Vocal Point: Can we learn from Missoula’s mistakes or is it too late?

What makes a city a community?

In July my husband and I visited Missoula, an enjoyable, artsy, university town.

Missoula is laid out within and without a basic triangle of roads, Broadway, Higgins (which runs through the beautifully preserved, vibrant historic downtown) and Reserve (once a mostly rural road). Within and near the triangle’s apex (at an intersection called Malfunction Junction) is the Southgate Mall.

Reserve is now filled for miles with big-box stores, commercial and restaurant development. It’s saving visual grace is its newness, with dominant landscape and trees.

To the west are many new housing developments, including that millennial darling, a mixed-use neighborhood. Missoula, like our region in the ‘90s, is bursting with commercial and residential growth. Curious as to the effects, I asked questions of business owners and employees.

Reserve people said they never shop downtown and rarely at the mall and that Reserve’s development had hurt both. But we saw growth at the mall, including two new upscale stores. Servers and the manager at a busy mall restaurant said the mall was thriving, but downtown had been hit.

Some downtowners claimed downtown was fine, providing all necessities; they only shopped there. Only one claimed downtown wasn’t hurting. Despite the activity in downtown, we felt we perceived some struggle.

Missoulians, once centered, apparently now live in a fractured community.

Spokane Valley is also fractured. Unlike Missoula, it began that way, evolving from small townships into suburban sprawl unfettered by concern for cohesion or aesthetic sensibilities.

For a time, there was the U-City/Sprague hub. Then, with the building of the Valley Mall and explosive residential and commercial growth farther east, U-City devolved into a derelict, neglected area. More commercial development eastward has followed and is expanding on Indiana, on Sullivan and east on Broadway.

We incorporated with no discernible core or community magnet. Our makeshift hub, by default, has shifted to the mall area. But a shopping/commercial cluster does not a cohesive city or community make.

Nor do top-down grand plans we can ill-afford.

I applaud the Spokane Valley City Council’s efforts to create a central core with long-range (and sorely needed) aesthetic city planning. The council is focusing on what Spokane Valley will be decades from now and that’s vision.

We can use a small civic center down the road, but I question that the large enterprise being planned with upscale commercial and residential development at U-City will be the widespread year-round community magnet they hope for. This is the Valley. We’re not big-money downtown Spokane; we’re a suburban/rural area with a surfeit of discount stores, pawn shops and payday loan operations.

For a council that promised low costs, it’s puzzling that they’re not buying the Prings’ land across from U-City at a bargain offer and scaling down their vision, instead of moving ahead (after cutting off citizen input) to lease U-City land for the city center.

Building the city hub on rented land — what a shaky foundation.

What will the financial impact of grand U-City gentrification be on nearby home values and property taxes—all our taxes? With growth eastward, will eastern citizens feel connected to a center built at U-City, or will Spokane Valley, like Missoula, become U-City vs. Sullivan vs. the mall?

And the most fantastic city center in the country isn’t going to heal the rifts and distrust caused by council decisions.

Instead of mending fractures, the council is widening them with a zealous focus on development at all costs. They reneged on a lot-size agreement with Greenacres residents, creating feelings of betrayal that have reverberated across the city. How does defying clear, realistic citizen wishes bring people together?

And if they think we citizens are always “misinformed,” why should we trust them? Why should citizens, to achieve goals important to them, spend months and years working with such a council? How can we believe the council has our interests at heart, when developers and commercial interests always have the winning hand? How does this create healthy community?

Instead of reversing fracture, the council is creating more. Malfunction Junction, indeed.

Community can’t be imposed from the top down with edicts and civic centers. It comes with trust.

We could really use some of that.