Summit Property Development says it has landed two tenants for a 24,000-square-foot building it plans to build in the Spokane Valley Plaza, which is located at the northeast corner of Sullivan Road and Broadway Avenue.


Kyle BrinJones, Summits retail project manager, says that the two tenants, China King Buffet and Corral West Ranchwear, have agreed to lease about 8,000 square feet and 7,000 square feet of space, respectively, in the building.


China King Buffet earlier this year opened a smaller restaurant in a former Sizzler Restaurant building at 9707 E. Sprague. The business is owned by two brothers and an uncle who also own a China King Buffet outlet in North Carolina and one in Georgia.


Corral West is a Cheyenne, Wyo.-based retail chain that operates one other store here, located in the Northpointe Plaza on the Newport Highway.


Summit expects to begin construction of the building soon and to complete it by next spring, BrinJones says. The building will sit on a 2.5-acre site at the southeast corner of the power centers partly developed 34-acre site, he says. He declines to estimate the cost of the project, saying construction bids are expected to be sought shortly. Tenants are being sought for the remaining 9,000 square feet of planned floor space in the building.


Separately, Summit is close to securing a tenant for a proposed 30,000-square-foot store in the retail center, BrinJones says. That store would be located just east of a recently completed 24,000-square-foot building where Michaels Stores Inc., the big Dallas-based retailer of arts, crafts, and home-dcor items, plans to open a store.


Wal-Mart and Toys R Us are the only current tenants in the Spokane Valley Plaza. The 135,000-square-foot Wal-Mart store opened first, in July 1997, on a 13-acre portion of the site near Interstate 90 that Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. bought for about $2.8 million. The 32,000-square-foot Toys R Us store opened last October on the west side of the site, next to Sullivan and just west of the Michaels store site.


Summit announced in February 1997 that it planned to build a 30,000-square-foot, multitenant building on the site where the 24,000-square-foot building now is planned. Construction was delayed and the planned building size was reduced after the company was unable to reach lease agreements with a couple of anticipated tenants.


The Spokane Valley Plaza is expected to have a little over 300,000 square feet of retail space when completed.


Summit handles the real estate interests of Spokane-based Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co., which owns most of the Spokane Valley Plaza property. Metropolitan is a financial-services company with more than $1 billion in assets.