Developer Marshall Chesrown says that if he had 200 completed living units today at Kendall Yards, the envisioned urban village near downtown Spokane that will overlook the Spokane River, he could sell them all in a weekend.


His confidence reflects a still-hot real estate market, enthusiasm about plans for the 77-acre site where Kendall Yards is envisioned, and his development track record in the Spokane-Coeur dAlene area. Chesrown sold $85 million of real estate in the first year of development at The Club at Black Rock, the golf-course community on the west side of Lake Coeur dAlene, about $70 million more than he had projected for that first year. At an average home value of $2 million, hes developed 375 homes there in the past seven years and now plans to expand the development by 300 homes, fetching the same pricesunprecedented for a development of that scale in the Inland Northwest.


Homes in two other Chesrown projects, the Legacy Ridge neighborhood overlooking Liberty Lake and the 412-unit Bellerive condominium project along the Spokane River in Coeur dAlene, are moving quickly as well.


The issue right now is getting things built fast enough, Chesrown says. It isnt getting things sold.


Chesrowns company, Black Rock Development, plans early next month to submit a planned-unit development application for Kendall Yards, which as currently envisioned will have more than 2,600 living units and 1 million square feet of commercial space. He estimates that the project will have $50 million to $100 million worth of public infrastructure alone, and the projects total economic impact could be nearly $3 billion.


He hopes to have the proposal in front of the citys hearing examiner in early March, then to the Spokane City Council shortly thereafter.


Chesrown has had meetings with city of Spokane staff about the project and agrees with them on 98 percent of the requirements. He says the main sticking points are that he wants direct access to Kendall Yards from Maple Street and a better pedestrian crossing and a traffic signal just north of the Monroe Street Bridge, at the east end of the project.


Chesrown says he would like to have more living units on the site, as he has seen at successful urban villages in other cities, but he says he can live with the densities he has discussed with the city.


Fifty years from now, I think well wish wed put 7,000 units there, he says.


An environmental cleanup on the site, which has involved removing 149,000 cubic yards of dirt from the site is expected to be completed in the next couple of weeks, and he hopes to have Washington state Department of Ecology approval of the cleanup within five weeks.


Chesrown already has a site-disturbance permit for the environmental-cleanup work, and he hopes to keep equipment on site and begin major grading for the project early next year. Infrastructure improvements to the site could be under way this spring, and the first buildings could be coming out of the ground there a year from now, he says.


He hopes that the hearing examiner and Spokane City Council will understand the reasons for his proposals at the Maple and Monroe junctions.


While gearing up to start the development, Chesrown says he also is talking with Washington state officials about buying the state Court of Appeals building, at 500 N. Cedar, on the north side of the Kendall Yards site, and moving the courts to a new location. He says he has shown the site to Gov. Christine Gregoire, and says shes receptive to selling the property and moving the courts.


Development work is to start at the east end of the property, near Monroe Street. There, he anticipates developing mixed-use buildings that will have retail space on the ground floor, and office space, and living units on the upper floors.


In general, he says, most of the buildings will be between four and seven stories tall, and none will be more than 10 stories tall.


Earlier this year, Chesrown proposed a private-public partnership with the city in which hed develop a mixed-use building with a public market at Veterans Park, on the southeast corner of Bridge Avenue and Monroe. He shelved that proposal after meeting some resistance, but says he hasnt ruled out revisiting the idea in the future.


While development will start at the east end of the property, Chesrown says it wont necessarily move from east to west. More likely, he says, the company will develop the propertys main corridorsspecifically the Maple Street corridor and the propertys western pointthen fill in between them.


If the real estate market stayed as hot as it is now, Kendall Yards likely would be developed fully within eight years, Chesrown estimates. More likely, he says, the market will cool somewhat, and the project will be developed over the next 15 to 20 years.


The property likely will include an assortment of types of housingapartment buildings, condominium units, row houses, and some single-family housesat a various price points, he says. As envisioned, a number of mixed-use buildings will include living units and commercial space, though the project is expected to have some stand-alone retail and office buildings as well.


Centennial Trail, the walking-biking trail that runs through Spokane County and into Kootenai County, will run along the ridge of the property, and some public areas might feature displays recognizing the five Native American tribes that once fished the Spokane River from that property.


Chesrown bought the Kendall Yards site for $12.8 million last December through a U.S. Bankruptcy Court auction. The site previously was owned by Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co., of Spokane.