CdA Spokesman-Review building sold to bank

Mountain West Bank has purchased the former Spokesman-Review building in Coeur d’Alene.

The building at 608 Northwest Blvd. will function as the headquarters of the Coeur d’Alene-based bank, according to Scott Anderson, president and CEO of the bank. But the move won’t happen hastily.

The company will make do at their current main location at 125 W. Ironwood Drive, until the current tenants of The Spokesman-Review building finish their leases, he said.

The bank has been looking to combine its administrative and back-office workers in their main and satellite offices for about three years, before making an offer on the old newspaper building, he said.

“We’ll have the opportunity to have our whole team under one roof,” said Scott Anderson, president and CEO of the bank. “We’re excited about that.”

The building housed the Coeur d’Alene bureau of The Spokesman-Review starting in 1994.

The newspaper transferred the last of its Coeur d’Alene employees to its main downtown Spokane office in 2017.

“We weren’t marketing it to sell,” said Doug Yost, vice president of acquisitions and development for Cowles Real Estate, a subsidiary of Cowles Company, which publishes The Spokesman-Review.

“They came to us with an offer that seemed to make sense,” Yost said. “We had some discussions about it, but it was a pretty quick decision.”

For about $9.5 million, Mountain West Bank purchased the building that houses numerous tenants, Anderson said.

“As the landlord, we’re now managing the property,” he said. “As space and floors become available, we will probably do some cosmetic remodeling. But everybody here will likely all make the move in concert – sometime during the first half of 2026.”

Yost said the building was fully leased. Tenants included businesses including Guild Mortgage Company, Advanced Aesthetics and NexTitle.

“We were fully capable of keeping it, maintaining it and moving the property forward as we have in the past,” he said. “But we’re always looking for opportunities and finding productive uses for funds if we get them.”

A current focus of Cowles Real Estate is the River Landing at Mirabeau, a Spokane Valley development planned to host several hundred units of multifamily housing.

“We just completed 20 townhome units along the river,” Yost said. “We’re starting on two more apartment buildings in the next couple weeks.”

Land development is something Mountain West Bank officials considered, according to Anderson, and gladly avoided.

“We’re thrilled that we don’t have a huge new construction project to manage in addition to running a bank,” he said. “Instead, we found an existing building that suits our needs, in a good location, with plenty of parking and has great customers access – its a good fit.”