Three companies in which Spokane developer Steve Schmautz is involved have bought three acres of land in the Liberty Lake area for future commercial development.


The newly acquired parcels were among the last available small pieces of land in the Liberty Lake Center, a 99-acre business park thats being developed by Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co., of Spokane. The recent purchases give companies in which Schmautz is involved a total of nine acres there.


The activity level is very high at Liberty Lake, and were trying to capitalize on that, Schmautz says.


He and Spokane contractor Bill Lawson bought most of that property through companies they own that include Jackson in the name.


In one of the three most recent land purchases, Jackson V LLC bought about three-fourths of an acre along the south side of Appleway Avenue. Schmautz says the company plans to develop most of that land into a parking lot for a three-story, 36,000-square-foot office structure that Jackson V already is building, but there will be enough additional space there for future development of a small commercial structure as well.


Just east of that property, at the southwest corner of Appleway Avenue and Discovery Lane, Jackson VII LLC bought one acre of land, and at the southeast corner of that intersection, SDS Properties LLC, a company owned by Schmautz and his wife, Tresa, bought 1.25 acres of land.


Schmautz says plans are to develop most of the newly acquired land, but he declines for now to disclose details.


In the fall of 1999, Schmautz and Lawson bought just less than six acres in that part of the Liberty Lake area. In addition to the three-story office structure thats nearly completed there, another company they own, Jackson IV LLC, recently completed a two-story, 48,000-square-foot building on that property. The combined cost of those two projects is about $7.1 million.


Of the six acres Schmautz and Lawson acquired in 1999, about 1.5 acres, at the northeast corner of Mission Avenue and Molter Road, remains to be developed. Plans havent been finalized for that land.


Schmautz owns SDS Realty Inc., of Spokane, and Lawson owns A&A Construction Inc., of Spokane.