Valley Real Life Ministries, of Greenacres, is designing a $20 million multiphase expansion project at its 48-acre campus near Saltese Creek, located at 1831 S. Barker Road, in Spokane Valley.

The development will be the fourth expansion project at Valley Real Life since the facility was built in 2008, says Jeff Sevigney, facilities and safety team leader at the church.

"In 2016, we actually doubled the square footage of our kids wing," he says, adding that in 2022, the church expanded the facility's lobby and indoor playground areas. The upcoming expansion follows the completion of a commercial outdoor playground in May.

The 50,000-square-foot facility is at capacity and likely will double in size with the expansion, he says.

Design work still is in progress for the new building that will be constructed west of the existing church. The structures will be connected via a renovated lobby.

Adele Ohler, executive of operations at Valley Real Life, says the current 700-seat auditorium will double in size to accommodate about 1,500 seats.

A second phase of development includes traffic-calming measures, such as adding a second driveway to access the property from Henry Road for incoming traffic from Liberty Lake. Expanded and new parking areas also are planned.

"Coming out of COVID, we've seen a tremendous increase in new families attending our church. We're busy, running anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 people on our campus on any given weekend," Sevigney says. "We're pretty much out of buildable square footage on the property because we'll have to do a lot of sitework to accommodate additional parking."

 Ohler says attendance at weekend services have grown 20% in each of the last two years.

Valley Real Life holds one evening service on Thursdays and three services on Sundays. The church may have to add a fourth Sunday service during the expansion project due to limited space, Ohler says.

"The campus is in use pretty much every night of the week," Sevigney says. 

Spokane-based Fusion Architecture PLLC is the project architect. No contractor has been selected for the project yet, Ohler says.

A pre-development application is under review with Spokane County, and records show a determination of nonsignificance was issued in May for the project by the Washington state Department of Ecology, meaning the preliminary plans pass environmental muster.

Once the design plans are finalized, a new building permit application will be submitted, and if approved, construction of the expansion project will take about 12 months to complete, Sevigney says.

"It's been pretty exciting to see folks who may or may not otherwise set foot on our church property (do so) because we have these amenities that we intentionally put up for community use," he says. "It helps us have a bridge to show people what we're all about."