Here’s the dirt : Nursing home construction should be finished soon
Construction of a 120-bed nursing home in Post Falls is nearly complete, while an adjacent, three-story independent- and assisted-living center could take another 18 months to finish, a project manager said.
The structures, called Garden Plaza Post Falls, are rising next to the Wal-Mart off Interstate 90.
“We’re hopeful to be installing the furniture by the middle of August,” said Linda Cross, senior project manager for Cleveland, Tenn.-based Life Care Centers of America Inc.
The approximately 63,000-square-foot, one-story assisted living center will include a library, ice cream shop and beauty shop, Cross said. The other, roughly 270,000-square-foot building will provide 147 independent-living beds and 95 assisted-living beds. It will offer a fitness center, indoor swimming pool, large meeting room and putting green. The roughly $50 million project is expected to bring about 170 jobs, according to Life Care. The second building will be operated by Century Park Associates LLC, of Chattanooga, Tenn.
Liberty Lake shopping center on track, developer says
Preparations continue for shopping center Telido Station, the first commercial component of a massive mixed-use development planned along the Spokane River in Liberty Lake.
But it likely will be three years before stores start springing up on the 152-acre property, which is being jointly developed by Liberty Lake-based Greenstone Corp. and Centennial Properties Inc., said Greenstone owner Jim Frank.
The city of Liberty Lake this spring approved a preliminary site plan for the vacant parcel, located north of Interstate 90 and west of the George Gee auto dealerships. Final approval would allow the site to be subdivided into 38 parcels.
Telido Station could include 20 retail pads and 500,000 square feet of retail space, Frank said. No retailers have been announced.
“We’ve done quite a bit of work related to market study, market analysis and preliminary site-plan design,” he said. “We’re in the initial phases of marketing and talking to prospective tenants.”
Centennial Properties is a subsidiary of the Cowles Co., which owns The Spokesman-Review.
Telido Station is one part of the plan for the roughly 700-acre River District, which extends north to the river and east past Harvard Road. Greenstone recently submitted a lengthy application for a special type of zoning that would allow it to build a denser, diverse mix of housing and retail on the other areas, including a walkable “town center.” That application must be approved by the city’s Planning Commission and City Council.
“This process allows us to have the flexibility to achieve the goals of the project that are just not achievable under the current comprehensive plan and development code,” such as narrower street sections, Frank said.
County commissioners last summer approved creating a “revenue development area” that would allow the state to contribute as much as $1 million a year for 25 years for infrastructure improvements in and around the River District.
A key to developing Telido Station will be modifications to the Harvard Road interchange with the interstate east of the development, and the company is studying modifications that would handle traffic from the project, Frank said.
Greenstone already has built about 300 homes near Telido Station, Frank said. While the shopping center will be oriented toward cars, other portions will target pedestrians, he said.
“Our desire as a developer is to have a community that will be something really different from what people have seen in the past in terms of new developments, much more urban in character,” he said.
Downtown trashcans replaced
Eighteen shiny black garbage cans have been popping up in downtown Spokane as part of an effort to “freshen the look of our streetscapes,” according to the Downtown Spokane Partnership.
The Downtown Spokane Business Improvement District, a roughly 80-block area of downtown that receives taxes from businesses and property owners and is administered by the partnership, also bought 18 black planters that will be placed this month, according to a news release. The cans and planters cost about $45,000, said Marla Nunberg-Oleniacz, vice president of marketing for the DSP.
The revitalization effort will begin with the area between Wall and Stevens streets and Riverside Avenue and Spokane Falls Boulevard. Current terra cotta planters on Main Avenue will be placed elsewhere downtown “until a unified look is accomplished.”
“The BID Clean Team, with assistance from Security Ambassadors, have begun replacing the familiar 12-gallon, Expo ‘74, cement receptacles, removed by the City’s sanitation department, with an updated, sleek, 30-gallon trash receptacle for a larger capacity,” the release says.
Special business district assessments raise more than $900,000 annually, according to the DSP.