A new suitor is trying to team up with Washington states Division of Archives and Records Management to develop the long-proposed Eastern Regional Archives facility, and wants to see the structure built in or near downtown Spokane.


The new suitor is the Inland Northwest Technology Education Center (INTEC), a fledgling organization that trains workers in emerging technologies. Community Colleges of Spokane Chancellor Charles Taylor, a proponent of INTEC, says INTEC recently submitted for inclusion in the governors budget a request for more than $3 million to fund the organization.


Philip Coombs, an Olympia-based state archivist, said in October that the Secretary of States office had planned to seek $15 million in capital funds from the Legislature in the 2001-2003 biennium to build the planned two-story Eastern Regional Archives, which would house important paper documents on its first floor and the states first electronic data center on the second floor. The archives division is an arm of the Secretary of States office that oversees the states regional archives facilities, including the Eastern Regional Archives, which currently is located in cramped space on Eastern Washington Universitys Cheney campus.


In October, Coombs said that the new archives building might be constructed at EWU with the university taking about 10,000 square feet of the buildings proposed 47,000 square feet floor space. EWU expected the buildings data center to provide internships for its computer-science students.


Before EWU became interested in the project, the building had been planned at the Riverpoint Higher Education Park just east of downtown Spokane. This fall, however, Coombs said that Washington State University, which manages the Riverpoint campus, had withdrawn its offer to locate the archives building there.


Also, Coombs says he received word last month that the executive branchs Office of Financial Management wasnt going to seek capital funds for construction of the building because the next state budget would be too tight. Coombs says now, however, that he has been told the project has been included in the governors budget, this time as a $14.3 million loan that would have to be repaid by the archives division over 20 years using operating funds.


Now, the idea of building the structure at or near Riverpoint is being considered again.


The newest site proposal and the proposed partnership between INTEC and the state archives division came out of a meeting convened last month by City Councilwoman Roberta Greene and County Commissioner Kate McCaslin at the request of Spokane Mayor John Talbott and the county commissioners. The meeting brought together civic, business, and government representatives to decide whether a new archives building should be a legislative priority for the Spokane area and where the structure should be built to benefit the greatest number of people, Greene says.


My hope is that well find a way to get that building constructed as a multiuse facility with a high-tech training center, she says.


Kim Pearman-Gillman, a senior vice president of Avista Development and an INTEC steering committee member, last week presented a draft report developed by a committee formed at the meeting Greene and McCaslin chaired. It said INTEC should be involved with the facility, and the building should be located at or near the Riverpoint campus.


In the other two proposals by WSU and EWU, both had plans for educational purposes, Taylor says. That seemed like a natural fit for INTEC, which also has an educational purpose. Pearman-Gillman adds that if INTEC partners with the archives division, the new facility would provide space for INTEC, which currently doesnt have a home, and INTEC and the archives division could share the high-tech equipment that would have to be installed in the building to operate the archives electronic database.


Pearman-Gillman says the committee now is looking at sites for the archives building and hopes to reach a consensus that can be presented at a legislative meeting sponsored by the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce here Dec. 13. At that meeting, various proposals for legislative funding will be submitted, and eventually a prioritized list of Spokane-area projects will be created.


Although it was suggested that the archives building be constructed at the WSU-controlled Riverpoint property, Coombs says he got the idea that WSU wasnt real open to that.


Says Taylor, If were going to pull this together, we need to get our ducks in a row. That includes making sure that WSU and EWU are comfortable with INTECs involvement, he says.


I really feel like theres a momentum here where people are saying, Lets put aside our differences and do whats best for our region, Taylor says.