In Spokane-area development circles, Kent Hull is known best for the Iron Bridge Office Campus, located along Trent Avenue just east of the University District. 

He’s built three office buildings and a parking garage there, with plans for two more offices structures along the Spokane River and near the iron railroad bridge for which the office park is named. 

In recent years, he moved beyond the few-block area in which he’s conducted business of one form or another for 30 years to take on projects in North Idaho and the University District itself. In all, Hull has $70 million in projects in the works.

He also is working with basketball Hall-of-Famer John Stockton and his family on the $13.5 million Matilda Building, a mixed-use structure that’s nearing completion along Hamilton Street, across from Stockton’s alma mater, Gonzaga University. 

At 69, Hull is looking for a legacy project in downtown Spokane to, as he puts it, “leave my stamp on the city.”

We sat down recently with Hull in his office at Iron Bridge to talk about his development career, both what’s he accomplished and what he’s working on now. 

Journal: The first place I’d like to start is how you got into the development business.

Hull: I actually got into it for my own businesses. Getting into this was a little bit of an accident. 

I have an engineering background, and I was in the packaging industry for 26 years, and I had my own business for 13 years. During that time when I had my own business, I developed two buildings of my own for manufacturing facilities. One of them is on Hogan Street, which is now the Stoneway Electric building. I designed that building and hired an architect to finish the plans, then we constructed the building. 

After I sold that to Stoneway, I bought 5 acres off of Bigelow Gulch, east of Market Street out there, and built a really nice building. After I closed that business down, I sold the building to ISC (Impact Service Corp.), which builds portable rock crushers, and I sold the front 3 acres of lawn area to LJ Oil, who put in a card-lock gas station there. 

I made money on those deals, and I like building things. I don’t care if it’s building packaging machinery or remodeling a house or something like that. 

After I closed that business down, I sold all of my patents to companies in Germany, Florida, and California, so I was traveling a lot. I was consulting with them, and I really got tired of the travel. Around 1997, I decided I wanted to quit all of that traveling and find something locally. 

I have a good friend who is a Realtor. She had bought several properties in Browne’s Addition, old Cutter properties and that sort of thing. She had remodeled them and made money. I had lunch with her, and I told her I was looking for a project I could take on, an apartment building in Browne’s Addition or something like that. As we’re having lunch, she mentioned to me that her boyfriend had the listing for Layrite Products Co., the old concrete block company that was here. 

Journal: Is that where Iron Bridge Corporate Office Campus is now?

Hull: Yes, a block and a half from where my old business had been. I knew the property and had been on it a few times. I found out that Sterling Bank had closed Layrite down. The banker who handled that was one I had worked with on projects before. There were other developers interested. Walt Worthy and Dick Vandervert were wanting to buy this property. I was the only one who stepped up who wanted to take on the block plant itself. There were literally 7,000 pallets of old concrete block stored here, out-of-date inventory. The other developers wanted Sterling to clear it all off. Then they would take the property. 

I brought in partners. My partners were all from Seattle. I started the concrete-block plant up again with the idea we were going to make that a profit center and eventually move that someplace else, consolidate the properties, and probably sell them. I wasn’t really planning at the very beginning to be the developer. 

We put a half million dollars into that and got it operational. I hired a fella from Australia who was a quasi-block expert. He helped, but he wasn’t as knowledgeable as we thought. He left and went to Denver, and my youngest son and I ran the block plant. 

Journal: What was it like, running that business?

Hull: It was a tough business. Layrite used to have a monopoly on that business. White Block was a small player. Then Central Pre-Mix got into that business after a falling out with some of the Layrite people, and the margins got real low. I learned that the hard way when we started up. We were bidding on business with the big-box stores. 

All of the masonry contractors came to me at the time and swore they would give me all of their business. But when it got right down to it, if White Block or Central Pre-Mix was a penny cheaper on the block, they got the deal. I had a bad taste in my mouth with some of the local masonry groups who came to me and wanted me to get that block plant going. 

After about a year and a half of running the plant, we got approached to sell it by two out-of-town companies. I was getting ready to leave for a trip to Europe for five weeks, and I got a call from Tim Murphy at Central Pre-Mix. This was the day before I was leaving for Europe. We had lunch that day and struck a deal. They ended up buying the plant. 

It was a good move. It was one of those things that you don’t plan on, but it worked out well. We didn’t make any money on it. I did patent one block and sold that to a company in Denver. Other than that, it was just a good learning experience. 

In the meantime, I was working to acquire other properties around here. We acquired eight or nine private homes. We acquired old industrial buildings. We purchased a piece of land from Burlington Northern. We purchased ground from the state. We worked a deal for a land swap with the city. That took us from 1998 to about 2003. In the meantime, we spent time demolishing buildings and cleaning up the property. 

Journal: That’s around the time you built the first building, right?

Hull: Yes, we built the first two buildings on spec (without tenants lined up). Back at that time, in the early 2000s, you could buy land in the Spokane Valley or on the West Plains for $2.50 to $3 a square foot. For land in the city that you have to redevelop, even if you buy it right, you’re in for $5 to $6 a foot. 

That’s one of the problems Spokane has had. That’s one of the reasons we’ve had the sprawl. It’s always been cheaper for developers to go out to the Valley or the West Plains and build something new, instead of trying to infill and redevelop. That’s typical of any city, unless you can get the higher rents. Spokane, because it’s a secondary or third-tier market, it’s difficult to generate the rents you need to do redevelopment. That’s what kills projects like Jensen-Byrd (on the Washington State University Spokane campus) or downtown. It’s hard to justify the cost. 

We decided, to get the thing jumpstarted, we would build the first building ourselves. 

Journal: That’s the building along Trent Avenue?

Hull: That’s Building One. It’s the smallest building on the site. It’s 25,000 square feet with two stories. We didn’t have any tenants. It took us close to a year before we landed State Farm Insurance, which opened a claims center there. That helped, and we got the rest leased up over the next year and a half or so. 

Building on spec is tough to do here. Back in those days, you could get financing. Today, it’s impossible. 

Then I demolished Lay-Rite’s old office building and planned a second building there. We had three different tenants dancing around. One of the things in Spokane I’ve found is, people have the idea that they don’t have to make a decision today because it will still be there two years from now. It’s frustrating from a developer’s standpoint. 

For Building Two, where PAML (Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories LLC) and Washington Dental Service are now, we didn’t intend to be a spec building. I had two well-known Spokane entities that had made verbal commitments to take half of all of the space in that building. To make a long story short, we got stuck with an $8 million building and a $5 million parking garage that weren’t committed. We went through a year and a half of having to carry that and maintain that. 

Journal: What year was that? 

Hull: About 2005.

Journal: So that was during a good economy.

Hull: Yes, that was a good economy. Luckily, Washington Dental Service stepped to the plate and took about 25 percent of the building, and four or five months later, PAML took the rest of the building. And that’s been great. 

That’s part of the issue with being a developer in Spokane. You have to be patient, and you have to be thick skinned. I tend to get mad. You always get mad when someone reneges on a commitment to you, but you can’t say to heck with them, because they might come back two years from now and be your only option. 

This building we’re in now, Building Three, was the first building we had completely precommitted. Ninety-five percent of it was preleased. 

You know as well as I do how many trial balloons are floating around town. Someone is going to build a 30-story office building or a 25-story condo building, and it doesn’t happen. They’re trying to generate interest and get preleasing, but it doesn’t happen. For this project to happen, we had to step up to the plate and start building spec. Otherwise, this project doesn’t happen. 

Journal: How did you get involved in the Matilda project with the Stocktons?

Hull: About four years ago, I had run into John Stockton, and he said he’d like to talk to me. He came and sat down right where you’re sitting now. At that time, it was before he’d done the Clementine (multitenant retail center) project. I didn’t know this at the time, but for some reason, he thought I’d be competing with him over there. But I’m not into retail. I’m not a retail guy or a multifamily guy. 

We have a common attorney. Two and a half years ago, after the Clementine building, he told John to call me. John did, and then he explained to me what he wanted to do. I tried to direct him a little bit. I’m pretty opinionated, if you haven’t figured that out yet, and I tried to lead him to the quality that I know to build with now and save him the learning curve. John is a super guy, but you can’t make up his mind for him. He’s not going to be led around. 

We met three or four times. We started putting numbers together. This project is going to cost a couple million dollars more than a stick-frame building, but it’s not going to be dated 50 years from now. 

He is really committed to this neighborhood, and he understands that I’ve been committed to this neighborhood, with the stuff I have done here and getting that bridge redecked. When he’s dead and gone, he wants this neighborhood to show that he made a stamp on it. I don’t blame him a bit. 

We looked at taking a run at the Macy’s building downtown. We went through it, and we may still do a joint venture with the Cowles. I have some ideas of how to make it work. I shared some of that with the Cowles. Originally, they were thinking about tearing the whole darn thing down, which would cost them a year and a half. I gave them some ideas about how it could be made more usable for apartments. Whether they want to do it on their own or have us participate, it’s fine. 

At this point, I have so many projects going on. I’m almost 70 years old and I’ve got two projects going on in Hayden right now. We were going to take a run at the Jensen-Byrd building, then I looked at the RFQ (request for qualifications) and thought, “There’s no way. There’s no way this is going to work.” It’s the old axiom, some of the best deals are the ones you don’t get. The Jensen-Byrd is a good example of that. 

But I’d still like to find a project to leave my stamp on downtown Spokane. I’m still looking. 

Journal: Speaking of the neighborhood, it’s changed substantially since you built your first building here, with the investment and growth in the University District. Did you see that coming?

Hull: Oh yeah. When I first started my business over there in late 1982-83, you still had railroad viaducts south of Trent. Where the University District is now, it was just Spokane Tent & Awning. It was before the hotels were built or anything was there. 

You asked if I saw it happening. When I bought this property, it was 1998. I had seen 15 years of transition since I was first in this neighborhood. I saw everything moving from Division Street and kind of creeping this way. I understood that we were on the borders of it. 

I also felt all of this stuff north of us is going to have to be redeveloped. All of this riverfront property over here is prime for apartments or condos, and you’ve got all of these rundown houses.

Remember, I was here before the (Union Gospel) Mission was here. I remember people getting all up in arms about the Mission moving here. There were a lot of people in the neighborhood who were against that, but I wasn’t against it. 

I’ll get businesspeople looking at tenant space and say, “Oh, I don’t want to be across the street from the Mission.” I say, “Why not? That could be a good service project for your employees for one thing.” Number two, I’ve never had a problem with those guys. The only problem I’ve had in 18 years is neighborhood kids. 

In fact, I have two guys working for me who graduated from the program at the Mission. They’re good, hard-working guys, and they got themselves off of alcohol. For me, it’s a plus and not a minus.

The SIRTI (Spokane Intercollegiate Research & Technology Institute) building was built. I have to give Jim West (former Spokane mayor) credit. We were quasi-friends for years. We were on a state health care board together for years. In all fairness to Jim, we worked on getting funding for SIRTI and what became the University District. I could see that vision coming this way. 

We were a little bit ahead of our time here, but it was right.