S.L. Start & Associates, a Spokane retirement-housing and social services management company, says it plans to build a $17 million, 215-unit retirement campus on about 10 acres of land near Northpointe Plaza.


The project is to include a 135,000-square-foot building that will house 60 independent-living units and 80 assisted-living units, a 35-unit apartment building for victims of Alzheimers disease, and 40 single-story, 1,600-square-foot independent-living cottages, says Ann Martin, S.L. Starts marketing manager.


The project is planned at the southeast corner of Nevada Street and Westview Court, near a 120-bed subacute-care and skilled-nursing facility that Regency Pacific Inc., of Issaquah, Wash., built last year. S.L. Start is buying the site where it plans its project, Martin says.


S.L. Start hopes to break ground on the first phase of the two-phase project in June. She says the first phase would include 17 of the 40 cottages, the 16,000-square-foot Alzheimers building, and a 60,000-square-foot facility that would house 64 of the independent- and assisted-living apartment units.


Work is to be completed on the first phase by spring 1999, Martin says. She says it hasnt been decided when the second part of the project will get under way. S.L. Start plans to manage the retirement campus, which has yet to be named.


The second phase would include construction of the remaining 23 cottages and a 75,000-square-foot addition to the main apartment building. The addition will house the remaining 76 independent-living and assisted-living units.


S.L. Start may still seek a development partner for the project and has yet to select a contractor. Kirkwood Rodell Associates PS, of Spokane, is designing the project.