Eastern Washington Universitys building in downtown Spokane is back up for sale after the Washington state agency that has been marketing the structure was unable to reach an agreement with the apparent winning bidder, Seattle-based Meriwether Partners LLC.


Three parties still are interested in buying the structure, though, and one of them is expected to provide a written offer shortly, says Steve Valandra, spokesman for the state Department of General Administration. The agency also will prepare a new prospectus on the building that it will post on its Web site, he says.


The state had set a minimum asking price of $3.77 million for the four-story, 67,000-square-foot structure, which is called the EWU Spokane Center and is located at 705 W. First. The university has housed its Spokane branch operations there since 1983, but now plans to construct a larger building in the nearby Riverpoint Higher Education Park as part of a broader effort to expand its academic offerings in Spokane.


EWU intends to use money from the sale of its current building to fund design and planning work for its envisioned Riverpoint building, and expects to seek state construction dollars for that building in the 2009-2011 biennium.


Meriwether Partners, a five-year-old commercial real estate company that owns 11 properties in the western U.S., and Fred DiCosola, a member of a private investment group, submitted the only proposals for the building in the first go-round.


Meriwether Partners proposal was deemed unworkable because it was based on a leaseback arrangement with EWU, and the university plans to move its staff out of the building by the end of September, Valandra says. The DiCosola groups proposal didnt meet the minimum asking price for the building, he says, but Tim Redfern, of Spokanes R.H. Cooke & Associates Inc., who is representing the investment group, says the group still is interested in the building and plans to resubmit an offer for it.


The DiCosola group is one of the three parties that Valandra says still are interested in the building. He says he doesnt know the names of the two other parties, but they both are located in Spokane. One of those parties might be Walt Worthy, who owns the Davenport Hotel and the recently opened Davenport Tower, which is located just west of the EWU building, with his wife, Karen.


Worthy says he was out of town and didnt learn that the building had been listed for sale until it was too late to submit a proposal, but that he expects to do so now that it has been put back on the market. He says he, too, would expect to fix it up and lease it out.


Contact Kim Crompton at (509) 344-1263 or via e-mail at kimc@spokanejournal.com.