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 Spokane developer returns to professional roots with apartment project, consulting work. Ron Wells is returning to his professional roots.
A couple of decades ago, the North Carolina-born architect came to Spokane and began to establish himself as a pioneer of the community’s historic restoration effort by fixing up old apartment buildings in or near downtown. Before that, he worked as a private development consultant and directed the University of Idaho’s Community Development Center.
Now, for the first time in many years, Wells & Co., the design-build firm that Wells leads, is taking on an apartment project in the city’s core. And on a more long-term basis, Wells is returning to the consulting world.
“I’m planning on doing what I was doing 25 years ago,” Wells says. “I’m coming back full circle to what I was trained to do.” Started in 1979 in Moscow, Idaho, and moved to Spokane a few years later, Wells & Co. has completed 26 historic-restoration projects with a total value of $21.5 million. It currently owns or has controlling interest in 17 properties in Washington state and Idaho that include a total of about 300 apartment units and about 300,000 square feet of commercial space. In recent years, it has focused on commercial and condo projects. For the new apartment project, Wells plans to build a structure on an old fire station site downtown, at the northwest corner of First Avenue and Adams Street. As initially envisioned, the structure would be 10 stories tall and include 90 living units. Wells says, however, that when that project was priced out, bids came back $1.5 million over budget. He says the company will redesign it and rebid it. “That one doesn’t pencil out, so I don’t know if that means it gets taller or shorter,” he says. Wells & Co. had planned to build on that site the Carnegie Square Townhomes, a town house condominium complex with 10 three-story units that would range in price from $525,000 to $795,000. Initially, the project was redesigned and rebid a couple of times, with constructions costs coming in too high. Once the company had a design that came in within budget, the downtown condo market had softened, making a condo project less viable. Wells & Co. still is involved with a few other condo projects downtown (see sidebar, page 14), and Wells says the company will continue to look for additional development opportunities. He, however, will be shifting much of his own focus to becoming an urban-renewal consultant. He’s in the process of putting together his marketing materials and plans to begin bidding on consulting work in coming months. When Wells worked as a consultant previously, he worked with communities in the Northwest and in British Columbia. He doesn’t expect his work to be just in this region; he hopes to have clients nationwide. One of his selling points, he hopes, is that he can help with what’s referred to as development implementation. In addition to offering help with urban-renewal planning and community-revitalization strategies, he can offer guidance on redevelopment of a specific property or cluster of properties. “We used to think urban renewal occurred eight to 16 blocks at a time,” Wells says. “Now we know a downtown is saved one building at a time.” Wells says he has spoken about the idea of development implementation with Daniel Iacofano, principal of Berkeley, Calif.-based urban planning firm MIG Inc., which completed the downtown plan for Spokane in the late 1990s and currently is updating that plan. Wells says there’s a possibility that he could work with MIG to offer development implementation to some of its clients. Wells says he feels the downtown Spokane plan has worked well, and the city’s core has been transformed. “When I came here in 1983, I thought there was a lifetime supply of old buildings here,” Wells says. “It’s a happy occasion that they’re mostly renovated.”
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