SPOKANE, Wash. — A $440 million plan from the Spokane School Board and Parks and Recreation Department plans to change youth sports in the area in a really big way.
The school board is asking voters to approve a 20-year, $200 million bond to build and improve facilities while the parks department is asking for a 20-year, $240 million levy to maintain them.
Part of this plan, titled Together Spokane, would expand the Dwight Merkel Sports Complex, build a new complex at Ferris High School and add indoor tennis courts and sports courts around the city. The hope is improved facilities will help attract larger sporting events in the area.
“Trying to establish Spokane as a place where you can come to host your sporting event,” said Kate Hudson, public relations manager.
Parks and Recreation director Garrett Jones says adding more fields and courts across the city and upgrading the current fields could do that.
“You’ll see it sometimes we have eight teams that will be practicing in the same field,” Jones said. “The Dwight Merkel Sports Complex is just one of the play fields that would be redone in this project. When we’re able to double the field space of that complex, that now takes us to the next level to host tournaments and we really want Spokane to be that destination.”
The hope is that by having new facilities, sports tourism will grow.
“Tourism in Spokane is a $1.48 billion industry and it grows every year,” Hudson said.
This would also mean Spokane locals would have to travel less for sporting events.
“I know a lot of our families they travel around the region to the Tri-Cities, Montana and the West Side,” Jones said.
The other goal is that when people come to visit, they will want to stay.
“When we all have that choice of where we want to live, we want to have great education, great schools, great parks. We want to have safe and vibrant neighborhood kids and this proposal, this initiative really achieves that,” said Jones.
All of these goals are riding on the community passing the $440 million proposal in November.
You can check out which parks could be getting an upgrade under the Together Spokane program here.
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