Argonne Center Revitalization Studied

The Argonne Village Shopping Center has emerged from receivership and could be in line for a facelift.

The 25-year-old shopping center at Argonne and Montgomery has new ownership after three years under a court-appointed receiver.

The new owner, a Delaware company called 1994 N1 Washington Associates, acquired Argonne Village last month in a settlement between former owner GVL Investors of San Francisco and its lender, RTC Mortgage Trust. The new owner is a subsidiary of RTC Mortgage Trust.

The Delaware company has already commissioned an architect’s study of how the aging shopping center might best be revitalized, said John Bennett, president of Tomlinson Black Real Estate.

In 1995, Tomlinson Black was court-appointed to run Argonne Village. Now the Spokane real estate company will be the shopping center’s leasing agent and manager.

“Now they’re going to take a look at where the shopping center will be in the future,” he said. That could include a new paint job, a new exterior facade, a design theme different from the present country-style silos, or even expansion, he said. The shopping center owns the vacant, 7-acre parcel immediately to its east.

“We think it has a lot of potential as a shopping center,” Bennett said.

Presently, the 81,000-square-foot shopping center is at 60 percent occupancy, he said.

An Albertsons grocery store left in 1992, moving to the northwest corner of Trent and Argonne.

Later, others followed. A chiropractic clinic, a bank and an office supply store have left in the past six years.

This spring, Goodtymes Pub will move from Argonne Village to a new building at Mission and Mullan.

There’s still a sports store, a pizza delivery place, a dry cleaners, a restaurant, a drug store, a computer store, a sewing machine store and a sandwich shop.

Argonne Road now carries 40,000 cars a day stream past the yellow and green shopping center. But on any given day, only about one-fourth of the center’s parking lot is full.

Merchants say the past few years have been trying.

“Everything hit us at one time,” said Kathy Paupst, co-owner of Max’s Italian Subs. “Everyone here has really struggled through the construction, the underpass and the receivership.”

The two-year construction of the Argonne Road underpass, begun in 1995, detoured traffic west of the shopping center. Sewer construction tore up Montgomery Avenue.

In 1995 the shopping center went into receivership, leaving most merchants wondering what would happen.

“It was rumor city,” said Mike Jones, owner of Spots Argonne Dry Cleaning. The shop has been in the shopping center for almost 10 years. “It was getting real unnerving for those of us here.”

With a redesign, merchants say they could be a successful strip.

“It could do quite a bit of business,” Paupst said. “I think the people of Millwood want to shop in Millwood.”

, DataTimes