Spokane developer WAM Enterprises Inc. has started work on a $4 million speculative office building in Liberty Lake.


The structure is being built on a 1.75-acre site at 23321 E. Knox, just west of the Foretravel Inc. recreational-vehicle dealership. Bruce Miller, WAMs vice president, says Spokane general contractor Panco Construction Inc. broke ground on the building last month and is expected to complete it in March.


The two-story structure will include 28,000 square feet of floor space. The building could be divided into spaces as small as 600 square feet, but Miller says he hopes to attract one or two larger tenants to fill all of the space.


WAM is marketing the structure as premium, or Class A, office space, and expects to charge annual lease rates of about $21.50 per square foot. Those rates are comparable to what landlords command for premium space in downtown Spokane.


Architectural Ventures, of Spokane, designed the building.


Miller says a lot of office space in Liberty Lake currently is vacant, but he contends that only a couple of buildings that have vacancies have Class A space and would compete for tenants with WAMs new structure.


This year is obviously slow, but by the time the dot-coms and high-techs turn around, we want to be there, he says.


WAM is prepared for it to take up to four years to lease out all of the space in the new building, but he says that obviously, the company hopes to fill it much more quickly than that.