Editorial: Spokane’s targeted incentives strategy is worth keeping

The city of Spokane’s new economic development strategy looks good, but the critical element missing from the scoresheet so far is sustainability.

Strategies, or what has passed for strategies, have come and gone over the years. The latest reworks the Targeted Area Development plan, which identified several areas around Spokane where the concentrated application of incentives was supposed to encourage more private investment.

But one of the first efforts, a 2010 city effort to foster development of an energy/manufacturing complex around the Waste to Energy plant, faltered because the Legislature would not reclassify its electricity to “green.” Without that, interest among businesses that might have relocated to access its power or steam output fizzled.

The strategy lost impetus, too, as the economy struggled for footing after the recession and the administration of Mayor David Condon restructured city planning. Some longtime employees associated with the targeted investment approach left.

The idea still makes sense, and renewed city dedication to the strategy is good news. Because resources are limited, one-off spending or incentives is not going to be transformative. The revival of the South Perry neighborhood has become the model for renewal that appropriate zoning, lighting and other infrastructure investment can encourage.

Now, about $18 million in proposed improvements in the East Sprague area are underway, and Hillyard, the West Plains, downtown, the University District and parts of West Central are also targeted.

For planners, the challenge will be to find the balance between incentives and conditions that can be too proscriptive. Design, for example, can be a very subjective judgment.

But the draft evaluation matrix gives only five points of a potential total of 160 to design elements, and the same to green and low-impact considerations. The big points are earned where they should be: on job creation and incremental tax revenues. Overall, the matrix should be a good tool for determining where the city will get the most for the money it, other public entities and their private partners can dedicate to economic development.

City leaders estimate they will have to have about $750,000 a year to make a meaningful impact, with the goal of getting the new businesses, their employees and customers generating a substantial share. Tracking progress and exercising discipline will be essential to assuring the public this approach pays off.

One of the strategy’s best attributes may be its transparency. The brief blowup over what city assistance had been pledged to Davenport Grand developers Karen and Walt Worthy was unfortunate, and unnecessary. It should not happen again.

The public should be able to understand the initial scoring given proposed projects and measure the payoff for itself, as it did before re-upping the street levy last November.

Success goes a long way toward assuring sustainability.