November 12, 2009 in City

Kendall Yards buyer touts range of housing options

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A venerable home builder is bringing new hope to a stalled downtown Spokane development project.

Greenstone Corp. has purchased the Kendall Yards property with plans to build a waterfront neighborhood affordable to downtown workers yet still attuned to the ambitious mixed-use community envisioned by seller Marshall Chesrown.

By reducing the scope of the upscale project and dropping the price of new homes, Greenstone is betting that it can complete the struggling project on the north bank of the Spokane River – an accomplishment that has eluded developers for years.

The number of housing units will drop from about 2,500 to fewer than 1,000. And the focus will be mostly on wood-frame construction, including many townhouses, rather than numerous pricey steel-and-glass high rises, Greenstone President Jason Wheaton said.

Within two years Greenstone plans to have perhaps 60 to 80 housing units available in the $175,000 to $250,000 range. The average price under the previous plans was $400,000 to $500,000.

Wheaton said housing options will include single-family homes, urban lofts, condominiums and apartments. There may be a residential tower eight to 10 stories tall.

The architecture, Wheaton said, will include modern and historical features. Homes will be built with energy efficiency as a priority.

The project’s commercial building space will be cut to about 600,000 square feet from 1 million.

Controlled by Jim Frank, Greenstone is the largest home builder in the Inland Northwest and is perhaps best known for its extensive work on Liberty Lake developments.

The terms of the purchase were not disclosed, though Greenstone acknowledged it is restructuring about $20 million of debt associated with the project.

Washington Trust Bank is providing the financing.

Kendall Yards construction is expected to be ongoing for the next 10 to 15 years.

Chesrown was unavailable for comment Wednesday. He said in a prepared statement: “We are very pleased that Greenstone has committed to develop the property and carry the Kendall Yards vision forward.”

Another major change to the project will be park planning. Greenstone will ask the city of Spokane to abandon Ohio Avenue so the Centennial Trail corridor can be turned into a greenway park open to bicyclists and walkers, akin to Riverfront Park.

“We’re really excited about extending the park, and we think the community will be, too,” Wheaton said.

Brenda Corbett, chairwoman of the West Central Neighborhood Council, said Greenstone’s plans would be good for the area.

She said fewer, more-affordable housing options would be well received, along with a continued commitment to find suitable retailers for the area. The neighborhood hopes for an affordable grocery, hardware store and day care, she said.

“We need these things,” Corbett said. “And we need to have all different ranges of income in here to make this a truly mixed and healthy neighborhood.”

She said the neighborhood council and Greenstone have been meeting for a couple of months. Neighbors will like the idea of less traffic congestion than initially feared and having working-class housing, she said.

“We’re hopeful that this is the one that gets done,” Corbett said.

The Kendall Yards project has been embraced by city leaders and the business community. Under Chesrown’s company, River Front Properties LLC, the land has undergone a massive, multimillion-dollar pollution cleanup stemming from its use as a railroad refueling depot.

More than 223,000 tons of contaminated soil have been removed from the 78-acre site. The cleanup was partly financed with federal grants and low-interest loans and is ready for builders.

Yet legal issues remain in play. The Union Pacific Railroad has initiated legal action against River Front Properties because of fears that it may be on the hook to refund Chesrown for some of the cleanup costs. The railroad claims indemnity from an $8 million demand by Chesrown, citing its sale of the land 19 years ago to Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co.

When Metropolitan Mortgage failed in 2004, Chesrown scooped up the property at a bankruptcy auction for $12.8 million. He then began his ambitious development project with plenty of fanfare.

The housing market collapse, however, took its toll. And high-end homebuilders have buckled under the weight of the credit crunch. Chesrown’s Black Rock North development is the subject of a bank foreclosure action, and little has happened at Kendall Yards in many months.

Wheaton said Greenstone has been weathering the recession by offering a broad range of houses and prices. “It’s worked for us in this tough economy,” he said.

Greenstone is a partner with Centennial Properties Inc. in RiverCrossing LLC, a development project in Liberty Lake. Centennial Properties is a real estate subsidiary of Cowles Co., which also owns The Spokesman-Review.

24 comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  Rifleman__Dodd on November 12 at 12:58 a.m.

  Lipstick on a pig

• 

  ChefGus/ John Olsen on November 12 at 5:12 a.m.

  Yeah… but many of us will “kiss the pig”… the new prices seem more within reach of “average” people that actually already live in Spokane.. and not just the high end “aliens” from California and the Phoenix Basin. Remember our aquifer and low cost renewable energy are going to increasingly boost migration to our Inland Basin. j

• 

  Ninch on November 12 at 8:13 a.m.

  I don’t get the “lipstick on a pig” comment. Maybe because the author lacks knowledge about the long overdue environmental cleanup.

  Greenstone is a smart and pragmatic developer and will be successful in completing the project.

• 

  herbsty on November 12 at 1:45 p.m.

  The lipstick on a pig comment is really uninformed. This is a beautiful old neighborhood that just needs a bit of love in some areas. We have all types of people that live here, from the very poor, to high paid professionals, Drs and Lawyers. We all have one thing in common, we love old houses. Please don’t call our neighborhood a “pig”. Rude.

  I welcomed Chesrown and will welcome Greenstone. All I ask is that you maintain the vintage neighborhood feel. And give us a nice pub we can safely walk to.

• 

  MrNatural on November 12 at 3:08 p.m.

  Nothing like ripe fruit on a low limb but this might be more of a tough nut. This site will be developed to maximize profits and aimed at dazzling urbanites to get them to invest their money. It’s a great site and a rare opportunity to polish the downtown core. At issue I think is the relic contamination from prior land use…This site was environmentally brushed and not completely cleaned. Once they start digging and living on it I’m afraid there will be much to contend with…not to mention the effect of the perpetual power struggles that pull the fabric of this city.

• 

  ChefGus/ John Olsen on November 12 at 6:41 p.m.

  Mr N… wondering what more you know, or can find out about the remediation of this toxic site… scraping off the top and sending it to Kellog Idaho or the Cataldo flats may indeed not quite cut it… help us here/? j

• 

  theknow on November 12 at 7:13 p.m.

  Mr. Natural, don’t make comments on things you don’t have hard facts to support. If you weren’t involved in the cleanup process then you obviously don’t know to what standard the site was cleaned. I doubt you would have any knowledge of the situation in any substantial manner that would support you making these allegations.

• 

  Rifleman__Dodd on November 12 at 7:52 p.m.

  Kendall Yards was a stupid project from the get go.

  Where were they going to come up with the 2300 High Paying jobs ($200K/Yr) in order for people to afford to buy one of Chesron’s Taj Mahals? Well that just wasn’t going to happen was it. Whose gonna pony up all the money to pay for power, water, sewer, fire, police, streets, etc. All the infra-structure that this development is going to require? Well nobody but us tax payers. Just figure the costs of a new fire station alone.

  So the PIG is that Kendall yards was a joke in the first place and that by reducing the number of units and cost/unit that there is no tax money to finance this. Remember our “give away” city council gave away the property taxes for umpteen years.

  By bringing/selling to another developer whom has deeper pockets than Chesron, we are just putting different lipstick on this pig.

  Ninch’s comment is very stupid since I never said ANYTHING about the environmental cleanup and my comment was not meant to either.

  Herbsty is as ignorant as also. Uh what neighborhood is there at Kendal yards now besides a huge patch of dirt? Herbsty are you living in a cave? He probably was one of the losers that bought property in Felony Flats hoping to make a killing after slapping some paint on a run down crack house and hoping for appreciation by proximity to Chesrons meth dreams of an Urbane Village.

  The County/CIty screwed the pooch by letting Chesron get a by on the taxes and not demanding a hunk of the land for a new jail/courthouse complex.

  We might as well have turned the empty land into a racetrack. No ones gonna buy any of those wet dream houses when they go out a couple of miles and get a better deal in our depressed real estate market. I guess none of you have looked at the housing market lately. Remember the $500,000 Riverfront Condo’s in Post falls/CDA that couldn’t even be sold for $175K?

  You all keep rubbing and rubbing that magic lamp of Kendall yards hoping that genie is going to appear. Cause it just isn’t going to happen and remember to exhale once in a while.

• 

  ChefGus/ John Olsen on November 13 at 5:39 a.m.

  But Rifleman… IF we Inhale real real deep… and hold it in our lungs for as long as we can then…. then…. we relax and feel better and eat brownies.. ( don’t you remember the Real Estate Crash of 1974? … and 1984?… the bottom of the market has a ways to go yet me thinks.. the same problems with residential real estate have not become apparent on the front page yet with regards the Commercial Markets… add up all the empty commercial space in Seattle and you’ll start “seeing the light”…

  Chesron did indeed get a great free ride with the TIFF etc… i’d guess the new kid on the block got the same padding in his pocket… j

• 

  herbsty on November 13 at 9:32 a.m.

  “Kendall Yards”, is in West central, which is the Nettleton Addition, the largest Historic District in Washington State.

• 

  MrNatural on November 13 at 11:17 a.m.

  ChefGus and theknow…just look at the RI-FS on file at Ecology and compare it to the cleanup given to date…they left an unkown amount of metals and Bunker C oil at levels that were deemed too deep to mitigate…yes I do know what I’m talking about…shoot you should see how much contamination still exists over at SIRTI-Riverpoint…when powerful people mow down the goverment entity that oversees contamination they do so…if you don’t believe me just look at Raceway Park and the TMDL for the river…

• 

  eagleproducer on November 13 at 12:01 p.m.

  rifleman: Love the comment about slapping paint on a crack house. Real residents of felony flats were concerned with gentrification should the Kendall Yards project see fruition, not whether they’d have a pub they could walk to. They already do, it’s called the Broadway Tavern. Oh, you meant a pub like The Elk in Brownes Addtion, didn’t you, one that is rarely used by neighborhood residents but frequented by South Hill types who think it’s cool once in awhile to go slumming?

• 

  eagleproducer on November 13 at 12:04 p.m.

  chefgus: I’ve been in Seattle plenty recently and I didn’t see anything resembling the amount of empty retail space as one sees in Spokane.

• 

  herbsty on November 13 at 12:13 p.m.

  Spotucky: I guess I’m not “real” then.

  I’ve lived here for more than a decade. So, NO I did not rush in and buy a crack house when Kendall Yards was proposed. Have you even driven through the entire neighborhood, or do you judge the entire neighborhood based on 1 drive up Boone?

  With Kendall Yards, I was excited to see the potential, and welcomed the presumed increase in my property taxes. Bring it on!
  My hope is this, increased value in the property, increased proerty taxes, then people who cannot afford to maintain thier houses will leave.
  Possibly naive of me, but I would like to see a continued gradual increase in the number of home owners who are updating and caring for all these neat old houses. And bulldozing the ones beyond repair.

• 

  Rifleman__Dodd on November 13 at 7:46 p.m.

  herbsty are you volunteering your crib to be one of the ones to be bulldozed?

  right that Nettleton aka Felony flats is the largest historic district in the state. I guess Seattle, West Seattle, Bellingham, Ellensburg and all the other cities are not as big as your Crack Land district.

  Please put the pipe down.

• 

  herbsty on November 14 at 12:51 p.m.

  Rifelman: Please get a t-shirt that says “your neighborhood sucks”. It will add to the debate in a more constructive way then how you are handling yourself here. What you are doing is called an ad hominem attack. The fact that you are using this tactic reveals more about you than your words ever could. It is called a “logical fallacy”, and shows that you have no idea how to truly debate. Educate yourself or risk exposing your ignorance each time you post.
  http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html

• 

  eagleproducer on November 14 at 3:39 p.m.

  herbsty: You might want to go back to Debate Logic 101 because rifleman did not engage in an “ad hominem” attack. I didn’t see once where he engaged in name calling or belittling your character.

  I’ve lived in Spokane forty years and know the Nettleton district intimately. I share the same concerns you do about values increasing to the point where the neighborhood loses its diversity of cultures and incomes. I know landlords in Brownes Addition would love to see it go mainly condo while not realizing the reason it was named a top 10 neighborhood in the U.S. (who knew of such competitions, eh?) because of the people who live there, both owners and tenants.

• 

  ChefGus/ John Olsen on November 14 at 4:38 p.m.

  Spoke… yes there are more small retail spaces empty here likely.. i was referring to the empty office blgs downtown.( although we have them too)

  West Central seems to me to gently evolving… there are some five different christian denominations workin hard on that too… and the neighborhoods that I doorbelled for Barb Chamberlain a few years ago were a good bit less nice than they are now…. not quite so many nasty dogs either… j

• 

  herbsty on November 14 at 6:03 p.m.

  Spotucky: Yes he did. He called me ignorant, a loser, and a crack addict (or some other kind of drug smoked via pipe). I will paste them below.

  “Herbsty is as ignorant as also. Uh what neighborhood is there at Kendal yards now besides a huge patch of dirt? Herbsty are you living in a cave? He probably was one of the losers that bought property in Felony Flats………”

  And after I said that they should bulldoze the houses beyond repair, this was his response….

  “Herbsty are you volunteering your crib to be one of the ones to be bulldozed?……….Please put the pipe down.”

• 

  Rifleman__Dodd on November 14 at 7:16 p.m.

  Herbsty glad to see the shoe fits. Wear them well albeit them size 19’s normally are found on a clown’s foot.

  Uh might want to expand where you get your news and I dont mean the Thrifty Nickel either.

  KXLY.com

  Residents living near Kendall Yards concerned about development.

  SPOKANE — People with homes facing the Kendall Yards construction project - the biggest in Spokane history - are worrying about the consequences of the project that will last 15 years.

  The land north of the Spokane River and west of the Monroe Street Bridge was sold to the Greenstone Corporation recently and they plan to start construction soon. Kendall Yards will impact everyone and some are very excited about it.

  “This project has everything that Spokane is looking for,” Mayor Mary Verner said. “This announcement is great news.”

  But what about the residents living close to the project?

  “Very sad day,” Karen Kavanagh, who lives 25 feet from the soon-to-be construction zone, said. “I’m really sorry to hear that, because we had a block party when we heard Kendall Yards was going under. It’s just plain stupid. This has always been a nice, quiet street, now it’s going to turn into a parking lot.”

  Karen doesn’t see Kendall Yards bringing economic benefits either.

  “Everybody says property values will go up, I don’t think so,” she said. “I think property values will go down.”

  Once there are new homes next door selling the old houses like the one Karen lives in will be impossible, she says. Karen and her neighbor Marci Lonn are not excited about the construction potentially destroying their view of downtown either.

  “It’s a beautiful view at night,” Marci said. “It’s going to suck.”

• 

  herbsty on November 14 at 8:04 p.m.

  Rifleman: Wow, almost 300 posts on Spokesman alone on 2 months? Dang. I think I’ll go have a life now.

• 

  Rifleman__Dodd on November 14 at 10:42 p.m.

  “Greenstone will pump $500 million into Kendall Yards”

  Wow $500 Mill for 1000 houses.. that comes to $500K/House for the math challenged.

  Whose gonna pay all thisplus the overhead and the $20mill for the buy in so that Greenstone makes a profit?

  Herbsty.. you could sell that life for about a dime and start the ball rolling.

• 

  purplecoin on November 16 at 9:42 p.m.

  It would be a great site for a downtown university. Could even be one that takes its theme from the 1974 Expo, a environmental friendly university focusing on climate issues and the technologies to make our planet more greener.

  Just a thought..

• 

  shanusmaximus on November 17 at 4:25 p.m.

  Greenstone just wants the gold……

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZfyrIPw3wY

  ……and then we will get the shaft.