Letters

Call Sprague-Appleway plan ‘bailout’

It is fairly obvious that the momentum on Sprague Avenue has shifted to the area east of Pines Road and is headed toward the Sullivan area. The auto dealers fought back by joining ranks and reinventing themselves as a destination complete with their own marketing plan. They serve as an example of what can be done when individual businesses, competitors no less, put their heads together for their mutual benefit.

The city of Spokane Valley’s proposed Sprague Appleway Revitalization Plan is a new urbanist vision of how we should all properly live. Implementation is achieved through heavy-handed micromanagement of the free market system and forced reinvestment in the city center area.

In fact, the SARP should be called the Sprague Avenue Bailout Plan. Which begs the question why other corridor landowners and city taxpayers should be forced to underwrite a plan that will benefit just a select few, setting them up to compete with existing retail development that was built with private dollars and that exists through free markets?

Susan Scott

Spokane Valley