Over the relatively short span of about 25 years, the Riverpoint Campus has evolved into an attractive urban educational setting, a magnet for an expanding number of ambitious future medical professionals, and a major downtown Spokane asset.

The future of the campus, located east of downtown between the BNSF Railway Co. tracks and the Spokane River, looks even brighter in the wake of the latest signs that Washington State University Spokane has aspirations for more development activity there. That activity, of course, underlies its stated goal of operating its own medical school there.

As the Journal reported earlier this month, the university likely will seek nearly $52 million in state funding during the next six years for capital purchases and projects envisioned under its next 10-year master plan, which is still in the draft stage.

To be sure, there’s no guarantee that the Legislature will approve the money WSU Spokane is seeking. Nonetheless, preliminary details of the master plan suggest it has no intentions of letting up on the gas pedal as it seeks to fortify its presence here.

Looking ahead through the 2019-2021 biennium, WSU plans to request a total of nearly $28 million for real estate acquisitions and $24 million to construct a technical and data center and facilities maintenance building on the campus here, the draft plan shows.

As the Journal’s story noted, recommendations for partial funding for acquisitions and construction have been included in WSU’s $214 million 2015-2017 biennial capital budget request, which the WSU Board of Regents approved in a recent resolution.

The resolution gives WSU President Elson Floyd authority to forward the capital budget request to the Legislature to consider early next year in the capital budget for the state’s next biennium.

WSU representatives aren’t saying yet what real estate the university is interested in adding here. Nor has it determined a site for the proposed, 89,000-square-foot data center and facilities maintenance building, but it likely would be erected in the southwestern part of campus.

WSU is seeking $300,000 for preliminary design work in the 2015-2017 biennium, $3 million for formal design in the 2017-2019 biennium, and $20.7 million for construction in the 201-2021 biennium. Projects of such scope usually are tied up in six-year cycles of capital funding.

Meanwhile, other encouraging development efforts are continuing on campus, such as planning for a $15 million, 40,000-square-foot teaching health center and for a 400-foot-long bridge that would span the railroad tracks and Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

Though coming up with funding for the latter project remains a challenge, and the estimated cost of it has come under warranted scrutiny, the bridge would provide a welcome link for bicycle and pedestrian traffic between Riverpoint and surrounding neighborhoods.

  The projects envisioned on or near the Riverpoint Campus over the rest of this decade no doubt will help energize the University District, and the neighboring city core as well.