‘A thriving environment where people want to be’: Kendall Yards apartment project resurfaces with new filing

A long-delayed project by developer Jim Frank appears to be moving forward as an architectural firm has filed paperwork with the city of Spokane seeking input on a six-story building that would include 200 living units and retail space in a vacant lot on West Summit Parkway west of the Monroe Street Bridge.

The project, called Kendall Yards Active Adult Spokane, was submitted earlier this month to the city of Spokane for a predevelopment conference. That essentially means that Frank, the founder and former CEO of Greenstone Corporation, is seeking guidance from city planners about what is needed prior to seeking a building permit.

“We are just taking another look at the project under the current construction and interest-rate environment,” Frank said. “It’s challenging.”

As planned, the project, at 1175 W. Summit Parkway, would cater to certain clients and would be age-restricted to those 55 and older, he said.

“It would be an opportunity for people to downsize and provide housing for people whose kids are gone and for people who are looking to live in an urban setting where services are close by,” Frank said. “There are a lot of people with big houses on the South Hill. But where do you downsize to? That’s the market we are looking for.”

The project, which would be built on about 2 acres just east of the existing building that houses The Inlander, would have an underground garage. The first floor would host retail businesses, and the upper five floors would be a mix of studio, one-bedroom and up to three-bedroom apartments.

Frank estimated the cost of the project between $50 million and $70 million.

The idea goes back nearly 20 years to when Greenstone took over Kendall Yards after developer Marshall Chesrown purchased the 78 acres in 2004 with plans for a $1 billion urban makeover with luxury developments and businesses.

Chesrown sunk millions into cleaning and moving utilities at the property before he got swept up in the tide of the Great Recession that ended several major projects.

After Chesrown’s bankruptcy, Greenstone again obtained Kendall Yards and Frank started a scaled-down version based on mixed-use, or using a combination of businesses and residential to create its own self-sustaining community.

“It goes back that far because we always wanted and understood the importance of having a true mixed-use environment in the business district,” he said. “It couldn’t just be the one- and two-story retail buildings … and nothing else. The only way to get that residential is to go up.”

And Kendall Yards Active Adult will cater to empty nesters.

“That particular market is in itself quite diverse,” Frank said. “We are doing an age-restricted project in Liberty Lake. Some 40% of the occupants are single, and most of those are single females.”

As a result, the Kendall Yards project will have several one-bedroom units, or two bedrooms for when grandparents have family come visit.

“We also want to have a product that is economically diverse,” he said. “It’s not exclusively for wealthy people. We want it to be able to serve a wide economic and demographic profile.”

The timing for the project, as it has been delayed in the past, relies on construction costs and interest rates.

Frank said construction costs have somewhat stabilized, but several developers have delayed proposals in the past few years because interest rates remain higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s just hard to make projects pencil right now,” Frank said. “If we move ahead, we’d move ahead next spring.”

Once the construction begins, he said crews would probably take about six months to excavate and build the underground parking garage before beginning vertical construction.

“It’s probably 18 months to two years,” Frank said, referring to the time needed to build. “We’d shoot for occupancy in 2028.”

Despite the economic challenges, Frank said he has other motivations.

“There is the other side. We have a vision for Kendall Yards and what we want it to be,” he said. “To accomplish that mixed-use, walkable, thriving kind of environment, it takes the right mix of retail, office and residential. We can’t go forever without building new residential.”

Folks living in the project help sustain its economic viability, he said.

“Compare it to downtown. The real problem is there simply isn’t enough residential. That’s hard to turn around,” Frank said. “You want to build in a thriving environment where people want to be.”

Greenstone is in a position, despite the economic challenges, to complete the project perhaps better than a developer who relies only on the economics of a single project to sustain it, Frank said.

“We are able to take a longer view of things because our economics on Kendall Yards are not dependent on one project,” he said. The proposed residential building “creates value for the rest of the property we own.”