Tidymans LLC, which operates a grocery-store chain based here, has sold three of its Spokane-area supermarket buildings to a Western Washington real estate investment group for a total of $8.45 million.


Tidymans President and CEO Mike Davis says the grocery chain leased back two of the properties through long-term agreements and is continuing to operate stores in those buildings. The company had closed the supermarket that it had in the third building, a 45,000-square-foot structure at 2024 N. Argonne, last November.


Davis says Tidymans had marketed only the Argonne Road building for sale, but decided to sell the other two structures after receiving a proposal from the investment group.


The Spokane company is using the proceeds of the sale to pay down debt, he says.


The two buildings that Tidymans has leased back are a 14-year-old, 67,000-square-foot supermarket at 12930 E. Sprague, in Spokane Valley, and a 15-year-old, 52,000-square-foot structure at 6405 N. Addison, on Spokanes North Side.


The company still owns the buildings occupied by its other two Spokane-area supermarkets, at 4235 S. Spokane-Cheney Road, in southwest Spokane, and 116 S. McKinnon, in Spokane Valley.


Leo Notar, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Schneidmiller Realty Inc., of Coeur dAlene, who handled the transactions, says Kirkland, Wash.-based real estate investor Jim Samuel heads up the group of investors that bought the three supermarket buildings. The investors established separate limited-liability companies to buy each structure, with the name of each company including the name of the street on which each building is located. Those companies are Sprague Investment LLC, Addison Investment LLC, and Argonne Investment LLC.


The sale of the three buildings closed in late December.


County records show that in late January, Sprague Investment LLC subsequently sold the Sprague Avenue property to a Fountain Valley, Calif.-based real estate investment company called Bridges, American Sher Lane LP.


That building sold for $5.3 million, roughly $1.1 million more than Sprague Investment LLC paid for it a month earlier.


Notar says he currently is marketing the Argonne Road building for lease.


He says he has talked with several national tenants, but no transaction is imminent.


Tidymans currently operates six stores, four in the Spokane area, one in Post Falls, and one in Kalispell, Mont. In addition, it operates four County Market supermarkets in Montana and a Dissmores Food Court, in Pullman, Wash.