Then and Now: Joe Albi Stadium
The stadium that was later named for sports booster Joe Albi opened as Spokane Memorial Stadium in 1950. Intended for multiple uses, one of the first events was the Apple Cup between the Washington State Cougars and the Washington Huskies. It had been 40 years since the Apple Cup was played at a Spokane venue.
Construction began in 1947 behind the former Baxter military hospital on the city’s northwest outskirts. One of the first big donations to the effort was a $250,000 pledge by the Athletic Round Table club, where Joe Albi, a lawyer and jocular toastmaster, was president for more than 40 years.
Local Hollywood crooner Bing Crosby put his support behind the fundraising for the new field.
The Athletic Round Table would be remembered for weekly luncheons at the Dessert Hotel, rollicking dinners featuring well-known athletes, gag events poking fun at high culture or local politics and for raising money for youth sports and other charities. The stadium was named for Albi after his death in 1962.
The stadium’s concrete bleachers, laid over earthen berms, were initially designed for 14,000 spectators but would later be expanded to almost 30,000
Since it was built, highlights have included several Apple Cup games, an Elvis Presley in concert in 1957, a Billy Graham crusade in 1982, and the Monsters of Rock concert in 1988.
During the passage of a $495 million bond in 2018, the Spokane Schools Board discussed how to replace the aged stadium. To gauge public sentiment, they held an advisory vote about the preferred site for a new, smaller venue. The nonbinding vote was to keep the football field in Northwest Spokane.
The Spokane Schools board, which had paid the $350,000 each year for maintenance and operation of Joe Albi, elected to partner with the Spokane Public Facilities District to build the new stadium downtown, where the PFD would take on the cost of annual maintenance and make it available for high school sports but also provide it to new professional soccer teams and for other events.
The old stadium was demolished in 2022 and a new school, Pauline Pascal Flett Middle School, was built there. ONE Spokane Stadium opened at the corner of Howard Street and Joe Albi Way in 2023.