For 20 years of Mick McDowells working life, what he did for a living depended on what day it was.


From 1975 to 1996, he was a city of Spokane firefighter who would work the standard firemans schedule at the time: 24 hours on duty and 48 hours off.


When not at Fire Station No. 9 on Spokanes South Hill, McDowell was at maintenance-deferred slums he had bought, making needed repairs and improvements.


At one job, he extinguished flames. At the other one, he routinely put out fires of another kind.


I worked my ass off for 15 to 20 years, McDowell says. What you have now is this.


The this that McDowell refers to is a five-story, $10 million culmination of a career that is the AmericanWest Bank Building, downtown Spokanes newest Class A office building. McDowell led a development group that built the attractive brick building on the old Thaddeus T. Thudpuckers restaurant site at 41 W. Riverside.


Larry Soehren, vice president of Kiemle & Hagood Co., of Spokane, says that one building has put McDowells name among a select few visionaries who have taken on high-profile projects that help to revitalize downtown.


Hes taken his real estate career to a new pinnacle with the building there, Soehren says. Its a great treasure for Spokane.


While many of the 67 buildings McDowell has bought and rehabilitated in his career are within walking distance of the new structure, none likely would be described as great treasures for Spokane.


All but a few of those structures are low-income apartment buildings that McDowell bought, rehabilitated, and in many cases, later sold. He refers to most of them as maintenance-deferred slums that provide housing for those who cant afford to live many other places.


He didnt set out to be a landlord of low-income apartments, but his development career evolved in that direction.


It was less a pro-active attraction than a reality of what I could afford to buy, he says. If my daddy had a bunch of money, maybe I would have bought a brand-new building.


McDowells family didnt have a bunch of money, but he describes his father as a great guy who enjoyed a successful career as superintendent of the Montana State School of the Deaf and Blind.


McDowell grew up in Great Falls, Mont., but spent the summers of his teenage years at an uncles farm outside of Opheim, Mont., located 320 miles northeast of Great Falls, 10 miles south of Saskatchewan, and smack dab in the middle of nowhere.


Working on the farm proved to be formative, McDowell says. It gave him the skill and knowledge base that helped him score near the top on the firefighters examination later in life and gave him confidence to be successful in other areas of life.


Hed work 10 to 12 hours a day, operating a $100,000 piece of machinery that harvested a crop his uncles family relied upon for a years worth of income. Even at his young age, he realized the seriousness of what he was doing.


It was on the farm where he first added bulk to his 6-foot-3-inch frame. McDowells grandmother lived across the street from his uncle, and hed stay with her while working on the farm. During the summer before his senior year, he started working a good scam in which hed wake up at 5 a.m. and eat a breakfast prepared by his grandmother. Then, hed walk across the street and wake up his uncles family and eat with them before heading out into the field. Upon returning at night, hed have dinner with his uncles family, then walk back to Grandmas house to find a nice meal waiting for him.


That went on until the Fourth of July picnic, when his aunt and grandma compared notes on how much he ate and discovered that he was double-dipping. They trimmed his five square meals a day to three, but he still grew to 195 pounds that summer.


The extra weight was in the right places. He placed fifth in state in high jump and was the starting center for his schools basketball team during his senior year. Throughout high school, he earned seven varsity letters.


McDowell came to Spokane after high school to attend Gonzaga University. His dad had gone to the Jesuit school, and he had an aunt and uncle who lived here.


McDowell majored in psychology and in four years had enough credits for his major and for minors in theology, philosophy, political science, mathematics, and physics. During summers, he had earned some masters credits in psychology from San Francisco State University and Western Washington University.


At the time, however, Gonzaga required students to take four years of a foreign language, and McDowell clashed with his German instructor and left the school without finishing the fourth year of foreign languageand without a degree.


He stayed in Spokane, though, and became a maintenance man for property owners and managers around town. He did a little of everythingfrom fixing toilets to replacing drywall.


After four years of that, McDowell decided he wanted to get into the same business as those who owned the buildings he worked in.


I discovered they werent any brighter than I, he says.


McDowell bought a run-down, 18-unit apartment building called The Patrician, at 102 E. Second on the edge of downtown, for $89,000 in 1975, the same year he became a fire fighter.


A real estate agent had given McDowell money for a down payment and let him work off the debt by doing maintenance on properties he managed. In essence, McDowell says, the agent had an indentured servant for a couple of years.


McDowell ended up buying more buildings of the same type, occasionally selling them off to finance other, larger projects. He currently maintains ownership of 11 buildings in the Spokane area, including the AmericanWest Bank Building.


Commercial buildings that he has developed include the old Teamsters Building, at the southwest corner of Third Avenue and Browne Street, which Transnation Title Insurance Co. now occupies; and the Rowan Assisted-Living facility, at 1707 E. Rowan. He maintains ownership of the assisted-living facility, but has sold the old Teamsters Building.


In the late 1970s, he married his current wife, Shelley, who handles much of the financial side of the couples development interests.


Passion for work


Through the years, he has been critical at times of the city of Spokanes building department and how it works with developers, and of nonprofit organizations that offer the low-income housing but spend more than he thinks is necessary on construction and remodeling projects. He says he would help them make their projects more cost efficient, but, To them, Im Snidely Whiplash.


Dianne Quast, executive director of the Spokane Housing Authority, says shes doesnt know anybody who refers to McDowell that way, but shes aware of his opinions on how nonprofit low-income housing providers conduct business.


Weve had animated conversations about that, Quast says.


She adds that McDowell has done a good job of turning dilapidated complexes into nice living environments for people in need of affordable housing.


McDowell takes pride in the work hes done in the low-income housing market. By putting new electrical, heating, and fire-suppression systems into many of the buildings he rehabilitates, he says he adds decades of life to structures that in many instances were on their last legs.


Regarding past interactions, he says, If I had a trait that kept me from being well liked, its that Im completely blunt. When you couple that with a passion that some people find intimidating, it gets in the way of consensus building.


He adds, Im not losing any passion, but I dont need to fight anymore.


Now, McDowell is part of a larger effort in which consensus is sometimes necessary. Last spring, the Spokane County commissioners tabbed McDowell to replace fellow developer Walt Worthy on the Public Facilities Districts board of directors.


The PFD is handling the $79.4 million Spokane Convention Center expansion downtown, and McDowell is on the project committee thats overseeing construction. He says hes taken a hands-on approach to the position and will do everything in his power to make sure public funds used on the project are spent wisely and efficiently.


The convention-center expansion site is partially visible from the upper floors of the AmericanWest building. Its not visible from McDowells corner office on the buildings main floor, but city Fire Station No. 1 is directly across Riverside, and he can watch the big, red emergency trucks come and go.


He says its a happy coincidence that he can watch the goings-on at the fire station, but its a coincidence he enjoys. He stays in contact with long-time cronies from the firehouse and remembers the work fondly.


Outside of work, McDowell likes to hang out at Priest Lake with his wife and their three four-legged childrena 6 1/2-year-old border collie-akita mix named Yoda and 2 1/ 2-year-old black Labradors named Tucker and Tilly.


The McDowells used to ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles and had 15,000 miles of road trips under their belts, but sold the bikes after finding that the dogs didnt fit on the two-wheelers.


The dogs live well, he says. Frequently, hell pick up chicken gizzards or other on-sale items at the supermarket meat counter and cook them up for the dogs.


I have friends who want to come back as my dogs when they die, McDowell says.