Here’s the dirt : Cinema planned on West Plains
Owners of Village Centre Cinemas at Wandermere are planning to build an 8- or 10-screen cinema complex in the West Plains area.
Duane Brelsford Jr., president of Corporate Pointe Developers in Pullman, partnered with Spokane developers Dick Vandervert and Lowell McKee, to build the $9 million multiplex at Wandermere shopping center, on U.S. Highway 395.
The three men also formed West Plains LLC, which owns land on the south side of U.S. Highway 2, in Spokane County near Airway Heights’ eastern border.
Preliminary research shows the community could support a cinema, said Brelsford, who expects to know definitively this spring if the project will move.
“All the tools are there with the big boxes (including Wal-Mart) that are going in there” and the growth in single-family housing and other retail, Brelsford said of the West Plains area.
The company is currently building Deer Creek Apartments, in the West Plains, which when completed will have about 300 total units and could contribute significantly to a movie-going audience.
Also, he said, Cheney had a two-screen theater close within the past year or so, leaving the area “screen-less,” with just one movie viewing screen on Fairchild Air Force Base.
Brelsford shares ownership in a half-dozen theaters, including ones in Pullman and Lewiston.
He partnered with Vandervert for several ventures.
Big movie companies tend to focus on big cities. Brelsford said, opening the door for complexes that cater to smaller markets.
“We kind of got into the business because there was a need in these communities”
Opa is opening in north Spokane
A restaurant serving authentic Greek and Italian foods will open within the next two weeks at 10411 N. Newport Highway.
Steve Dimitriadis, who was born and raised in Greece, is opening Opa Pizza Greek and Italian Cuisine with his wife, Judith Dimitriadis. The couple visited leased space stretching from Coeur d’Alene to north Spokane before deciding on the location, which is near Northpointe Plaza and has ample parking and good visibility. They named the place Opa — meaning happy in Greek, he said.
Dimitriadis, who has owned more than a dozen restaurants in multiple cities and cooked for 38 years, is particularly proud of an award he received for Pirate’s Pizza, a restaurant he owned that was located between Edmonds and Everett, Wash.
In 1980, he recalls, Pirate’s Pizza was awarded “Greatest Pizza in the World” by a group of food critics. The story was written up in The Seattle Times and The Daily Herald in Everett, Wash., Dimitriadis said.
Opa’s prices will range from $9 to $14 for pasta dishes and from $10 to $25 for pizzas, he said.
Specialty dishes include Greek gyros, mousaka, souvlaki and baklava. The restaurant will also serve a variety of coffees, including Greek coffee.
Custom 1031 moves into rehabbed digs
An old warehouse at 1105 N. Lincoln St. has been rehabbed into the headquarters of Custom 1031, Inc. a small, locally-owned company that specializes in holding proceeds from property sales so people who want to reinvest aren’t taxed in the interim.
Shelley Hengesh, who owns the 17-year-old business with her father, Pete Warnick, said the family did much of the work. Jobs such as removing a mammoth boulder from the property were hired out to contractors.
They created 4,700 square feet of office space inside the 12,000-square-foot building. The exterior of the cinder-block structure received a coating of stucco, awnings and a big wooden door.