The vast majority of the land is a former railyard that Metropolitan Mortgage acquired from Union Pacific in the mid 1980s. The company's planned unit development for the site was approved by the City in 1994 and included an environmental impact statement. The cost of the development is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Both parties expect to be moving dirt by early 2004.

Nitze-Stagen President Kevin Daniels tells GlobeSt.com a joint venture agreement has been hammered out between the two companies and the next three months will be spent evaluating the market and deciding whether the project as originally planned is doable or whether it needs to be tweaked to match the market. Russ Johnson, market development manager for Summit Property Development, Metropolitan's real estate company, tells GlobeSt.com that the two parties, both of which are self-capitalized, will have a business plan hammered out by the end of the summer and "will churn and burn from that moment on."

Generally speaking, the eastern third of the property, which sits across from Downtown Spokane, will be developed as an employment center, with a mix of commercial uses that complement the Downtown core and blend in with the existing county and city buildings on the same side of the river. The western two thirds will be used to expand the neighborhoods that already border the property.

As a former Spokane resident and a graduate and current regent of Gonzaga University, Daniels is connected to Spokane, but his Vice President of Administration Alan Cornell is the real string that ties these two companies together. Cornell, formerly with Union Pacific, sold the railyard to Metropolitan Mortgage in 1985. He also sold the Nitze-Stagen Seattle's historic Union Station in the mid-1990s before joining the company to handle its restoration, a project that won the company the 2000 National Trust Preservation Award.

"So this is the second project that he's sold and got himself wedged back into," says Daniels. "He's either crazy or pretty creative."

Instant Insights /

Metropolitan Mortgage, Nitze-Stagen to Develop Spokane Land

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