Post Falls, once considered a bedroom community to both Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, has become home to a vibrant medical district that’s brought hundreds of health care jobs to the River City.

The growth in medical and health services and facilities in Post Falls in recent years has been driven largely by Coeur d’Alene-based hospital district Kootenai Health and Post Falls-based medical facility development group North Idaho Surgical Hospital Building LLC.

In one current project, Kootenai Health is in the midst of a $10.5 million expansion at the Post Falls Kootenai Clinic.

In an imminent project, NISHB plans to construct a second medical office building in the Tamarack Medical Plaza, where it opened a similar $2.1 million building last year.

NISHB and another developer also are planning and marketing separately two larger proposed office buildings, although the construction timeline likely would be farther down the road for both of them.

The district is mostly along the Mullan Avenue-Polston Avenue corridor north of Interstate 90. It’s bordered on the west end by a Super 1 Foods supermarket and on the east end by a cluster of auto dealerships, although rehabilitation and advanced-care hospitals are a short distance directly east of the corridor.

Darron Rock, NISHB marketing director, says the group is in the planning phase for Building B at its Tamarack Medical Plaza, at the northeast corner of Syringa Street and Mullan Avenue.

He says the building will be similar to the two-story, 14,000-square-foot Building A in the plaza.

“We’re actively recruiting for that space,” he says.

D’Zign Group LLC, of Hayden, is designing the project, and Coeur d’Alene-based Young Construction Group of Idaho Inc. will be the contractor, Rock says.

Meantime, the first tenants in Building A are Olscamp Orthopedics and Northwest Occupational Medicine.

Rock says NISHB is negotiating with two other prospective Building A tenants, and he anticipates the building being rented fully by early 2017.

NISHB’s flagship facilities in the corridor are Northwest Specialty Hospital, at 1593 E. Polston, and the fully leased, 44,000-square-foot Northwest Medical Office Building next door, at 750 Syringa.

In all, NISHB owns 14 properties across 26 acres of land in Post Falls alone, including six buildings that comprise nearly 160,000 square feet of space, Rock says.

One of its properties is the 10,500-square-foot former Idaho Stone Artisans Inc. building, at 1614 E Polston.

Recently secured tenants in that building are Summit Cancer Centers and North Idaho Neurosurgery & Spine surgical center.

Rock claims 17 businesses are leasing space in NISHB properties, providing employment to more than 340 people.

NISHB has developed some marketing materials for an envisioned office building that would be located at the southwest corner of Shetland Street and Mullan, just west of the Kootenai Clinic complex.

That project, though, could be five years down the road, Rock says.

“We have several requests from various tenants about when we will be able to build on that site,” Rock says.

In preliminary drawings, the building is envisioned as a three-story, 45,000-square-foot structure.

“The size will depend on tenant response rates,” Rock says.

Separately, Howard Rude, of Post Falls, is seeking tenant interest in a project envisioned as the River City Office Plaza on the south side of Polston, just east of the former Consign Furniture building.

Signs posted on the vacant property show a rendering of a two-story office building that’s described as Class A tenant office space.

Rude couldn’t be reached for comment.

Kootenai Health expects to complete its 22,000-square-foot Kootenai Clinic expansion project at its Post Falls campus at 1300 E. Mullan in December.

The expansion will provide new space for orthopedic, internal medicine, and other specialty clinics.

It also will expand family medicine, a heart clinic, laboratory services, and obstetrics and gynecology.

The expansion also will include space for future growth.

Bouten Construction Co., of Spokane, is the contractor on the project, and Spokane-based NAC Architecture designed it.

Jeremy Evans, Kootenai Health executive vice president, says he expects steady growth in the health care sector in Post Falls.

“Post Falls continues to be one of the fastest-growing areas in North Idaho,” he says. “Our medical office building and cancer care center have been designed to expand and grow as additional capacity is needed.”

The 21,000-square-foot, two-story Post Falls Cancer Services center opened in 2009.

Evans says Kootenai Health has 52 health care employees in the Post Falls area, not counting staff at independent practices and services that lease space from the health network.

Heritage Health, a Coeur d’Alene-based nonprofit community health network, joined with Kootenai Health and the Panhandle Health District last year to form Idaho Health Partners, which occupies 5,000 square feet of medical office space at 925 E. Polston.

“The point of the Idaho Health Partners project is to tie together a safety net of providers,” says Heritage Health CEO Mike Baker.

Idaho Health Partners, which is managed at Kootenai Health-owned facilities through grant funding obtained by Heritage Health, started with 10 employees and now has about 25 employees.

Baker says the partnership is building momentum that will lead to more opportunities to expand.

“We’re continually trying to add medical providers,” Baker says. “We’re running out of space, and we have to look for additional space.”

Idaho Health Partners has applied for a grant to help start a dental clinic, Baker says. The grant would provide funding for two dentists and two hygienists, he says, adding, “The clinic would grow as people use it.”

Idaho Health Partners is negotiating for additional lease space with a couple of potential landlords.

“We want to be close to that area,” he says of the corridor. “That’s really where patients are traveling.”

Less than a mile east of the corridor, Kootenai Health and Ernest Health Inc. operate as a joint venture the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Northwest, a 30-bed acute rehabilitation facility at 3372 E. Jenalen.

The 34,000-square-foot facility opened in 2014 and has 37 physicians and 27 nurses on staff and 81 full-time-equivalent employees.

Ernest Health is an Albuquerque, N.M.-based care facility operator, which also owns and operates North Idaho Advanced Care, at 600 N. Cecil in Post Falls.

North Idaho Advanced Care, which opened in 2006, has 24 beds and is staffed with 104 physicians, 45 nurses, and 118 full-time equivalent employees.

Doug Rall, a commercial real estate broker with Coldwell Banker Commercial Schneidmiller Realty, says that between Kootenai Health and the NISHB group, there’s not much land available to buy in the district, except for a couple of parcels on the north side of Mullan that have top-market prices.

Rall says commercial vacancy rates in the area have only recently started to stabilize at below 10 percent.

“We’re getting good absorption and the market is good, but I wouldn’t say (lease space) is flying off the shelf,” he says.

NISHB’s Rock says he anticipates continued strong growth in the Post Falls medical corridor.

“We’ve got a lot of plans we can’t disclose yet,” he says.