Albi’s glory days far in the past

It’s time for the city of Spokane to face some facts about Albi Stadium.

Fact: Albi is 55 years old. Built with private funds, it served a need at a time when a city like Spokane could aspire to host big-time college football games occasionally. In fact, the facility was formally turned over to Mayor Arthur Meehan just before Washington and Washington State took the field for their 1950 showdown. If you long for the Apple Cup to return to Albi Stadium, don’t hold your breath.

Fact: Nothing lasts forever. In its first year, Albi suffered through inadequate parking and lighting. When Washington State College complained about the rent, the city made concessions. A burst water pipe washed out part of the earthen bank, plugging an entrance tunnel with sand and rock. Ever since, Spokane has been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in an endless struggle to get the facility up to snuff and keep it there.

Fact: There’s no Santa Claus. The city of Spokane runs about a $100,000-a-year deficit operating Albi. That’s a good deal for the high school football programs and the professional soccer team that account for most of the use, but not for city taxpayers, who are bracing for more municipal budget cuts, including fire and police service.

Fact: When you’ve made a hasty decision, it’s better to cut your losses than compound them. That includes paying the Spokane Shadow soccer team and owner Bobby Brett $450,000 to buy out the remainder of the team’s lease on the stadium.

Fact: When you wake up in the middle of a beautiful dream, the dream is over. In 1999, the opportunity to sell surplus city property in north Spokane seemed to offer funding for a multi-use sports complex plus neighborhood park on the Albi site. Voters endorsed the reverie in an 81 percent landslide, but today the city says the $3.5 million reserve account for the project is insufficient, and an executive of Brett Sports says the complex may no longer be plausible.

For more than half a century, Albi Stadium has made important contributions to community life in Spokane, especially as a place where young athletes could compete in front of cheering friends and parents. But the useful lives of municipal sports facilities are notoriously short and getting shorter.

If Spokane wants to attract big-time football or develop a vibrant professional soccer presence, it won’t happen in a 50-year-old bowl in need of constant repairs and modernization.

And if area schools require a football venue that their own construction programs have failed to provide, Spokane County has shown an interest in making the more centrally located Fairgrounds available.

Nevertheless, now that Spokane Mayor Jim West has suggested selling Albi, most of the City Council has expressed reservation. Council members ought to give the idea serious consideration.

Such a sale probably would net the city less than $400,000, once associated costs are paid off, but that’s more appealing than continuing to watch operating subsidies bleed out of the city budget at the rate of $100,000 a year.

And, if the sale is handled correctly, it would put that land back onto the tax roles and actually start generating revenue rather than consuming it. That doesn’t mean denigrating the neighborhood by putting a jail there but rather residential development.

If the facts aren’t enough to overcome the community’s understandable sentiment for Albi Stadium, it is worth pondering a hypothetical question. If such a facility were being proposed today, would Albi’s design and location be acceptable? Would the project itself?

The sale of Albi Stadium needs to receive serious consideration. The burden rests with those who oppose the sale to explain why it would be better to keep spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year subsidizing the stadium.