The Dirt: South Hill to gain 12-unit apartment complex

A 12-unit apartment complex with an attached garage building on Spokane’s South Hill has been issued building permits.

Thirty First Place Apartments, 2772 E. 31st Ave., will occupy a half-acre lot just west of Regal Street that is currently vacant. The project is valued at $1.3 million.

According to the project website, the apartments will be available in January. Each unit of the three-story building will have two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and will be 875 square feet, on average.

The land is owned by the same company leading the project, South Hill Investments LLC, which is owned by real estate agents Chris Bornhoft and Marianne Guenther Bornhoft.

The project’s architect is Rex Anderson of Fusion Architecture, of Valleyford. – N.D.

New Spokane Gun Club project moves forward

The Spokane Gun Club has filed preliminary permits with Spokane County to build a new location on the West Plains.

County commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to remove a 450-acre site from a designated no-shooting area west of Fairchild Air Force Base and bounded by McFarlane Road to the north and Thorpe Road to the south. The area had been designated as a no-shooting area since 1993.

The land is owned by Western Pacific Timber LLC, with a sale contingent upon approval of the conditional-use permit.

The gun club plans to build controlled pistol, trap and skeet shooting ranges as well as a clubhouse, according to an environmental review.

The gun club’s plans were supported by Fairchild following an agreement on how to orient shooting ranges to ensure safety. Shooting would be contained to a 300-yard designated area within the site and efforts would be made by the club to isolate noise.

The conditional-use permitting process will address the club’s operating hours and type of use for the site.

The gun club sold its former 99-acre site in Spokane Valley to the Central Valley School District last year to make way for the district’s third comprehensive high school.

The sale was somewhat controversial among club members, with some concerned about ability to find a new site and obtain permits. – A.E.

48-unit housing complex to be built in Hillyard

Permits have been issued for the Jayne Auld Manor, a 48-unit workforce housing project in Hillyard.

The project at 2830 E. Francis Ave. will include a three-story main building and five two-story duplexes. In all, there will be 25 two-bedroom units and 23 three-bedroom units. The complex also will have a community garden and play structure, and it will primarily be aimed at the workforce population earning less than 60% of the area’s median income.

Spokane Housing Ventures will build 48,832 square feet of residential space on 1.8 acres of vacant land near Harmon-Shipley Park and Arlington Elementary School. The complex will have 51 parking spaces.

The construction project is valued at $7.6 million. The general contractor is Kilgore Construction Inc., of Colbert. It was designed by ZBA Architecture, of Spokane.

The complex is named after Jayne Auld, the organization’s former executive director who died in 2016.

Spokane Housing Ventures was founded in 1992 and currently owns and operates 1,300 units of affordable rental units in 10 Washington counties. The underlying property is owned by the Northwest Association for Housing Affordability, according to county property records. In 2015, Spokane Housing Ventures and the Northwest Association for Housing Affordability merged and now serve Spokane, Lincoln, Yakima, Grant, Klickitat, Okanagan, Jefferson, Pierce, Clallam and Kitsap counties. – N.D.

SCC parking lot expansion to add 400 spaces

Spokane Community College is spending $706,450 to expand an existing parking lot due east of the Walter S. Johnson Sports Center, according to city permit data.

The 76,000-square-foot expansion of a centrally located lot comes on the heels of the college building a $5 million transit center on campus, which will act as the eastern terminus for Spokane Transit Authority’s Central City Line, a $92 million bus rapid transit line that is anticipated to begin operating in July 2022. The lot expansion could bring upward of 400 additional stalls.

The parking lot expansion and relocation of the transit center from its previous spot facing Greene Street are also related to construction of the North Spokane Corridor, the $1.5 billion freeway that will be elevated over the community college’s parking lot adjacent to Greene. – N.D.