COPS shop gets new look

Spokane’s oldest COPS shop got a face-lift Saturday, turning the well-used structure on Boone and Elm from nondescript gray to white and hunter green.

“It’ll sure brighten up the corner,” said Char Morris, who lives across the street from the community oriented policing station, as volunteers scurried up ladders with rollers and jammed paint-laden brushes into bricks and mortar.

Home Depot’s community effort, Team Depot, donated some 24 gallons of paint, plus brushes, rollers, pans, tape, drop cloths and some bodies, said team captain Troy Kinder, who also lives in the neighborhood.

Members of the West Central neighborhood answered the call in the community newsletter, and a few politicians even took the neighborhood up on an invitation issued at a recent City Council meeting.

City Councilman Brad Stark took time out from the primary campaign to pitch in, and Saturday morning found him sitting on the sidewalk painting the station’s window trim while someone on a ladder that stretched above his head was rolling paint on the siding.

Stark said he didn’t know if it was unlucky to sit under a ladder, but it can be messy.

“Should we paint the top first?” asked one of the volunteers as splotches of paint dropped to the ground.

“That’s what the hat’s for,” Stark said.

West Central opened the city’s first COPS station in 1992. About two years ago, a fire that was set in the back of the building caused some damage, but that was repaired and the COPS station remains a focal point for the area.