Groundbreaking Projects
...Bars, Shops and Offices will fill the Steam Plant

Smoke Signals
May 1998
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Downtown Spokane is a busy place these days. A number of projects are being planned, built or renovated within a few blocks of the Spokane Club.

The twin 225-foot-tall smokestacks that have punctuated Spokane's skyline since 1916 now look down on Steam Plant Square project. Located just south of the railroad tracks on Lincoln, this redevelopment partnership between Washington Water Power and Wells & Co. will open high-tech office and specialty retail space this summer.

The cavernous brick interior will be up dated, but still feature the original boilers, perhaps refitted as espresso or sushi bars, says Kim Pearman-Gillman, of WWP.

Across the railroad tracks, the venerable Davenport Hotel may finally get its long-awaited makeover. Renovation work on several hundred-guest rooms could begin this summer with completion in time for romantics to celebrate the new millennium at Spokane's great turn-of-the-century hotel.

Work also begins shortly on the new Spokane Regional Business Center at Riverside and Post. The Chamber of Commerce, Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Economic Development Council already have combined offices in the building. The first floor now will become a state-of-the-art conferencing and marketing center.

West of the Club, several luxury condominium projects are taking shape along Riverside, while Cheney Cowles Museum is moving ahead on designs for an expansion that will more than double its floor space. If state law-makers, appropriate construction funds next year, the $12 to $14 million project could be completed in early 2001.

Across the river from the Club, Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co. has been busy demolishing old structures and digging away the former railroad berm in preparation for future development on its 72 acre Summit property.

On the east-side of downtown, the city of Spokane is still committed to a major expansion of the Convention Center in spite of the Legislature's vote against a proposed financing plan. The City hopes to find funding to add more than 150,000 square feet of new space plus three levels of parking to be built across Spokane Falls Blvd. from the Opera House.

Several blocks east of there, designs have been completed for the Eastern Washington Archives Building, according to Gerald Winkler of Integrus Architects. The Legislature also has okayed design money for a new Health Sciences structure on the Riverpoint Higher Education campus. Planned for the north side of Spokane Falls Blvd. one block east of Division, the building would house research labs and classrooms for upper-division and graduate students. "If the next legislative session appropriates funds, then both structures could start construction in the summer of 1999," says Winkler.

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