We Had A Chance On Science Center And We Blew It

While pumping gas at my neighborhood station on Friday, the Spokane science center came up.

“I know a good place for the science center,” the store’s owner said as I forked over a $20.

Say what?

The vote already is in on the science center.

On Tuesday the people, the few who bothered to show up at the polls, said no.

That’s it.

There is no plan B.

As happens in much of life, Spokane got one shot at it, and Spokane blew it.

So, at one level there is no point in arguing any more.

The democratic process can be frustrating, but that’s the way it is and the way it should be.

Still, the vote on the science center underscores the challenges every public institution and good idea must confront these days in the face of a lumpy apathy and a highly polluted information environment.

You see, despite the vote, most people in Spokane probably wanted the science center.

Polls on Tuesday showed 12,904 no votes and only 12,709 yes votes.

But that combined total represents fewer than 1 in 4 voters in the city.

And back in 1992, when initial polling was done about the feasibility of the center, 94% of Spokane residents said they supported it.

But many of them didn’t vote because they had something better to do, like watch TV.

And if they did that, they saw opponents of the science center skillfully spin a web of doubt and innuendo that was painfully short of facts.

Partly, this was a media problem. The TV, radio, and the newspaper gave too much unchallenged air time, voice time and space to claims about the project.

Those who offered up half-baked theories and objections shouldn’t be punished or silenced. But they should have been challenged more vigorously and fact-checked more closely.

Somehow, solid information about this project never found a large enough audience while the halftruths and rumors kept building.

And who fueled that rumor mill?

Well, records show only 16 people actually donated money to the antiscience center campaign.

Two of its major opponents were Hal McGlathery, the current Riverfront Park manager who stood to lose much of his job if the center were approved, and Steve Corker, a PR guy who lost a contract due to the science center plan.

After the vote, Corker even sounded a little sorry.

“I don’t take any pride in stopping something worthwhile,” he said.

So what is going here?

Hundreds of volunteers worked on this project and almost everyone spoke favorably about a science center, even its chief opponent.

The project would have saved taxpayers money and turned the seedy center of Riverfront Park into a gem.

The folks who have made Seattle’s science center the best-attended science center in the country and Seattle’s second-largest tourist attraction would have run the Spokane science center, taken all the financial risk, and reduced the city payroll.

The sum was no new taxes, solidgold management, and a project to inspire kids in a town where everyone says it’s a great place to raise a family.

Yet when the votes were counted, it didn’t happen.

This doesn’t speak well for the future of this city.

Our paranoias, our numbing apathy and our growing inability to sort out bad information from good, could lead Spokane on a long road down in the 1990s.

Supporters of the science center have been stunned in the last few days at the number of people who have said, “well, next time it will go.”

There is no next time for this project as far as anyone can see.

More to the point, the ‘next time’ mentality Spokane so loves to cite as a civic virtue rapidly is losing altitude.

Cities and regions compete every day for resources, looking for an edge, fighting to gain leverage on the weak.

Some cities manage to see over the horizon, get a little ahead of the pack, and act.

Others hang back and wait for “next time,” only to be left in the dust of a fast-changing world.

Spokane could be about to take two more called strikes at the plate thanks to this “next time” attitude.

The downtown urban core is at a make-or-break point. Either the plan to keep Nordstrom and The Bon in place and redevelop the core happens in the next few months, or the urban core likely will begin to dry up and blow away as it has in dozens of other American cities.

Either people work to save it now, or it’s gone. There is no “next time.”

The same is true for the plan to fix local government. The vote to consolidate city-county operations could break the gridlock and provide both more representation and better structure for local government.

We will get one vote in November.

There is no “next time” for this plan, either.

I am mad at Spokane.

And I am worried about its direction.

, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the Editor of The Spokesman-Review. His column appears each Sunday on Perspective.<