U-City Redevelopment Awaiting Design Ok

Sat., May 2, 1998

By Angie Gaddy angieg@spokesman.com

A proposed $6 million redevelopment of University City Shopping Center is awaiting design approval from the Spokane County hearing examiner.

After reviewing the preliminary master site plan, county planners expressed concerns about the handling of stormwater, landscaping and signage.

The 41.5-acre site at the corner of Sprague Avenue and Univeristy Road is up for a major revamp, with pad sites, more tenants. Developers hope U-City will become the retail hub for the Central Valley.

County planners told hearing examiner Mike Dempsey they don’t want a rebuilt U-City “to be developed with lots of signs like the rest of Sprague.”

“We’d like to see it more aesthetically pleasing,” planner Louis Webster said at the Wednesday hearing.

Since the preliminary master plan calls for five new buildings along Second Avenue, where the new Valley Couplet’s eastbound lanes will run, and three buildings along Sprague, which will carry westbound traffic, developers said they want to have the option of offering future tenants the ability to advertise to passing motorists.

U-City, rebuilt as a community-based shopping center, will need to attract tenants who want to advertise, said David Peterson, vice president of Goodale and Barbieri, which manages U-City for owner Harry Magnuson’s University City Inc.

Gary Bernardo, of Bernardo-Wills Architects, the project architect, said developers want each of three proposed tenants along Sprague Avenue to have its own sign. They would also like to put up one University City city sign that might also advertise the shopping center’s bigger tenants.

Dempsey will not make a decision on the final project until mid-May.

Meanwhile, construction of the new 52,000-square foot Rosauers supermarket at U-City is expected to begin in about a month. Last fall, the east wing of the shopping center, which used to house a Rosauers store, was torn down to make way for the new one.

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