A trio of developers from the Tacoma, Wash., area plans to develop a multimillion-dollar business park on part of the still-vacant property on the West Plains where Spokane-based Inland Power & Light Co. sought unsuccessfully for years to develop the more than 400-acre West Terrace Business Park.


The Western Washington threesome, operating under the name West Terrace Business Park LLC, expects to begin work on two speculative 30,500-square-foot, office-warehouse buildings this summer and on two more buildings of that same size soon thereafter, says Kevin Byrne, the companys managing member. We have a goal of having those four buildings up by the end of the year, he says.


The initial group of buildings is expected to occupy about 10 acres of a 136-acre parcel that the limited-liability corporation bought about two years ago, Byrne says. The parcel is located directly south of Spokane International Airport and is bounded by Electric Road on the north, Geiger Boulevard on the south, and Thomas Mallen Road on the west. The property extends just past Soda Road on the east. The parcel essentially is the eastern portion of Inlands former proposed business park site, which extended west of Thomas Mallen Road all the way to Hayford Road, north of the Interstate 90-Medical Lake interchange.


Inland assembled the property in the 1980s by adding to a site on the West Plains that it had bought for a warehouse. Eventually, the cooperative decided to develop a business park there to create new electrical load that it could serve.


It spent a substantial sum on the park, for sewer, water, engineering services, an environmental impact statement, and other work, but then was unable to land users for it and since then has sold off most of the land in pieces, with the stipulation that it will provide electrical service to the eventual users of the property. The new owners of the property, though, have had an equally difficult time thus far attracting users.


Byrne says he and the other owners of West Terrace Business Park LLC nonetheless are optimistic that construction of the speculative office-warehouse buildings there will get the development ball rolling.


I think there are a lot of things happening on the West Plains in general and a lot of things occurring near the airport, and for property bordered by I-90 that backs up to the airport, I would think there would be reasonable demand, he says. We feel very good about the project and happy to be over there.


Along with gearing up to begin construction of the buildings, West Terrace Business Park LLC is working on a plat for its overall 136-acre site, Byrne says. We have a plan that basically breaks it into 19 parcels, ranging in size from about four acres to 11 acres, he says.


Those parcels will be available for purchase or for build-to-suit projects in which users would lease the space in buildings that West Terrace would develop for them, he says. The main focus will be on making sure all of the buildings there, whether owned or leased by their users, are similar in look and layout to maintain a strong business-park type of atmosphere, Byrne says.


Soda Road, on the east side of the planned business park site, is about where transportation officials are planning to put in a new freeway off-ramp. Our plat is reserving enough area on Soda to allow for an interchange, he says.


Byrne says the initial speculative buildings will be single-story, steel-and-masonry structures that will be erected along Geiger Boulevard about midway between Thomas Mallen and Spring roads. The latter north-south road runs through the middle of the business park property. The space thats going to be built is, at least from my perspective, A-type space. It will be heated space, fully sprinkled, with generous landscapingthings like that, he says.


Adams & Clark Inc., of Spokane, is doing the engineering work on the project, and Mountain Construction, of Tacoma, is expected to be the general contractor, Byrne says. Garco Building Systems, of Airway Heights, will provide the structural steel, he says.


Byrne also is CEO of NW LLC, a financial-services company that makes commercial real estate loans and is based in University Place, Wash., a suburb of Tacoma. He says the two other owners of West Terrace Business Park LLC are Mike Price and Tom Price, who are the two main principals of a publicly traded company call T&W Financial thats based in Fife, Wash., just east of Tacoma. The three men have developed a number of other projects together, all in Western Washington, Byrne says.


Alpha Group Inc., of Freeland, Wash., which is on Whidbey Island, bought the 136-acre parcel now owned by West Terrace Business Park LLC from Inland about four years ago and said it planned to put an industrial park there. Those plans never materialized, however, leading to West Terrace Business Park LLCs acquisition of the property.


In 1988, Inland was close to selling a site in the park to Boeing Co. for Boeings Spokane plant. Inland hoped that attracting Boeing would spur more development in the park and also provide a good-sized piece of new business for its electrical system.


Boeing, however, reached an agreement with Washington Water Power Co. to buy the site near Airway Heights where its plant now is located.