Spokane focuses on downtown dwellings-Analyst says city is ready for more urban-core residents

Is Spokane ready for downtown living?

That’s the question residential market analyst Laurie Volk was asked to address.

Her answer: an emphatic "yes."

Michael Guilfoil
Staff writer

Volk, of the New Jersey-based consulting firm Zimmerman/Volk Associates, will deliver the keynote address at the annual meeting of the Downtown Spokane Partnership, Downtown Spokane Business Improvement District and Downtown Spokane Ventures Association.

It will be in the Davenport Hotel’s Marie Antoinette ballroom at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Volk was hired to determine the depth and breadth of Spokane’s potential market for downtown housing.

Based on discussions with community leaders and developers and on analysis of demographic data provided by the Internal Revenue Service and other sources, Volk estimates that Spokane reasonably can expect to attract 294 new downtown households annually during the next five years.

"Generally speaking, about 41 percent of the potential market will be empty-nesters and retirees," Volk said during a telephone interview Monday.

"The bulk of the market — 53 percent — will be younger singles and couples. And the remaining 6 percent is what we call traditional and nontraditional urban families — households that have been raised in cities and wouldn’t live in suburbia if you paid them," she said.

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IF YOU GO
Meeting time
The annual meeting of the Downtown Spokane Partnership, Downtown Spokane Business Improvement District and Downtown Spokane Ventures Association will be in the Davenport Hotel’s Marie Antoinette ballroom at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday 2/26.

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Volk said downtowns nationwide report rising interest from potential residents.

"As baby boomers’ kids move out," Volk said, "some become bored with the suburban lifestyle and move to places with a variety of entertainment, stores and commercial opportunities within easy walking distance."

The other main group eyeing urban living — young adults born after 1976 — are moving downtown at a much higher rate than previous generations did, she said. "So you have a whole untapped market that hasn’t existed before."

Volk characterized downtown Spokane as "terrific," with an appealing blend of restaurants and retail.

"The reopening of the Davenport Hotel will continue to spur more development," she said. "From what we’ve seen in other cities, downtown Spokane is right on the edge of booming."

But Volk also said she sees obstacles, among them the lack of available market-rate housing.

Other challenges include:

• The high asking price for existing underutilized buildings;

• The lack of a full-service grocery store within walking distance;

• Building codes that some say unnecessarily increase the cost of rehabilitation; and

• The reluctance of bankers to loan money for urban residences.

"It’s difficult to acquire financing," Volk said, "because banks are always looking for comps" — existing structures comparable to what’s being proposed — "and Spokane doesn’t have any comps" for urban housing.

Cities such as Louisville, Ky., and Detroit have addressed the financing issue by creating loan pools supported by public-private partnerships, Volk said.

And her home state of New Jersey has relaxed building codes for rehabilitation projects.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Volk said, she will encourage local officials and developers to do whatever it takes to create more housing in the urban core.

"Downtown living is essential to the long-term health of cities," she said. "You can’t have just office and retail. To be sustainable, you need a mix of uses, a variety of housing units, a variety of people."

Business writer Michael Guilfoil can be reached at (509) 459-5491 or by e-mail at [email protected].

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=022503&ID=s1308083&cat=section.business

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People, vision keys to urban renewal

By John Stearns, Tom Zoellner and Craig Harris
The Arizona Republic

"What is the city but the people?"
– William Shakespeare,

Coriolanus, Act III

Downtowns that work have a common ingredient: people.

The mix includes visionary politicians, motivated shop owners, deep-pocketed developers, loft dwellers and artists on street corners performing for pocket change.

Vibrant downtowns have a visual human mosaic: lawyers in suits mingling with techies with chin-studs and fuchsia hair.

Attracting those people requires a combination of investment, safety, friendliness and the kind of real urban cool you won’t find in a mall.

Cities have been fighting to reclaim their aging, neglected cores, with varying levels of success, for the past 30 years.

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Great links for these articles at:
http://www.arizonarepublic.com/news/articles/0223dtn-downtowns.html

Related links
• Phoenix’s plaza, light rail projects depend on public funding deals
• Phoenix: Bold ideas for desert metropolis
• San Diego: City goes from blight to bright
• Portland: ‘Radical’ pushed for model city
• Denver: ‘Great city’ built on solid foundation, brick by brick
• Indianapolis: Sports, yes, but with a dash of arts
• Houston: Creative energy urged for new knowledge-based economy

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Phoenix, late to the redevelopment game because its growth came later than older cities’, has been working to improve its downtown for the past 15 years with the addition of sports facilities, restaurants, residential lofts and additional offices. A $600 million Phoenix Civic Plaza expansion and a light rail project are seen as linchpins of future development.

How can Phoenix further rekindle downtown? What can it learn from the cities that have passed this way?

Ingredients vary with the personality of the city and the region, but there are constants. Winning cities have strong planning, politicians who take chances, timely investment and an engaged citizenry. Some examples:

• In Denver, government financial support helped play a key role in turning a dishwater-dull warehouse district into a major cultural neighborhood full of shops, microbreweries and dot.com start-ups.

• Portland, Ore., built a model downtown by replacing a freeway with a park and drawing a controversial urban growth boundary to focus development inward.

• In Indianapolis, corporate philanthropists played a major role in transforming downtown. The Lilly Endowment has given $1.15 billion over three decades to help redefine what was once known as "Indianoplace."

• In San Diego, a non-profit corporation helped turn a sailor’s ghetto into one of the West Coast’s most densely packed nightlife districts.

• Houston downtown advocates commissioned a 1993 study that found young residents were hungering for a missing "cool factor" in their housing choices. Loft builders seized on the opportunity, and the downtown population swelled by 69 percent.

Networks

"There are no silver bullets in this business," said Ethan Seltzer, director of the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies at Portland State University. "There are silver networks."

One of the most critical pieces in that network is housing, which creates a 24-hour population base. And retail follows residents, which then attracts more people and the snowball grows. Beyond that, a certain sense of place and special attractions help bring character and appeal.

"The rest of the city has to have an appreciation of how important the downtown is," said Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, who heads a city acknowledged for successfully transforming its downtown. San Diego, Portland and Indianapolis receive similar accolades.

There’s another factor at work when it comes to reviving a downtown: raw profit motive.

"It’s kind of an enlightened self-interest we have here," said Jodie Sinclair of the Houston Downtown Management District.

"If you owned one of these towers," she said, gesturing out her 16th-story window at Texas’ biggest skyline, "you wouldn’t want to see the property values decline and city services go away because your downtown has failed."

But Houston, like Phoenix, continues to struggle with creating a real sense of place in a downtown left hollow by suburban flight of the 1950s.

Both cities have placed sports facilities downtown to restore suburban connections, but suburbanites haven’t lingered much before or after the games.

Denver: Juggling the mix

Allan Wallis, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Colorado at Denver, likened efforts in the Mile High City to building a "very elaborate stage set." The goal is to get the right mix of dancers "so you get music and not noise." The result in Denver, once referred to as a "cowtown," has been startling.

"It’s a very significantly transformed city," Wallis said of the connection among the arts, stores, sports, conventions, residents and visitors.

Its downtown includes trendy lofts, myriad restaurants, efficient transportation and sophisticated cultural attractions. The Denver Art Museum is embarking on a major expansion that will nearly double its size, designed by renowned architect Daniel Libeskind. Across downtown are three pro sports facilities, an aquarium, a theme park and an expansive park and path system along the South Platte River.

Much of the progress would not have been possible without numerous citizen-approved tax hikes to help fund the projects, said Rich Grant, spokesman for the Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau.

For example, citizens in the seven-county region of metropolitan Denver have long supported a sales tax of 1 cent on every $10 to help fund arts, science and culture.

"These things don’t come free," Grant said.

In a 1999 special initiative, citizens OK’d doubling the size of the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver, a facility that has been important to the health of the nearby Denver Pavilions shopping mall. "It has certainly worked to our benefit because our conventioneers are just vital to our success," said Pavilions General Manager Susan Cantwell.

Downtown resident Mark Alexander praised Denver’s greenways and paths. But the landscape architect still sees a city that needs to be more pedestrian-friendly.

"It’s very clear to me that Denver has a long way to go," he said. "All the little pockets downtown are still places you drive to, except for this few-block anomaly," he said of the historic lower downtown area.

Portland: Lose the car

In Portland, walking rules.

"We honor the pedestrian and not the automobile," Mayor Vera Katz said.

That’s evident throughout the city, where myriad elements, from the Oregon Convention Center to Portland State University to downtown shopping and office districts to neighborhoods like the Pearl District, are connected via light rail or streetcar.

Someone can live in the Pearl District on one side of downtown and easily walk or travel by streetcar to the other side.

"It’s very approachable and very pedestrian-oriented," said consultant Dean Runyan, who commutes to his home outside downtown via bicycle when weather permits.

In large part, that’s due to the links via sidewalk, rail, bus, greenway and bike path. RiverPlace, an early commercial and residential development on the Willamette River, is one of many areas connected via paths to the waterfront and within an easy walk of downtown’s central core. Portland’s streetcar, which now ends at Portland State on the south, is targeted to run to RiverPlace and then to the planned North Macadam Project on former industrial land just south of RiverPlace. North Macadam will include new facilities for Oregon Health Sciences University, now on a hill above North Macadam, plus commercial and residential developments. All will connect to the hill via a planned tram, which will connect to the streetcar.

Progress has been deliberate, requiring perseverance and patience.

Former Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt remembers vicious battles in the early 1970s to save unique neighborhoods from being razed by freeways meant to shuttle people to the suburbs. "The core of our value proposition was that great cities require great neighborhoods," Goldschmidt said. "The transportation battles were pretty ugly. But everybody fought the fight. On our side, they were a fight about neighborhoods."

Indy: A partnership

To the east, downtown Indianapolis has made remarkable strides. Although famous for its once-a-year 500-mile auto race in suburban Speedway, until the Lilly Endowment stepped up, downtown Indianapolis had little to offer except a stately capitol.

The private foundation of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. in 1974 started pouring millions of dollars into downtown brick-and-mortar projects. The foundation helped finance the Hoosier Dome, which lured the NFL Colts from Baltimore and later became the RCA Dome; a 64-acre zoo and aquarium that has up to five daily dolphin shows; the NCAA headquarters and museum; and the 60,000-square-foot Indiana State Museum, which holds 400,000 Hoosier artifacts.

The foundation also contributed heavily toward downtown tennis and track stadiums, an ice skating facility and Market Square Arena, where the NBA Pacers played until it was destroyed and replaced in 1999 by Conseco Fieldhouse. Total capital contributions to downtown and the rest of the city have totaled $383.7 million, according to foundation records.

The $10 billion foundation, created in 1937 by three Lilly family members and financed with 158 million shares of company stock, also has donated $767.4 million toward social programs in the Indianapolis area over the past 30 years. And in the early 1990s, with the country in a recession and Indianapolis in danger of losing a new downtown retail center, the Lilly company became an investor to help save the now popular Circle Centre Mall.

"Lest any politician or any civic leader get too self-congratulatory, they should realize much of the revitalization would not have happened without the Lilly Endowment," Mayor Bart Peterson said.

"There is nothing in the area, whether it’s arts and culture, sports and recreation or education in this city and state that Lilly hasn’t touched."

Gretchen Wolfram, the foundation’s spokeswoman, said the reason Lilly pours so much money into Indianapolis is simple: It was their home.

"The (company) founders felt a special connection. Because they were so successful in Indianapolis, they felt a special allegiance," she said.

Yet, despite the numerous downtown attractions that buoy its convention business, the city is just starting to develop housing in its core. And just outside downtown are rundown neighborhoods and some of the worst schools in Indiana.

San Diego: Rebirth

San Diego’s 30-year transformation also has captured attention.

In the 1970s, downtown San Diego, characterized by a stagnant economy, horrible crime and tattoo parlors, hadn’t changed much since the turn of the century, when the area was dubbed the Stingaree District.

Sailors provided the infamous moniker because it was said a man on leave could get stung faster in downtown San Diego by prostitutes and illicit activity than by the stingrays in the bay.

"About 25 years ago, this place had liquor stores and X-rated theaters," said Teresa McTighe, executive director of the 16 1/2 block Gaslamp Quarter, which now has 100 downtown restaurants and nightclubs.

"It has changed a lot in a short amount of time."

The Gaslamp Quarter, with Victorian-era buildings and boutique hotels, became a redevelopment project for the city in 1982.

Yet, the revitalization began a decade earlier under then-Mayor Pete Wilson’s administration. In 1975, Wilson created the Centre City Development Corp., a non-profit organization whose mission has been to develop and promote downtown. Wilson, who would become a U.S. senator and governor, also persuaded influential developer Ernie Hahn to build a downtown mall, and Wilson laid the groundwork for the convention center to open in 1989.

"In those days, Pete felt that for San Diego to grow as a region we needed a strong downtown," said John Gilchrist, former president of the Hahn Co. "He knew what people in the community were looking for, and he was good at building a coalition. Frankly, he did a wonderful job."

Today there are 21 cranes in downtown San Diego working on 113 development projects, including a new ballpark for Major League Baseball’s Padres, said Donna Alm of the development corporation. Downtown also is home to more than 10,000 people, five times the number of residents who lived there in the mid-1970s.

Houston: Work in progress

Of all the cities visited, Houston bears the closest resemblance to Phoenix. Both experienced hyperspastic suburban growth after World War II. They harbor politically conservative cultures and city governments welcoming to developers and have struggled to bring something other than glass-and-steel office sterility to their downtowns.

It is almost possible to walk across downtown Houston without touching asphalt or breathing outside air. Many of the 125 major office buildings are linked by a series of underground tunnels built to keep employees shielded from the oppressive summer bayou heat and winter rains.

An estimated 140,000 people work downtown – about 7 percent of the city’s total employment – and yet few of them can be seen on the streets. Walking in the tunnels, which have food courts and pharmacies, is like walking through an airport. What they add in convenience, they rob from the streets, giving downtown a lifeless appearance and providing a challenge for city leaders to create some kind of "sense of place."

"Houston is so spread out that it really doesn’t have a central hub," said Shea Guinn, the President and General Manager of the Reliant Park convention center. "Are we going to resign ourselves to being a ghost town in the central city, or are we going to make something happen?"

Give Houston credit for trying to do just that, even if the results haven’t always been delivered. A coalition of business and government leaders, including the then-high-flying Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, built a retractable-roofed baseball stadium next to the shell of an old railroad station in a moribund section of eastern downtown.

Enron Field, now known as Minute Maid Field, was built with private investment and $250 million in Harris County taxes.

It has had only a mixed effect at helping breathe life into east downtown, but other projects are on the drawing board.

http://www.arizonarepublic.com/news/articles/0223dtn-downtowns.html