Spokane development company Worthy Enterprises Inc. is planning another office-building conversion project here.


The company recently bought the 36,000-square-foot, former Rosauers supermarket building at 8517 E. Trent in the Spokane Valley and plans to convert and expand it for office use, says Walt Worthy, who owns Worthy Enterprises with his wife, Karen.


The company is looking at adding a second floor to the building, which is located a few blocks west of the busy intersection of Trent Avenue and Argonne Road, and boosting the structures size to as much as 75,000 square feet of floor space, he says.


Work on the project is expected to begin soon and to be completed by next spring, Worthy says, adding that he hopes to find a large user for the building. He declines to estimate the cost of the project.


Spokane-based Rosauers Supermarkets Inc. closed its grocery store there in the spring of 1998, saying it had been ravaged by competition from a couple of larger, nearby stores operated by competing chains.


Since the late 1980s, Worthy Enterprises has displayed a knack for transforming older structures into contemporary office buildings, while also pursuing other development projects. The buildings it has bought, expanded, and converted include the former Coca-Cola plant at 901 N. Monroe, the former Peoples Lumber Co. store at 1907 E. Francis, the former Kohler Tower United building on north Ash Street, and three former grocery stores, two along the Maple-Ash corridor and one in Omak, Wash.


It may be known best, however, as the developer of Rock Pointe Corporate Center, the three-building, 340,000-square-foot office complex at the northeast corner of Boone and Washington, and the nearby 240,000-square-foot, five-story Rock Pointe East building. Worthy Enterprises built all of those structures from the ground up.


The Rock Pointe East building, completed late last year, now is more than 65 percent leased, Worthy says. Its 58,000-square-foot top floor, a portion of the fourth floor, and a 1,500-square-foot space just off the main lobby are the only unleased spaces remaining, he says. The new complex, which includes a connected parking garage, got a boost this summer when Pitney Bowes Inc., the Stamford, Conn.-based provider of mail and messaging management systems, announced it would lease an entire floor there. It opened its offices there last week.


Worthy Enterprises expects shortly to begin development of 300 to 500 additional parking spaces just west of Rock Pointe East to accommodate growing tenant needs, Worthy says. Some of that added parking should be ready for use before the end of this year, he says. He declines to estimate the cost of that project.


Separately, Worthy Enterprises is adding about 300 units to a 500-unit mini-storage facility it owns on the north side of Francis Avenue between Napa and Crestline streets in northeast Spokane, Worthy says. It began work on that project earlier this year and expects to complete the expansion within a few weeks, he says.


The mini-storage facility is located just west of the former Peoples Lumber building on East Francis that Worthy Enterprises bought about eight and a half years ago and converted into offices. The Washington state Department of Social and Health Services now occupies that 19,000-square-foot building.