Petition Drive Crucial To Efforts To Save Downtown

Today, the heart of Spokane hangs by a thread.

One end is tied to the single most ambitious real estate project in downtown history - a proposed $80-million redevelopment of the River Park Square shopping complex.

At the other end of the thread dangle Nordstrom and The Bon, with whom lease negotiations are entering a critical phase.

Should this slender strand unravel, major retailing would in all likelihood desert downtown. And serious shopping, the fabric which has bound this community’s core together longer than most city centers in America, would pass from the downtown scene in the wink of an eye.

It’s automatic, a whirlwind visit to a string of desolated downtowns across the nation convinced me half a dozen years ago.

The downtowns on my itinerary were selected at random from among a long list of victims of a shopping center giant who planned to build a monster mall here in the boonies out by Liberty Lake. Everywhere I traveled, exodus of the last remaining retail anchors set in motion an irreversible domino effect among smaller merchants that emptied and devastated downtowns almost overnight. Without exception.

But that was then. Now I expect, in those downtowns that have their retail hearts ripped out, the end comes even more swiftly. In just the past few years, the socioeconomic impacts that can render downtowns utterly untenable have greatly intensified.

Today, downtowns are home to more street kids, more derelicts, more homeless, more toughs, more gang members, more sociopaths and psychos, more misfits and misfortunates of one description or another than ever before.

And so it is in downtown Spokane.

Within recent days, an 81-year-old man was viciously attacked on a downtown street by three teen-age subhumans simply because he was “ugly.”

Police said the motive for the brutal battering of a delightful oldster whom I have long known by sight was racial hatred. But witnesses said the pack of cowards who did this laughed and cheered each other as one bashed in the frail old man’s face, then all kicked him.

Shades of Los Angeles and truck driver Reginald Denney. Just across the street from this newspaper.

Meantime, two blocks away and three days earlier, a 50-year-old woman was gunned down on the sidewalk. Her assailant approached and shot the victim in the chest as she walked down the street with another woman.

A man who heard the shot saw four youths run away laughing and firing in the air.

More fun.

Not so surprisingly, some have taken to packing a weapon for protection downtown.

It is this knowledge that strikes fear into those who value the civic, the social and the cultural heart of this community.

In an effort to battle back, supporters have launched a petition and letter-writing campaign to impress upon Nordstrom and The Bon how important they are to downtown at this critical crossroads.

The past few weeks have produced other positive developments as well:

One - A superior court judge threw out an environmental challenge to construction of the Lincoln Street Bridge. The suit by governmental watchdog Steve Eugster could have proved an obstacle to reconfiguration and reconstruction of River Park Square.

Two - In an entirely separate action, the activist attorney also dropped a suit seeking to bar use of federal tax funds for a grant and loan for the all-important project. The grant and loan are necessary for the project to pencil out.

The project is necessary to secure commitments from Nordstrom and The Bon to stay downtown.

Whether they will remains to be seen.

Organizers of the petition drive hope to gather 20,000 signatures to be presented to the stores. They also urge citizens who care about downtown to write letters.

Having just returned from an extended vacation, during which much of the above events took place, I have been unable to endorse the efforts of the campaign, which is supposed to wrap up tomorrow.

So belatedly - there’s just time to get off a letter. But it must be in the mail by morning. The address is: I Love Downtown, P.O. Box 5131, Spokane, Wash., 99205.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Frank Bartel The Spokesman-Review