Just over a year after voters greenlighted a major Riverfront Park revitalization project, crews have yet to start work on the project. Now, the Spokane Park Board expects the needed improvements to cost more than the $64.3 million voters approved for the project and to take a year longer to complete than previously estimated.

Some observers familiar with the project contend the schedule delays are due at least partly to planning missteps by the Park Board and the  city of Spokane’s Parks and Recreation Division. 

Those sources, who asked not to be identified, contend the process that the Park Board chose to design the improvements, which includes dividing them into multiple projects, involves too many firms and consultants, and could easily eat away at the project’s designated money.

They also say the city overlooked a number of key and costly aspects to the project, bypassed Spokane-area design firms, and issued incorrect and confusing documents seeking qualifications from firms interested in designing various pieces of the project.

“What you have is a pile of money and you’ve got a plethora of designers, architects, and in some cases engineers” doing a lot of duplicative work, contended a board member of a community organization that works closely with the Parks Department, who asked to remain anonymous.

Already, the Park Board is looking into raising additional money in other ways to fully fund the project, says city of Spokane Parks and Recreation Director Leroy Eadie. 

The Riverfront Park redevelopment project started in 2012 with various committees and city employees working on developing a master plan for the downtown park. In 2014, a bond issue was proposed to Spokane voters. 

At the end of the year, a previous tax was set to expire, which would have lowered citizen’s tax rates. By approving the bond for $64.3 million, it kept taxes at the same rate. The bond was tied to another initiative that funded street maintenance, and passed with a 68.5 percent yes vote. 

In November 2014, Randy Cameron, then-Spokane Park Board president, said construction was expected to start in Riverfront Park just after Labor Day 2015 and to wrap up by spring 2019.

But the city still doesn’t have final design plans and doesn’t anticipate construction starting until next spring. Berry Ellison, the Riverfront Park Bond program manager, said he hopes that construction will wrap up by 2020.

City officials contend that’ isn’t a misstep, but rather was the plan all along.

“When you’re building a house, you want to design the house first, right?” says Monique Cotton, Parks and Recreation Division spokeswoman. “Make sure your plans match up with the landscape, which match up with the measurements you need, which match up with the dollars. That is what we are doing right now. We are designing. We are in the design phase.”

Cotton says that even though the voters approved the park renovations in November 2014, the bond money wasn’t available until January, so the Park Board couldn’t do anything substantial until after that time. That’s why it’s still in the design phase, she says.  

From the beginning, the city has touted the project’s more visually pleasing components, including moving and modernizing the ice rink and renovating the Looff Carrousel. However, some critics contend that other needed improvements that aren’t as sexy will be costly and were overlooked by the city, such as environmental cleanup and the park’s deteriorating bridges.

Eadie admits that the bridges were overlooked initially, but hopes that some of the funding for bridge repair can come from other sources, not just the bond money.

Eadie says the parks department is talking with other departments in the city to get some help to fund bridge repairs. Using the Howard Street Bridge as an example, he says that since a water line runs under the bridge, the parks department is working with utilities department to help fund that project.

Ellison estimates that the work on the 11 pedestrian bridges alone could cost between $10 million and $13.5 million. According to findings of KPFF Consulting Engineers, the Howard Street Bridge should be a top priority. The parks department already has budgeted $6.7 million for that bridge, and Ellison says he expects to start issuing requests for qualification for more bridge restoration work next spring.

According to parks department documents, the department already has spent $1.1 million of the $64.3 million approved by voters, and is committed to spend another $2.3 million on various projects, including $1.5 million to the Seattle-based Berger Partnership for the design and landscape of the public spaces for the park revitalization. It also has committed to spend more than $550,000 in professional costs to engineering firm CH2M Hill for its work on the Howard Street pedestrian bridge, and more than $223,000 in “owner costs,” which include pre-design studies and project management. 

Cotton says the parks department is exploring other ways of getting more funding for some of those projects, and plans to apply for state and federal grants. Cotton also said she has written up some legislative agenda items to help fund bridge repairs that she might take before the City Council.

“We do recognize there are other elements to this project that will cost extra dollars, but our hope is to take the dollars we have and leverage that, not ask the entire community to cover that,” Cotton says. “Everything that was promised to the voters will be accomplished with the $64 million.”

Promised elements include relocation of the ice skating rink, renovations to the Looff Carrousel, construction of a regional playground, updates to the U.S. Pavilion, and renovations to public spaces and park grounds, she says.

On Nov. 12, the Park Board approved using $63,138 from the park fund to pay the Collins Group Inc., a Seattle-based fundraising-consulting firm, to conduct a capital fund drive feasibility study.

Cotton says the research will be useful for evaluating the best ways of conducting a capital fund drive for Riverfront Park.

The Park Board is paying for the feasibility study with money from the city’s park fund instead of the voter-approved bond money. Eadie says the city’s bond attorneys told him funding the study with the bond dollars wasn’t appropriate.

Some critics of the park improvement planning process thus far say they don’t think the public would react well to a capital fund drive, suggesting that taxpayers who already approved giving the city $63.4 million wouldn’t appreciate being asked to give more.

But Park Board President Chris Wright says he already has heard from a number of local businesses and other park supporters who have told him they want to donate money to the park. He says the board is looking into selling naming rights to certain attractions in the park, and that there is already interest in that, but he didn’t name specific businesses.

“We know the interest is there,” Wright says.

Looking far down the line, Eadie says he would like to seek a change to the city charter so that the park can allow long-term leases, opening opportunities for businesses to set up shop in the park.

Currently, the city manages all aspects of Riverfront Park, including the concessions and the attractions. Eadie suggested that if the charter was changed, the private sector could take over some of those operations.

 

Change in plans

The city initially proposed to have a general contractor/construction manager model for the construction and management for the project, but the state’s project review committee in Olympia denied that proposal.

Instead of working with that committee to make the GM/CM model work, which Eadie says the city could have done, the Park Board decided to go with a bid/build model, which means a different design and construction team for each project in the park. The city didn’t need state approval for that model.

Ellison says this could lead to multiple firms working on different projects in the park concurrently. While this could mean a lot of options for work with the city, one critic familiar with the project contended it will be expensive and that the “soft costs” will add up quickly.

But Ellison countered that the city will get more for its money by spending the voter-approved bond dollars on multiple projects, instead of on a four-year contract with one firm.

“We think that it may be better to spend our money more in individual projects and do the coordination in-house,” Ellison says. “This is a city project and our desire, from the mayor’s office down, is to have the owner/developer be the city and also the construction manager.” 

But that being said, there will still be plenty of consultants to help out, Ellison says. “We are going to have five different design teams and several different contractors working at the same time over several years

 

Changing of the guard

Another area of criticism among some architectural and engineering firms has been inconsistent management of the project by the city. From 2013 to October 2015, Juliet Sinisterra was the Riverfront Park project manager. Today she no longer works for the city and operates Sun People Bed & Bath Co., a health conscious bedding retail shop.

Sinisterra says that when she started working with the city, she knew the project was time sensitive and that she was there to help get the master plan in place. 

“I was brought on really to do the master plan for the Park Board and for the city,” she said. “I stayed on to help transition and get that master plan clearly laid out in the RFQs.”

For a while, Sinisterra said she was the “go-to” person for everything related to Riverfront Park.

“I was handling all the marketing, all of the redevelopment work, the budgeting, working with the Park Board about the actual master plan implementations,” Sinisterra said. Of Cotton, she says, “It was fantastic she came in when she did.”

In May 2015, Cotton started working on the project as its marketing and communications manager. As has been widely reportedly she previously was the spokeswoman for the Spokane Police Division, but was transferred to the parks division after allegedly being sexually harassed by former Spokane Police Chief Frank Straub. Sinisterra says Cotton’s arrival was much needed since she was already so busy and Cotton already knew how to communicate with the public and work with the community. 

This fall, Ellison came on as program manager. He and Sinisterra worked together for a month, while she acquainted him with the project. 

Ellison wasn’t new to the park revitalization project. Prior to joining the city, he worked as a landscape architect for Land Expressions, a Mead-based firm that is contracted with the city to work on the park project. 

Eadie says Ellison’s prior knowledge of the project and experience in landscape architecture made him a qualified candidate for this job. 

But Ellison says once the project is out of the designing and engineering phase, the city could bring in someone to replace him, someone with more construction management experience.

 

Confusing RFQs

The city has also come under fire for its process of how it selected its finalists for some of its projects including the design and landscape of the park grounds and public spaces.

A Spokane-based architecture and design professional who submitted a proposal for the project, and asked not to be named, says the requests for qualifications issued by the city early on were confusing and improperly worded.

Ellison understands why professionals in the architecture and engineering sector might feel this way.

“As a part of the architect and engineering community, we felt as if the process to build something was not quite there,” he says. “There was no real good link in terms of communication with the A&E community.”

He says the communication between the parks division and the architecture and engineering community was the weakest link to the project so far, describing it as a “disconnect in jargon.” 

“There wasn’t a reluctance to work with our A&E community,” Ellison said, “There just wasn’t the common language.”

Out of the RFQs released by the city related to Riverfront Park, all but one were written only by Sinisterra. The latest one, for the redesign of the Looff Carrousel, was written by Ellison.

He says he has received good feedback from architects and engineers that the verbiage in the latest RFQ was more clear and easier for those companies to understand.

But the poorly written ones from earlier may have deterred some architecture and engineering firms from bidding on other Riverfront Park projects, due to what they cite as the substantial cost of responding to such requests.

While some observers familiar with the project aren’t pleased with how the initial planning for the project has progressed, all of those interviewed remain confident that the revitalization of the park will be good for the city and for businesses here.

 “All of us view the central jewel of the park that we have as a huge asset,” one critic says.

Mark Richard, president of Downtown Spokane Partnership, says, “We are convinced that when this project is done, not only is it going to be an amazing playground for the people who live here, but it is going to attract more private investment, more visitors and tourists; it is going to attract more conventions; and ultimately, it is going to create more jobs.” 

While the long-term hopes for a revitalized park are high, the concern among some concerned supporters the Journal interviewed is that it could cost a lot of money to get there.