Gonzaga University has bought, for $1.45 million, the Spokane Regional Plan Center's 12,000-square-foot building at the southeast corner of Boone Avenue and Ruby Street and says it eventually plans to use the structure as office space.

The Spokane Regional Plan Center, a nonprofit organization that serves the construction industry in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and parts of Oregon, is seeking space that will be more efficient for its operations, says Rita Heldenbrand, its executive director.

The plan center bought the building, at 102 E. Boone, in 1965. It offers its members access to construction plans online now, rather than just on paper at the center, so the space needs of the office have changed, Heldenbrand says.

The plan center has made plans for 2,100 construction jobs available to its 800-plus member companies so far this year, she says.

For now, the plan center has leased the main floor of the building, which covers about 6,000 square feet of space, from Gonzaga, and will remain there for up to two years while it looks for a new space. Previously, it had leased out some of the lower level offices in the two-level building, but currently there are no tenants in those spaces, Heldenbrand says.

Gonzaga plans to complete some cosmetic remodeling in the lower level of the building and to consolidate there its offices of human resources and environmental health and safety, says Ken Sammons, Gonzaga's plant services director. Currently, those offices are located in two houses that the university owns at 328 E. Sharp and 414 E. Sharp, but the offices are in the same department and would be more efficient if they were housed together, Sammons says. Eventually, Gonzaga will install a sprinkler system in the plan center building, an expense that the plan center cites as one reason it decided to sell. The university hasn't estimated the cost of that project yet, he says.

Once Gonzaga moves its human resources and environmental health and safety offices, the two houses on Sharp will be used as adjunct faculty office space, Sammons says. Later, when the plan center vacates the building on Boone, Gonzaga likely will move its human resources and environmental health and safety offices up to the main level of that building and likely will use the lower level for additional faculty office space, he says.

The plan center property includes the building and a parking lot located south across Boone from Gonzaga's Kennedy Apartments. Part of the parking lot will be reserved for the plan center's current staff of six full-time and four part-time employees, and the rest will be used by the university.

On that same block, Gonzaga University also owns the Fuller Building and St. Gregory Choral Hall, which formerly housed Barstone Dry Ice, Sammons says.