Four companies vie for WSU property

Four companies are vying for the opportunity to develop five acres of land just east of downtown Spokane on the Riverpoint higher education campus.

Washington State University released a request for proposals last month, looking for parties interested in leasing the land for 55 years and developing it. The land stretches southeast from the intersection of Pine Street and Spokane Falls Boulevard and holds several structures, most notably the six-story Jensen-Byrd building, built in 1909.

WSU received four proposals by its Dec. 22 deadline. Developers were given fairly free rein, including permission to keep or demolish existing buildings, but they could not construct condominiums for sale. The four proposals came in from: American Campus Communities, a publicly traded company that builds student housing; The Phoenix Project, a group of businesspeople interested in developing a farmers market, space for promising start-up businesses and artists’ studios; and two Spokane firms, Northwest Architectural Co. and SRM Development. All are proposing a mix of uses, potentially to include office or retail space and housing.

WSU anticipates selecting a developer by March.

“If we happen to be the selected group, we would be commencing construction very quickly, as soon as WSU approved proceeding,” said Bruce Blackmer, president and CEO of Northwest Architectural. Blackmer said his company is working with a general contractor whom he declined to name.

Blackmer said his firm has commitments from office, retail and possibly research-oriented tenants who would occupy up to 200,000 square feet of space. Blackmer declined to name any of the potential tenants. The company plans to construct up to seven buildings on the site, which it would call Riverpoint Plaza, he said. There also would be room for housing, though no set number of units has been determined. Northwest Architectural would probably remove the Jensen/Byrd building, Blackmer said.

The company has completed projects comprising up to 300,000 square feet of space, but nothing with “this particular mix of uses,” Blackmer said. One component of WSU’s request called for developments that included mixed uses, not just housing or just office space, for example.

Building student housing is what American Campus Communities has done on college campuses across the country. However, the national company’s proposal calls for a mix of uses, including residential and “supportive neighborhood retail,” said Sue Lani Madsen, a local architect working with company. “They want it to be an urban community.”

The company’s proposal included three different scenarios, two of which call for apartment structures with up to 560 individual living units or “beds.” Those two call for demolition of the Jensen-Byrd building, she said. The third, however, calls for only 350 beds and preservation of the historic structure, Madsen said. Retail uses could include a grocery store, a drycleaner, coffee shops, restaurants, pubs or pizza places, she said.

“The kind of things people want to walk to,” she said.

The Phoenix Project is a collaboration among businesspeople including Pete Chase, CEO of Purcell Systems, Pete Thompson, a real estate agent at Hawkins/Edwards, and Chris Kelly, a Spokane writer and consultant. They want to see Spokane promote more innovation and start-ups in business and industry and they see the Jensen/Byrd building as a great place to start. They see it holding an eclectic mix of business including a farmers market, artists’ studios, start-up technology businesses, an alternative movie theater, a radio station, production studios and more.

“We’re trying to figure out how to make something happen down there,” Thompson said.

A representative of SRM Development said previously that the company planned a mixed-use development, but declined to elaborate further.