Pinecroft LLC, developer of the Pinecroft Business Park in Spokane Valley, plans to break ground this week on a $5.25 million multiuse building in the office complex. 

The catalyst for the project is PayTrace Inc., a Spokane Valley-based payment-processing company and a current tenant at Pinecroft. Justin Goes, PayTrace’s director of client services, says the company has committed to take about 10,000 square feet in the new building, which will be erected at 12709 E. Mirabeau Parkway. The company plans to move there from a 3,000-square-foot space it currently occupies at 12409 E. Mirabeau Parkway, near the northeast corner of that street and Pines Road.

Jamie Traeger, broker at JMA Commercial Real Estate LLC who handles leasing at Pinecroft, says the new structure will include a total of about 27,500 square feet of floor space. Divcon Inc., which is constructing the building, is expected to finish the building’s shell by the end of this year and to complete the entire project by April of 2017, Traeger says. 

The building will include a total of 22,500 square feet of office-and-commercial space and a 5,000-square-foot restaurant space, Traeger says. She says PayTrace is the only committed tenant so far, but she’s marketing the balance of the building.

Pinecroft doesn’t have any restaurant tenants currently, but about 2,000 people work in the complex, Traeger says. 

“I think you would find that a food-service business could be quite successful at Pinecroft,” she says.

Architectural Ventures, of Spokane Valley, designed the building and the building site. HDG Architecture, of Spokane, is designing PayTrace’s interior space. 

Goes says PayTrace started looking throughout the Spokane area for a new home for its growing operations and decided it wanted to stay at Pinecroft. However, the business park—which currently has 14 buildings with a total of 400,000 square feet of floor space and a 3 percent vacancy rate, according to Traeger—didn’t have any spaces large enough to accommodate the company. Goes says the company began talks with Pinecroft, which then agreed to build a new structure, in large part to create the new space for PayTrace.

Traeger and Nick Brumback, of Brumback Inc., handled PayTrace’s new lease. 

Goes says PayTrace currently employs a total of 33 people, 25 of whom are based at the Spokane Valley office, and the company’s new space is being designed to accommodate up to 65 workers. 

He says it expects to add 15 employees by the end of 2017, mostly in Spokane. 

“If we can’t find the right person, we’ll venture outside of the area, but we’ll really try to make all of those hires in Spokane,” Goes says. 

The company is looking to add a mix of software developers, technicians, customer-support specialists, business-development staff, and administrative positions, he says. 

Founded in the early 2000s, PayTrace makes payment-processing systems for both websites and physical retail locations. The company works with banks and other financial institutions, which then offer the PayTrace products, among others, as an option to commercial customers that want to process credit-card payments in person or online payments. 

Goes says the company works with a lot of banks in the Midwest, but it has some customers that have large presences in Spokane, including Washington Trust Bank and Umpqua Bank. 

Currently, Goes says, a total of about 21,500 merchant outlets use PayTrace’s products at about 85,000 locations.