A Fresh Start Vastly Scaled Back In Size And Totally Reconfigured, Plans For International Expo Are Moving Forward

Five years later and 400 acres smaller, the International Expo development is back on the boards in Post Falls.

Seal Beach, Calif., developer Jim Watson has rolled out a scaled-down version of the once-huge retail and commercial project. This one features two “power centers” - sites devoted to a concentration of retail activity - plus a strip of industrial land facing Seltice Way and a section of freeway commercial property along Interstate 90.

“It’s going to be a different project,” Watson said. “But when it’s done, we’re going to have a major impact out here.”

Post Falls officials have heard those words before.

When Watson began working with the city in 1993, International Expo was attempting to raid anchor stores scheduled to move into what eventually became the Spokane Valley Mall. With those stores in place, Watson said then, the Post Falls project would be rivaled only by the West Edmonton Mall and Minnesota’s Mall of America in size and scope.

Others had tried and failed in their attempts to build a regional mall near the state line.

Between 1987-89, the Ohio-based Cafaro Co. tried to develop 150 acres along the freeway at Liberty Lake into a $60 million, 900,000-squarefoot mall. That development stalled and the land was sold to the Liberty Lake Land Co. and now is planned as a corporate park.

Watson’s plans were more adventurous.

The blueprints for his Post Falls Expo called for 2.9 million square feet of retail space on 600 acres that also would include an automobile mall, a motel, light industrial tenants and an entertainment complex with multiplex movie theaters, an ice rink, water slides, a miniature grand prix, a health club and a community hall.

Eager to expand its place on the map, Post Falls was prepared to offer tax-increment financing and defer tax payments related to the project for up to 10 years.

But none of the major department stores which Watson sought to anchor his development would bolt from Salt Lake City-based JP Realty, which last August opened its $80 million, 750,000-square-foot Spokane Valley Mall at Sullivan and I-90.

Looking back, Watson says now he never gave his Expo better than a 50-50 chance to win the battle for those retailers.

“But I still believe we were closer than anybody gave us credit for,” he said. “If we never attempted it, nothing would have happened, and the upside was tremendous if we did get it.”

According to Rex Frazier, president of JP Realty, Expo never came up on the big retailers’ radar screen.

“They were no threat at all - none,” he said, adding that the department stores now operating in the Spokane Valley Mall never attempted to negotiate one option against the other. “We knew that development (plan) was there, but it was never an issue that gave us any concern.”

Post Falls City Administrator Jim Hammond rolled the dice along with Watson as he pursued mall merchants, and, about a year later, went after Micron Technology’s $1.3 billion chip plant when that company was researching expansion sites. Other than outdated maps of undeveloped ideas, Post Falls has little to show for that effort.

“The amount of man hours we put into that project have been tremendous, with very little return,” Hammond said. “Sometimes we got the impression (from Watson) that we were the ones holding things up. But we spent a lot of time going back to the table over and over again.

“I don’t know what else we could have done as a city.”

In retrospect, Hammond described the mood at City Hall as “disappointed” over unrealized expectations for the Expo site.

No one is more disappointed than the three businesses that invested in the project starting two years ago. They believed their pioneering moves to Expo would guarantee them prime real estate before the rush of retail settlers. Instead, they make up points of a lonely triangle, surrounded by undeveloped land between I-90 and Seltice Way.

“We presumed we would be on a road to somewhere, but a dead-end is where we’re at,” said Larry Guthrie, owner of the Expo Texaco at Expo Parkway and Pleasant View Road.

Just south of Expo Parkway, Scott McCandless opened his Subway sandwich shop about 10 months ago. “We were led to believe that a wave, a crescendo was building for development and we were riding the crest,” he said. “We’re still awaiting all this traffic. I have been really, really disappointed.”

McCandless owns 15 Subway stores. The Expo location falls well short of sales in a wider area served by Subway, he said. “This is the lowest volume store in five states.” Scott Hatter, whose Burger King franchise sits on property immediately west of the Expo Texaco, belongs to a family that owns 14 Burger King locations in North Idaho and Eastern Washington.

“That’s our slowest - and that tells you a lot,” Hatter said. “We went in with the total anticipation of a larger Expo project. We wouldn’t have built out here without it.”

Hatter was unaware that Watson had plans for a revised version of development at Expo.

“It’s news to me,” he said. “We’ve been told all kinds of things in the two years we’ve been out here and you start not to believe it after awhile. It’s frustrating.”

Watson realizes he runs the risk of being seen as the developer who cried wolf.

“I’m sure there’s some of that - maybe a lot,” he said. “I certainly understand their feelings. A year goes by very slowly if you’re sitting on a piece of land waiting for other businesses to come along.

“I’ve heard from two of the tenants who said, ‘Where’s everybody else? Get busy and get ‘em.”’ he added. “But you can’t pull them out of thin air.”

The developer said announcements are pending for as many as five retail clients about to locate on the Expo site, though he declined to identify the names or nature of the businesses.

“It may be six months or it may be a year,” he said. “But certainly, in the very near future you’re going to see a lot of activity out here.”

One key to development will be improvements to Pleasant View Road and a traffic signal at Expo Parkway, he said. Seated at a table in the Subway shop at the project, Watson pointed to the constant flow of traffic through the intersection, which he said will become part of a major thoroughfare if plans to punch Pleasant View through to State Highway 53 are completed.

“That road is being widened to seven lanes from I-90 to the north of Expo Parkway by this summer, and five lanes north to Seltice,” he said. “It’ll be about $1.25 million in street improvements and we’re paying for half of it.”

Both Watson and Hammond agree the site’s proximity to the interstate, as well as its position directly under one of the last undeveloped overpasses between Coeur d’Alene and Spokane, make the site a natural for growth.

“That’s one of the only remaining sites in contention for that kind of activity,” Hammond said. “I still believe it has potential. If he wants to make another effort out there, we’ll support him.”

In the big picture, Watson said his time line for finishing the project over the next five to six years is not far off the mark from his original concept of completing a regional mall by 2002. Only this time, the plans are limited to 200 acres with no congregation of major tenants. “There’s only going to be one regional mall,” Watson said. “I don’t think it’s feasible in our lifetime that there would ever be a need for another one.”

Watson quoted inventor Thomas Edison in defending his track record in Post Falls.

He said when asked why it took so many failures to come up with one successful invention, Edison responded that every attempt was a success in that it taught him what not to do next time around.

“And I’ve had my successes (at Expo),” Watson said. “Now I know what doesn’t work.”

In California, Watson & Associates had its best year ever in development and property management during 1997. So he can be patient in attending to interests in Post Falls.

“I’ve got more than enough on my plate,” Watson said. “I can wait.”

Less patient are the people attempting to do business at Expo. “We’ve heard a lot of big dreams. Now we want to see something happen out here,” Hatter said. “He’s a good salesman and we were enthralled by his vision. But from now on, I’m not going to believe anything until I see it.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo Graphic with map: The changing International Expo site

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: EXPO’S NEW LOOK The revised Expo site plan is 200 acres, one-third the size of the original. The new plan provides 123 acres for industrial development, two “power center” retail areas of 47 acres and 17 acres and a 15-acre freeway commercial space. Not included in the plan is a 14-acre site at Wellesley and Seltice which Watson now leases to an RV dealer.