Planners Lay Out Riverpoint Growth Community Gets Look At Architects’ Ideas For ‘Urban Campus’ In Downtown Spokane

Spokane’s Riverpoint Higher Education Park could become a virtual extension of downtown as the campus continues to grow in the coming decades.

That’s the direction planners and architects are taking as they lay out the future of the Riverpoint campus, which is managed by Washington State University. Both WSU and Eastern Washington University offer degree programs and share facilities at Riverpoint, just east of the downtown core.

About 60 community members reviewed preliminary plans for the “urban campus” at a public forum Thursday night. Designers are seeking public input as they draft a master plan that will guide Riverpoint’s development.

“It’s an urban campus, not a traditional campus, so it will have more of a downtown feel,” said Bruce Blackmer, principal architect of Northwest Architectural Co. of Spokane, which is heading up the project.

University employees, neighboring business owners and community members responded to five draft plans, which depicted variations of the 48-acre campus which sits between Division Street, Trent Avenue and the Spokane River. While three plans left Trent Avenue where it is, two depicted Trent crossing the river further south, bypassing the campus altogether and joining up with Riverside Avenue.

Most in attendance believed Trent Avenue should be left as is.

“Businesses would be hurt by slow traffic and would be devastated if (Trent) closed,” said Julie Clarke, an owner of The Globe Building and Clarke and Stone Book Co.

The group also agreed that green space was important to campus aesthetics, but should be concentrated on the peripheries of the campus - especially along the river - so the public also could enjoy it.

The meeting was at the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute, one of two buildings on the decade-old campus. A third structure, the Health Sciences Building, is still under construction.

The $39 million, 144,000-square-foot building is slated to open for classes in the fall of 2001 and will include state-of-the-art research laboratories, classrooms and clinic space for nearly 800 students.

Meanwhile, a fourth building - an 85,500-square-foot academic center - is in the planning phase.

The $44.5 million project is scheduled to begin in 2003 and be completed by the fall of 2005. It will relocate the academic and administrative units now occupying the Metropolitan Financial Center in downtown Spokane.

WHAT’S NEXT Final forum A third and final public forum on the future of the Riverpoint campus will be April 13 at the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute, with the master plan expected to be completed by mid-May.