Spokane developer Lanzce Douglass is constructing the $17 million first phase of a two-phase apartment complex in Cheney that city officials say is expected, when finished, to include 576 living units in 24 buildings spread across more than 30 acres.

Douglass couldn't be reached for comment. However, Brian Jennings, community development director for the city of Cheney, says Douglass is developing the big complex through a company named Eagle Pointe Apartments LLC at 1090 Betz Road, just west of Cheney Middle School on the south side of Betz Road, on the north side of the city.

The first phase of the project is to include 192 units in eight three-story apartment buildings, as well as a recreation building, Jennings says. In all, the first phase will encompass a total of 278,000 square feet of floor space, plus 570 parking spaces, and is to occupy about 12 acres of the 33.5-acre site, he says.

Russell C. Page Architects PS, of Spokane, designed the project.

Jennings says he's unsure when the first phase will be done or when construction of the next phase will begin.

Elisa Rodriguez, senior planner for the city, says the 384-unit second phase is to include 16 three-story buildings, with a total of 537,000 square feet of floor space, along with 990 parking spaces.

One of the questions the project raises for Cheney, a college town with only about 10,550 permanent residents but a growing student population, is how long it might take to absorb that many new apartments.

"That's a difficult question to answer," says LeeAnn Case, who oversees campus housing and dining for Eastern Washington University there and is associate vice president for business and auxiliary services.

Case says university-owned housing was 95 percent occupied last fall, which was "very good for us." It means the university's housing is nearly full, but with some openings to allow for flexibility for students, she says.

EWU has six residential halls, which are traditional dormitories: Brewster Hall, which Case says is more like an apartment complex, with two- and three-bedroom units and cooking facilities and bathrooms in each unit; and some apartment units for graduate students and students with families.

The school maintained a high level of occupancy last year even with the opening in September of The Grove apartment complex, with 512 bedrooms, at 240 S. Cheney Spangle Road, Case says. The Grove is the brand of student housing built by Charlotte, N.C.-based Campus Crest Development LLC.

The opening of Eagle Pointe, though, could have an impact on the university's occupancy levels, she says.

"Obviously, students like new (living facilities), so they may migrate that way," she says.

Cheney Mayor Allan Gainer says the city doesn't have numbers that would illustrate the demand for apartment housing in the city.

Still, he says, "My gut instinct is I think we're overbuilding. There's a lot of vacancies now."

Thorne Tibbitts, a real estate agent for Tomlinson Black Cheney-Medical Lake, says, "We just had so many new complexes in the last five years. It makes you wonder if we can keep up with it."

He adds, "It's going to be interesting. I don't think they're all going to be full. It's going to have an effect on some of the older apartment complexes."

In that part of Cheney, the city has Barrington Apartments, at 201 Betz; Rock Springs Apartments, at 2701 Al Ogden Way; and Boulder Apartments, at 210 Simpson Parkway.

Douglass last year developed a mini-storage facility, called Secure It Self Storage-Cheney, on land at the southeast corner of the intersection of Betz and state Route 904, also in the north part of town. The Journal of Business reported in January 2008 that the storage complex would have just less than 60,000 square feet of space and cost about $3.27 million.