The campus was established in 1990 by the Joint Center for Higher Education (JCHE) and has been owned and operated by Washington State University since 1998.

[4] On April 23, 1988, Washington State Governor Booth Gardner signed an appropriation that allocated $800,000 for purchasing land east of Downtown Spokane for the eventual development of a higher education campus.

The campus is generally bounded by the Spokane River to the north and east, Martin Luther King Jr Way and the BNSF Railway tracks to the south, and Pine Street to the west.

[19] It was acquired by the WSU Foundation in 2001 and leased back to its prior owner for use until its transfer to Washington State University in 2004[20] with plans to eventually make the building, or its land, a key part of the campus.

The warehouse was designed by Spokane architect Albert Held for the Marshall-Wells Hardware Company, which was based in Duluth, Minnesota.

However, it has been used occasionally in recent years, hosting some small events and having its basement serve as a filming location for several scenes in the SyFy series Z Nation.

The university shares space in the Health Sciences Building, where it collaborates with WSU Spokane and houses its programs in dental hygiene, physical and occupational therapy, and speech and hearing disorders.

Its functions can be seen as similar to that of the former Innovate Washington agency, however, as an accelerator as opposed to incubator, it is involved in a later stage of a business start-up timeline.

[33] The school's original location near Downtown Spokane on a higher education campus was intended to provide several new opportunities for learning.

Access to university libraries was provided for Riverpoint Academy students, and several college-level classes were also taught by EWU Spokane staff.

[24] Innovate Washington was a state-funded business incubator whose roots partially began as the Spokane Intercollegiate Research & Technology Institute (SIRTI).

It created in 1994 under the administration the Joint Center for Higher Education (JCHE), the entity which had originally developed the WSU Health Sciences Spokane campus.

[39] In June 2011, a bill was signed by then-Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire that abolished SIRTI and its Seattle-based Washington Technology Center counterpart.