Spokane-based Cowles Co., which owns The Spokesman-Review, the Journal of Business, and a handful of other companies here, has moved some of its operations in The Spokesman-Review building and the neighboring Spokane Chronicle building.

Those consolidations have resulted in additional office space becoming available for lease, says Spokesman-Review Publisher W. Stacey Cowles. Overall, there now is about 28,000 square feet of vacant space in the two buildings, both of which Cowles Co. owns, he says.

Cowles says the recent office moves mostly involved the newspaper's advertising department, located in the Review building, at 999 W. Riverside. They were made, he says, as part of an effort to improve the efficiency of its operations and to consolidate unused space.

"We hope to lease it out, but it's not the most robust market," Cowles says. "We only have 50 percent of the staff working downtown for the newspaper than what we had 20 years ago. This is an overdue move to bring people into contact with each other."

Cowles says the advertising department moved from the building's second floor to the first and third floors, on which some marketing operations already were located. The paper's newsroom still is located on the building's fourth floor, he adds, but there is some vacant space there as well.

The building's sixth and seventh floors, which primarily house Spokesman-Review operations, both are full, Cowles says.

The 8,000 square feet of space on the Review building's second floor that's now vacant is listed for lease, and Craig Soehren of Spokane-based Kiemle & Hagood Co. is marketing that space, Cowles says.

In addition, he says there is a combined total of about 12,000 square feet on the building's fourth and fifth floors that's available for lease.

The fifth floor of the building now mostly is occupied by Northwest Farmer-Stockman Inc., the Cowles Co.'s insurance and financial product agency, Cowles says.

In addition to the shifting of some offices in the Review building, the offices of Cowles Co.-owned Centennial Property Management Co. recently moved from a 1,100-square-foot space on the sixth floor of the Chronicle building, at 926 W. Sprague, to a space in the Review building, within the Cowles Co. executive offices.