The internet modem and the servers they connect to could hold the key to Kitsap County’s economic future

Kitsap County is the second most densely populated county in Washington State, yet it ranks 38th out of 39 counties in business creation. Translation: few if any entrepreneurs are starting businesses in a county that has 230,000 people and is located a mere ferry ride away from downtown Seattle and East King County — ground zero for the emerging Internet, e-commerce economy.

Yet, in spite of its proximity to sophisticated Seattle, Kitsap County has more in common with its neighboring counties to the south and west, Mason, Jefferson, Clallam and Grays Harbor, which have similar challenges in attracting new businesses, sparking entrepreneurship and connecting to the wider world via the Internet and broadband access.

For those reasons and others, such as ferries, roads, bridges and salmon, the Kitsap Regional Economic Development Council in cooperation with Sen. Patty Murray’s Rural Telecommunications Working Group, sponsored the Olympic Regional Telecom Conference in mid-November.

The one-day event drew 140-plus people from the five-counties to the Cornerstone Building in Bremerton and included presentations, speeches and afternoon workshops where participants were encouraged to divulge the telecommunications challenges facing their individual communities and offer up solutions. “On the surface this conference is about technology,” Sen. Murray noted, “but below the surface it’s about not leaving people behind.”

Indeed, 70 percent of cities with 270,000 people or more in the United States have access to broadband services, while only 10 percent of less populated areas have similar access. Those are the very statistics people attending last month’s conference are aiming to overcome.

“It’s not only possible to create jobs outside Seattle,” said Bryan McConaughy, an aide to Congressman Norm Dicks, “but it’s a must. High housing and high business costs are taking the luster off the I-5 Corridor.”

Participants learned that out-of-the way places such as Forks and Grays Harbor are attracting new businesses and helping local companies expand using a combination of advanced telecommunications networks and local partnerships with private business and government.

For example, Satsop Development Park in Grays Harbor is owned and operated by the Grays Harbor Public Development Authority (PDA), which was chartered by Grays Harbor County to create a new business and technology park on the site of a mothballed nuclear power plant at Satsop.

That was in August of 1999. Today, the 400-acre business and industrial park is home to 10 businesses, including a $70 million wood plastic composite plant being constructed by Boise Cascade Corp. that will employ 120 people when its completed in April 2002 and SafeHarbor.com.

The technical support services company currently employs 200 people and leases 90,000 square feet of high-tech office space on the site. SafeHarbor is now nearing completion on a new 42,000-square-foot building at the park.

Tami Garrow of the Grays Harbor PDA, said a 30-year agreement with Bonneville Power to bring 72-strand fiber optic cable from Olympia to the park and into Aberdeen, at a cost of $1.5 million, was crucial to making the park attractive to businesses. The fiber is now in place and the PDA has installed the necessary electronics to light it.

Garrow said the development of the Community, Education and Lifelong Learning Center, known as the Cell Center, which provides customized training to park tenants, local business and private citizens on the site, was another important ingredient in transforming Satsop.

“This is a result of a partnership of a whole bunch of people who mobilized,” said Garrow. “We’re making real progress.”

Forks, in rural Clallam County, has created a integrated community network that links broadband telecommunications infrastructure and services to all aspects of the community, including city government, the school district, and Forks Community Hospital. The arrangement has had a positive spin off for expanding business opportunities and attracting new industries, for schools and distance learning, telemedicine and telehealth and government.

Port Angeles and Sequim are also becoming more wired cities and backers are working to close the so-called Sappho Gap, a digital trunk line running from Aberdeen to Forks that will eventual connect to Sappho, Clallam Bay and Neah Bay and provide redundancy using existing microwave technology.

“In 1993, we had no ISP (Internet Service Providers) in Clallam County,” said Karen Rogers, a Port Angeles businessperson behind the innovations. “I think we’re leaders.”

While Kitsap hasn’t had as dramatic a turnaround in efforts to improve its telecom wiring as some of its more rural neighbors, there have been a number of success stories.

According to the EDC, these victories include Sprint’s decision last summer to install its Internet backbone Point of Presence in Poulsbo, a service similar to what customers could find only in Seattle. The service promises to level the telecom playing field in our efforts to compete for high-tech, clean industry; Poulsbo’s telecom conduit ordinance, still in the works, which will allow fiber to be laid in the ground while streets are being dug up for other purposes; Kitsap PUD, NoaNet and the BPA’s huge effort to create a wholesale source of telecommunications power in Kitsap County using existing and underused BPA lines; North Kitsap schools’ innovative program using the Internet, which allows teachers, parents and students to communicate over the web on a regular basis; and local developers such as Herb Myers, Jim Freeman and Ron Spieko who are developing buildings with fiber optic networks, teleconferencing facilities, scalable broadband access with shared T-1s and OC 48 lines in anticipation of attracting New Economy tenants.

“We think we have an exciting future that will make us less dependent on ferries, roads and bridges and more plugged in to the World Wide Web and the larger economy,” said Ed Stern, who has led Kitsap’s efforts to improve it telecommunications backbone.

(Editor’s Note: Kevin Dwyer is a Bainbridge Island free-lance writer.).