Thomas Clouse: The Dirt: Spokane County adding new office building
May 16—Spokane County is seeking a building permit from the city to build a new Operations Building at 1303 N. Cedar St., which is on a block of buildings that had been used as an asbestos plant.
Kyle Twohig, senior director of public works for the county, said the plan would be to build a new office building and warehouse that would consolidate several teams.
"We are putting our construction management team, our signals shop, our sign shop, our bridge crew and our training-and-materials lab all over there," Twohig said.
Demolition has begun to tear down several structures on the site and construction, by contractor Garco Construction, should begin soon, he said.
Plans include a 26-foot tall building that will contain about 16,346 square feet. The cost is projected at about $15 million and Twohig said it should be completed by the fall of 2025.
Integrus Architecture is designing the structures.
"It's going very well," Twohig said. "We are just looking forward to improving conditions for our crews. They've been getting by with some outdated facilities."
New tavern for downtown
A permit seeking to remodel the site of the former Brooklyn Deli, at 1001 W. 1st Ave., has been submitted to the city that would remodel the space for what would become The Griffin's Tavern.
The owner, GVD Hospitality Management Services of Spokane, has submitted a request to remodel the space, which also formerly housed Far West Billiards.
Jeff Cooney, general manager of Ruby Hospitality, said the name, Griffin's Tavern, has not been finalized. GVD Hospitality also operates the Steam Plant Restaurant and Brew Pub and The Gilded Unicorn.
It's looking to remake the space at the corner of West First and South Monroe.
"We haven't finalized the name if it. The concept would be a restaurant and bar and we are testing out some different ideas what we've come up with," Cooney said. "We are trying to open sometime this year."
Plans call for remodeling about 3,837 square feet of space at a projected cost of about $80,000.
Mauer Construction is the contractor and the architect is Jerod Harwood of HOIST LLC.
"We are working on getting permits," Cooney said. "Our next step is coming up with menus and concept of design."
New C-Store and pumps
Owner TEJ LLC has submitted a permit request with Spokane County what could be a strip-mall-type commercial development on vacant land at 3525 E. Francis Ave., located north of US Foods and northwest of the Freya Street intersection.
Mike Kiehn, of Russel Page Architects, is designing the building.
Plans call for a C-Store and fuel pumps as part of a 21,931-square-foot building. Kiehn said the building would have room for other commercial businesses.
The projected cost of the project is $2.5 million.
"We hope to get started as soon as we get permits," Kiehn said.
No contractor had been hired as of last week.
Nef's Auto Repair
The owner of Nef's Auto Repair had a predevelopment conference with city planners last week to convert a former Cooper Tire warehouse, at 114 East Ermina Ave., into a vehicle repair shop.
The project architect is Eric Anderson of Pondera Architecture of Spokane.
Anderson said the work, which would mostly entail a simple change of use, would keep the existing office space. But plans call for adding hydraulic lifts in the warehouse for the mechanics to work on vehicles.
Nef's would operate both an auto-repair company and car rental business out of the existing warehouse.
Anderson said work on the remodel would begin as soon as city planners give their approval.
The projected cost of the remodel effort was not listed on the permit documents.
