Budget Includes Millions For City’s Wish List State Dollars Will Help Launch The 70-Acre Mirabeau Point Project In The Spokane Valley
The capital budget awaiting Gov. Gary Locke’s signature includes millions in spending for Spokane projects.
The budget includes money for everything on the area’s wish list, including $1.5 million for the 70-acre Mirabeau Point project in the Spokane Valley.
Those state dollars will help launch the $33 million development, which includes a senior center, planetarium, performing arts pavilion, classrooms and ice arena.
The YMCA would also build a full-service youth and family center at the site, where the Walk in the Wild zoo used to be.
A combination of public and private funds will be used to develop the project.
The capital budget also includes money for Riverpoint Higher Education Park, but not as much as backers had hoped. Former Gov. Mike Lowry had proposed spending $21 million to build a health sciences building at the campus.
But lawmakers recently rejected that idea, providing $1.7 million for planning and design of the building, and no money for construction.
“This is a political situation,” said Terry Novak, executive director of Riverpoint, “and we don’t have the clout over there the Seahawks do.”
Lawmakers just voted to borrow more than $300 million in public money to build a new stadium in Seattle for the team. The proposal goes to the voters statewide June 17.
Novak said supporters of the health sciences building will get back in line and hope for construction money in the 1999 budget.
Other spending approved by legislators at Riverpoint includes $8.5 million to build a five-story office building for faculty offices and student services. The building will be owned by the state and leased to the higher education park.
Riverpoint will be the master tenant in the building, and lease some of the space to private tenants to pay off the bonds used to pay for construction.
Planning will also begin on a planned $4.7 million Eastern Washington archives building at the Riverpoint campus. Lawmakers set aside $521,000 for the design work.
The long-planned expansion of Cheney Cowles Museum was given a start, with $1.9 million approved for design of the expansion and exhibits.
Glen Mason, museum executive director, said backers will try again in 1999 for the $20 million needed to built the addition.
Lawmakers also provided $2.5 million to renovate the state Court of Appeals building in Spokane to accommodate an additional judge on the bench.
Extensive renovations to the legal offender unit at Eastern State Hospital would also be completed at a cost of $17.5 million.
The building will be used for people who have been found not guilty for crimes they committed by reason of insanity. Others will be awaiting trial and undergoing psychiatric evaluation.
The capital budget also provides $692,000 to Spokane Community College for work on an addition to its health sciences building.
Locke has several weeks to sign the budget, or veto part or all of the bill.
, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: WHAT SPOKANE GETS What the Spokane area gets in the 1997-99 capital budget: $1.5 million for Mirabeau Point $1.2 million for design of the expansion of Cheney Cowles Museum, and $700,000 for design of museum exhibits $2.5 million for an addition to the state Court of Appeals building in Spokane, to accommodate the addition of a new judge $521,000 for design of a state archives building at the Riverpoint Higher Education Park $1.7 million for design and construction management of a new health sciences building at Riverpoint $8.5 million for state purchase of a private office building to be leased to Riverpoint $17.5 million for a legal offenders unit at Eastern State Hospital $500,000 for a sewage treatment plant at Medical Lake, the first installment in a $17 million project entered into jointly by the city and state $692,000 for an addition to the health sciences building at Spokane Community College - Lynda Mapes