A glimpse at Valley makeover

Spokane Valley residents and businesspeople watched an “extreme makeover” show at City Hall Monday night.

An urban design specialist flipped through before and after slides of cities once plagued by urban sprawl similar to Spokane Valley’s Sprague Avenue corridor. Cities like San Jose, Calif., and Ames, Iowa, went from dull to delightful with a click of a computer mouse – and millions of dollars of public and private investment, no doubt.

Michael Freedman, of Freedman, Tung & Bottomley, wanted to show the audience what could happen in Spokane Valley if the community backed stricter design standards, more strategic zoning laws and better-planned streets.

“But that’s what we have downtown (in Spokane),” Spokane Valley business owner Carolyn Gallion said, after looking at photos of hip shopping centers, charming buildings and plazas bustling with people. “We don’t have that out here.”

Exactly. Freedman showed that such drastic change is possible, despite the current view from the car window.

The city’s long-range planning manager Greg McCormick agreed.

“There are success stories in other cities,” he said. “It’s not pie in the sky.”

Under a contract with Oregon-based ECONorthwest, the consultants are writing an economic analysis of the corridor for the city this fall. The report will help the City Council decide what changes, if any, it should make to traffic routes and land-use laws.

About 60 people, mostly business owners, attended the meeting Monday. The consultants shared their observations of commercial development from around the country and had citizens brainstorm ideas for the city’s future.

One thing was clear: The consultants said the strip-mall style of development that’s prevalent in the Valley doesn’t work anymore.

“The strip is dead,” Freedman said of that trend. “It’s not coming back.”

The consultants said concentrating retail stores in “nodes” around busy intersections and building nice apartments, townhouses and condominiums along streets like Sprague can revitalize sprawling areas. Key, though, is making the main roadway more pleasant and safe for walkers by planting trees and grass and building sidewalks away from the road.

Resident David Gnotta travels a lot for work and has seen city turnarounds firsthand. It would take a big commitment from the business community, but it’d pay off in the long run because more people would shop in attractive areas, he said.

“We need to be fully committed to this process,” Gnotta said. “This is our opportunity.”

The consultants will summarize the discussion and discuss their next steps at the council meeting tonight. On Monday, they shared some of their findings so far.

Terry Moore, of ECONorthwest, said there are 1,000 acres in the couplet corridor, which is huge for a commercial area. When Freedman’s firm helps cities build downtowns, they generally confine the center to about 30 acres, he said.

Moore said about one-fourth of the corridor’s land is underused or vacant. The value of land is starting to come closer to matching the value of the buildings that sit upon it. When that happens, property owners are more willing to tear down structures and rebuild something better, he said.

“Once you get down to a one-to-one ratio, people start thinking, ‘Gee, I wonder if I can get something out of that?’ ” Moore said.

The consultants found that Spokane Valley’s ratio of retail space to population is twice the countywide average.

The consultants said couplets and one-way streets improve traffic flow, but they can be confusing and can reduce the number of cars that pass by businesses, they said.

Citizens talked about whether Appleway Boulevard and Sprague should have one-way or two-way traffic, with many speaking in favor of the latter.

Susan Scott worried, though, whether congesting Sprague would send people to the freeway, harming businesses even further.

“I kind of wonder if you put it back to two-way whether you’ll lose some of the commuter traffic,” she said.