Renovation Of Old Plant Gathers Steam Downtown Building With Landmark Smokestacks To Be Retail Complex

The Spokane central steam plant, perhaps the city’s most controversial pigeon coop, will get a face lift and new ownership, backers of a redevelopment project said Tuesday.

Ron Wells, who with wife, Julie, owns Wells and Co., said exterior work will start within 60 days. Interior renovation will begin in 90 days after a specific use for the landmark building has been identified, he said.

“It obviously lends itself to a lot of character uses,” said Wells, who is well-respected for his work restoring historic buildings.

A restaurant, microbrewery or specialty shops are among the possibilities, he said. Completion of the project, which some view as a possible stimulus for other downtown development, will take about a year.

Also during the next 60 days, Wells said, the building will be nominated for inclusion on the national and Spokane registries of historic places.

The steam plant has been a neighborhood sore point since 1993, when the existence of a leak from one of its underground fuel bunkers was disclosed.

The revelation set back downtown boosters who hoped the imposing building would help anchor a proposed Davenport Arts and Entertainment District along the south side of the elevated Burlington Northern tracks.

The 13,000-square-foot plant was constructed in 1915 and provided steam to other downtown structures until 1986, when Washington Water Power Co. turned off the last boiler.

Peter Kerwien, president of WP Finance, the WWP subsidiary that owns the building, said title to the steam plant property would be passed to a limited liability company of which WP and Wells and Co. would be the first members.

Long term, he said, the two companies hope to enlist other investors and owners of adjacent properties in an effort to revitalize the area along the alley south of the elevated Burlington Northern tracks.

“It’s pretty much Ron’s show,” Kerwien said of the redevelopment effort.

Wells said he envisions a renewal like that achieved in the Carnegie Square area at West First and Adams, where Wells and Co. has assembled a mixture of apartments, shops and offices.

He estimated rehabilitation of the steam plant will cost between $1.5 million and $4 million, depending on the amount of work necessary and the type of project.

Structurally, Kerwien said as a train rumbled by, “It’s the rock of Gibraltar.”

A somewhat sullied rock. Scrap boiler pipe was heaped in one corner, and pigeons fluttered near the windows high overhead. Icicles reached down from a leak in the roof.

Outside, the landmark smokestacks tower 250 feet overhead. Julie Wells said she was anxious to see the spires saved.

“That kind of brickwork is almost a lost art,” she said.

Ron Wells said using a limited liability company to own the plant has nothing to do with the decade-old oil leak.

The pollution has migrated towards First Avenue, where WWP proposes to contain it with a combination of wells and barriers.

The owners of The Davenport Hotel have sued the utility, claiming the oil has reduced the value of the property and impeded its redevelopment.

But hotel Executive Director Jeffrey Ng was conciliatory Tuesday, steam plant saying the project was a step in the right direction, although it does not resolve concerns about the spill.

Whatever development takes place at the plant will only make worse an already severe shortage of parking in the area, he added.

Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co., which has also been severely critical of WWP, reacted cautiously to what was characterized as a study and “a good first step.”

“Simply proposing a study is not enough to magically disperse the cloud of uncertainty that the oil spill has created over the economic future of the Davenport Arts District,” President C. Paul Sandifur Jr. said in a prepared statement.

He said any cleanup plan approved by the Washington Department of Ecology should address human, environmental and economic health.

Approval of the plan should be delayed until a complete redevelopment plan is available, Sandifur said.

Kerwien noted that WWP has offered to indemnify the owners of all adjacent property against any loss in value due to the presence of the oil.

“The renovation of the building is apart from what happens to the site around it,” Wells added.

He said he has discussed financing with banks, but will not have a loan package to submit until he knows more about the project’s final shape.

Gage Stromberg, an attorney and Wells’ son, said a limited liability company is a new type of business entity intended to combine some of the advantages of corporations and limited partnerships.

Investors, or members, get some of the legal protection afforded corporations and some of the tax advantages of a partnership, he said.

Wells said he was approached about the steam plant last March by an appraiser who thought Wells and Co., with its history of rehabilitating older buildings, would be interested in the building.

He said his company is enthusiastic about the challenge and the project’s potential for triggering more development in the area.

“Neighbors will be glad to have a viable activity and something that attracts people back into the neighborhood,” he said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo