Convention Plan Would Invest In City

People in Seattle make more money than people in Spokane.

We know this.

We know the gap has grown in the 1990s.

The per person income in Seattle is now 30 percent higher than Spokane.

So here’s a thought.

Let’s invite Seattle over here to spend some of that money.

In essence, that’s the idea behind the proposed expansion of the Spokane Convention Center.

Import dollars from the West Side, rather than export them by, say, shopping in Seattle for Christmas.

A bigger convention center would help do this.

“It’s a pretty easy thing to grasp once you think about it,” said Patrick Jones, owner of the Harvey’s Fine Clothing store and one of the businessmen in Spokane working hard to bring a new convention center into reality.

“Whether it is a primary export like wheat, or a more sophisticated export like tourism and convention business, or a very sophisticated export like Packet Engines (computer-switching equipment), we’ve got to understand that the best way to increase our local economy is to … bring in money from the outside rather than just stir the pot here locally,” Jones explained.

Finding state money to help build an expanded convention center stands as a top priority for Spokane area legislators.

Again, a Seattle vs. Spokane comparison is in order.

In the mid-1990s, the Legislature allowed a tiny .033 percent of state sale tax revenues to be used to help build new homes for the Seattle Seahawks football team and the Seattle Mariners baseball team.

Now, Spokane has teamed up with Vancouver and Tacoma to ask the state Legislature to allow the three cities to use that percentage of state sales tax revenues to help build convention centers.

If approved, that state law would generate $27 million over the next 20 years for Spokane.

That $27 million represents about one-third of the money needed to expand the convention center to a size that would attract bigger conventions and trade shows.

“What the legislators did for Seattle they now should do for other cities in the state,” said Mike Kobluk, director of Spokane’s entertainment facilities.

Seattleites and other out-of-town visitors would be walking around with their name badges. The money they spent while in Spokane would go for projects right here.

And it’s a substantial payback for the city and Spokane County.

A study by Price Waterhouse accountants in 1997 found that an expanded convention center would attract enough new conventions and trade shows to add $355,000 to $443,000 a year to the city of Spokane’s tax revenues.

Another $113,000 to $141,000 a year would go to Spokane County as a result greater sale tax generated annually by the larger convention center.

The point is very simple.

Build a convention center in Spokane and you will attract dollars from elsewhere that can be used for services here.

What can’t be done, however, is something Spokane Mayor John Talbott seemed to suggest in his annual State of the City address Wednesday night.

The mayor hinted that rather than spend money to build a convention center Spokane should use the estimated $75 million cost of the expanded center to fix the streets.

It doesn’t work that way.

“Those dollars we’re trying to get from the state for the convention center aren’t available for pothole repair,” said entertainment facilities manager Kobluk.

Nor can the federal dollars for a Lincoln Street bridge be transferred to street repair. Ditto for the dollars, including the HUD loan, used for downtown redevelopment.

Dollars don’t just grow on trees and wait to be plucked.

In today’s political and business environment where people don’t want to pass new taxes, the best source of new dollars for government will come from projects, ideas and plans that generate revenue that can be taxed and then harvested for public use.

In Spokane, it’s important that leaders understand this.

In our community, as we struggle to stay out of a culture of poverty, leadership must not play to the worst fears of the poor and frightened.

Spokane might do well to remember this proverb:

“Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he never goes hungry.”

As a city, we need to learn how to fish for the dollars that flow to the West Side.

A convention center is one way to cast our bait.