The Spokane Public Facilities District is negotiating to buy the C.I. Shenanigan's restaurant building and land, just north of the boat-shaped Group Health Exhibit Hall downtown, as part of a long-range plan to develop additional convention exhibit space and meeting rooms.

The district's board earlier this month authorized staff members to enter into a preliminary agreement to acquire the 10,000-square-foot building, at 332 N. Spokane Falls Court, and nearly an acre of land, at a cost not to exceed $4.5 million. The final executed agreement still will be subject to board approval.

Kevin Twohig, the district's executive director, says, though, that an unexpected complication has arisen—the longtime restaurant and the building it occupies have different owners—and so, "We don't have a deal. We are trying to make one, but we don't have one."

Twohig says the snag "has to do with a bunch of rights," and he estimates the district won't know for another month or so whether the transaction can proceed, but he's optimistic.

"I know we have a willing seller, and we're a willing buyer," he says, adding, "I think we'll figure a way to get this done."

If the PFD is able to complete the purchase, it will continue to lease the building to the restaurant until it's ready to redevelop the site to accommodate a further expansion of convention facilities, he says. It owns the Spokane Convention Center, the INB Performing Arts Center, and the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena. The convention center complex stretches along the south bank of the Spokane River west of Division Street and was expanded a couple of years ago.

The Shenanigan's restaurant shut down for a time while that work was being done because access to the restaurant property was blocked. Twohig says the district began exploring the purchase of the property after being contacted by the property owners, who expressed a readiness to sell it.

"The building is for sale, and we were concerned about having it go to someone who might try to do something else on that site," he says. That would be a problem, he says, because long-range planning documents call for the possible development of additional exhibit space and meeting rooms there.