![]() Within a few years the UW was developing two branch campuses and WSU was at work on three, including Spokane’s, its first. But the Seattle advocates sensed an opportunity, as WSU pointed out branch campuses could meet the state’s growing enrollment demand from children of the baby boomer generation. In the state Legislature, powerful Seattle lawmakers controlled higher education’s purse strings and preferred to keep dollars focused on the University of Washington. In Pullman, eyes popped open and a turf war began between the two universities as Frederickson expanded his beachhead and WSU looked for a few programs that might be suited to a branch in Spokane. He began moving classes to downtown Spokane, winning a warm welcome. But George Frederickson, president of Eastern Washington University, sensed an opportunity. Others took up the cause: business leaders, university presidents, legislators, governors.Īt first, the response from WSU’s Pullman campus was chilly. It must correct this mistake, he said, by starting to relocate. It should have been built in Spokane, he said. While those projects kept life in the city center’s traditional location, it was an audacious idea that caused the downtown’s footprint to grow.įour decades ago Wendell Satre, the outgoing CEO of Washington Water Power Co., declared in his valedictory speech to the Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce that Washington State University had been constructed in the wrong city. River Park Square is owned by the Cowles Co., which also owns The Spokesman-Review. When retail fled for the suburbs in the 1980s and 1990s, the River Park Square project “stopped the bleeding” and brought consumers back, Mielke said, triggering a decade of commercial reinvestment including renovation of the Davenport Hotel, the Fox Theater and Steam Plant Square. ![]() It was a series of catalyst projects.”Įxpo ’74 turned the railroad yard into Riverfront Park. But every major project built upon the previous. “I don’t know if anybody can say we planned steps 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. There is not a single explanation for Spokane’s path from decay to recovery, he said. He remembers magical Christmas displays in the windows of the long-gone Crescent department store, and he remembers when once-glittering attractions like the art deco Fox Theater fell into disrepair. Todd Mielke, who grew up in Spokane, now serves as CEO of Greater Spokane Incorporated. And today, changes to the retail industry have turned against the nation’s once-thriving suburban malls, hollowing them out as consumers order directly from Amazon distribution warehouses. In more than a few American cities, the decadeslong flight to suburbia left decay in its wake. It’s more than a place to shop, and it does not go dark at 6 p.m. The department store, once the downtown’s heart, is gone.Įxtending outward from the core is an expanding explosion of investment: movie theaters, shops, restaurants, concert halls, shelters and clinics for the homeless, a trendy urban grocery store, wine tasting rooms and the racket of construction as old buildings are turned into high-end apartments for the professionals, empty nesters and students who want to make this vibrant downtown center their home. The hotel, once closed, has been restored. ![]() The railroad yard is gone, and in its place is a park. Vitality is sending fingers of renewal even into long-troubled neighborhoods to the east and west where prostitutes walk the streets and drug dealers run houses into ruin. We will change, said the leaders of the gritty little town, rolling up their sleeves.įifty years later, nobody calls Spokane a gritty little town by a railroad switching yard. The future is here and it will pass you by. We’re new, they said to the gritty little town, and you’re old. But in the 1960s a freeway bypassed the gritty little town, and out beyond its outskirts of bars and used-car lots some shiny suburban shopping malls appeared. ![]() Next to the switching yards where locomotives chuffed and cinders flew, its downtown had a nice department store where everybody shopped, and a famous hotel where everybody stayed. Once upon a time there was a gritty little railroad town. (as reported in The Spokesman Review by John Webster) ![]()
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