Homes For Business With Commercial Property Along Sullivan And Broadway Priced At A Premium, Some Businesses Are Moving Into Remodeled Houses

(From Valley Voice, March 7, 1998): Captions accompanying the photographs that ran with the cover story in Thursday’s Valley Voice misstated plans for property from which two older homes were recently moved. Modern Electric, which owns the land on East Broadway Avenue, has said it intends to use the vacated parcels as a storage area.

For 15 years, Susan and Kyle Kinyon ran their small accounting firm from an office building on East Sprague Avenue.

But as rents continued to increase along the Valley’s main arterial, the husband and wife team began to look elsewhere.

They needed more space and wanted to buy rather than continue to rent as a business investment.

However, said Susan Kinyon, “We didn’t want to pay prime retail” for office space. If they had bought along Sprague, Sullivan or Pines, she said, “I’m sure we would have paid a fortune.”

Instead, the owners of Allegro Escrow last year purchased an older, 1,300-square foot house just east of Pines Road on Broadway Avenue and converted it into an office.

The move, they say, was easier on their pocketbook and more convenient than being part of a huge office building facing six lanes of traffic.

The Kinyons spent about $150,000 to buy and remodel their house-turned-office roughly half of what they figure it would have cost to purchase an office building on one of the Valley’s commercial arteries.

Plus, they said, parking is ample and convenient for their clients and the office atmosphere, while professional, is quieter and more relaxed.

The Kinyons aren’t the first to stake a business claim to a Valley area that once was a residential neighborhood, and it’s almost certain they won’t be the last.

Businesses began setting up shop off the main thoroughfares years ago, said Jim Huttenmaier, membership development director for the Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce.

“Now we’re seeing more and more companies doing that,” Huttenmaier said.

“It certainly looks like a trend,” said Susan Kinyon.

Drive along Mission or Broadway near Pines, Sullivan or Argonne and you’ll find an ever-increasing number of older houses that have been turned into medical, dental and insurance offices, electronics repair shops, gift stores, offices for roofing and carpet-cleaning businesses.

“The real estate along Pines and Sullivan is becoming expensive. Businesses are looking for alternatives,” Huttenmaier said.

On Sullivan, real estate prices have increased from between $3 and $5 per square foot in the late 1980s to between $8 and $10, even $15, a square foot today, said Marshall Clark, president of Clark Realty.

Corner lots on Sullivan used to sell for $10 a square foot. Recently the corner of Sprague and Sullivan sold for $22 a square foot to Rite Aid, he said.

“You’ll never see office buildings on Sullivan,” Clark said. “They’ll never be able to afford rents.”

It isn’t the big retailers - the WalMarts, the Future Shops, the grocery chains - that are setting up shop along streets like Mission and Broadway. It’s smaller firms, typically service businesses that need office space but don’t necessarily need a lot of drive-by traffic to thrive.

For a company like Shur-Kleen, a carpet and upholstery cleaning business with its office in a converted house on Mission just east of Pines, the easy freeway access for was a more important factor in deciding where to locate than availability to drop-in customers.

“We’re a service business. We don’t hardly ever see a customer,” said owner Fred Helbling, who moved his business into the house on Mission 14 years ago. He works mostly with established accounts and arranges most new jobs by phone.

“We’re one block from the freeway. We can be downtown in 10 minutes.

“I think everything around here will become commercial in the next 10 years,” he said.

Long-time residents echo the same thoughts.

“It’s not the residential area like it used to be,” said Bob Deets who has lived in his home on Broadway near McDonald since the 1940s. More apartment complexes are going up, single-family homes are now rentals and several businesses are nearby.

“I don’t even know my neighbors anymore,” Deets said. “I don’t believe in making businesses out of neighborhoods.”

But as the Valley continues to grow and commercial real estate prices escalate, it seems likely that more and more small service businesses will look to neighborhoods like his for office space.

“It’s the change in times,” said Jack Louie Jr., manager of Ascho Insurance, which 18 years ago became one of the first businesses along Broadway to convert a house into an office.

As traffic has increased over the past 10 years along streets like Broadway and Mission, families with small children have moved away.

The neighborhood’s nature has changed, from residential to commercial, but Louie adds, “It’s still a good neighborhood.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 photos (1 color)