MOSES LAKE - The ASPI Group is building a retail center on property along Aspi Boulevard, in Moses Lake, to serve an undeveloped retail area.

The ASPI Group is a major landowner near the Grant County International Airport.

It is expected the 12,000 square-foot building will be completed in mid-May or the end of May, said Kim Foster, the ASPI Group's corporate counsel, on Wednesday.

The site is located across from the Moses Lake Senior Living Community on Patton Boulevard.

It is estimated 8,000 Big Bend Community College students, Grant County International Airport employees, nearby businesses and residents would use the new stores, Foster said.

"For them, there's just not a lot of lunchtime food opportunities out there," he commented.

Foster is working with potential tenants to fill the building.

Some possibilities include a restaurant serving sandwiches or teriyaki, real estate office and dry cleaner,

The retail center offers a "great opportunity for a health-related tenant" to benefit the senior living complex, he said.

There is no emergency medical facility or state Labor and Industries testing site available in the immediate area, he said.

Such facilities could benefit the industrial workers at the airport.

Foster described the new center as "very high quality," using a textured, colored, concrete block on the exterior. Steel canopies are coordinated with the block's color.

"It will look very first-class," he said. "As the first building leases up, our intent is to add a second building of similar design. The second building presents an opportunity for a tenant to have it custom-built to their specifications."

Ever since Moses Lake Senior Living Community was built, ASPI Group has had two or three different third-party developers come to them, wanting to further develop the area.

"For whatever reason, it never materialized, so we decided to do it ourselves," Foster said. "When the SGL plant was announced, we said 'there has to be a need for services there.'"

But one of the interested developers had a stroke and decided not to proceed with the project.

A second developer, a Canadian, decided not to start any more projects in the US.

Mike Brown, project manager at the Tualatin, Ore.-based Russell Construction, the retail center's builder, said the company has completed other projects for ASPI Group.

The projects include constructing Doolittle Drive, a road going into the transit authority site and the Coca-Cola building on Patton Boulevard.

"We've had a presence in Moses Lake for awhile," Brown said.

Russell's Moses Lake-based superintendent, Michael O'Halloren, called the retail center project "a long time coming.

"Then you have the fiber plant, which will draw a lot of people," Brown said. "With the fundamental project, you have a lot of spin-off."