Borders Books & Music is coming to Spokane.


Borders Group Inc., which owns the big bookstore chain, has leased a 23,000-square-foot retail space in the Northpointe Plaza shopping center, on Spokanes North Side, for its first Spokane-area store, says Ruben Poplawski, a Beverly Hills, Calif.-based businessman and president of Northpointe Plaza LLC, which owns the center.


Poplawski says Borders has begun remodeling its store space at Northpointe and expects to open its store there in either August or September.


A spokeswoman for Borders declines for now to comment on the companys plans in Spokane.


The Borders space formerly housed a Rite Aid Corp. drugstore, which closed in early 2001.


That space is located between a Safeway Inc. supermarket and a Best Buy Inc. consumer-electronics store, which opened last year.


With the Borders lease, the 350,000-square-foot Northpointe Plaza is 99 percent occupied, Poplawski says. A prospective tenant is negotiating to lease the one remaining space in the shopping center, but Poplawski declines for now to disclose further details.


According to Borders Groups Web site, the company is based in Ann Arbor, Mich., and owns about 365 Borders Books & Music stores in the U.S.including eight in Western Washingtonand 22 stores in other countries.