Park board again delays decision on U.S. Pavilion covering

With a little more than two months to go before members of the Spokane Park Board must approve a final plan for a refurbished U.S. Pavilion in Riverfront Park, the panel again punted Thursday on whether the structure should be covered.

“I want the citizens to feel like we’re listening, that we’re not in a huge hurry,” said Ted McGregor, leader of the Park Board’s committee overseeing the overhaul of the park with $64.3 million in taxpayer dollars. “We do have a time frame here. We are going to have to make some decisions as the board, to move this project forward.”

McGregor, who is also publisher of the Inlander, said the delay would give Park Board members time to explain their reasoning to officials at City Hall who have expressed frustration over the lack of a cover in the structure’s early design.

One of those reasons, he said, is the findings of a 2012 study that indicated the cable netting overhead was only sound if not bearing a weight load. Another is that the costs of a traditional covering – predicted to be at least $5 million – would scale back other amenities.

It is the second time the Park Board has refrained from making a formal decision on putting a new cover on the structure, after taking a similar tack in June.

The city was granted approval from the state for a construction process that allows designers and builders to progressively develop a plan early in the process, an approach touted by park officials and board members as a way to avoid cost overruns that have been seen in other parts of the park. But that process requires the team developing plans for the pavilion to submit a concrete proposal to the full Park Board for approval by Sept. 14.

Clancy Welsh, president of Garco Construction, and Keith Comes, a managing principal with NAC Architecture, made their pitch, one of several this week, to the full Park Board on Thursday. Welsh said after the presentation he believed “there are opportunities for this process to continue to thrive, but ultimately, a decision has to be made.”

“My biggest concern is that everybody keeps going back to this: We made a promise to cover the pavilion,” he said. “I think we made a promise to reinvigorate, or rejuvenate, the park. I don’t think covering does that.”

City Councilman Mike Fagan, the panel’s representative on the Park Board, called the ensuing criticism in the community for the uncovered plan a “looming public relations issue.”

“I can tell you, the public that has contacted me is just split right down the middle as to whether or not we’re going to cover it or not,” Fagan said.

City Council President Ben Stuckart, former City Councilman Mike Allen and former Park Board President Randy Cameron have all said in the past month the cover was key to selling the ballot measure that voters approved and is funding work in the park.

McGregor said there had been “a lot of different eyeballs” on the pavilion’s design, disputing claims the design was secretive, and echoed the comments of Park Board President Chris Wright, who told the City Council on Monday it didn’t appear the pavilion “could accommodate” a covering like the one that hung over the structure during Expo ’74 until February 1979.

“We’re just trying to deliver reality here. We’re trying to deliver what we’re learning,” McGregor said. “We’re not angling it. We are the messenger.”

The full Park Board is scheduled to meet again Aug. 10.