Renovating School A Wise Investment

It hasn’t exactly injured the reputation of Oxford, Harvard and the University of Washington to educate the next generations in classic old buildings that teach a history lesson from every cranny and pore of their gothic walls and marbled halls.

For 85 years now, with a resonance that grows with every passing generation, Lewis and Clark High School has sent its message to young people of Spokane. When students walk through that magnificent arched doorway, the community is saying, you matter, and so does education. When they chatter with friends on those wide terrazzo floors, polished perhaps by their grandparents’ feet, the building echoes, others have gone before you. As they rush to class, where a teacher their parents could have had marks the newest lessons of science on a century-old chalkboard, students pass paintings of the school’s bold namesakes - paintings donated by the class of 1912. And if they listen closely, students sense those distant classmates saying, soon it will be up to you.

Sure, the building is old. Its plumbing, wiring, and heating systems obsolete. Its location, close to a freeway. A few blocks away, and yet worlds away, lurks what adults delicately call the “downtown street culture.”

Some school district officials in the past have agitated to replace the building with one of those anonymous modern conglomerations of sheetrock, steel and industrial carpet. Available construction sites, however, are on remote suburban or industrial land far from the current, central location in this, the city’s most culturally diverse high school attendance area.

Now, a grass-roots citizens committee is studying Lewis and Clark’s future and has produced good news - a vote for heritage, and a vote of confidence in downtown.

The committee’s work is not complete - in April it will hold public hearings - but so far its analysis strongly supports remodeling Lewis and Clark on the current location. The undertaking appears feasible and its estimated cost is lower than other options, even counting the acquisition of adjoining land for athletic fields and parking.

The school board, reflecting its commitment to hear community suggestions, has blessed and assisted the committee’s effort.

If the school district does invest in LC’s historic downtown building, it will join many others who are working and investing to keep the community’s core alive and take it back from the forces of decay. The way to deal with that “street culture” is not to flee, but to invest - and supersede. Look at Riverfront Park, the new Arena, the new library, the transit terminal, the Higher Education Park, the Amtrak/Greyhound depot and many private projects from the Mars Hotel on the east to the freshly revived Carnegie Library neighborhood on the west. Consider, too, the emerging proposals to expand the city’s convention center and convert the old downtown steam plant from a vacant problem to a lively commercial attraction. And yes, note the investment this newspaper made a decade ago, in renewing its downtown production facilities.

Investment is an expression of hope, and there is no investment greater than the investment a downtown high school, rich in tradition, can make in those who someday will become community leaders.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board