Developer plans hotel, stores

PONDERAY — Just weeks after the opening of Ponderay’s new Holiday Inn Express, another developer announced tentative plans to build a hotel and restaurant near the same site.

Spokane-based GVD Commercial Properties, which owns approximately 30 acres of land on both sides of U.S. 95 just north of Wal-Mart, is in the early planning stages of a new development — which could include a hotel and restaurant — on the west side of the highway, according to GVD vice president Ryan Goodell.

“Right now we’re early in our due diligence studies,” he said. “One of the concepts, of course, is a hotel. But that’s just preliminary. We’re still doing our studies on whether the market justifies a hotel.”

Goodell said the hotel site would likely include a family-style restaurant, and singled out Denny’s, International House of Pancakes and Chili’s as possible candidates.

GVD also has plans to further develop its Ponderay Crossing shopping center, which includes the 80,000-square-foot former Kmart building and a number of smaller businesses to the south.

Laughing Dog Brewery is slated to move into a 10,000-square-foot section of the building early next year, and Goodell said he is in talks with a number of other potential tenants, including Black Sheep Sporting Goods. Black Sheep currently occupies the entire building on a temporary lease, and Goodell said he would like to keep it there on a long-term basis or possibly find a similar store to replace it.

He said there is no firm plan for how many tenants the building will house, and much is dependent on the types of businesses chosen to move in.

“It’s really driven by what tenants we’re working with,” he said. “A pet store might be 12,000 square feet and a sporting goods store might be 40,000, but we’re flexible.”

Company officials are also contemplating building additional commercial structures on vacant land just north of the building.

The entire project, including the hotel, will take a number of years to complete, Goodell said.

“If everything falls into place, in a perfect world, it would be done in 2012, realistically,” he said.