Land Of Dreams Walk In The Wild Zoo Site Is Being Considered For Long-Dreamed-Of Valley Community Center

Proud parents fill rows of bleachers on a grassy hillside to watch their children receive their high school diplomas.

Behind the graduation stage, sunlight peeks through tall pines and dances across a small lake. On the other side of a 70-acre complex, senior citizens share an afternoon of bingo and pinochle. Next door, handicapped children splash in an indoor pool.

Once just the dream of a handful of community activists, such a complex is moving closer to reality.

Inland Empire Paper Co. has agreed to donate 70 acres now occupied by Walk in the Wild zoo for a proposed Valley community center.

Organizers say it would take a combination of public and private money to build the $11 million complex. They are forming a nonprofit corporation to push ahead with the project. They also have hired a designer to sketch preliminary plans for the proposed complex and begun recruiting support from other groups, such as the YMCA and the Valley Rotary Club, that have expressed interest in the project.

Tentative plans for the first phase of the community center include an indoor aquatics center, a teen center, a senior center, an interpretive trail and an amphitheater built into a natural bowl on the property’s north side.

“Combining teen and senior needs to give them a place to go and something to do, what a great thing for the quality of life in the Valley community,” said Ray Murphy, executive director of the Valley Chamber of Commerce.

“We like that location,” Valley YMCA director Steve Jurich said. “We like the idea of being surrounded by other activities that serve families and seniors.”

Jurich and Inland Empire YMCA director Rich Wallace said construction of a new Valley Y is not contingent upon the community center.

“It could be tied together, but it could stand alone if it needs to,” Wallace said. However, YMCA priorities include construction of an aquatics center and a teen center, making a marriage of the two projects logical, he said.

Valley Rotary is also considering moving the Valley Senior Citizens Center it built in 1976 at 11423 E. Mission to the community center site.

The Valley Rotary board has talked about funding the move with money bequeathed to the club by Hank Grinalds, a Valley businessman and long-time Rotarian who died last summer, said Mike Butler, Valley Rotary president. Butler said Grinalds intended his gift to go toward a Valley project.

“I think it’s an exciting project and I certainly hope it’s something that goes through,” Butler said.

“The dream has a lot of very positive things coming together,” said Denny Ashlock, a Valley insurance executive who has taken a leadership role in getting the project rolling.

Donation of the land, which is a portion of the 81-acre Walk in the Wild Zoo site, is contingent upon the group organizing itself into a nonprofit corporation, said Wayne Andresen, vice president and general manager of Inland Empire Paper. Ashlock hopes the group will be able to comply with the stipulation by the end of the year.

“The only guideline (for donating the land) is that it would be used for community involvement,” Andresen said.

Walk in the Wild’s lease on the site expires this year. Officials at Inland Empire Paper, the zoo’s landlord, say they’ll extend the lease as long as the zoo is preparing a new site.

Ashlock hopes work on the community center will begin in 1997.

If the community center needs to expand later, the corporation could purchase additional land from Inland Empire Paper, Ashlock said. Possibilities for a second phase include health club facilities, public meeting rooms, a day care center and play fields.

The proposed community center site is almost ideal, organizers said. The land is nearly centered in the Valley, within sight of the proposed Spokane Valley Mall and adjacent to the Centennial Trail, Mirabeau Park and the Spokane River.

Access to the site is one of the only flaws keeping organizers from calling it perfect. Euclid Avenue - a dirt and gravel road - carried visitors to the Walk in the Wild Zoo on the property’s north side, but would not be adequate for the community center.

Additionally, organizers want to remove the old, unsafe dirt railroad crossing near the Latah Creek Wine Cellars and construct two new ones to allow access from Indiana and Shannon avenues. The new crossings would link the community center to the Spokane Valley Mall.

Besides road concerns, water and sewer costs are the other major roadblocks. Estimates of infrastructure costs start at $2 million.

“The only thing that would not make this come together would be a lack of adequate funding of water and roads,” Ashlock said.

Funding for the infrastructure is something the Valley Chamber’s Murphy hopes he will be able to persuade state legislators to supply.

“They need some infrastructure work that could - and probably should - be financed by public funds,” he said.

Although it is too early to begin any official lobbying, Murphy has put a bug in the collective ear of legislators to alert them the project could be coming.

“I’m just trying to make people aware that there are projects out here in the Valley that are worthy of funding, besides what goes on in beautiful downtown Spokane, Washington,” he said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 color)