The approach that Washington State University and NexCore Group LP, of Denver, are taking to develop 3.5 acres of land at the Riverpoint Campus is different from past efforts employed there.

This time, WSU and its developer plan to develop a medical office building as a destination point, say managers with WSU, NexCore, the Downtown Spokane Partnership, and Arthritis Northwest PLLC, a Spokane doctors group that would be the anchor tenant in the proposed new Musculoskeletal Center of Excellence.

Rather than seeing patients just once to deal with an ailment, Arthritis Northwest helps its "chronic-disease patients" for many years, says Karen Ferguson, administrator of the medical practice, which tentatively plans to occupy 12,000 to 20,000 square feet of floor space in the center. As envisioned, the center would include a minimum of 60,000 square feet of space.

"We continually maintain the quality of these patients over a lifetime," says Ferguson.

The idea behind the Musculoskeletal Center is that patients could see in the same building both their doctors and the specialists with whom they need to schedule appointments, Ferguson says. It's expected that specialists would either open their own offices at the center or make their services available in satellite facilities there provided for that purpose. Meanwhile, students and faculty members from WSU's health program-oriented Riverpoint campus and from other local colleges and universities could do research and collaborative work at the center with medical practitioners from Arthritis Northwest and other doctors' groups.

The Musculoskeletal Center would be built at the southeast corner of Spokane Falls Boulevard and Pine Street in the first of three phases of development on the 3.5-acre site.

Arthritis Northwest, which has six rheumatologists and 42 staff members in all, claims to be the largest practice of its kind in Washington state and, Ferguson believes, also is the largest north of Denver in the western U.S. She describes the practice as "regional in scope," and says the Musculoskeletal Center likely eventually would have under its roof specialists in orthopedics, dermatology, radiology, neurology, physical therapy, and other related clinical and research programs.

"Physicians are excited to come on to the campus" to offer services there, she says. To determine that, Arthritis Northwest held an after-work open house at the Spokane Club on Oct. 16, and it attracted a sizable crowd, Ferguson says.

"About 96 people attended," she says. "We invited primarily the referring docs (who send patients to Arthritis Northwest) that we thought would be interested in that first phase" of development. "We have a good footprint of interest for this first building."

Brian Pitcher, chancellor of WSU at Spokane, says the concept that WSU is following in the project is similar to what Oregon Sciences University is doing in seeking to develop a 400,000-square-foot health and healing center in Portland.

"It's the whole-health, led by the university, private development, and the city approach," says Pitcher. He says WSU will sign a ground lease and NexCore will own the Musculoskeletal Center structure. Pitcher says the buildings that will go up in the project will be "more urban" than the structures built by the state of Washington thus far at Riverpoint. The new structures will have strong mass-transit and other transportation connections to bring patients, students, and others to the campus, and will include first-floor retail space, Pitcher says.

Ferguson says retail in the Musculoskeletal Center could include a core of "healthy food outlets," a spa, a clothing store, banks, and a coffee shop. Jerrod Daddis, of NexCore, says that if the building includes 60,000 square feet of floor space, surface parking will be developed on an adjacent parcel in the first phase, but if the structure is bigger than that, a parking structure will be constructed in that phase.

A second medical office building will be constructed, and the old Jensen-Byrd Building, which sits on the property, will be redeveloped in second and third phases of the project, although it's uncertain which of those two projects will be done first, Daddis says. The project will be NexCore's second here, following its development of a medical office building as part of an expansion at Holy Family Hospital.

Marty Dickinson, president of the Downtown Spokane Partnership, says that business group wants "to move along as rapidly as possible a project that this community needs from an economic-development standpoint." She adds, "Our greatest fear is that we only use this area from 8:30 in the morning to 5 o'clock at night," and both she and Pitcher say every effort must be made to provide better links between the campus and the rest of downtown on the other side of Division Street.