Liberty Park Likely Will Keep Name Spokane Park Board Will Make Final Decision

A proposal to rename East Central’s Liberty Park will likely be denied tonight when the Spokane Park Board makes a final decision on the controversial issue.

The board’s land committee voted unanimously last week against renaming the park to honor the late Rev. Clifton E. Hamp, founder of the Full Gospel Mission for All Nations and an East Central resident for decades.

“It got to the point where people sensed it as a truly divisive issue,” said committee chair Steve McNutt. “Nobody felt comfortable with pressing for a renaming. It seemed it would somehow harm the memory of this man because the tension would always be there.”

The committee’s recommendation will be forwarded to the Park Board for tonight’s vote.

The proposal has been passed back and forth between city entities and citizen boards since July, when a group of East Central residents asked the Parks Department to consider calling the park Clifton E. Hamp Memorial Park.

The Rev. Lonnie Mitchell of Bethel AME Church and Hamp’s son, James, sent the original request.

During the process, neighbors came out on both sides of the renaming. The neighborhood steering committee voted against it.

Many said they favored a monument to honor Hamp, but not renaming Liberty, the city’s second oldest park.

“Husbands met their wives there. It’s where you went after church for a picnic,” said Maxine Howard, an East Central resident and steering committee treasurer who’s spent all her 71 years in the neighborhood. Howard was one of the most vocal residents against the renaming. She said she’s pleased with the land committee decision.

James Hamp has said throughout the process he didn’t want to drag his father’s name into controversy.

“I know there was a lot of opposition,” he said after hearing last week’s vote. “But the opponents did not reflect the individuals that Dad strove very hard to protect and support.”

Hamp said while he was disappointed with the decision, he wants to continue searching for a way to memorialize his father.

“The first thing is to get back together with Parks,” he said. “Now we can look at alternatives.”

Options that have been mentioned include a park amphitheatre or a memorial along an undeveloped strip of land between Liberty and Interstate 90.

Parks Department spokeswoman Marion Severud said her department will work with Hamp to brainstorm an alternative memorial. She said the men who wrote the original proposal must form a committee to oversee the project.

“They’re going to need to take the lead on this,” she said.

The Parks Department is in the process of making changes to the park naming policy, she said. Part of the difficulty with deciding this issue came because the policy does not currently address requests to rename an existing park.

The issue has only come up once before, when Harmon Park was renamed to honor neighborhood activist Elizabeth Sharpley.

MEETING PLANNED The Spokane Park Board will meet at 1:30 p.m. today in the City Council chamber.