The Kalispel Tribe of Indians recently opened bids for a project to move and reconstruct a stretch of Sprague Avenue located just south of the tribe's Northern Quest Resort & Casino to make way for future development of land it owns there.

The apparent low bidder for that project is Eller Corp., of Newman Lake, with a bid of about $2.8 million, says Brandon Haugen, manager of Kalispel Development Co. That company is owned and overseen by the Kalispel Tribal Economic Authority, and deals mostly with real estate development projects for the tribe, Haugen says.

He says the tribe hopes to award the project contract within the next month so that work can begin. Work is planned to continue through the remainder of this year's construction season and will resume again in the spring, he says. The project is expected to be completed near the middle of next year.

The project first will involve relocating an existing, 3,000-foot-long portion of Sprague located south of the casino, between Hayford Road and the Washington state Department of Correction's Airway Heights Corrections Center property, at 11919 W. Sprague. The new road will be rebuilt 800 feet south of the current Sprague-Hayford junction, and gradually will curve north and west to meet the current stretch of Sprague that borders the prison, Haugen says.

He says the tribe is moving the roadway to the southern region of a parcel of undeveloped property it owns that's adjacent to Northern Quest so that land can be developed in the future, though he says the tribe doesn't have development plans in the works yet for that site.

"We are moving the road for a couple of reasons," Haugen says. "First, it provides essential infrastructure for a majority of the Tribe's property for economic development. In the future, it will provide for a pedestrian-friendly environment between Northern Quest and adjoining parcels and will increase safety."

Information obtained from the Spokane County Assessor's website shows that two large parcels of tribe-owned land in the vicinity of the roadway alignment project that together total roughly 250 acres have a combined assessed value of about $4.7 million.

The new stretch of Sprague there will include four lanes of travel for the majority of the project, and a traffic circle will be constructed roughly in the middle of it to serve as a connector to a future planned roadway there, to be called Quest Drive, Haugen says.

Two arms of the roadway will branch out near its end to provide access to what could be future industrial development to the southwest, and to the Spokane County Raceway facility to the north.

Once the new road alignment is complete, Haugen says, the current portion of Sprague will remain open to traffic until the Tribe decides to close it.

As part of the project to move the strip of Sprague, the city of Airway Heights is moving some storm sewer lines and water lines that are aligned with the road. They city is paying for that work, Haugen says, while the Tribe is funding the construction of the new road.

Taylor Engineering Inc., of Spokane, designed and engineered the new roadway alignment.