Several construction projects with a combined value exceeding $130 million are in various stages of planning in the University District east of downtown, and schedules for them are expected to overlap during the next two or three years.

The first of the upcoming projects is the construction of Martin Luther King Jr. Way, which will be an extension of Riverside Avenue east of Division Street that will connect to Trent Avenue, says Mike Taylor, the city's director of engineering services. The city will hold a groundbreaking ceremony for the $13 million project this month, and construction on it will start sometime this summer, Taylor says.

Seattle-based McKinstry Co. last week bought the former Great Northern building, at 802 E. Spokane Falls Blvd., just west of Hamilton Street on the north bank of the Spokane River, and expects to start a $10 million renovation project there within the next 60 days, says Dean Allen, the company's CEO. McKinstry hopes to consolidate its Spokane operations there and occupy about half of the 52,000-square-foot building within a year, Allen says. (See story, Page One.)

Pending approval of state funding, construction could start next year on a $78 million biomedical health-sciences building on the Riverpoint Campus, says Ryan Ruffcorn, a project manager at Washington State University.

Preliminary engineering and design are expected to start soon for the Division Street Gateway Corridor project and a pedestrian overpass that would link the East Sprague community to the Riverpoint Campus, where WSU and Eastern Washington University offer health-sciences programs.

The U-District is bounded roughly by Interstate 90 to the south, Sharp Avenue to the north, Division Street to the West, and Hamilton Street and the Spokane River to the east. The district includes the Riverpoint and Gonzaga University campuses and surrounding businesses and neighborhoods.

The scope of WSU's proposed 100,000-square-foot-plus biomedical building, to be located at the southeast corner of Spokane Boulevard and Pine Street, has grown from a previously envisioned proposal for a $45 million, 70,000-square-foot building, Ruffcorn says. The larger space now planned for the biomedical building will accommodate a proposed new medical school and WSU's College of Pharmacy, which will move there from the university's Pullman campus, he says.

The biomedical building is the first major project that would be built under WSU's latest Riverpoint Campus master plan, which the university updated last year.

The building is expected to be completed in 2013, Ruffcorn says. The master plan also calls for construction of more than 300,000 square feet of additional space on the campus by 2015.

WSU is seeking bids from Graham Construction & Management Inc. and Lydig Construction Inc., both of Spokane, and Portland, Ore.-based Hoffman Construction Co. to act as the construction manager and general contractor for the project, Ruffcorn says. WSU selected the short list from among 11 contractors that submitted qualifications to build and manage the project, he says.

The Legislature has allocated a total of $7.8 million for project design. WSU will seek $70 million in capital funding next year. "Hopefully, we'll be able to start construction late next summer," Ruffcorn says.

Meantime, U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell are seeking $5.3 million in federal funds for soil cleanup at the site, he says. The cleanup would involve moving contaminated soil from an old railroad bed that was moved to the proposed biomedical building site and encapsulated there during construction of the Sirti building.

The Riverside Avenue extension will run through the southern point of the Riverpoint Campus, Taylor says. The project will be integrated with the proposed Division Street Gateway Corridor project, he says.

The city is seeking an additional $2 million in federal funds to start that latter project at the Riverside-Division Street intersection.

Taylor says the intersection will include "traffic-calming" landscaping and brick-colored pavement to help identify the intersection as a pedestrian-friendly link between the U-District and downtown.

That work, which could start in about a year, is expected to be the launching point of the overall gateway project, says Katherine Miller, the city's senior engineer for capital projects.

The city will perform a preliminary engineering and design analysis aimed at carrying the gateway concept through to other intersections in the corridor from near I-90 to Sharp, Miller says. Once the preliminary engineering and design work is completed, the city will seek federal funding to complete the gateway project, she says.

The city has formed a U-District revitalization zone in which tax-increment financing totaling up to $20.4 million will be used for a number of economic-development purposes, including seed money to obtain matching state and federal funding, Miller says.

Marty Dickinson, president of the nonprofit Downtown Spokane Partnership, which is the fiscal and administrative agent for the U-District, says pedestrian-friendly links, starting with the Division Street Gateway Corridor project, are the organization's top priority for the district.

"Connectivity is how people move in a safe, access-oriented way," Dickinson says. "Strong connectivity points will allow people to move freely between downtown services, educational and health centers, and our river."

In another proposed pedestrian link, the city recently awarded a $400,000 contract to KPFF Consulting Engineers, of Seattle, to conduct a size, type, and location study for an envisioned pedestrian bridge over the BNSF Railway Co. tracks. The bridge would link the Riverpoint Campus to the East Sprague neighborhood. The tracks currently are a barrier between the heart of the U-District and the businesses and neighborhoods south of the tracks.

The city also is seeking $2 million in federal funds to buy right of way for such a bridge, which Dickinson says would encourage more mixed-use development in the East Sprague area. Preliminary estimates put the cost of the bridge at $5.2 million.

Dickinson says that part of the district south of the river is identified in WSU's Riverpoint Campus master plan as the most affordable and appropriate place for economic development to occur in the short term. Such development likely would include student housing, business offices, and commercial services, she says.

Economic expansion in the U-District will hinge on attracting private development, and that can be a long process that will depend on motivated property and business owners, Dickinson says.

"It will be up to the private sector to make investments and do developments," she says.

One private developer, NexCore Group LP, of Denver, announced in late 2008 that it plans to build a 60,000-square-foot office building to be called the Musculoskeletal Center for Excellence, at the southeast corner of Spokane Falls Boulevard and Pine Street.

That project lost momentum due to the recession, but NexCore is optimistic it can revive the project, WSU's Ruffcorn says. Plans called for the building to be the first of three phases of development on a parcel of land that includes the former Jensen-Byrd Co. warehouse building. The second and third phases, as originally envisioned, eventually would include construction of another medical office building and redevelopment of the Jensen-Byrd building.