Northpointe Retirement LLC, of Spokane, hopes to begin work late next month on the $9.8 million first phase of a planned 326-unit retirement facility on an about eight-acre parcel on Spokanes North Side.


Richard Colliton, a principal in Northpointe Retirement LLC, says the investor group still is working to secure a building permit for the project from the city of Spokane. It also has filed a State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) application with the citys building services division, which was accepting public comment on the application up until last week.


Earlier this month, William Mott, city plans examiner, said the building services division expected to issue a determination of non-significance on the project, which is tantamount to approving a SEPA application.


The investor group plans to build the retirement facility, which is to be called Northpointe Retirement Community, at the southeast corner of Westview Court and Nevada Street in three phases. S.L. Start & Associates, a Spokane retirement-housing and social services management company, would manage the facility, says Colliton, who also is S.L. Starts chief operating officer.


S.L. Start had said earlier this year that it planned to build a $17 million, 215-unit retirement campus on the same property at Westview Court and Nevada. Those plans, which called for the construction of a 140-unit apartment complex for independent seniors and for those who need assisted-living care, a 35-unit apartment building for seniors with Alzheimers disease, and 40 single-story cottages for independent seniors, since have been revamped and enlarged, Colliton says. He declines to disclose an estimated value for Northpointe Retirement Community beyond the first phase, though. The new project, which no longer is being developed by S.L. Start, is expected to include an apartment building with a total of 156 independent- and assisted-living units, five buildings with a total of 50 dementia-care units, another apartment complex with 100 independent-living units, and 20 single-story cottages.


For the first phase of the project, Northpointe Retirement LLC recently bought a 5.2-acre parcel between Westview Court and Holland Road, just east of Nevada, Colliton says. The company plans to build a 73,500-square-foot, four-story structure on the northern end of that property. The structure would house 80 apartments, according to construction documents filed with the city of Spokane. Some of those units would be reserved for senior citizens who can live on their own, and others would be designated as assisted-living units, for seniors who need help with routine tasks.


Also as part of the first phase, the company plans to build three single-story buildings on the southern end of the 5.2-acre parcel. Those buildings each will house 10 apartments and will be dedicated to seniors who suffer from Alz-heimers disease and other types of dementia. Each of the dementia-care buildings will have 5,000 square feet of floor space and will house its own kitchen and dining room, a library, a laundry room, and two showering facilities, planning documents say. The three buildings will be built just south of the four-story apartment facility.


The second phase, which is to be built on an adjacent 3-acre parcel that the investor group still would have to buy, is to include the construction of the 20 independent-living cottages and a 100-unit independent-living apartment complex, Colliton says. Those structures would be built just to the east of the projects first phase and are expected to get under way next spring, he says. He declines to give an estimated cost for that phase or for the final phase of the project.


That final phase, which is expected to get under way in December 1999, would involve adding two more 10-unit dementia-care buildings and another 76 units to the first-phase, four-story apartment complex, he says.


Northpointe Retirement Community would be built a short way west of a 120-bed subacute-care and skilled-nursing facility that Regency Pacific Inc., of Issaquah, Wash., built last year. Also, a Bellevue company called Leisure Care has announced plans to build a retirement facility that will house a total of 220 independent- and assisted-living units on a nearby parcel on Holland Road between U.S. 2 and Nevada. That project is expected to get under way in May.


Kirkwood Rodell Associates PS, of Spokane, is designing the Northpointe Retirement Community project, and the Spokane companys construction arm, Kirkwood Rodell Construction, has been selected as the general contractor.