Confidence In The Core

Mon., Nov. 27, 1995

By John Webster johnwe@spokesman.com (509) 459-5421

A year ago, delivery trucks crammed downtown Spokane for The Crescent building’s reopening. It was a thrilling scene, and a time of nail-biting transition.

This year, downtown business people could smile, with growing confidence in the core’s still-unfolding future.

As shoppers flooded in for the biggest retail season of the year, Crescent Court was fully operational.

Across the skywalk to the south, the Spokane Transit Plaza supplied this year’s new ingredient: the local vendors of Spokane’s Marketplace sat at booths throughout the handsome building, offering unique wares not found in cookie-cutter mall chain stores: baked goods, produce, spices, crafts …

Across the skywalk to the north, department and specialty stores bustled with a traffic volume pleasing for both merchants and shoppers.

This is good news. Downtown remains in transition. Most of the business people who keep downtown alive are local, smaller merchants who need vitality now as well as three years from now. For them, when loyal shoppers respond to the investments of recent years it’s an encouraging sign about what should follow investments still to come.

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