If you haven't had a chance to visit the renovated McKinstry Spokane & Inland Empire Railroad building, you ought to find the time.

The company, with headquarters in Seattle, has a corps of about 100 workers in the Spokane area. Last fall it finished a $20 million renovation of the former electric railway maintenance and repair depot, on Spokane Falls Blvd. east of downtown and across from Gonzaga University.

Today's story on the business pages highlighted plans by McKinstry to set aside about 38,000 square feet of the building for an innovation center. The center will open its doors in August, and become a gathering spot-incubator for companies that are looking to accelerate their growth.

At least four companies will move in, come August, said McKinstry VP Tony Stewart. He projected about two dozen tenant companies will eventually fill up the innovation center.

A large portion of the McKinstry building is designed for open space — which is not easy to illustrate, given the unusual configuration of the building. We ran a story last year on the building, with a video, and those images still didn't capture the appealing and deceptively welcoming nature of the interior design.

A historic building slated for the wrecking ball could get a friend in the Spokane City Council.

Late last year, Washington State University-Spokane announced it would sell a 102-year-old warehouse called the Jensen-Byrd building so a development company could tear down the brick building and erect student housing.

Last month, the city-county Historic Landmarks Commission determined the building is eligible to be placed on historic registries. That will create procedural hurdles for tearing it down, but doesn’t prohibit demolition as long as a new building takes its place.

On Monday, the Spokane City Council will consider a non-binding resolution requesting that WSU reconsider the decision.

Councilman Steve Salvatori, co-sponsor of the resolution, said the structure is sound. 

“It could be an iconic, signature part of the campus,” Salvatori said. “It could be the most iconic, signature landmark on that campus.”

Spokane's City Council is likely next week to vote on a resolution about the Jensen-Byrd Building, being sold by WSU to a Texas firm, Campus Advantage.

The old building, once a central warehouse along the city's main rail yard, has become a cherished icon for historic preservation advocates. They view the plan by Campus Advantage to demolish the building as short-sighted. 

Campus Advantage has said it has looked at restoring the building but has concluded the structure is not easily and affordably convertible to a modern student housing complex, which is the plan for the Jensen-Byrd.

While the council is free to pass any resolution it wants, it doesn't have final say on what happens. According to the city's laws, Campus Advantage can apply for a demolition permit if its shows it will build a similar building in the same  spot. 

The request by Campus Advantage to move forward with demolition would have to go through the city's building department.

The council's resolution, as currently worded, urges WSU and Campus Advantage to reconsider the plan and look for ways to either build a high-density student apartment complex elsewhere. Or review the demolition option.

@SR_Officehours is asking Twitter users to respond to the question:  What do you think of the Jensen-Byrd building sale by WSU to a company that will tear the building down? We'd like to hear your comments or thoughts, in 140 characters or less.

Tweet messages or RTs, and the Tweetstream embedded here should collect all those messages.  Thanks. If you can, use the hashtag #Jensen-Byrd

So, if you read some of the reader comments found on Thursday's Spokesman.com story about Campus Advantage tearing down the Jensen-Byrd building, you may have wondered how many jobs comes out of this development.

The story in a nutshell: many folks regard the 1909 Jensen-Byrd building a major piece of Spokane history. But WSU has agreed to sell it to the Texas company, who will tear it down and replace it with a five-story student apartment complext catering to Riverpoint Campus students and those from nearby Gonzaga University.

How many jobs will the Campus Advantage project create?  Simple answer, not that many. Reader comments on Spokesman.com were all over the map on that question.

We can't say how many demolition and construction jobs will come from the effort; the Austin-based firm said it will rely on local contractors but it hasn't even closed the sale yet.

Longer-term, once it opens in fall 2013, the new building will likely hire about 5 fulltime and 5 part-time workers, said Campus Advantage Executive VP Scott Duckett.

The company that's buying the old 1909 Jensen-Byrd building in downtown Spokane has decided it will raze the structure rather than convert it.

Austin-based Campus Advantage paid $2.85 million to Washington State University for the buidling, which is roughly 136,000 square feet on land on the east end of downtown Spokane.

Spokane will borrow about $4 million from itself to pay for improvements near the University District along Division Street.

The money will be repaid in payments of $250,000 a year over 25 years with sales tax money collected in Spokane that otherwise would have been earmarked for the state.

The Spokane City Council voted 7-0 on Monday to issue the bond and to allow them to be purchased by the city’s investment fund, which is made up mostly of money held in reserve for future sewer, water and trash system upgrades.

Wednesday evening is the annual Spokane Catalyst Awards ceremony. In honor of the event Office Hours on Wednesday will host a Catalyst Trivia Contest. Some nifty award will be given to the winner, nearly as good as (and perhaps more valuable than) a Catalyst.

The nominees cover several categories listed below. The awards start at 4:30 p.m. at McCarthey Athletic Center, at Gonzaga University. Dr. Thayne McCullogh, the new president of GU, will take a role.

For tickets or information go here. Nominees:

Company of the year

A minor addition to our earlier post about Integra Telecom offering a free year of T1 connectivity for a qualifying Spokane nonprofit organization. The post ran on June 30.

Melissa Moore, a spokeswoman for Portland-based Integra Telecom, said the value of the service is between $5,000 and $6,000.

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If you have a passion for Spokane railroad history, you’ll celebrate recent plans by a Seattle firm to restore one of the area’s historic train sites.

Seattle energy-efficiency building company, McKinstry, has bought the early 1900s-era electric train shop and yards once used by a railway that ran from Spokane to Coeur d’Alene.

The address of the new McKinstry Spokane office is 802 E. Spokane Falls Blvd., south of Gonzaga inside the University District. Notably, it will call the office the Great Northern Building.

McKinstry has about 50 workers in Spokane now, with roughly 1,600 overall at various locations.

A press release from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) praised the company’s plan to grow its Spokane location. The firm focuses on building, designing and managing more energy efficient buildings.

The 1900s-era building McKinstry is converting was the shop and train yards of the Inland Empire Railroad Co. which operated until 1919. It became the Spokane and Eastern Railroad Co. That later became the Spokane & Inland Empire Railroad.

In 1929 the railway was taken over by the Great Northern Railroad.