Seattle-based Real Property Investors LLC says it plans to buy a 10.5-acre site at the northwest corner of Market Street and Garland Avenue in Hillyard and to develop a $9 million neighborhood retail center there.


Mike McKernan, a partner in Real Property Investors, says he expects the center to have a supermarket, drug store, and video-rental outlet, as well as development pads near Market. The entire development would have about 80,000 square feet of retail space when completed. Work on the project could start next spring.


Real Property Investors is in the process of buying the property from Northwest Development Inc., a Spokane-based limited partnership owned by William S. Morin, Carter Dullanty, and members of their families. Northwest Development had planned to develop a shopping center on the land with its sister company, S.G. Morin & Son Construction Inc., also of Spokane.


In the spring of 1998, Northwest Development and S.G. Morin announced plans for a center with a supermarket anchor tenant, a retail strip building for smaller shops, and a separate building pad near the street for a bank branch or fast-food restaurant, but those plans were never finalized and the project never started, says Gregg Morin, president of S.G. Morin.


Then we received an offer to purchase that was too attractive not to accept, he says.


The purchase price wasnt disclosed.


Real Property Investors and the owners of the site now are in the midst of a 90-day due diligence review period.


McKernan says the sale is contingent on Real Property Investors ability to get signed leases with tenants and the needed building permits, both of which he hopes to obtain within 60 days. He says Real Property Investors is negotiating with potential tenants now, but declines to disclose names of businesses the company is working with, including the possible supermarket anchor.


Real Property Investors has worked with numerous supermarkets in projects on the West Side of the state, and a grocer that had worked with the company previously wanted to work with Real Property Investors on a Spokane site, McKernan says. This will be the first project for Real Property Investors here.


As part of the sale agreement, S.G Morin would be a pre-qualified bidder on the construction of the center, Morin says.