Centennial Real Estate Investments and the city of Spokane Valley are moving closer to finalizing plans for the development of a 200-acre industrial park amid efforts to woo at least two major manufacturers there as tenants. 

Doug Yost, Centennial’s director of real estate investments, says the industrial and manufacturing site is located near the northeast corner of Barker Road and Euclid Avenue. He says the company is still negotiating with Union Pacific Corp. for the company to provide rail access to the two, 100-acre parcels from its rail line that bisects Barker Road and Euclid Avenue.

“The plan is to stub off their main line,” says Yost of the creation of a rail spur, a secondary track used by railroads to allow customers at a nearby location to load and unload railcars without interfering with other railroad operations.

 A final cost estimate still has yet to be determined. Yost says Centennial, the city of Spokane Valley, and Greater Spokane Incorporated all have been working together in an effort to attract a couple of specific big manufacturers to the planned industrial park. However, officials decline to identify the businesses that Centennial has been in negotiations with about setting up operations there.

Most of the envisioned manufacturing site, which fronts the east side of Barker Road and abuts the north side of the Union Pacific rail line, is owned by Inland Empire Land Co., a subsidiary of Cowles Co., of Spokane, which also owns Centennial Real Estate Investments and the Journal of Business.

Centennial plans to sell business site properties once the industrial park’s infrastructure is complete. The park has yet to be officially named, Yost says.

“Centennial, going forward, at this time, plans to maintain ownership of the property where the main railroad line will be installed on its property outside of the Union Pacific right of way,” says Yost.

“We’re designing a park to accommodate businesses with big acreage properties,” he says. “We own that property, and we’ve been working on it for the last two years.”

Mike Basinger, economic development manager with the city of Spokane Valley, says GSI approached Spokane Valley a few years ago about not only the Centennial property, but also other properties in Spokane Valley for industrial and manufacturing use.

“We have an enormous amount of vacant industrial land. Quite frankly, our goal is to place at least another Kaiser (Aluminum Inc.) within the city limits,” Basinger says.

“We want more, higher paying manufacturing jobs in our area, and those efforts have been well underway on the part of GSI, the city, and the individual property owners,” he says.

Basinger and Yost decline to reveal large manufacturing companies that have been targeted for potentially establishing operations here.

Yost says Centennial and Spokane Valley initially approached Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway about creating a rail spur off of its nearby rail line.

“We worked with BN, but the infrastructure was just going to be too expensive for those parcels,” Yost says. However, the Union Pacific rail line and related infrastructure proved to be more cost effective for the developer, he says.

The proposed industrial park would occupy land about a mile east of Flora Road, which is the easternmost border of Crown West Realty LLC’s 615-acre Spokane Business & Industrial Park.

In an interview with the Journal earlier this month, Crown West Realty President and General Manager Dean Stuart said SBIP’s current 98 percent occupancy rate is the highest he’s seen in his 17-year tenure with the company.

Located at 3808 N. Sullivan, SBIP has a total of 5 million square feet of leasable space in 50 buildings. The park currently has 125 tenants.

Yost says Centennial Real Estate Investments sees a real opportunity to create another industrial park based on SBIP’s high occupancy rate.

“That area (SBIP)—designated as industrial—is limited in large acreage with access to rail,” Yost says.