Shopping Centers Making Transition

Wed., Aug. 16, 2000

By Rebecca Nappi rebeccan@spokesman.com (509) 459-5496

It’s hard to imagine this now but once upon a time shopping centers were a novel concept. In 1960, plans for the $4.5 million Shadle Center on Spokane’s North Side were announced in bold headlines.

When University City Shopping Center opened in August 1965, 1,000 people showed up. The newspaper story gushed: “The covered mall is air-conditioned and will be heated for winter months.”

Fairwood Shopping Center north of Spokane was heralded as a boon to young families building homes in the early 1970s in the popular Mead School District. A 10-foot, helium-filled balloon replaced the traditional ribbon cutting at the center’s November 1974 grand opening.

Spokane’s earliest shopping centers thrived, then declined. It was sometimes sad to drive by Shadle, U-City and Fairwood in the late ‘80s and ‘90s and see so many storefronts dark and parking lots empty, in stark contrast to their golden eras.

But business trends changed. Megamalls attracted customers and the teens who really are key to making shopping centers work. (Shadle was once a hangout for young people, believe it or not.)

But this is not an obituary on Spokane’s first shopping centers. Instead, there’s good news here. The centers, in their original forms, did die. But each lives on, although in ways no one could imagine 25 years ago. Fairwood Shopping Center still has some shops but a major resident is a church. Yep, a church. Former retail store space gives Calvary Chapel plenty of room for its thriving congregation.

Shadle Center felt like a ghost town for awhile and perhaps that’s why plans for a Wal-Mart there didn’t generate as much protest as other Wal-Mart projects. Many residents nearby sensed that the store might save the center as a gathering place and also boost the appeal of things around it, such as the library. Wal-Mart opened in April. The Shadle Park High School choir sang and 200 eager customers greeted the new store.

Last week, a Pennsylvania-based company announced it had leased 48,000 square feet of space at U-City to use as a call center. Where shoppers once roamed, telephone solicitors will work instead.

These new beginnings for old spaces should be celebrated and supported. They sure beat the heck out of paving over another wheat field. And they allow old shopping centers, with their memories and potential for becoming community gathering spots, to live on.

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