Project’s Side Effects Stressed

Thriving downtowns are the magnets that attract companies with high-paying jobs, hotel developer Don Barbieri said Wednesday.

Although talk about the proposed downtown revitalization effort focuses on retaining Nordstrom and other retailers, he said, the project’s importance goes beyond its impact on a few blocks in the city’s core.

Low wages are putting affordable housing beyond the reach of many in Spokane, Barbieri said.

Recruiting companies with well-paid workers helps the whole community, he said, but executives who make relocation decisions are not going to move to areas without shopping and cultural amenities.

Barbieri said Spokane must take the same steps Portland and Seattle have taken to turn their downtowns around. Parking, he said, was critical to those efforts.

“Portland is probably one of America’s most liveable cities,” Barbieri said, in part because the city has used tax-increment financing- barred in Washington - to build 70 percent of public parking garage construction.

The average worker there earns about twice the income of a comparable Spokane employee, he said.

“We’ve got to do what other cities have been willing to do,” said Barbieri, who expanded his family’s hotel chain into downtown Seattle earlier this year.

The Spokane City Council is considering the purchase of the River Park Square garage as part of a $100 million redevelopment of the downtown shopping center.

River Park Square is owned by Lincoln Investment Co. and Citizens Realty Co., affiliates of Cowles Publishing Co., owner of The Spokesman-Review.

The developers asked the city to buy the garage for $30 million to help finance the project. The city would issue revenue bonds to cover the cost, and pay those off with parking garage fees.

The city also is considering other ways to arrange the purchase.

Barbieri was one of several speakers who addressed a Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce news conference called to rally support for the project.

U.S. Bank of Washington President Phyllis Campbell said the city of Seattle has committed almost $115 million to downtown redevelopment projects, including $73 million to a 1,200-slot parking garage.

The former chairman of the Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce, who moved to the West Side seven years ago, said Seattle had to step up when loss of the Frederick & Nelson and I. Magnin department stores threatened its downtown.

“Spokane is at a very similar crossroads,” Campbell said. “A great downtown, a great core, is part of a great-city equation.”

The risk of not acting, said developer Ron Wells, is a cityscape like Tacoma’s, where indecision devastated downtown.

“We don’t want Spokane to ever come to that brink,” he said.

Wells said the downtown project has been unfairly portrayed as favoritism for a relative few. In fact, he said, 70 percent of the business owners in an 80-block area voted to approve a Parking and Business Improvement Area because they think solving downtown’s parking problems are in their best interest.

Betsy Cowles, president of Citizens and Lincoln, said the project will provide a $3 million annual tax boost to the city.

, DataTimes