[todaysdate]
By Blaine Stum
In private meetings, a small group of business owners, developers and interest groups drafted a plan to revitalize downtown. Buildings all over the downtown core were said to be substandard. Retail sales had been falling in the Central Business District for over a decade. Major chain stores were packing their bags and moving into suburbia. Something needed to be done, this group said. So a plan was created, with the help of outside planners and experts. It called for drastic changes to downtown: the creation of a new city hall and fire department building, revitalization of the Riverfront, construction of new retail and office space, the construction of six parking multi-level parking garages and the demolition of almost all housing in the downtown core.
That was 1961. The report was produced by Ebasco at the behest of Spokane Unlimited, a group of deep pocketed, influential downtown business owners and developers that included high level players at Washington Trust, Spokesman-Review, First National Bank, Washington Water Power and the Spokane Chamber of Commerce. The report and the group who commissioned are famous for rekindling support for redevelopment of the riverfront, which would lead to the creation of Riverfront Park. Whats less infamous is just how short sighted, negligent and arrogant the rest of the plan was, and the long term problems it caused for the city due to political leaders who failed to question the “conventional wisdom” contained in it. Thanks in part to this plan, Spokane lost thousands of housing units in downtown: In 1960, there were over 6,000 housing units downtown. Today, there are around 2,000. A large chunk of the units lost housed low income populations. Surface parking lots and new office space replaced apartments. People were exchanged for empty space, all to quench the thirst of business owners whose only concern was profit margins. If this story sounds all too familiar, it’s because it is: the battle for downtown is a broken record on repeat.
Today, interest groups and business owners are equipped with more money and shinier public relations campaigns. They feign support for social services and civic efforts meant to “educate” the public on how we should really be addressing homelessness, poverty or mental health, but like their kindred spirits from days past, they see it all through the lens of sheer self interest and never quite seem to grasp structural factors that have created the situation so many people in our country find themselves in today. Case in point is the STA Plaza Renovation Ad-Hoc Committee.
Like Spokane Unlimited before it, it’s a “who’s who” of monied downtown interests, and much like the 1961 Ebasco Plan, the Ad-Hoc Committee’s recommendations on STA Plaza Renovations completely miss the mark and verge into territory that screams “This will fail.” To deal with what they see as “unproductive behaviors” occurring in and around the Plaza, the group says STA should create indoor waiting areas available only to transit riders (they never say how anyone is supposed to know someone is a transit rider or not…), “shell off” much of the second floor retail, increase security, include employment services inside the Plaza (because all transit users are poor or jobless of course…) and decrease meeting room space, citing a supposed lack of demand without providing data or facts to support it. It all reads like the worst nightmares of Jane Jacobs, George Orwell and Jarrett Walker: decreased use of available public space, a heavily securitized environment and restricted access to transit a hub for populations who likely need it the most.
A lot of ink has been spilled on what challenges downtown faces, but I would say the biggest problem is not panhandlers or homeless people, it is a small group business owners and developers who have too much influence and not enough vision.
Hi Blaine, Thanks for sharing this information. (I had not yet seen the ad hoc committee’s recommendations.) There is definitely a gulf between the experience, perceptions, and interests of those who authored the report and many who regularly pass through the plaza. I’ve mentioned before that I believe the frustration that arises between these disparate realities will end only by repositioning of the plaza (ideally a few blocks east). Unfortunately, until such a time comes, the travesty of this conversation continues in our community. Who owns downtown? (Inevitably, the central district will continue to gentrify as this is a simple reality of economic growth in American urban centers.) Who owns our Spokane community? (We all do.) Whenever a conversation sadly devolves into them and us, a community suffers. Community leaders placed the plaza where it is and need to make sure it is a TRUE place of welcome for everyone until it can be moved.
Downtown is used (abused) as an enormous interchange, with I-90 and the major arterial streets vomiting traffic into the core, so that that traffic can be slowly and clumsily re-routed via a maze of one-ways, shopping centers and pay parking lots. The moneyed business interests want to cash in to a greater degree. Like a giant truck stop, if you will. Poor people and people of color and those struggling with mental health scare off the target demographic which is middle to upper-class, white privilege people who drive. Those white privilege people are the people who need to change.
Thanks for the thoughtful piece! It is so frustrating that our tax dollars go to the Downtown Spokane Partnership and Greater Spokane Incorporated and the primary message I get from them is that downtown sucks.
We give a lot of money them too! A recent article in the Business Journal ‘Conflict Over [BID] Boils Over Downtown,’ says $1 million in BID tax assessments plus another $100k from the city for management, while the people actually making Spokane a better place scratch and scrape for resources.
The contract with DSP expires in 2015. We need to get that money out of the hands of the people discussed in this article and into the hands of someone with energy, vision, common sense, and good management skills. Any ideas?!!!