Greenstone Corp. is getting ready to begin building its first wave of multifamily housing at the Mead Works development in north Spokane County, says Joe Frank, president and CEO of the Liberty Lake-based development company.

The roughly $8.3 million project located at 2137 E. Redona will feature 80 garden-style apartments spread across eight two-story buildings, Frank says. The market rate apartments will include one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom layouts, with the first units coming online in about a year. Units will range from about 700 to 1,200 square feet, and most buildings will include one-car garages for each unit, he adds.

Greenstone designed the apartments, he says. Liberty Lake-based Rockwood Property Management LLC will oversee leasing.

“This is the first multifamily phase of our Mead Works project,” Frank says. “Construction is imminent.”

The Mead Works development is located on over 300 acres north of the long-defunct Kaiser Aluminum smelter and abutting the north Costco Wholesale Corp. store. It is bounded by Farwell Road to the north and Hawthorne Road to the south and sits between U.S. Highway 2 and the North Spokane Corridor.

Greenstone plans to build over 1,400 residential units and one million square feet of commercial retail space, along with a system of trails, parks, and open spaces. The endeavor will be developed over 20 years and cost about $1 billion to complete, the Journal previously reported.

The pending apartments will be built on the northwest corner of the development along Mellon Parkway, straddling the north and south sides of Redona Avenue. Mellon Parkway is being built to connect the development to Farwell and Hawthorne Roads and divert residential traffic off U.S. Highway 2, Frank says.

The southern portion of apartments will sit across from the Costco gas station, while the northern portion will sit across a vacant lot, he says.  

The multifamily project marks the latest expansion at Mead Works, where residential construction has so far focused largely on single-family homes and Trutina, the age-restricted enclave for the 55-and-over crowd located on the northeast corner of the development.

As previously reported by the Journal, Greenstone is in the midst of building 150 residential units, comprised of single-family homes, small cottage homes, and townhouses.

Greenstone has sold 13 single-family homes at Mead Works, Frank says, with six more pending and 17 others in various stages of construction. Within the Trutina community, about 14 homes are currently being constructed or in the permit process, he says, with about 10 sales completed so far. Trutina will ultimately consist of 300 to 500 housing units.

According to the Mead Works website, the development offers several home designs with floor plans bearing names such as Astoria, Oak Harbor, Lilac, and Sequoia. Prices listed for homes range from about $430,000 for a two bed, two bath cottage home, to about $750,000 for a five bedroom, three-and-a-half bath “plus home.”

Elsewhere at Mead Works, Greenstone is making progress on additional features of the development, including a walkable mixed-use business district at the heart of the development, about three blocks east of Costco. The urban center will straddle Renshaw Avenue and include community recreational and gathering spaces, retail and restaurant spaces, and a surface parking lot, he says.   

“Our goal is to start construction there at the end of '27 with them opening in '28,” Frank says. “Because there is so much what I’ll call traditional commercial around the project, this is really intended to be a small, walkable town center.”

Mead Works is being built with an emphasis on multimodal pathways and recreation areas, he says. One feature that will help strengthen that vision is a future bus stop at the southeast corner of Mellon Parkway and Farwell Road.

According to the Spokane County Assessor’s Office, Spokane Transit Authority purchased 20 acres of vacant land at the southeast corner of Mellon Parkway and Farwell Road last July for $11.3 million.

The STA plans to extend service to a new Mead Transit Center on a fast route via downtown Spokane, Division Street, and Newport Highway, according to a Planning & Development Committee recommended draft report.

Greenstone is the developer behind some of the region’s largest and most well-known mixed-use developments, including the Kendall Yards urban village northwest of downtown Spokane and the 900-acre River District in Liberty Lake.