Downtown Project Spawns Consensus Missing Since Expo

It has been a quarter of a century since city officials, civic and business leaders, and the citizens of Spokane worked together so well.

Not since Spokane made history as the smallest city ever to pull off a world’s fair has there been this solid a consensus for community betterment on such a grand scale.

In the past two weeks, the City Council has overwhelmingly approved private/public initiatives that will shape the future of the community well into the next century.

Last week the council voted 5-0 for an $80-million redevelopment of the River Park Square shopping complex. If it happens, it will help ensure that Nordstrom and the Bon stay downtown. It will greatly expand parking. And it will create a stunning new shopping showplace in the center of the core.

A week earlier, the council voted 6-0 to create a special new downtown self-tax and self-improvement district. It empowers property and business owners to act in concert to improve safety and security, provide free parking, clean the sidewalks, enhance the street scene, and otherwise manage their mutual interests like shopping centers do.

Together, these landmark initiatives and a host of capital improvements and special projects just completed, nearing completion, in the works and on the drawing boards will re-energize the heart of Spokane and the Inland Northwest.

At a City Council hearing on River Park Square last Monday, supporters outnumbered naysayers 10 to one. Some 120 persons signed up to testify.

A few said they were all for saving downtown and had a high regard for this project, but objected to the use of tax money for any part of it, namely a public parking structure. A few others described themselves as “neutral.”

Taken all together, those expressing reservations of any sort probably numbered fewer than a dozen.

The huge outpouring of support was evidence that the community does, indeed, understand what is at stake and endorses these projects.

As to criticism from a handful of council groupies who oppose everything, Councilwoman Phyllis Holmes said it best. “Some people don’t understand the difference between the word spend and the word invest.

“What we’re talking about tonight,” said Holmes, “is investing.”

She said the council, the city, the citizenry, and businesses all together were collectively investing in the future - not just of downtown but of the entire community.

I would go yet a step further and suggest that what the community is doing is not spending, or even investing, it is saving - saving the downtown infrastructure for future generations, saving the heart of the city’s tax base for the benefit of all Spokane, saving property values, saving jobs and payrolls, saving community spirit and self-image.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is providing a $1 million grant and a $24 million loan to cover part of the $80-million River Park Square redo. Lease payments by Nordstrom and neighboring property owners will repay the HUD loan over 20 years.

The Cowles family, owners of this newspaper and River Park Square, along with other private investors will risk tens of millions on the retail project.

“But the private sector cannot do it alone,” City Manager Roger Crum said of a project this size and complexity. “I personally don’t know of a city in which the private sector is doing it alone.”

Revitalization of the city center will not use local tax dollars. The public will back a $14-million revenue bond for the city-owned parking structure, but the bond will be retired with income off the facility.

Councilman Orville Barnes observed there are a few detractors who favor the project only - “if the Cowles family will do it all by themselves.”

But Barnes, a shopping center manager and developer for 39 years, “looked at the numbers - all of them.” And he said, “There is not a developer - or anyone - who could do it.”

The only “feasible” approach to achieving these ends for the entire community, Barnes said, is a public/ private partnership.

“Even with the way it is divided out,” said the veteran shopping center executive, “the return is so small no developer anywhere would do it - it takes someone with the responsibility of the Cowles family to do it.”

, DataTimes MEMO: Associate Editor Frank Bartel’s column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Sunday.