Square One River Park Square Opening Is The First Step In A Long-Term Move To Revitalize Downtown Spokane’S Retail Core

When River Park Square opens its doors and cash registers Friday, it will be accompanied by a long sigh of relief from the downtown retail community.

The men and women who run downtown businesses, own downtown property and make deals for downtown storefronts have long looked forward to the $110 million shot of adrenaline they hope River Park Square injects into the city.

Over the past decade, one business after another — J.C. Penney, Lamonts, J.J. Newberry, among others — has closed its doors and left downtown, and in some cases left Spokane. For downtown stakeholders, River Park Square is the bulwark desperately needed to halt the outbound flood.

“It certainly has stabilized a dwindling situation,” said Al Payne of Payne Properties, which manages the former Lamonts building.

No one is more ecstatic about the project than David Peterson, the property manager for Goodale and Barbieri, which owns the Crescent Court property directly across the street from River Park Square.

With numerous vacancies, including the street-level storefront formerly occupied by Harvey’s, the Crescent Court may be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the foot traffic River Park Square’s 400,000 square feet of stores, restaurants and movie theaters are expected to generate.

“I think the development of River Park Square is a home run,” Peterson raved. “The amount of retailers that are now interested in downtown Spokane … there’s no question there is a high degree of interest. It will have a positive impact and a long-term positive impact.”

The project’s success will be determined by its overall influence, said developer Betsy Cowles, president of River Park Square LLC.

River Park Square LLC is an affiliate of Cowles Publishing Co., which owns The Spokesman-Review.

“There’s obviously the financial side: Does it work financially?” she said. “But for me, the judgment of success is what’s happening a block or two blocks away. Are the dark storefronts bouncing back and coming back to life?

“That easily could be a five-year process,” she said.

But the Downtown Spokane Partnership, which provides security, marketing and sanitation for downtown, is preparing for immediate changes, said DSP President Michael Edwards.

AMC, which will operate 20 movie theaters in the project (14 in the first phase, six next year) anticipates selling a million tickets a year, Edwards said.

“That’s like 2,700 more people downtown a day,” he said. “That’s a thousand more vehicles.”

Not only will the Downtown Partnership need to adjust to thousands of additional visitors, but so will downtown parking operators, restaurant owners and shopkeepers.

“This is going to force a lot of downtown businesses to stay open at night,” Edwards said.

“We’re looking at something completely different,” he said. “It’s a whole new day.”

River Park Square brings with it a number of retailers new to Spokane.

In the first phase, which opens Friday, they include clothing stores Ann Taylor and Chico’s, housewares store Williams-Sonoma and speciality stores such as Godiva Chocolatier, Bath and Body Works and Bag’n Baggage.

In the second phase, scheduled to open sometime in 2000, they will be joined by Banana Republic, Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn and Abercrombie & Fitch.

The new stores will be complemented by stores that opened in the old River Park Square, or in anticipation of the new one, such as Anderson & Emami, Talbots and Eddie Bauer.

River Park Square will be anchored by a new Nordstrom, which is about 16,000 square feet bigger than the store it replaces.

It remains to be seen what impact River Park Square will have on Spokane’s retailers outside the city core.

Jerry Irwin, manager of the Spokane Valley Mall, said it is inevitable that there will be some drop in sales at other properties as curious shoppers flock to the new project.

“Initially, it will have an impact on everybody,” he said. “But I think we’ll be fine. In fact, I know we will. People are pretty loyal to where they shop, and we have a pretty loyal customer base.”

Nonetheless, Spokane’s two regional malls — Spokane Valley and NorthTown, both owned by Salt Lake City’s JP Realty Inc. — have expansion plans that will help them carve out more market share.

While Spokane Valley’s 400,000-square-foot expansion is dependent on a new Evergreen freeway interchange, work has begun on a 100,000-square-foot addition to NorthTown. The expansion project, which will include a movie theater complex, bookstore and clothing store, was initiated in 1994 by former mall owner David Sabey, an outspoken opponent of River Park Square.

Irwin hopes that JP Realty’s properties will benefit from River Park Square as the downtown project expands Spokane’s trade area and brings more shoppers into the city.

Other store owners share that hope.

John Ferris, a manager and owner of home furnishings store Joel Inc., said he doesn’t expect to lose customers to Williams-Sonoma.

Rather, he expects his family-owned store on Post Street to benefit. Not only will the number of downtown shoppers grow, but so too will opportunities for Joel to distinguish itself from River Park Square’s chain stores.

“Now customers will come from Calgary and Missoula and say not only, `Did you see Pottery Barn?’ but `Did you see Joel?’”

No one knows exactly who will shop at River Park Square. But it’s less likely that the project will draw customers from the malls, strip centers and big-box power centers than from populations that aren’t currently being served by Spokane’s retailers, said Kennedy Smith, director of the National Main Street Center in Washington, D.C.

As national retailers have set up shop in America’s suburbs, they try to serve as broad an array of shoppers as possible, Smith said.

As a result, “shopping malls have very predictable markets,” she said. “Ninety percent of shopping centers sell apparel — and food and entertainment to keep people buying apparel — and serve middle Americans.”

Often, shoppers at the upper and lower tiers of the income spectrum are left without the stores they want, she said.

“In some communities, the upper-end market is truly underserved,” she said.

Joe Ward of Pinnacle Realty agrees.

Ward represents some of Spokane’s biggest developers, including Harlan Douglass and Raymond Hanson, who own hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail property along North Division and in the Valley.

Douglass and Hanson are unlikely to be stung by River Park Square, he said.

“I think their target is really a different market than a lot of our big boxes,” Ward said. “If they pull off what they’re trying to do downtown, putting one-of-a-kind stores downtown, I believe that their primary market is upper-income people on the South Hill, DINKS — double income, no kids — yuppies, and people who want to give the impression of having a lot of money.”

Those customers already shop at Nordstrom, but also buy in Seattle and shop from catalogs.

In fact, Ward said, he helped find Talbots a location in Spokane after the company noticed that many of its catalog customers lived here.

”(River Park Square) is not going to hurt anybody,” Ward said. “It’s just going to allow people with money to spend more of it.”

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This sidebar appeared with the story: By the numbers A quick look at River Park Square * 3,075 tons of steel were used for the River Park Square and Nordstrom buildings combined. * 620,000 bricks were used for River Park Square and Nordstrom. * 1,000 people have worked on River Park Square. * AMC Theatres will have 3,700 seats. * There will be 15 restrooms in River Park Square, including eight at AMC Theatres, as well as a nursing room at Nordstrom. * Nordstrom used 105 miles of wire and cabling.