A modest predevelopment application to open a bakery in the long-vacant Halliday Building, next to the shuttered Ridpath Hotel downtown, is just the first glimpse of plans to breathe new life into the block, says Spokane real estate investor and developer Ivan Kriger.

Kriger leads an investment group seeking to acquire the Halliday Building, which is at the southwest corner of Sprague Avenue and Stevens Street, next to the 13-story Ridpath Hotel, which is located at 515 W. Sprague and fronts both on Sprague and First avenues.

He says the group would redevelop 8,000 square feet of street-level commercial space and construct a three-story addition atop the two-story Halliday Building.

When the addition is complete, the Halliday Building would have 32 condominium units on the second through fifth floors, Kriger says. 

He says he anticipates selling prices for the condominium units to start at $600,000, with upper-floor condominium prices exceeding $800,000, which would put the value of the completed Halliday project at well over $20 million.

Kriger declines to disclose the terms of the group’s recent offer to buy the building, but it had been listed recently for $1.3 million through Spokane-based commercial real estate brokerage NAI Black.

The first part of the Halliday project to be submitted to the city is for a bakery to be named Silver Cup Café, which would occupy about 2,000 square feet of floor space.

The bakery would be owned by Kriger’s wife, Natalya Kriger, and her business partner, Marina Grigoryan, who own and operate the Lacomka LLC bakery, at 823 W. Garland, in the Garland District.

Kriger says Silver Cup would employ about five people.

The bakery would specialize in breads and cakes, Kriger says. It also would handle special-order cakes for birthdays, weddings, and other events, he says.

Silver Cup would include a café with a coffee shop-style menu, he says.

Kriger says a coffee-roasting business would be another tenant in the Halliday Building. It also would have about five employees, he says.

As envisioned, the main floor also would have a ballroom-sized event center, he says.

In a separate effort, Kriger’s group is competing with Wells & Co., of Spokane, to buy portions of the former Ridpath Hotel building.

Kriger wants to restore the Ridpath as a hotel, while Wells & Co., which is led by Spokane developer Ron Wells, proposes converting most of the hotel rooms into affordable apartments.

Both parties are trying to consolidate ownership of portions of the Ridpath complex, which had been divided into several parcels and sold to separate owners, before and since the hotel closed in 2008.

Wells’ proposal, called Ridpath Club Apartments, has been viewed favorably by the Washington state Housing Finance Commission and the Spokane City Council.

Wells says his group owns the top two floors of the Ridpath Hotel tower, all of the hotel’s street level commercial space, and voting rights to change the use of the hotel to apartments.

He says he’s confident the Ridpath Club Apartments project will succeed, although acquiring remaining key parcels of the hotel could take another two years due to drawn-out bankruptcy proceedings involving a Las Vegas-based owner.

Kriger says his group could develop the Halliday Building project regardless of which developer wins out in the bid for the Ridpath.