Team evaluating Jensen-Byrd building
Washington State University has selected a company to assess the development potential of a historic building on the east end of downtown Spokane.
SERA Architects of Portland will complete the assessment of the Jensen-Byrd building, built in 1909. The six-story, 120,000-square-foot building is the centerpiece of a five-acre piece of land WSU would like to lease for development.
Historic preservation advocates protested when they learned the building might be torn down in the course of development. WSU responded by hatching plans to evaluate the building’s development potential.
Ryan Ruffcorn, WSU’s project manager, said the assessment would determine whether the building is eligible for listing on historic registries, what condition it is in, what development opportunities exist and how much it would cost to rehabilitate the building.
SERA will work with E.D. Hovee & Co., an economic development firm from Vancouver, Wash., and two Spokane firms – KJM Associates for cost estimates; and Coffman Engineers for structural issues.
The team began work Thursday and should be finished by June 30, according to a WSU news release.
Washington
Regulators widen seminar crackdown
Federal and state securities regulators will expand their crackdown on misleading investment seminars for senior citizens as part of an effort to protect them from fraud, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday.
The SEC and state regulators announced Monday a joint program designed to protect seniors against fraud. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said in a speech Tuesday that special inspections of brokerages and promoters offering sales seminars for seniors, now being conducted by the SEC and Florida regulators, will be expanded to other areas of the country. He did not specify the areas.
“There’s surely a place in hell for those who prey on the greatest generation,” Cox told a gathering of the North American Securities Administrators Association, the organization representing state regulators.