Skagit County awards $500K to Port of Skagit, NWIRC

Skagit County has awarded $500,000 to The Port of Skagit and NW Innovation Resource Center's TheLab@SWIFT, an innovation center for start-ups and entrepreneurs.

The SWIFT Center, which stands for Sedro-Woolley Innovation for Tomorrow, is the former Northern State Hospital campus owned by The Port of Skagit. Many of the remaining buildings on the campus were used to treat and house people with mental illnesses until it closed in the early 1970s.

NWIRC has already received $750,000 in state and federal funding for architectural designs and renovation of a non-historic building on the SWIFT Center campus.

NWIRC's TheLab@SWIFT will provide prototyping workshops, advisory services, training facilities and other resources to facilitate new innovations, which can be the basis for establishing new businesses or building more resilient and competitive existing small businesses in the region.

The Port of Skagit was also awarded $500,000 to expand capacity and enhance functionality of The Granary, the Port's publicly owned grain infrastructure located at the Bayview Business Park. The port received another $500,000 for development of Watershed Business Park off Peterson Road to increase the number of ready-to-build industrial lots in Skagit County.

Source: Port of Skagit