French Designs Solutions

Al French’s cell phone rings seconds after he hangs up from the last call.

He’s sitting in a booth in a downtown restaurant, drinking milk and juggling calls and a face-to-face meeting with his campaign co-chair. It’s just after 9 on a recent morning, and it’s his third meeting of the day.

On the phone, French explains his upcoming campaign ad, which aims to distance him from his opponent. “We want it to say, `I want an architect designing my future, not a talk show host,”’ French tells the caller.

The “talk show host” is Steve Corker; the “architect” is French.

Both men want the City Council Position 2 seat held for eight years by Orville Barnes, who can’t run again because of term limits.

Of the three council races, theirs is by far the most congenial. The candidates chat, even joke with each other at appearances and debates. They share a desire for more open government and more citizen involvement in planning.

Their biggest battle is over money, and Corker is winning, raising nearly $3 to French’s every dollar.

Corker’s money machine means French is spending a lot of time on the street, leafleting and listening to voters. But listening is his livelihood, French says.

“As an architect, you have to have the ability to listen to what a client’s desires are and create a variety of solutions,” he says. “When you reduce architecture down to its basic element, it’s about problem solving.”

That’s a skill he sees lacking in City Hall, which spends too much time responding to emergencies and too little time planning, he says. That’s why he’s adamant the city finish its comprehensive plan to manage growth.

“If you’re managing the city not by crisis but by design, you’re thinking far enough ahead to anticipate” problems, he said.

His architectural training taught him that. His work as a citizen activist made it his mantra. Friends and co-volunteers say French, who serves as president of the Nevada-Lidgerwood neighborhood council, is passionate about getting people involved from the beginning.

“He starts at the bottom, with what we think and what we need to have done,” says Deborah Wittwer, who drafted French five years ago to design the Nevada-Lidgerwood Community Oriented Policing shop. “He knows what really matters is at the neighborhood level.”

Others see too much fire in his fervor.

Cheryl Steele, who oversees the city’s community-oriented policing project, says French wants to command, not lead. Steele and other COPS leaders have clashed several times with French, most recently over access to the Nevada-Lidgerwood COP shop. French argues neighborhood residents need increased access to the building.

“On the surface he appears to be obliging, collaborative and educated, but when you peel away the layers … you have someone who wants to be a dictator,” Steele says.

French admits the disputes have left scars, adding the city’s neighborhood councils still are learning their role in the community. Many residents feel strongly about the COP shop because of the work they put into it, he says.

Bob Larson, who plays bridge with French and his fiancee Rosalie Fisher, remembers seeing French and Fisher painting the building early one Saturday morning. “It’s that type of commitment he has to the community. He’s out there doing it himself if it needs to be done,” Larson says.

Politics wasn’t a dinner-table topic of French’s childhood. His father was career Army. The family moved six times in 14 years, finally settling in Las Vegas, where French finished high school. He spent three years in the Marines, followed by a five-year architecture program at the University of Idaho courtesy of the GI bill.

After college, he and his then-wife moved to Spokane, where he spent a year at a traditional architecture firm before going to work on large-scale projects for developer Earl McCarthy.

The high point of French’s 20-year career was designing an enclosed NorthTown Mall, which until 1983 was a strip mall.

The low point came in the late ‘80s, when NorthTown’s new owner, David Sabey, fired French from a five-year, $10,000-a-month contract. French sued Sabey, taking the case all the way to the state Supreme Court, where French lost last year.

About the same time, two shopping mall developments he was working on went sour, eventually leaving French more than $600,000 in debt. In five years, he reduced that to less than $100,000, he says.

“I don’t have anything to be ashamed of,” he says, noting he repaid the debt while building a new architectural firm and launching into community activism.

Linda Crabtree, Holy Family Hospital’s marketing director, says French was instrumental in making the Nevada-Lidgerwood neighborhood’s child-care incubation center a reality. She recalls how he used humor to defuse a tense meeting with Nevada-Lidgerwood residents about the center, a partnership between the neighborhood and the hospital that trains day-care providers.

“They came in with their arms crossed, saying not in my neighborhood,” she says. “They left hugging him.”

His neighborhood activities can be exhausting, especially for Fisher. They’ve set a wedding date - Feb. 30 - it just hasn’t come around yet, she says with a laugh.

The couple doesn’t have time to get married, she says, let alone finish remodeling the two-bedroom bungalow they share with French’s 17-year-old daughter, Kristina.

The house can wait but the community can’t, French says, adding that his daughter’s move to Spokane three years ago sparked his activist side.

“I was looking around, thinking, is this the kind of environment I want to put her in?” he says. “And it wasn’t. So I got involved.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: Al French

Personal: Age 48 … born in Belton, Texas, moved to Spokane in 1977 … architect, HMR Development Inc. … president, Nevada-Lidgerwood Neighborhood Council … president, Spokane Community Development Board … board member, Economic Development Council … board member, Northeast Community Center … vice chairman, Boy Scouts of America, Thunderbird District … divorced, one daughter.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in architecture, minor in business finance, University of Idaho.

Finances: As of Oct. 20, raised $16,146. Top donations include $2,000 from Kellee and Robert Daugherty; $2,000 from the Real Estate Traders Club; $1,000 from Pilgrim Nutrition Centers and $1,000 from Build East.

Campaign co-chairs: Candace Dahlstrom and Robert Daugherty.

1. Corker used to limelight 2. Questions for the candidates