Valley happy with new facility

A little more than a year after Spokane Valley opened the CenterPlace community center, at least 80 couples have been married there, revenues from room rental have exceeded expectations, and the new senior center has been a hit.

Classes in space leased by Community Colleges of Spokane also have been popular. But city officials have asked that law enforcement training in the CCS space be stopped because they don’t meet the city’s goals for the facility, raising the question of how city leaders want CenterPlace to be used as it becomes more established.

“I think we’ve been really lucky in that people have discovered it,” said Mayor Diana Wilhite.

Estimates in a presentation to the City Council on Tuesday set CenterPlace’s expected 2006 revenues at $345,000 – $172,000 more than projected.

That’s still well short of the $500,000 budgeted for CenterPlace and the senior center this year, but the city is putting less of its money into the building than originally anticipated.

“We were just cautious in our projections because we didn’t know if people would see what kind of facility it was,” Wilhite said.

Space was reserved this year for 447 events ranging from meetings to religious services, with 126 reservations already on file for 2007. Senior center membership increased 50 percent after moving into the building.

Classrooms in the building’s west wing are leased to the CCS, which has offered computer training, traditional college classes on a number of topics and seminars like those recently offered on business leadership.

At issue is an agreement the college entered into a year ago with the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.

“The thing that sets the sheriff’s (classes) apart is that they are not community-education classes offered to the community at large,” said Mike Jackson, director of Spokane Valley Parks and Recreation.

In an Oct. 3 letter, Jackson asked CCS to end the Sheriff’s Office sublease because training doesn’t match the city’s goal for regional uses of CenterPlace, namely conferences, cultural and community activities.

“It’s our goal to make 70 percent of the facility available for regional use,” Jackson said, which stems from bonds passed countywide by the Public Facilities District in 2002 to build CenterPlace.

There isn’t consensus, though, as to how the training fits into how the city has stated it wants CenterPlace used.

“If a training class is something that the police needed, and if they are running it through the community colleges, I think that would make sense,” Wilhite said.

In the next couple of weeks the community colleges are looking to discuss the law-enforcement classes further with city officials, said CCS district director of facilities Greg Plummer.

He’s hopeful that when officials are given additional information it will fall within what the city supports, he said, but the colleges are prepared to honor whatever decision the city makes.

On the larger question of the community center’s evolving role in Spokane Valley, Wilhite said she’d like the city to promote space there to businesses for meetings, particularly those using video teleconferencing equipment there.

To that end, the city has hired consultants to develop a regional marketing plan for CenterPlace that should be finished in the coming weeks.

There is also $372,000 left in the CenterPlace construction budget, some of which Wilhite said she would like to see set aside for a Universal Park. The city plans to ask the Legislature to help fund the park, which would be designed to accommodate children with various disabilities.

On the recreation end, Jackson said the city will continue to look at programs it can develop at CenterPlace that aren’t available elsewhere.