Merrily Bjerkestrand sips soup silently. She cuts her salad greens into petite portions and tears off bite-sized bits of a breadstick with her fingers instead of her teeth. Across from her, I put my elbows on the table faster than you can spell

Quite literally, the groundwork is being laid in the Spokane area for the in-home communication networks of the future.Custom-home builder Sullivan Homes Inc. and start-up technology manufacturer World Wide Packets Inc., both of Spokane, are up

A 57,000-square-foot, office-and-warehouse building is being proposed in the Spokane Valley for Parrott Mechanical Inc., a Coeur dAlene-based heating and air-conditioning contractor, Spokane County records say.The proposed building would be at

Costco Wholesale Corp., the big Issaquah, Wash.-based membership warehouse chain, has agreed to buy land in the Spokane Valley from Home Depot USA Inc. and hopes to build a new, bigger store there to replace its outlet at the periphery of downtown

Consoer Townsend Envirodyne Engineers Inc., a large, Chicago-based engineering and consulting company, has opened a small branch office near downtown Spokane and plans to expand its presence here in the next few years.The company has leased and

Developers are moving forward with a $3 million expansion at Liberty Lake Town Center, motivated by a flurry of leasing activity for a shopping center under construction across the street.Design work already is under way on the expansion at Lake

Another Spokane shopping district has reached a crossroads.Just as Shadle Center and Argonne Village Shopping Center, and before them Fairwood Shopping Center, all faced change, and reacted differently, the South Hills Southgate shopping is in

An unidentified group of Spokane developers has bought a long-standing, 64-acre West Plains farm around which major industrial developments have sprouted in recent years.The land, which previously was owned by Adams Family Farm LLC, is located 2

A new Spokane-based go-cart track development group plans to open an indoor facility here next month for racing.Called Nascart Indoor Speedway, the racetrack will be located in a leased, 30,000-square-foot warehouse space at 1224 E. Front, near

Mission Property LLC, of Spokane, is negotiating with a national restaurant chain that hopes to build an eatery at the high-profile corner of Spokane Falls Boulevard and Browne Street, where the Union Gospel Mission building and another dilapidated