The SR and Spokesman.com featured a business story today on the rising hope that the area's housing market is coming back.

Today's Washington Post had the exact same idea today. Here's its take, which is nearly identical to the SR story, in terms of why people care about new home construction:

New homes are popping up in more and more neighborhoods around the country in recent months, offering one of the most promising signs yet that the nation’s long-suffering housing market is actually starting to heal.

The increase in new home construction is particularly encouraging because of the economic benefits that ripple out each time a construction crew breaks ground. The growing demand for new homes has put contractors back to work, helped shore up some municipal budgets and pumped money into local economies.

“When you create jobs again in the housing market, you create some multiple of those jobs elsewhere,” said Brad Hunter, chief economist at Metrostudy, a national research firm that tracks new home construction. “To build a house, you’re causing more demand for lumber, furniture, drapes, carpets, cement, steel, appliances . . . These are all industries that get stimulated by housing.”

Today's business news story is an update on progress at the near-downtown mixed use development, Kendall Yards. (Story may require Spokesman.com access to read it in its entirety.)

The project has, up to now, been focused exclusively on building out the residential half of the project. About 60 units have been built and sold to date.

Now the company behind the project, Greenstone Corp., is starting two new commercial buildings. The first, in the rendering above, is the building on the left. It's called the Cedar Street Park Commercial Building.  A restaurant will fill the side facing the river.

The second commercial building is the one on the far right. It will be a two-story — plus daylight basement — office building, with no tenants yet announced. The two other buildings between those are also on the drawing boards, but will not move forward until some tenants/owners are lined up, said project manager Adam Jones.

Renderings come from Spokane's nystrom + olson architecture.

What was once the Agilent Technologies company campus has become the Meadowwood Technology Office Park. It’s at 24001 E. Mission in Liberty Lake. Developer Jim Frank is converting the tech office-manufacturing center into a cluster project focusing on growing area companies.

Your chance to get a good view of what’s happening to that large building comes on Oct. 27, when LaunchPad INW hosts an Emerging Trends in Technology session there, from 3 to 8 p.m.

At 3 p.m., a panel discussion will focus on cloud computing.  Tom Wilburn (in the photo), a Cisco VP for US/Canada Security and Mobility Sales, will also deliver a keynote at 4:30 p.m.

LaunchPad membership is not required to attend the session.

You can register and RSVP for $10 per person online, at http://bit.ly/cG7yzm. Tickets will be  $20 at the door.

For further information, contact Bill Kalivas, bill@launchpadinw.com.