Seattle-based Group Health Cooperative, which has nearly 130,000 members in Eastern Washington and North Idaho, says it plans to open a larger clinic on the South Hill.


Group Health recently signed a 10-year lease agreement with Dr. John Sonneland, who owns the Quail Run Professional Campus near the southwest corner of the intersection of 29th Avenue and Southeast Boulevard, for space in a building he plans to develop there, at 2204 E. 29th, says Ray Summers, spokesman for Group Health.


Sonneland plans to build the 12,000-square-foot structure on a 1-acre site on the south side of 29th Avenue, says Bruce Blackmer, president and CEO of Spokane-based Northwest Architectural Co., which, together with Spokane-based Heylman Martin Associates Architects, designed the project. The site is a half-block east of the Quail Run development, and the new building will be part of that development and will share a parking lot with the buildings that are located there.


Sonneland will develop the building shell and do site work, at a cost of about $2 million, Blackmer says. Leone & Keeble Inc., of Spokane, is the contractor.


Group Health will be the buildings anchor tenant, and will perform tenant improvements before it moves into about 8,500 square feet of space on the north side of the structure, Summers says. Northwest Architectural is designing those improvements, although he has no cost estimate for them yet, nor has a contractor thus far been selected to do them, Blackmer says. The remaining 3,500 square feet of space in the planned building still is available to lease, he says.


Construction of the buildings shell is expected to start in August and be completed by next January. Group Health plans to start tenant improvements soon thereafter and will move into the new building next spring, Summers says.


Group Health currently operates its South Hill Medical Center in a roughly 4,200-square-foot space, at 3104 S. Regal, he says. Group Health wanted to move its center to a larger, newer space that includes more parking for patients, he says.


Were pretty excited about getting into a site that provides an opportunity for us to upgrade and give a more welcoming environment for our patients, he says. The existing site is small and has limited our ability to grow our practice.


Four doctors and a physicians assistant, as well as 20 support staff employees, will move from Group Healths current site to the new building on 29th, Summers says. Group Health isnt ready to say yet whether it will hire additional employees after it moves, he says.


Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co., which handles project management for Group Health, will help develop design standards for the tenant improvements, Summers says.