Valley council discusses Sprague makeover

Spokane Valley is moving ahead to make the Sprague strip vibrant and economically viable again, but it won’t be cheap.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, the City Council indicated it would be willing to spend significantly more than was originally budgeted for a land-use study providing ways to revitalize the blighted 8-mile-long corridor.

“I will find the money; I will find a way to do it,” Councilman Dick Denenny said. “It is just too important for our community.”

Establishing some sort of identifiable city center for the new city and redeveloping Sprague have been dominant political issues since the first council was elected in 2002.

In December, the city put out bids to hire an urban design firm to take a stab at the Sprague strip, and last month the council picked a team led by the San Francisco company Freedman Tung and Bottomley. City planners and the council seemed excited to have the firm on board because of its experience revitalizing similar strips in other parts of the country. But the company wanted more than $400,000 for the study budgeted at $250,000.

“I would still prefer to take a smaller chunk, do it right and build on that success,” Councilman Mike DeVleming said Tuesday.

City planners considered a study on a smaller segment of the road but advised against it, saying different segments could compete against each other and might not match up well in the long run.

The solution to the money question that seems most likely at this point is to schedule a large portion of the work in 2007, pushing some of the costs into the next city budget.

“I think it’s going to be well-worth every penny,” said Mayor Diana Wilhite.

Councilmen Rich Munson, Bill Gothmann and Gary Schimmels also said the additional cost would be worthwhile.

“We have chosen what’s best for the city,” Gothmann said. “We haven’t tried to cut corners, and I appreciate that.”

Spokane Valley’s new comprehensive land-use plan originally outlined property in and surrounding the abandoned U-City Mall as a spot where a city center would be built. But after property owners indicated they weren’t interested in the project, the council decided to leave the exact site of the city center up to the consultants doing the Sprague study.

On the tentative schedule presented Tuesday night, the city center concept would be fleshed out in the second phase of the project, which would wrap up at the end of the year.

It remains unclear whether the city will designate the center before the Spokane County Library District picks a spot to build a new facility in Spokane Valley.