Prominent Spokane developer and contractor Dick Vandervert says a company he heads that already owned part of the Lincoln Heights Shopping Center on the South Hill has bought up most of the rest of the center and plans to give it a facelift.

Trader Joe's announced recently that it will open a store in the center next year.

Vandervert declines to estimate the cost of the planned renovations, which will be carried out in phases at Lincoln Heights, but the city of Spokane calculates the construction cost of the Trader Joe's addition alone at more than $1 million.

The company that Vandervert heads, Lincoln Heights Center LLC, bought the west portion of the center that includes 56,000 square feet of commercial space anchored by Jo-Ann Stores Inc. and Petco Animal Supplies Stores Inc. from Gumenberg Properties LP, of Valleyford, Vandervert says.

Lincoln Heights Shopping Center is bordered roughly by 29th Avenue to the south, Fiske Street to the east, 27th Avenue to the north, and Mount Vernon Street to the west, and includes a total of more than 72,000 square feet of space in the two main portions of the center.

The Vandervert-led company's purchase of property there, which closed coincidentally on the same day that Trader Joe's announced it will open its first Spokane store, was its third acquisition of properties in the center.

Last December, it bought the east portion of the center, which includes the planned Trader Joe's site and a building that houses five commercial tenants. That transaction also included a portion of the shopping center that houses a Rite Aid Corp. pharmacy and two other commercial tenants. The property formerly was owned by Stanek Enterprises LP, of Spokane.

In a separate transaction earlier this year, Lincoln Heights Center bought the building and land where the Hugo's on the Hill restaurant, bowling alley, and casino is located, and leased the building back to the business, Vandervert says. Hugo's is just north of the planned Trader Joe's location.

Vandervert says a space in the shopping center's east buildings currently occupied by Referee Photo Inc. will be demolished to make room for the Trader Joe's addition. A new facade for the remaining 10,000-square-foot structure and the adjoining Trader Joe's addition will be constructed at the same time, and the rest of the center will be improved in one or more future phases, he says.

Trader Joe's is a Monrovia, Calif.-based chain of neighborhood grocery stores that carries a wide range of domestic and imported products, many at value prices.

Referee Photo has agreed to relocate to a spot next to Jung Kim's-South Hill Inc. martial arts center in the west portion of the shopping center, says Jim Quigley, who along with Ron Horton and Chad Carper, all of Spokane-based Kiemle & Hagood Co., handled the transaction between the developer and Gumenberg Properties. Jeff Ottmar, of Cornerstone Property Advisors LLC, of Spokane, handled the transaction with Stanek Enterprises.

Bernardo Wills Architects PC, of Spokane, is designing the Trader Joe's addition and the new facade on the east side buildings.

"The design will promote a unified storefront," says Mike Stanicar, of Bernardo Wills.

It will include cultivated stone, stucco-like insulated finishing, awnings, and a concrete tile roof, Stanicar says. Building permit applications could be ready around the first of the year, he says.

The Lincoln Heights Shopping Center, which dates back to the 1960s, has no overall design theme, he says.

"It has been rehabilitated two or three times," Stanicar says. "Everybody has added their own twist."

While Lincoln Heights Center had planned to construct the new facade on the shopping center's east building as part of negotiations that landed the Trader Joe's lease, Lincoln Heights Center's latest purchase of property in the center wasn't part of those negotiations, says Chris Bornhoft, a project manager for Vandervert.

Bornhoft says the Trader Joe's Building will take six to eight months to complete, and the grocer plans to open the store sometime next year.

The real estate transactions didn't involve a 20,000-square-foot Southside Christian Church complex that the church owns just north of the Rite Aid outlet.