Jerry Dicker and Gavin Cooley: City Hall needs a reminder: Spokane’s businesses are not the enemy

By Jerry Dicker and Gavin Cooley

We are business leaders who love this city, but who are increasingly worried that the current administration doesn’t return the affection.

Between us, we have spent decades investing in Spokane – in property, in the arts, in civic infrastructure and in the belief that this city has a bright future to match its storied past.

Jerry Dicker bought and refurbished the Bing Crosby Theater, the Steam Plant and the Ruby River Hotel, along with many other hotels and restaurants in and around the downtown entertainment district. Gavin Cooley spent 17 years as chief financial officer for the city of Spokane, serving under five mayors, helping balance budgets, strengthen reserves and lift the city’s credit rating six notches to AA.

Something has gone wrong in the relationship between Spokane’s civic government and the businesses and jobs that pay for it – and our fellow citizens deserve to hear about it.

In recent weeks, City Hall has taken a series of steps that will make doing business in Spokane more difficult and less attractive:

• A new commercial parking tax has gone into effect – one that lands squarely on downtown employees, customers and small property owners at the very moment the downtown office vacancy rate is approaching 35% and many businesses are struggling to convince customers that it is safe and convenient to shop downtown.

• A one-year moratorium was passed banning new drive-thus, gas stations and car washes on major corridors.

• An ordinance has been introduced that will require every rental unit in the city to meet new cooling requirements – an unfunded mandate aimed at a housing stock full of historic buildings never designed for cooling retrofits.

• The Division Street corridor – one of Spokane’s most important commercial arteries – is scheduled to surrender three lanes to bus and bike conversions, with the active support of the mayor and a majority of the City Council.

Each of these decisions may come from good intentions, but together they ignore a fundamental fact: Piling restrictions on businesses while the downtown core hollows out will not lead to a thriving city. We are not saying that business interests should run Spokane. But we are asking city government to acknowledge that businesses, jobs and the revenues they generate are the foundation on which Spokane’s services are built.

Public safety is rightly at the top of everyone’s minds. Progress has been made downtown, but anyone who has taken the Division Street exit knows there is still a long way to go, both for the health of our downtown core and for the men and women on our streets struggling with homelessness and addiction. City Hall must understand that when it makes it harder to do business here, it is shrinking the very tax base that pays for the help our most vulnerable residents need.

Spokane has so much going for it: a world-class entertainment sector – the theaters, the clubs, and the independent stages that make this city the artistic capital of the Inland Northwest – and some of the finest hotels and restaurants in the region. That is a success story to build on, not to burden with higher parking costs, diminished safety and drug paraphernalia on the streets. Our corporate employers, our hospitals, our universities and our manufacturers deserve the city’s partnership, not additional regulation. A city thrives when its government supports what is working.

What Spokane needs is a decision-making framework at City Hall that asks, before every vote, one simple question: Does this make Spokane a more attractive place to live, raise a family, and build a business? Or does it push our families and employers toward the surrounding communities that are competing for them every day?

We believe Spokane’s best days are ahead – but only if City Hall remembers that the people and businesses who invest here are partners, not problems to be regulated away.

Jerry Dicker is president of GVD Commercial Properties and owner of the Bing Crosby Theater, the Steam Plant and multiple downtown Spokane properties. Gavin Cooley is director of strategic initiatives at the Spokane Business Association and former CFO of the city of Spokane.