ED MARQUAND'S bike tires were punctured in 18 places. He was not amused. Riding near the tiny Yakima Valley town of Tieton, in 2005, he'd hit a patch of goats head, a hearty, diabolical weed with thorns so stout they can make holes in car tires. As he patched up the tubes, he looked around the sleepy little town. Marquand had never really taken note of the place before and he loved what he saw. "It was the layout," he says. Unlike so many other little burgs, Tieton isn't just a collection of strip malls; its modest buildings are plotted around a shady town square with storefronts on all four sides.

Nor are Tieton's commercial hopes bunched upon either side of a busy highway with commerce dependent on snagging people as they fly by. To get to Tieton (rhymes with "buy-a-gun") you must turn off busy Hwy 410at Naches, and drive four winding miles though the apple and pear orchards. "You have to want to get here," says Marquand. At 56, Ed Marquand is a successful Seattle publisher of fine illustrated books (Marquand Books) for art museums, galleries, trade publishers, artists, collectors and architects. The company has such clients as Chicago's Art Institute, The Smithsonian, and the Seattle Art Museum.

Marquand has had a vacation cabin in the hills near Tieton for 15 years, and has long fantasized about figuring out a way he could make his living in the area, and leave city life behind.

Looking around that day, Marquand spied a massive, concrete building near the center of town with a crude hand-lettered "for sale or lease" sign on the big white door. Later, he and friends crawled through a broken window and discovered the 28,000-square-footcanned fruit warehouse was soundly built with massive timbers and had two stories, one of which was mostly below grade.

Next door was an empty 40,000-squarefootwarehouse, also for sale, which included, he was to discover, a 12,000 square foot space once used for an apple packing line; five heavily insulated, canyonic rooms for atmospherically controlled fruit storage - plus two gigantic staging rooms with 26-foot ceilings.

All this stirred up an old dream of Marquand's; living and working in a community of like-minded people in creative businesses- architects, designers, craftspeople, artists and artisans, whose livelihoods require inexpensive studio and production space, and plenty of it.

Surrounded by orchards, Tieton had long been an agricultural center, and with much forested land nearby, it had also been heavily reliant on timber industry. With both industries severely depressed, the commercial district is nearly moribund. The population of1131, half of whom are Hispanic, finds seasonal work in the few fruit packing plants left in the incorporated town, which has an elected mayor and city council.

There are water and sewer systems and, important to Marquand, DSL for Internet access.

Excited, he brought designers, architects and artist friends that he describes as "people who have more ideas before breakfast than most of us have in a lifetime" to the town to brainstorm ideas about economically viable entrepreneurial, artistic, and residential uses for the spaces.

Over time, they came up with a vision of a community of designers, artisan businesses, and creative light manufacturers to take advantage of the low real estate prices and the underutilized (and cheap) workforce.

In the process, they'd like to be an entrepreneurial incubator for creative businesses, create a line of branded products, and bring some economic independence and skilled jobs to Tieton.

Marquand created Mighty Tieton LLC and bought the canned fruit warehouse, which is being converted into 14 two-level, 1440-square-foot condo/work lofts, with solar and conventional electricity, that should go for around $160,000 each. He's offered them to friends and colleagues who have, he says, spoken for 12 of them. Permitting is done, and they're shooting for occupancy next summer. To do the design work, Marquand hired the prestigious Seattle architecture firm of Arellano/Christofides.