Regal Partnership LLC, of Spokane, says it plans to seek next month a zoning change that would allow it to build a $5 million, three-story professional office building on a residential site along Regal Street on Spokanes South Hill.


The two-acre property, currently the site of two houses, is on the east side of Regal, just south of the big Cedar Canyon Village shopping center, which fronts on 57th Avenue, says Dwight Hume, a senior planner with the Spokane office of CLC Associates Inc. Hume is representing Regal Partnership in the zoning and permitting process for the project. He says that company has purchased the site and hopes to move the two houses to other locations, rather than demolishing them, as it makes way for the proposed office project.


As envisioned, Hume says, the office building would include up to 36,000 square feet of floor space and would accommodate a mix of medical tenants and professional users.


Kim Barnard, an independent architect here, owns Regal Partnership with Spokane builder George Doran and Spokane real estate broker Joe Nichols.


Barnard is designing the structure, and Doran, who owns George Doran General Contractors, would build it. Nichols, a real estate broker at Windermere/Manito LLC, would market the office space.


Barnard says the building would be similar in design to an upscale brick and stone office building at the northeast corner of 29th Avenue and Grand Boulevard, on Spokanes South Hill, that Nichols was involved in developing and that currently houses Windermere/Manito as one of its tenants.


The development company plans to keep many of the old trees that are on the site. Also, to be sensitive to water-drainage issues in that neighborhood, it intends to put in landscaping that requires a minimal water supply, Barnard says.


Hume says Regal Partnership held a community meeting at the Educational Services District 101 building, at 4202 S. Regal, on the proposed project late last month. Next month, the company plans to file a request with Spokane County to rezone the site from an urban residential designation that allows only single-family residences to a higher-density designation that allows office buildings among its uses.


If the zone-change request were approved, Hume says, work on the project could start next spring, and the building could be completed in late 2003 or early 2004.