Downtown Needs A Chance To Thrive

If the plan succeeds, today could be a foundational moment for downtown Spokane’s future.

You don’t usually see businesses, or anyone else, petitioning for an increase in their own taxes. But business people in downtown Spokane are doing exactly that. With good reason.

In today’s competitive environment, downtowns can and do rot, with terrible consequences for business and for the whole community. Downtowns also can be a glittering success.

While there is no single factor that makes the difference between success and failure, more than 1,000 of the nation’s downtowns - including Seattle, Portland, Coeur d’Alene - could testify to the value of a business improvement area like the one Spokane’s City Council will consider approving at tonight’s meeting.

Improvement areas levy taxes on property owners and businesses downtown. The smaller the business, the smaller the fee. Revenue goes to enhanced security, cleanliness, parking and promotion. This allows a downtown to achieve what malls achieve through a landlord’s dictates. Just as downtowns offer a superior diversity in parks, architecture and ownership, so also do downtown improvement areas offer a diverse, democratic policy setting process. For smaller businesses, that’s good news - they get a voice in governance that’s not always available from a mall landlord, or from private downtown-promotion groups that usually depend on big business for leadership and cash.

The organizers of Spokane’s proposed improvement area have spent two years studying the successes and the instructive mistakes of improvement areas in other cities. They repeatedly have contacted property owners and businesses within the area’s boundaries, have held numerous public meetings, and have refined the proposal in response to critics’ suggestions.

Is the proposal perfect? Probably not. But it is easily refined after creation, through the City Council. It is easily disbanded if it fails. And if it succeeds, as improvement areas have succeeded elsewhere, today could be a foundational moment for downtown Spokane’s future.

From a shopper’s point of view, the improvement area would mean a single, easy way to get free parking or bus-usage credits from a fuller array of merchants. It would mean a cleaner, safer environment.

From a business or property owner’s point of view, the area would improve customer flow, property value and support services. Its elected, diverse governing board is designed for responsiveness.

From the community’s point of view, the improvement area means downtown shoulders the responsibility and the cost for its own fate. It also improves the odds that downtown can compete with malls, and stay healthy. A dead downtown would mean higher crime, less revenue to fight it, a ruined business climate and a loss of safety for key public facilities such as Riverfront Park, the new arena, the downtown library, the Opera House/Trade Center, public and private bus terminals, and more.

Downtown Spokane could quibble its way to extinction, or it can get to work on saving itself, before it’s too late.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board