Not-so-new Pavilion

Just finished reading your article,“A new iconic structure” (Dec. 28, 2019), about the U.S. Pavilion makeover. The boosterism is a bit over the top, considering you could call this the Park Department’s great failure.

Most of us voted to give the Park Department all that money so they would put a new roof on the Pavilion. What did they do? They threw a couple of ford fenders on it and called it good.

The walkway that is so talked about is a sidewalk that takes up a lot of space and ends up on a perch that looks down on a great expanse of concrete. Concrete seems to be the main theme here. Without the roof to lighten things up and give it a reason to be, the pavilion’s remains seem to be just that, a homage to concrete. When walking about the place one feels one is about to enter a great bunker where the citizens of Spokane can hide from some Soviet attack. On the west side of the pavilion we go from concrete to a football field-sized splat of asphalt. Why is that?

At the end of the article the architect explains how there has been very little degradation of the cable structure and it’s going to last another 100 years. Hmm, I thought the excuse for not constructing the roof was those cables were just too degraded. So, except for the night lights, it’s the same skeletal hulk it’s been for the past 40 years.

Brad Ennis

Spokane