Uncertain Future Some Peaceful Valley Residents Want Casket Company Building Saved

A plan to demolish a Peaceful Valley building to make way for open park space is drawing mixed reactions from the small neighborhood.

Used earlier this century to make coffins, the Water Avenue building is now a storage unit for the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department. The department plans to move out of the building and tear it down next fall.

The old Casket Company Building is either an eyesore or a historical treasure, depending on which neighbor you ask.

One group of residents is asking that the building be salvaged, perhaps to be used as a community center or for low-income housing.

Others applaud the Parks Department decision to do away with the big green building and its brick addition.

“Looking out my front window, that’s all I see,” said Collette Dodd, who lives across from the building. “It would be very nice to have the area open to the river.”

Some say the building has become a haven for parties and transients, who leave the property littered with used condoms, beer bottles and hypodermic needles.

“The back loading dock was, and still is, used by gangs of young street people as a crash pad,” neighbors Roy Marriott and Kavan di Pignatelli wrote in a November letter to the Spokane Park Board.

“It continues to be used as a drug and sex emporium out of sight from neighbors, passing motorists and police patrols,” their letter said.

The Parks Department squeezes seasonal equipment ranging from canoes to lawn mowers into four spaces around town, including the Peaceful Valley building.

The department has earmarked three buildings in the city’s planned maintenance and operations center in the Garry Park neighborhood. Parks officials plan to consolidate all storage to that area.

Peaceful Valley resident Sali Combelic said she envisions using the building for senior housing or as a small center for shops, a self-service laundry, maybe even a theater.

Dodd said she would support saving only the brick portion of the building to be used as low-income housing. She joined other Peaceful Valley residents at the Spokane Park Board Land Committee meeting earlier this month to speak in favor of demolishing the building.

“There’s still lots of discussion,” said Combelic. “We’re just kicking everything around.”

She and other neighbors have enlisted the help of Washington State University architecture students to present some options to the Park Board.

But parks officials say they’ve planned to demolish the building since buying it in 1989 to open up more space along the Spokane River.

It’s the city’s long-range goal to acquire conservation land along the river.

“The original intent in buying that property was not to acquire another building,” said park operations division manager Taylor Bressler. “It was to acquire riverfront property.”

Bressler said the department has no immediate plans for the space but hopes eventually to extend the Centennial Trail through the area and do minor riverbank restoration.

“What makes this an attractive neighborhood is the river, not a big green building,” he said.

The board will listen to alternatives to demolition, he said, but neighbors will have to pay for any renovations.

“The Park Board has no intention to allocate money to support the building financially,” he said.

The casket building does not have any historic designation, said Spokane historic preservation officer Teresa Brum. But neighbors working to make Peaceful Valley a local historic district would like to include the building in their boundaries.

“It would be up to the Parks Department,” said Brum.