Arena’s Success Sets Standard For Civic Projects

George Strait will be the next sold-out concert at the new Spokane Arena.

More than 10,000 fans of the biggest belt buckle in country music will fill the Arena on the evening of April 11.

Strait will join the Seattle SuperSonics, Disney on Ice and the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus on the list of 17 events that have been sellouts in the Arena’s first six months.

“Things are going extremely well,” said Kris Mote, executive director for the Public Facilities District that built and manages the facility.

How well?

This week, the Public Facilities District will share a report with the City of Spokane that shows the Spokane Arena made $164,000 profit in 1995.

Profits in the first six months have allowed the Public Facilities District to quickly add to its capital maintenance fund. “We have in excess of $500,000 already built in the fund,” said Jim Ray, vice chairman of the Public Facilities District board of directors. “The fund should grow over the next few years so we won’t have to go back to taxpayers to ask them to pay for maintenance of the Arena.”

The first financial update available on the Spokane Arena also will show that revenues generated from the .1 percent county sales tax and 2 percent hotel and motel bed tax were estimated very close for the year. As a result, the $44.8 million in bonds used to build the Arena are scheduled to be paid off three years earlier than required by law.

The point of all this is to remind a frugal and increasingly suspicious public that things can work out in large, tax-supported civic projects.

The Spokane Arena opened on time and on budget.

The public management of the facility seems to be on track and ambitiously looking ahead.

“With the success of our national marketing campaign and with the crowds and the new facility, we’re finding that almost every show is calling us,” said Kevin Twohig, general manager of the Arena.

Can some lessons be learned from the success of the Spokane Arena project?

The region certainly should hope so. Any number of worthy civic projects are waiting for public support, and in some cases, desperately in need of it.

Take a trip through Spokane’s Riverfront Park pavilion. The buildings are shabby, the bleachers around the ice rink are worn, and the centerpiece of Riverfront Park is showing age. Soon, some public money and a public project will be needed to update this facility.

In Idaho, Post Falls and Rathdrum schools just failed to pass construction bond votes in the last few weeks. Clearly, these public projects are needed and will have to be voted on again.

Other public projects are gearing up but face big hurdles. Mirabeau Point in the Spokane Valley, designed to be a major suburban community center with two ice rinks, a swimming pool, performing arts auditorium and a YMCA, needs some public money to fly.

The list could go on.

The Spokane Arena’s success offers a few insights into what it will take for other significant public projects to succeed.

“For one thing, we had a single-purpose, focused board that worked on this thing for a long time,” said PFD board member Jim Ray. “For another thing, we didn’t get a lot of elected officials involved. That’s not a knock on politicians, it’s just saying that politicians have a lot of other things on their minds. We had one thing on our minds, the Arena.”

Still, politicians were important to the Arena, and will be important to other civic projects in the region.

The politicians can write and rewrite the law. They revised Washington state law that allowed the Public Facilities District to be formed in the first place.

And, differences in state laws written by politicians allowed approval of sales tax funding for the Spokane Arena with a 51 percent yes vote, while the Idaho school bond votes shipwrecked by falling short of an unattainable 66 percent yes vote as required by Idaho law.

More than 300,000 people already have attended events at the Spokane Arena. This patter of footsteps shouldn’t obscure the history of what it took to make this place a reality.

People who pay taxes had to vote yes for this arena to be built.

Politicians who write the laws had to step up and cooperate when a change in state law was required.

Private business people had to do their part in supporting the project in word and deed for a number of years.

Good things don’t just happen.

Good things take hard work, a little luck, and a tenacity to succeed.

When they do, these projects can enhance public life and build confidence in public institutions.

, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the Editor of The Spokesman-Review. His column appears each Sunday.