SEQUIM – They didn’t get the $1 million grant they asked for, but officials at Peninsula College and Battelle’s Sequim laboratories are delighted just the same.
That’s because late Monday afternoon, word came from Gov. Chris Gregoire’s office that Battelle and the college have won the state’s innovation partnership zone designation.
The labs and college together can become “powerful engines to drive our regional economies,” the governor said in a prepared statement.
Battelle runs its 140-acre campus near Sequim for the federal Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, or PNNL, based in Richland.
Its research conducted in labs along the shores of Sequim Bay ranges from marine biotechnology to coastal restoration to stressors on the marine environment.
With the IPZ designation, which pairs the labs with Peninsula College, “we bring together research, training and commerce, put them in a beaker and shake,” Gregoire said in a prepared statement.
On Monday, the state Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development, or CTED, chose Battelle and Peninsula College, as well as 10 other innovation partnership zones, and awarded five grants, totaling some $4.28 million, from 25 applicants around the state.
The grants went to innovation zones in Bellingham, Pullman, Spokane, Walla Walla and Grays Harbor County, where the nation’s largest biodiesel plant opened in August.
Clallam County’s innovators, however, received no money and no tangible state help other than the new label.
