SPOKANE, Wash. — The Spokane Sports Commission proposed a previously unconsidered method for replacing Joe Albi Stadium in a letter to the Spokane School District Board on Tuesday.
In November, voters were given two options in an advisory vote: build a new stadium on the current stadium site, or build a new stadium downtown. But this new proposal does neither. Instead, it would modify the designs of the already-in-progress Sportsplex to accommodate high school sports.
The Sportsplex will be a multi-sport indoor venue next to the Spokane Arena. Whereas the arena is a single playing surface surrounded by a large number of seats, the Sportsplex will have a large playing area and a small number of seats.
"This would have up to maybe ten, twelve basketball floors,” said Eric Sawyer, the CEO of the Spokane Sports Commission, a non-profit that works with the city on projects like the Sportsplex. “It's built more for large participation sports, big tournaments, usually youth based."
Since the Sportsplex will already be a center for youth sports, Sawyer and the commission – along with the city agency in charge of the project, the Spokane Public Facilities District – wondered: what would it take to accommodate more sports? In particular, what modifications would be needed for the Sportsplex to host high school football and soccer? Sawyer says: not that many.
"[One change could be] bringing in artificial turf that could be rolled out temporarily,” said Sawyer. “There's some new technologies out there that allow you to literally roll the turf out on a bed of air... in 20 minutes you just pull it back off again, and then you'd roll out your courts, your indoor track, all your other things. So it'd really become very much a multi-purpose venue."
In addition, the ceiling would need to be higher so that footballs could be punted. The capacity would also need to expand from a planed 3,500 to 5,000, but Sawyer says neither change is so dramatic as to be unrealistic.
“Adding 1,500 seats is not significant,” he said.
According to Sawyer, the parking at the Sportsplex will already be plentiful, alleviating one of the primary citizen concerns regarding replacing Joe Albi.
And he says the district would have first right when it comes to scheduling over other events.
Susan Chapin, the president of the school board, told KREM 2 today that the board isn’t ready to consider the proposal just yet. First, she said, the board needs to decide if they want to look at any alternatives, or simply go with what the voters suggested in the advisory vote: building a new stadium at the current Joe Albi location. If they decide not to do that, according to Chapin, that’s when they’d look at potential alternatives.
But Sawyer said he’s not looking for the board to embrace this new proposal outright; for now, he just wants to hear if there’s enough interest to justify seriously looking at the idea in depth.
"We think it's a logical option for the schools to consider,” said Sawyer. “At least give us some time to evaluate this, really run the numbers, let's make sure this does make sense, it works for the facilities district, it works for the school district, it works for the athletes and the community as a whole."
"We're very confident that it could save a lot of money,” he said.