Pawn 1 Inc., the Spokane-based pawnshop chain, has big growth plans, including moving its corporate offices downtown next month and opening three new stores to bring its total store count to 19 by spring, says Mark Lax, the company’s president and majority owner.

The corporate offices are scheduled to relocate next month to the second floor of the historic Globe Hotel building, at 204 N. Division, where it will occupy at least 4,200 square feet of second-floor space, Lax says.

Lax, who is a member of the ownership group that’s redeveloping the Globe building, says Pawn 1 also might expand its office plans there to include an additional 2,500 square feet of second-floor space.

Pawn 1’s corporate offices currently occupy a 2,200-square-foot building at 2715 E. 31st.

Lax says Pawn 1 plans to open its first store on the west side of the state in a former Blockbuster Video location in Bremerton by Nov. 1.

“Bremerton will be a test to see if our brand will take off on the West Side,” Lax says. “If it does, we’ll plan to open stores more aggressively in the Seattle area. I think Seattle is ready for Pawn 1.”

In the spring, the company also plans to open almost simultaneously new stores in Airway Heights and in Meridian, Idaho, he says.

Those stores each will have about 6,000 square feet of space.

As reported in the Journal earlier this month, the Airway Heights store is to be constructed in the planned development tentatively named the West Plains Plaza that’s to be located at the southwest corner of Hayford Road and U.S. 2.

The Pawn 1 structure would be the first of six commercial buildings envisioned at the plaza.

“We’re hopeful that development will move along and we’ll be open by March or April,” Lax says, adding that the Meridian store also is scheduled to open in that time frame.

The new stores each will have about 10 employees.

“We should be up to 230 employees by the time we get the new stores done,” Lax says.

He anticipates Pawn 1’s revenue this year will be about $30 million.

Lax has been in the pawn business for 36 years and co-founded Pawn 1 in Spokane in 1994, consolidating three stores under the Pawn 1 name with the goal of taking a corporate approach to the pawn business.

Pawn 1’s original headquarters were in the old City Hall building downtown, where the company was based for 12 years before Lax bought the South Hill office building and moved the operations there.