Past shadows Albi’s future

Joe Albi Stadium, once a symbol of Spokane’s post-war civic pride, has fallen victim in recent years to bureaucratic foot-dragging, neglect and an unpopular plan by a former mayor to demolish it.

Worn artificial turf inside the stadium has forced the city’s semi-professional soccer team to cancel its season this spring. The Spokane Shadow subsequently lost its franchise.

Spokane and Mead school officials have agreed to scrape their capital-spending budgets to come up with as much as $1 million to replace Albi’s turf in time for the prep football season this September.

But the problems at Albi run much deeper than the rug that covers the stadium floor. Albi today is a monument to missed opportunities and a lack of follow-through at City Hall, not the proud venue that once hosted college and professional football and an appearance by Elvis in 1957.

Residents who live near the stadium and its 130 acres of land blame City Hall for failing to make good on a promise to develop a sports complex at Albi, a plan that was promoted in 1996 by Shadow owner Bobby Brett and later endorsed by voters with an 81 percent yes vote in 1999.

Brett has now abandoned plans to work with the city on developing the sports complex, and he is asking the city to pay him $500,000 to buy him out of his lease for Shadow games through 2011. Brett called City Hall’s management of Albi “irresponsible.”

“They haven’t followed through on what they told the voters,” he said.

With the threat of demolition looming, a group of Spokane residents last year formed an organization called Friends of Albi, which is headed by Jim Albi, a second cousin to the stadium’s namesake, the late Joe Albi.

“There is no way that land should be turned back to houses or anything else,” Jim Albi said last week. “If that site goes away, we lose.”

Continued use of the stadium and construction of a sports complex also have the backing of northwest neighborhood residents, who say Albi should be developed as a destination for participant sports and a jump-off point for outings to Riverside State Park to the west.

“What we want them to do is to develop it and use it rather than it being a weed patch and an orphan,” said Ann Warrington, a member of the Northwest Neighborhood Association and Friends of Albi.

Spokane’s elected officials are reconsidering what to do with the 1950 stadium that can seat up to 28,000 fans. Mayor Dennis Hession last week said he wants to gather input from citizens and stadium users on the future of Albi and its grounds.

He said he believes discussion of selling Albi had not been well considered. “We felt that idea was premature,” he said.

Should the city fix it up – at a cost of $4 million over the next 30 years – or tear it down and let Spokane schools find other locations for the stadium’s largest remaining user: prep football?

Currently, Spokane and Mead schools have no other facility for football games, and they would likely have to ask voters to support construction of one or more smaller stadiums. School officials said it would take several years to plan, win approval and build new facilities for football.

As for Albi, an engineering study last winter found that problems with lighting and minimal repairs could be done for $90,000 over the next two years. After that, a continuing program of upgrades would cost $1.3 million over the next 10 years and another $3 million to make the stadium usable for the next 30 years.

Critics inside City Hall point out that the stadium already takes about $300,000 a year out of the city’s general fund. That is money that could otherwise be used for basic services such as police and fire.

If the site were sold, the proceeds could be used to pay for demolition and to retire existing bonds, leaving the city with a relatively small profit of $400,000.

Former Mayor Jim West last year pushed for demolition and sale of Albi as part of a larger plan to build a new, smaller stadium on the former Playfair race course site. The City Council approved the purchase in 2004, in part to be used for expansion of the city’s wastewater system.

But West’s plan ran into substantial opposition from the public and was voted down by the City Council last August. In an interview last week, West said he also offered Albi Stadium to Spokane Public Schools, but they declined his offer.

The City Council decision last Aug. 29 not to sell Albi occurred a few months before voters recalled West from office. Former Council President Hession, who assumed the mayor’s job last December, was just getting a handle on his new duties when Brett handed the city a report showing that the existing artificial turf was unsafe for play.

Brett said he warned the city last year that the turf was near the end of its life, and that without replacement, his soccer team would not be able to open its season in May.

When Brett signed his Albi lease with the city in 1996, he and city officials agreed to a comprehensive program to widen the stadium for soccer and to begin planning for a multi-sport complex on its surrounding grounds. More than $1.5 million was spent to upgrade the field.

Brett proposed an indoor soccer field, indoor hockey rink, jogging trails, multiple-use playfields, trails and picnic areas on the surrounding grounds, in addition to paved parking.

He said he wanted to turn Albi into a legacy for his sports enterprises in Spokane. He also owns Spokane’s minor-league hockey and baseball clubs. He said Albi could have become successful through a combination of spectator and participant uses.

“It was going to be all about kids,” Brett said. “The vision was improving Albi.”

The plan got a boost in 1999 when voters overwhelmingly approved the sale of land at Holland and Colton and to use the $3.6 million from the sale for the sports complex at Albi.

Parks officials spent $100,000 on a consultant who designed a softball complex for amateur competition, but the plan ran into trouble in 2004 when it was learned that it would draw enough traffic to require intersection improvements to the four-way stop at Wellesley Avenue and Assembly Street adjacent to Albi. The softball complex also was opposed by neighbors because it would draw more traffic, and also because it included a proposal to sell beer at its concession stand to help with operating costs.

At the same time, West had been promoting his plan within city government to sell Albi and develop a stadium at the old Playfair site, and within a matter of months, the sports complex plan lost support in the parks department.

The Park Board in October 2004 voted not to continue pursuing a sports complex at Albi.

In an Oct. 19, 2004, memo to West, Parks Director Mike Stone said the cost of traffic improvements would have to be paid by the parks department. As a result, he said, “Albi is no longer a viable option for the construction of the sports complex as voted on by our citizens.”

Even before that, Brett said, the city’s foot-dragging and passive management resulted in the loss of events at the stadium, including Eastern Washington University football. He blames elected officials, Park Board members and senior city staffers. “It would sure be nice if someone would show some leadership,” he said, noting that Hession was a park board member before becoming a city councilman.

“I think there has been an opportunity missed,” Jim Albi said. “I think the Park Board needs to be made accountable for that $3.5 million.” (The amount of money available now has grown to $3.75 million through interest earnings.)

Today, Albi Stadium is a shadow of its former prominence. It opened in 1950 as Memorial Stadium and was renamed in 1962 following the death of local attorney Joe Albi, who was longtime president of the Athletic Round Table, which raised money for the stadium.

In 1962, the stadium was expanded to hold Washington State University and Pacific Coast League football. It hosted a handful of professional football exhibition games.

The property was used during World War II for Baxter General, a U.S. Army hospital that treated 14,000 patients from 1943 through 1945. The existing Veterans Affairs Medical Center was built in 1948. Much of the Baxter land was returned to the city by the federal government in 1948.

Parks Director Stone said that the controversy and problems surrounding Albi have created an atmosphere of distrust in the community, and that until the issues are resolved, the parks department will not be able to win voter support for any other improvements to the city’s parks system, including new swimming facilities.

Neighborhood residents said they believe the idea of a sports complex needs to be reconsidered and targeted to a broad range of park users. They are suggesting a skateboard park like the hugely popular one built at Harmon Park in Hillyard. The city parks system also needs areas where dog owners can run their pets. Albi has been used for dog walking for years.

Jim Albi said he believes that city leaders, including West, have been trying to move the $3.75 million earmarked for a sports complex to park developments closer to downtown so that it can be used as part of a broader effort to draw people to the urban core for economic reasons. He said that millions of dollars of public money is already being spent in the core.

“I’m trying to help people find solutions,” he said.

“People are irritated the city spends money downtown but not in the neighborhoods,” Albi said. “In their zeal and somewhat in their greed they are forgetting the citizens are paying the bill.”