The eye-catcher on the corner of Main Avenue and Browne Street is the Main Market Co-op. Set on a brilliant yellow wall, its mural boasts wine bottles, a cheese wheel, chickens, goats and a sandwich. The air outside in the parking lot smells delicious, like the lunch that’s eluded you all week. A sign in the front window reads “Everyone Welcome.”
“Isn’t it gorgeous, all those big graphics, doesn’t it make you want to go in and buy vegetables?” asks Judy Randall, president of Randall Travel Marketing, Inc. Last week, the company released a study, commissioned by Visit Spokane, on how to improve tourism in Spokane.
Randall contrasted the co-op with the “brown box” across the way, its offset entrance guarded by a stone wall seemingly holding a grass moat: the Spokane Visitor’s Information Center.
“They make you want to go in and buy vegetables, something that people normally don’t really like,” Randall says, referring to the co-op. “Over here, we’re giving away fun and entertainment and can’t get them to come in. What’s wrong with this picture?” Getting a unified visitor center — there are currently two, on opposite ends of town — closer to the highway and more welcoming is one of the study’s recommendations.
But Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart says a center is a tough pitch. The building sits on city property, where rent is inexpensive, according to Stuckart. And finding suitable land closer to the highway might be a challenge.
Randall also advocates for better highway signs and more welcoming “gateways,” the places through which visitors enter the city.
Stuckart agrees with this and thinks it’s doable. “Everybody recognizes that we need better gateways,” he says. Like the experience of pulling off I-90 northbound onto Division Street:
“It’s not the prettiest thing.”
There, you glide down the exit ramp before rounding the bend through a homeless encampment beneath the highway. You sit at the Third Avenue stoplight next to the chicken wire fence of a rental car lot and round-the-clock shifts of panhandlers.
It happens so fast you might not even notice the sign in the shadow of the underpass, a depiction of buildings bearing the words, “Welcome to Spokane.”
I give it mixed reviews.
Spokane kind of looks like a city with one foot in the past, and one foot in the present. The future isn´t visible.
We seem to have quite a few older buildings you can see easily from I90, thanks to a commission that loves to save every building over 40 years old. Unfortunately, none of them are very attractive, with an occasional exception. They´re just old and dark. Whoopee! They don´t mix well with the more contemporary architecture either, so you kinda wonder what the city is like.
What really hits is the number of cardboard waving, shabbily dressed beggars on the corners asking for handouts. Although I feel bad for those who have no income and live on the streets or are going through hard times, I also know that there are plenty of places to go for assistance in Spokane (there goes my objectivity) and some of these panhandlers are just lazy takers who choose not to do anything too difficult to help themselves. A bad side effect of their panhandling is that they make Spokane look poorer than it is, or we don´t take care of our own. The visual has NO positive connotations. It gives pause to the viewer about Spokane in general.
Next are the streets. The local resident knows there have been improvements in the past few years....but the visitor doesn´t, and the still very poor condition of our streets is hard to NOT notice. It´s another sign that says we´re not doing well here and sends a negative message to visitors.
After that comes parking. I´ve never been to another city that forces people to pay for parking at ever turn. Even New York has free parking on some residential streets near business and "downtown". If our streets don´t have meters, then the empty lots of any business have threatening signs if you park there and the day of the week doesn´t matter.
No, I don´t think I´d get anything like a ´warm fuzzy´ were I coming here for a visit. I might even be glad to be gone afterwards.
Now, how do those predictions for population growth from 2000 match up with what we have today? Real numbers might tell part of the story. May 30, 2012 | Reply to this comment
Bradley May 31, 2012 | Reply to this comment
It´s also not yours, or mine, job to do something about it. It´s our city government´s job. One of the problems is too many people who see the city through rose colored glasses and refuse to see any problems, or areas that need upgrades. But even more of a problem is (IMO) a city that´s been so poorly managed by the city government for so long that we´re in a constant state of playing catch-up.....and we´re not catching up!
The brightest star I see in play at this time is our new mayor, David Condon. He seems to have the skills to do the job better than I´ve seen in 20 years. He also has the desire to make Spokane better than it is.....and I´ll cheer him all the way.
At the same time I can´t remember the last time I saw the revenue for Spokane match the expenses, and that´s gotta change before we can make any progress. May 31, 2012 | Reply to this comment