Answer Man Had Proper Plan Jim Ray Grounded His Vision For Spokane Arena In Reality

Jim Ray best answers a question with a question.

Ray is chairman of the board of the Public Facilities District, the five volunteers charged with building and operating the Spokane Arena.

He has been asked, early and often, if the new building is too small.

He’s also been asked if it’s too big.

“Those questions really became, do we build a church for Easter Sunday or daily mass?” Ray replied.

The answer - the guideline - early in the planning was: Don’t build for the occasional extraordinary demand.

Build it for the daily mass.

“If you get allured to the 18,000-seat facility so we qualify for an NCAA men’s regional basketball tournament, what do you do with it the rest of the time?” Ray said. “There is no way we’ll get an NCAA men’s regional here. I think we can qualify for a subregional.”

The planning was grounded in reality.

The Arena holds 12,000 for basketball. Another 2,000 seats can be added.

Perfect, in other words, for the daily mass kind of numbers Ray and the other board members of the PFD expect sports and entertainment to generate in Spokane.

Carl Lind, Jim Williams, Dave Robinson and Ray have served on the Public Facilities District board in the six years it has been in existence. Tanya Guenther sat on the board for the first four years.

Each brought expertise and a voice from a different segment. Robinson is a retired commercial banker. Williams is self-employed in the electronics industry. Lind is a retired concrete executive. Guenther and her husband own Guenther management.

Roger Paine, the hospitality industry’s representative on the PFD now, owns a motel.

Ray retired young, at 54, after 31 years with IBM.

The community is full of self-starters. After three campaigns to build an arena failed in the 1980s, the need was for volunteers whose commitment would be equal to their vision.

Closers.

Ray’s talent for closing a deal - for getting things done - is rooted in college.

He came out of Bellarmine Prep in Tacoma to Seattle University, where he played basketball. Although he said he never showed up in a varsity game, he played for an undergraduate team - the Seattle U Papooses - in a competitive AAU league in Seattle.

Al Brightman was the coach in 1956 when a future Hall of Famer came on the scene.

“Brightman told me to get out to the airport and meet this guy, Elgin Baylor,” Ray said. “Then he told me to go to the treasurer and get as much money as I wanted.”

“Your job,” Brightman said, “is to keep Elgin Baylor happy for two weeks, until registration.”

“We lived together for two weeks,” Ray said. “There’s no other part of the story I should really tell, but I did keep him happy.”

Baylor eventually took the Chieftains to the 1958 NCAA championship game, then turned pro. Helping to nail down the recruit of all-time was an early indication of Ray’s knack for seeing a job through.

When a 1985 election drive to finance a new arena in Spokane failed, Ray was not happy. He was co-chairman.

“Losing that one always stuck in my craw,” he said.

He sees this building as a validation.

Ray’s job took him to the Far East - to Tokyo and Hong Kong - for a year and a half, where retirement talk turned serious.

“We thought about settling in Portland,” he said. “We talked about Seattle. We decided on Spokane.”

One reason: He would have plenty to do besides play golf.

Spokane still didn’t have an arena.

The father of five grown children and the grandfather of eight, Ray, 60, has worked out the framework of what he’ll say when the Arena opens.

“Our slogan in 1985 was, wouldn’t it be great? Ten years later I think most folks are going to say, ‘By God, it is great.”’

It didn’t happen by accident.

“You think you’re going to retire and then you never really do,” Ray said. “This job requires more time than any of us anticipated. As we get closer to opening it becomes even more pressing. Full time is an overstatement, but I’d say in the last two years I’ve probably put in 20 hours a week.

“It’s not just me - all the board members have done it.”

They worked for the better part of six years without compensation.

Williams, for one, planned family life - dinners and vacations - around meetings.

Robinson, 66, is ready for a break.

“My term ends in October and I’m through,” he said. “We (the PFD board) are prohibited by the bond documents from spending any money on anything but the Arena. If other people want to build a zoo or something else they can go ahead and do it.

“I’ve done what I can do.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo