A California development firm isn’t the first candidate that comes to mind when you’re looking for a shining knight to rescue two historic downtown Spokane buildings from demolition. Aren’t those big-city guys the ones who trample on our heritage rather than protect it?

But let’s not get hung up over dashed stereotypes. The Los Angeles firm Renaissance Community Fund LLC has paid a deposit that buys time for the wrecking-ball-threatened Rookery and Mohawk buildings. Not only that, but the company’s principals are eyeing the structures as possible condominium and apartment projects.

Let’s see. More surface parking lots in downtown Spokane (current owner Wendell Reugh’s vision for the block bounded by Riverside, Howard, Sprague and Stevens) or two historic buildings, revamped and brimming with residential occupants to help bring the streets of downtown Spokane alive after dark?

Asphalt? Vitality? Asphalt? Vitality? Hmm.

An easy choice, yes, but it’s premature to get overly excited. Craig Stevens, one of the principals at Renaissance, has been clear there’s no final deal for the 1934 Rookery and 1915 Mohawk. He and his partner merely have put down a nonrefundable deposit that brings a halt – at least for now – to the demolition work that has leveled the oldest intact structure in downtown Spokane, the 114-year-old Merton Building. The Rookery and Mohawk were to be next, much to the chagrin of preservation advocates who have taken pains to spare the buildings. City ordinances even have been amended to limit the circumstances under which historic buildings could be leveled with nothing more than surface parking to take their place.

Those efforts were to no avail, however, and just when it looked as though hope had been exhausted, in rode Renaissance.

Spokane’s historic preservation officer, Teresa Blum, called the cliffhanger-style intervention “very, very exciting news.”

Indeed, if Stevens and Charles Loveman look the properties over and decide their plan is feasible and a suitable deal can be worked out with Reugh, it could result in an exciting marriage of Spokane’s past and future. As this city looks down the road, the existence of mixed-income residential use in the core is one ingredient for economic health and stability, as are a higher education center complete with student activity, a bustling expanded convention facility, diverse dining and entertainment outlets and a built-in population of citizens whose working, shopping and recreation habits prevent downtown from rolling up the carpet at 5:30.

In contrast, to use Stevens’ words, “It would be devastating to have that block torn down in the middle of downtown and just have an empty parking lot.”

If, in the process of improving downtown’s economic prospects, we can enjoy the added benefit of restoring two of Spokane’s rich inventory of historic buildings, it would be a double victory.

Much remains to be resolved before we’ll know if the Rookery-Mohawk issue will end favorably. But the wrecking ball is still for now, and that’s a hopeful sign.