Inland Empire Food Service Inc., of Spokane, says it plans to open a new McDonald's Corp. restaurant in the Fairways Plaza retail development near the Interstate 90-Medical Lake interchange. The outlet will be the company's sixth, all in Spokane County.

Cory Ray, majority owner of Inland Empire Food Service, says the restaurant will occupy about 3,400 square feet of floor space at the north end of a new multitenant building there and will be the first tenant to open in the structure.

Fairways Commercial Investments LLC, a company led by Spokane developer Dick Vandervert, is developing the 106,000-square-foot Fairways Plaza on a roughly 15-acre site at the southwest corner of Aero Road and Westbow Lane, just southeast of the interchange. The development, just across Aero Road from a truck stop that opened in the fall of 2006, is to include a number of buildings eventually, but just the one has been constructed there so far.

Ray says McDonald's Corp. expects to spend about $600,000 to remodel the leased space there to accommodate the restaurant, and his company probably will spend about another $700,000 to equip and furnish it, for a total project cost of about $1.3 million.

McDonald's has hired Associated Construction Inc., of Spokane, to do the remodeling work, Ray says, adding that he hopes to open the restaurant by around mid-December. The restaurant probably will employ 35 to 40 people, most of them full time, he says.

Inland Empire Food Service currently operates two McDonald's restaurants on Spokane's South Hill, one near downtown in a Chevron station at the southwest corner of Maple Street and Fourth Avenue, and one each in Airway Heights and Cheney. Ray says he formed the company on Jan. 1, 2006, when he split off from Spokane Food Service Inc., which is headed by his brother, Mark, and operates 21 McDonald's restaurants in the Spokane-Coeur d'Alene area. A third franchisee has one McDonald's restaurant here, in the Indian Trail area, and also owns outlets in Newport, Wash., and Rathdrum, Idaho, he says.

Ray says he split off from Spokane Food Service because he wanted his children to have a future in the business if they desired it. He says one of his daughters is his office manager and the husband of his oldest daughter is the company's supervisor.

The company's five restaurants altogether employ about 200 people, most of them full time, he says.