Downtown businesses hire security

Downtown business owner Tim Behrens doesn’t let his employees walk to their cars unaccompanied after their shifts end late at night.

Behrens, who owns CenterStage on First Avenue, and other downtown business owners, said that since The Big Easy concert house opened in January, more drunken and disorderly people have been roaming the streets, and that has contributed to fighting, public urination and noise.

While The Big Easy does a good job of handling security inside the building, Behrens said, it’s what happens when the drunken patrons are put out on the street that worries him.

“We want them to be good neighbors, and we are confident that they can correct their problems with increased security outside of their building,” Behrens said.

Starting Friday, that’s what The Big Easy and several other area businesses in the downtown core planned to do.

The Big Easy, The Davenport Hotel and Dempsey’s Brass Rail have contracted to hire off-duty uniformed city police officers to handle an increase in activity outside the concert venue.

The businesses will pool their money to pay four officers $29.90 an hour to police the four corners surrounding the concert house on Friday and Saturday nights. The Big Easy is bounded by Lincoln, Monroe, Sprague and First, just west of The Met Theater.

“We’re eager to work with our neighbors and make sure we can handle the added impact made by our presence,” said Greg Marchant, general manager at The Big Easy. “We are 120 days in and looking ahead, and we contracted those (police) services in good faith … to see how we can increase safety.”

Jim Nicks, assistant police chief in Spokane, said there has been an increase in calls for service to the downtown core generated by The Big Easy. Those extra calls have not been overwhelming, he said.

“We’re not looking at this as a nuisance right now,” Nicks said. “But it could be. So we’re in the mitigation process, looking at the numbers and trying to find a way to work together with the businesses.”

From January to April 2003, before The Big Easy opened, there were 42 calls for service to the one-block radius that surrounds where the concert hall now stands. The number includes only those calls that were serious enough to generate a report or an arrest, Nicks said.

For the same months this year, there were 69 calls, 37 of which were generated by The Big Easy, including calls from employees, he said.

“Spokane has never seen a business like The Big Easy before,” Nicks said. “We’re talking thousands of people coming into the downtown core, and that’s a good thing. But with it also comes growing pains, and we’re figuring out how to handle that.”

With the concert hall, the restaurant and the bars in The Big Easy, there could be more than 1,500 people inside during an event.

“Are the number (of complaints) out of proportion for the number of people? No,” Nicks said. “Is it something we want to monitor? Yes.”

On Monday, Marchant and other business owners talked with police Chief Roger Bragdon and Spokane Mayor Jim West about the growing number of problems.

“Overall, we’re glad for The Big Easy’s presence and hope they have a long and successful life downtown,” said Tom McArthur, communications director for The Davenport Hotel. “But when you have a few that act up and pee in your bushes, you try to do what you can about it.”

McArthur said hotel guests have complained about noise, such as whooping and hollering in the streets late at night and public urination.

“Some of that seems to be centered around the clientele coming out of The Big Easy,” McArthur said. “The question is when those people leave and go outside, whose problem does it become? It’s everybody’s.”

Also at issue for neighboring businesses was a recent application submitted to the city by The Big Easy asking permission to hold an outdoor concert during Hoopfest weekend. The concert house wanted to block off First Avenue from Monroe to Lincoln for an event called Street Scene, which would have included an outdoor beer garden. The city denied the request.

“After speaking with some of our neighbors, we decided to move the event inside,” Marchant said.

Marchant said he was led to believe that the city would be approving the application, and already had posters printed.

“The bands were contracted, the whole thing was ready to go,” Marchant said. “But clearly after further discussions there is just a lot of dynamics we were working with.”

Nicks said Hoopfest weekend is typically labor intensive for the Police Department and an outdoor concert with thousands of people would have added to the pressure.

“We are barely able to keep a lid on things to begin with,” Nicks said. The department scheduled 30 to 40 extra officers to work downtown during Hoopfest, he said.

Marchant said he was disappointed that the concert didn’t come to fruition, but he understands.

“All in all, everyone’s excited, and we want to keep moving,” Marchant said. “We just need to work collectively to try and address the impact of a large crowd that a business such as ours brings.”