Investors say a new medical complex they plan to develop at Liberty Lake will offer everything from urgent care, X-ray, and specialty services, to dentistry and physical and occupational therapy. It even will include an Ultrafit wellness center that will offer members a blended regimen of exercise, diet, and preventive health care, they say.


All of those services are to be housed in a 39,000-square-foot building that S&D Development, of Coeur dAlene, plans to construct on a 2.5-acre site at the northwest corner of Appleway Avenue and Molter Road in Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co.s new Liberty Lake Center business park. The total cost of that initial project, including the amount paid for the land, is expected to be about $2.4 million. Tentative plans call for an ambulatory surgery center and possibly an extended-care center for the elderly to occupy a twin building that would be constructed later on an adjoining site.


Were going to develop a whole health-care spectrum. This really should service all of the Liberty Lake health-care needs for the foreseeable future, asserts Jim Doty, one of the investors in the project.


The Liberty Lake project and a similar one that the same investor group is developing in Post Falls could give the group a strong health-care presence in a couple of the fastest-growing areas along the Interstate 90 corridor between Spokane and Coeur dAlene, if its plans unfold as expected. The developers are counting on attracting business to these essentially one-stop community clinics that otherwise would go to more distant and scattered health-care providers.


I think the thing is really patient convenience, says Dr. Jack T. Riggs, a Coeur dAlene physician and investor in the projects, of the potential demand for such new health-care facilities.


Riggs is an Idaho state senator and the owner of North Idaho Immediate Care Center, which operates clinics in Coeur dAlene, Post Falls, and Hayden Lake.


Doty is president of the consulting and management services division of Torrance, Calif.-based Health Care Partners Ltd. (HCP), a large physician-owned, health-care provider group. Doty has been flying to Post Falls weekly for the last five years and plans to move there permanently after retiring from HCP at the end of this year.


Along with his position at HCP, he is co-owner of Doty-Scott Investments, a California-based company that partnered recently with Riggs to buy the 2.5-acre site at Liberty Lake where the first medical building is to be constructed. Doty-Scott and Riggs also have secured an option to buy a similar-sized, adjoining piece of land for the envisioned second building. Doty also is co-owner, with Coeur dAlenes Keith Sexton, of S&D Development, which will be the general contractor on both buildings.


The two buildings are expected to be identical to one that North Idaho Immediate Care Center, of Coeur dAlene, and S&D are erecting next to the care centers Post Falls clinic. Each of the Liberty Lake buildings would have two stories plus a daylight basement and would be divided basically into two parts, connected by a central lobby and covered patient drop-off area. Architects West PA Inc., of Coeur dAlene, is the architect on both the Liberty Lake and Post Falls projects.


Construction of the first building in the Liberty Lake Medical Center will begin this summer, and the first half of that structure should be completed about six months later, after which occupants can begin moving in, Doty says. Work on the remaining half of the building is expected to begin about six months after the first half has been completed, but could get under way sooner if demand for the medical space is strong enough, he says. Construction of the second building, although not yet definite, probably would follow a similar timetable, he says.


North Idaho Immediate Care Center and S&D Development began construction of the Post Falls building late last year. The 18,000-square-foot first half of that building is expected to be completed by late next month, Riggs says.


As at the Post Falls center, health-care providers who set up practice at the Liberty Lake center will have the option of leasing the space they use or becoming part owners of the buildings they occupy.


Industrial medicine, which includes such things as drug testing and pre-employment physicals, is one of the services that the investors say they expect to be provided at the Liberty Lake facility, given the number of large employers located nearby. Specialty care offered there probably will include cardiology, pulmonary, and orthopedics services, among others, he says.


Liberty Lake Center is the designated second phase of MeadowWood Business Park, a large development that includes such tenants as Olsy North America Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., and Telect Inc.


Summit Property Development, which manages Metropolitans commercial real-estate portfolio, just recently began to market the land in the still undeveloped center. Summit executives say they believe the medical facility could serve as a catalyst for the development of other medical office space there.