Bank of Whitman, based in Colfax, Wash., says it has bought a downtown Spokane office-building project in which it will be an anchor tenant, and has reduced the size of the planned building to three stories from five.


The project, which is well under way, involves the rehabilitation of the long-vacant, former J.J. Newberry Co. and Lamonts Apparel Inc. buildings. The adjoining three-story structures are located on the north side of Riverside Avenue between Wall and Howard streets.


Bill Knox, a vice president with Bank of Whitman, says the bank bought the property from Spokane developer Dick Vandervert over a month ago.


Through a Spokane company called CentrePlace LLC, Vandervert had planned to connect the two buildings there more fully and add two more floors to create 100,000 square feet of office space at a project cost of about $9.2 million. The bank had agreed early last year to lease the entire first floor of the building for a full-service bank branch.


Knox says the bank decided when it bought the project to reduce the size of the building to keep the project manageable. It still plans to occupy just the main floor of the building and will seek to lease out the two upper floors, he says. Under the revised plans, he estimates the building will have about 60,000 square feet of floor space and a total project cost of closer to $6 million.


ALSC Architects PS, of Spokane, designed the renovation, and Vandervert Construction Inc., of Spokane, is the general contractor.