Two big housing projectswhich together would add more than 300 apartments and nearly 300 homes to the growing Indian Trail Road areacould be moving ahead soon.


The smaller of the two projects, a 96-unit apartment complex to be called Selkirk Lodge, already is under way at the northwest corner of the intersection of Indian Trail and Barnes Road, about two miles north of Francis and just north across Barnes from the Sundance Plaza shopping center.


The other project, which according to city of Spokane documents would include 298 single-family homes and a 212-unit multifamily complex, has been planned for years by Harlan and Maxine Douglass, of Spokane.


Called Windhaven, the housing development would be located just west of the Selkirk Lodge project, and a city planner says it now could move quickly to permitting.


Site work on the Selkirk Lodge project is done, and its developer, Selkirk Lodge LLC, should begin pouring footings and doing framing any day, says Jim Frank, the companys registered agent and also manager of Greenstone Commercial Construction, of Spokane, which is doing the work.


Meanwhile, the Douglasses last week filed a final plat proposal for Windhaven Apartments, the 212-unit multifamily piece of the development, and also filed engineering plans for sewer, water, and streets for the 298-unit single-family home development, says Steve Haynes, a city planner.


The 96-unit Selkirk Lodge development is expected to cost about $8 million to build and will include 16, six-unit, two-story structures on nearly seven acres of land, says Frank. He says the first residents will move into those medium-priced apartments in April of next year.


Each unit in the development will have a garage, and 30 percent of the garages will have direct access to a living unit, Frank says.


He says the units will range in size from 900 square feet of living space, with one bedroom and one bathroom, to about 1,300 square feet of space, with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. City records list the developments address as 9501 N. Woodridge.


Selkirk Lodge LLC recently bought the project from Tombari Delay Enterprises, says Frank. According to documents filed with the city, Tombari Delay received city approval in August to expand the proposed development from five acres and 72 units to the current 6.77 acres and 96 units.


Windhaven Apartments


The Douglass project, which has roots as far back as the 1980s under another name, now lists an address of 5420 W. Barnes, and was proposed to the city in its current format in 1997, then given preliminary plat approval in 2003, says Haynes. The city responded to the original application by citing concerns about such matters as storm water, right of way, traffic, parking, and zoning, but the project is seeing renewed activity, says Joe Wizner, director of Spokanes building department.


Haynes says the Douglasses basically have addressed those earlier concerns, and on Oct. 3 submitted a final plat proposal that, if approved by the city planning department, would remove the last barriers before the Douglasses could file for building permits, which could allow the project to proceed as planned.


Haynes, on whose desk the final plat proposal for the apartment units was sitting last week, says if city engineers approve the proposal, it could go through relatively quickly.


Even prior to the most recent filings, the Douglasses were busy making arrangements for the project.


In June, Harlan and Maxine Douglass filed an application to take advantage of a tax incentive crafted to encourage multifamily residential development in areas targeted for urban growth. At the city of Spokanes 2005 average property-tax levy rate of $15 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, that tax exemption for the Douglass apartment complex would amount to $142,500 in the first year alone, says Connie Kline, levy specialist in the county assessors office. The Douglasses tax-exemption application puts the estimated cost of the 212-unit apartment project cost at $9.5 million and says the estimate was based on company apartment cost history.


The tax exemption lasts 10 years, but Kline says no one knows how tax rates will change over those 10 years. If tax rates were to remain constant, which isnt likely, the savings would be about $1.4 million over the duration of the exemption.


Assistant city attorney Mike Piccolo says the goal of the tax exemption is to create pockets of urban development by attracting residential growth to areas that already have been developed commercially. He says the city of Spokane has designated 19 such pockets where the exemption applies, and added the Indian Trail-Barnes Road area to the list within the last three years.


In related activity concerning Windhaven, Harlan and Maxine Douglass, after a trio of meetings with the citys building department, recently appealed a decision by Wizner that the project is covered by the international building code the city adopted July 1, 2004, says Wizner. Douglass contends the 1997 building code in place when he made his initial application should apply, Wizner says. Wizner argues that such applications are in effect only for 180 days after theyre filed.


The primary difference between the two codes, as far as multifamily structures are concerned, is that fire-suppression sprinkler systems are mandatory today, and werent required before July of last year, says Wizner.


He estimates the cost of such sprinkler systems to be between $2.50 and $3 per square foot, which would add an additional about $510,000 to $620,000 to the construction cost of Windhavens proposed 10 buildings, which as proposed would exceed a total of 200,000 square feet of living space.


Wizner says the cost of sprinkler systems is partially offset by reduced insurance rates, and a decrease in construction costs because firewall codes arent as strict when sprinkler systems are installed.


Douglass appeal will be heard before an independent construction review board that is made up of engineers, architects, and contractors, Wizner says.


On their tax-exemption application, which they filed in June, the Douglasses said they anticipated starting the apartment project in mid-2005 and completing it a year later. They have submitted drawings of three building styles for the proposed 10-building project. The living units in two 10-unit buildings would average more than 1,300 square feet of living space, while the living units in the other eight 24-unit buildings would average between 900 square feet and 1,000 square feet of living space.


No estimates were available for the value of the single-family home development.