Michaels Stores Inc., the big Dallas-based retailer of arts, crafts, and home-decor items, plans to open a new store in the Spokane Valley Plaza shopping center just south of Interstate 90 and east of Sullivan Road.


Michaels has agreed to lease a 23,500-square-foot building that the shopping centers owner, Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co., of Spokane, will develop for it, says Kyle BrinJones, retail project manager for Summit Property Development, which handles Metropolitans commercial real estate portfolio.


The Michaels building will sit just east of a 32,000-square-foot Toys R Us store that opened in the shopping center last October, BrinJones says. Bernardo-Wills Architects PC, of Spokane, is designing the structure, but a general contractor hasnt been named yet to build it. Construction is expected to begin in April, and the building is to be turned over to Michaels in August, he says.


Michaels earlier this year divulged plans to open a store on Spokanes North Side that would be its second outlet here. That store is expected to open in June or July in about 25,300 square feet of leased space in the northern end of the 70,000-square-foot, former Best Products Co. building at 7630 N. Division.


Michaels currently operates a store in East Spokane, in Chimney Rock Park, at 3200 E. Trent. Michaels officials couldnt immediately be reached for comment about the plans for the new Spokane Valley Plaza store. However, a company executive said earlier that a decision would have to be made, once a new Valley store location was found, whether to move the Chimney Rock store to that site or to operate three Spokane-area outlets.


Michaels would be the third tenant in the 34-acre Spokane Valley Plaza development, after Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Toys R Us. Metropolitans site plan includes several other adjoining tenant spaces east of the Toys R Us store and the Michaels store site. BrinJones says he is negotiating with prospective tenants for those spaces.


When completed, the Spokane Valley Plaza is expected to have a total of about 300,000 square feet of retail space.