An unusual offer by the Washington state Department of Transportation to exchange almost four acres of property on North Ruby Street for the construction work on two projects has failed to produce any offers acceptable to DOT. The projects include construction of a building in the Spokane Valley and site preparation work north of Spokane for a second structure.


Kevin Reynolds, a DOT architect in Olympia, says the department plans to repeat the offer within a matter of weeks, although only one proposal, which was later rejected, was received in response to a series of legal ads published here recently seeking an exchange.


This is the first time weve tried anything like this, Reynolds says of the proposed exchange of property for construction services. Our plan now is to review the process, identify any obstacles to getting a successful bid, and remove them. Im guessing well put the offer out again sometime around the end of October.


The DOT property is located at the southeast corner of the intersection of Ruby and North Foothills Drive on the northbound leg of the Division-Ruby couplet. By trading it, DOT hopes to be able to start construction on two projects for which no state funding is currently available, Reynolds says. One of those projects is the construction of a 7,500-square-foot, steel-framed, concrete maintenance shop and office building on Montgomery Road near Pines Road in the Valley. The other involves grading, road paving, utilities installation, and other site-preparation work in advance of the construction of a pre-engineered 22,000-square-foot metal building at Hatch Road and U.S. 395 north of the city. That structure would eventually replace the DOTs office and vehicle storage facility near Wandermere Mall, he says.


DOT is offering the property in trade, rather than putting it up for sale, because state law stipulates that funds from the sale of such properties by DOT must go into the states Motor Vehicle Fund, which would make the money unavailable for funding the projects DOT wants to construct, Reynolds says.


He says the department is looking also at other unused properties that could be traded to meet its construction-work needs.


We dont have appropriated funding to do some of the construction that we need, and so were looking at some of our unused propertiesparticularly those that were acquired some time ago, and now are located in desirable commercial zonesto see if we can use those in a way that will help meet some of our construction needs, he says.