Historic Rose Apartments moves to new home in East Central

After more than a century on Third Avenue in the East Central Neighborhood, the historic Rose Apartments has a new home.

The Rose Apartments, which sat south of Interstate 90 at 1726 E. Third Ave., was hoisted Tuesday morning onto a large trailer and transported to a vacant lot one block south at 1816 E. Fourth Ave., where it will serve as affordable housing.

The building’s relocation was part of the East Central Community Organization’s two-year-long mission to save it from being demolished to make way for the North Spokane Corridor.

“This has been a really long process,” said Chris Venne, president of the East Central Community Organization, referring to acquiring the building. “It’s quite an endeavor to save a building like this and certainly not something that happens overnight.”

East Central resident Aaron Brown, who has lived in the neighborhood for decades, was among a group of neighbors watching the building’s relocation.

“It’s always good to have low-income housing in the neighborhood,” he said, adding that many homes in East Central were either demolished or moved because of the freeway expansion. “It’s a good thing because (affordable housing) is needed right now. It will accommodate a bunch of low-income people that can’t afford high rent anywhere else.”

The Washington State Department of Transportation acquired the Rose Apartments last year to make way for the future north-south freeway. The Rose Apartments could have been demolished, but the state agreed to auction the building off to purchasers willing to move it within the East Central Neighborhood.

The East Central Community Organization purchased the building back from WSDOT for $10 at an auction in April and work began last week by Nickel Bros., which has offices in Canada and Washington, to excavate the site and prepare the 200-ton structure for relocation.

Once the building is relocated to its foundation on the new site on Fourth Avenue, it will take about six months to connect utilities, complete landscaping work and repair some vandalism, Venne said.

The city’s Community Housing and Human Services Department provided grant funding to assist the East Central Community Organization with moving the building.

The city is also reimbursing costs for new water and sewer connections using its Urban Utility Installation Program, which is used to offset costs with restoring historic properties targeted for infill development.

The building’s move, which costs about $200,000, is paid for with proceeds from the sale of the building to WSDOT.

“Our community needs more affordable housing, so it just makes sense to preserve these units in this one-of-a-kind building,” Tim Sigler, director of the city’s Community Housing and Human Services department, said in a statement. “We were excited to be able to support the community with this creative solution.”

The Rose Apartments has a storied history as one of the city’s oldest apartment buildings. It was constructed in 1910, when Spokane was undergoing a population boom.

The two-story, 4,000-square-foot structure was built by Michael Hunz, a stonemason and engineer employed with the Henco Brewery, later known as the Henco Division of the Spokane Brewing & Malting Co., according to the city’s historic preservation office.

Hunz and his wife, Louisa, named the building after their daughter, Rose Marie Hunz. The building’s name was changed to the Kly Apartments in the 1940s after the Kly family purchased the property, and again in the 1950s when new owners George & Cecil Dittmer renamed it the Cecil Apartments.

The city of Spokane acquired the building – which was abandoned and in disrepair – in 2009 and placed it on the Spokane Register of Historic Places. ECCO purchased the property from the city in 2012, gutted the interior and transformed it into eight one-bedroom apartments for low-income residents.

After utility and repair work on the Rose Apartments is complete later this year, the building will be a nice addition to the neighborhood, coupled with Spokane Public Library’s Liberty Park branch, which will be built nearby at 402 S. Pittsburg St., Venne said.

“It’s the only two-story brick apartment building in the neighborhood,” Venne said. “It’s a beautiful building. It’s really graceful. It’s in great shape, it’s worth preserving, and, also, affordable housing is worth preserving in the neighborhood.”