When it comes to selling the Cheney School District’s surplused administration building, the district’s school board members likely hope there’s truth to the saying “Third time’s a charm.”
For the third time in a year and two-thirds the district has a purchase offer for the Fisher Building, which began life in 1929 as Cheney High School. The board agreed to a proposed agreement at its March 25 meeting with local developers Rob Brewster and Ron Wells to sell the building for $949,500, which is 90 percent of the building’s assessed value.
Brewster and Wells have formed a limited liability company (LLC) to purchase the Fisher Building under the name Collegetown Development. Wells has extensive historical rehabilitation work through his company Wells and Company, which according to its website, has completed 46 projects in the Northwest valued at more than $69.5 million since 1980.
Brewster has also done historical preservation work, teaming recently with Collegetown Development LLC’s financial backer Holland America Lines on a project in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. Brewster also partnered with Eastern Washington University to build Brewster Hall, a university residence hall on Second Street in downtown Cheney.
Both Brewster and Wells said their assessment of the best possible use for a rehabilitated Fisher Building would be for student housing, complimenting its location across Fifth Street from Eastern’s Showalter Hall and near other student housing facilities. The developers will undertake a 90-day feasibility study period to determine their best options should they decide to finalize the purchase.
“We want to make sure what we purchased is what we thought it was,” Brewster said.
Brewster said an initial walk through indicated the building was in pretty good shape. If the purchase goes through, one of the first things on their “to-do list” would be to get the building listed on the national historic registry to not only help preserve the building’s historic nature but also qualify Collegetown Development for historical preservation federal tax credits needed to keep the project financially feasible.
School board Director Rick Mount questioned Brewster about his previous involvement with construction in Cheney, namely Brewster Hall and the undeveloped lot north of the residence hall he labeled an “eyesore.” Brewster said the lot was never part of the original project, but could have been the site of a 117-unit second phase.
When the project’s proponent at Eastern, former president Dr. Stephen Jordan, left in 2005, the project was put on hold. Brewster has since sold the property, and Cheney City Administrator Mark Schuller told the school board that they had contacted the current owners to ask them to either clean up the property or be prepared for the city to do so and send them a bill for the work.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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