City Purchase Best For Public Buy The Site It’s Best In The Long Run

If the city of Spokane buys the gorgeous riverbank site of the old Salty’s restaurant, the owners of Clinkerdagger restaurant ought to send the city a thank-you note. So should the taxpayers.

A year from now that land will become a construction zone, immersed in the roar of riveters, jackhammers, cement trucks, bulldozers and cranes.

Later, and for decades into the future, the site will bloom again. As a park, perhaps. Or, better yet, as a restaurant, only with better access and parking than is possible with the current building and street configuration.

Meanwhile, as always happens whenever progress threatens to occur in Spokane, a gaggle of naysayers is yelling at City Hall.

It’s easy to stand on the sidelines and quibble. It’s hard, and always controversial, to build a city.

The Salty’s site adjoins the spot where the new Lincoln Street bridge, replacing the decrepit Post Street Bridge, will attach to the north bank of the Spokane River. Someday people will look at that new bridge and the new green space around it, and wonder why on earth some local residents opposed it all - just as they opposed the nearby library with its priceless view of the falls, and the World’s Fair that became Riverfront Park, and the new arena, and the Ag Trade Center, and on and on.

This fall, after the city hired an engineering firm to design the bridge, it began receiving specific information about how very difficult and expensive it would be to build the bridge while accommodating continued operations at the restaurant site. Meanwhile, Salty’s was going under. The building’s owner began negotiating with Clinkerdagger, which in spite of the city’s warnings wanted to lease the site. Even though it lacked a signed lease, Clinkerdagger gambled that it would get the location and began investing money in its plans.

In December, increasingly alarmed by its engineers’ findings, the city began negotiating with the owner to buy the site. Its goal? Eliminate the need to spend a few million in tax dollars shielding the restaurant from construction impacts. As it has an absolute right to do, the owner decided to sell its land to the city.

If the city buys the land both Clinkerdagger and the taxpayers escape an expensive short-term headache. Afterward the land can be resold, the cost can be recovered and the site can be well-used.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see “Leave business matters to business”

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = COLUMN, EDITORIAL - From both sides CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board