SEQUIM – An new Innovation Partnership Zone means jobs, higher salaries and a new generation of globally marketed products from Clallam County, said Linda Rotmark, executive director of the county Economic Development Council, at the start of a celebration Tuesday afternoon at the Battelle Marine Research Operations laboratory.
Two months after winning one of the state’s 11 Innovation Partnership Zone designations from Gov. Chris Gregoire, the representatives of the partners gathered at the Sequim lab to trumpet the new label.
The partners are Battelle, which runs the marine research operations lab on Sequim Bay for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy, Peninsula College and the Economic Development Council.
Together they received the IPZ designation on Oct. 1 after Rotmark and the EDC put together an application last summer, but lost out on some $4.28 million in state grants that went to five of the designees.
But none of the partners is gnashing teeth over that.
Being in the zone, said Peninsula College president Tom Keegan, means fresh opportunities for students, researchers and inventors.
Students will, he hopes, serve as interns in Battelle’s Sequim labs, while learning in the classroom about the concept of intellectual property and how to turn lab work into commercial products.
The college is “creating an opportunity for innovation,” Keegan added.
It would have been nice to get a million-dollar grant from the state, he said.
But the college and lab are capable of advancing without it.
“There are two ways to go,” Keegan said. One is to “get the money up front and then figure it out,” and the other is the way it’ll be done here: Bring the partners together, let the ideas flow and then go back to the state with a grant application.
