Bank's new proposal seems disappointing

I'm feeling disappointed and rooked by Panhandle State Bank's new financial center. Many of us helped define the zoning overlay for that neighborhood two years ago. We recognized that future downtown construction would be multi-story but hoped this zoning would encourage multiple use — i.e. commercial downstairs and residential upstairs.

If I heard them correctly, all four City Council candidates endorsed this use of zoning, at least in principle. And that's exactly what Panhandle offered us when they lobbied for the 60-foot height increase. If this project is a first test of that idea, it has to be counted a dismal failure.

Panhandle has removed all the residential component of their proposal and offers instead an attractive, but massive, commercial building, with inadequate parking, that will be abandoned every evening and weekend when the occupants and customers all head home. This is a recipe for creating a failing downtown just like so many others that grow dark and crime-ridden weekends and evenings. I oppose it as it stands.

But how do we create a downtown Sandpoint that is a "different product," to quote one council candidate — a place with a variety of housing where residents can walk to banks, groceries, and hardware stores, but still has galleries and real estate offices? A place that's alive in the evenings with restaurants and theaters — Panhandle will tear down four screens — that will also attract people from the suburbs. This project could have been a step in that direction. Worse yet, all that work on the Fifth Avenue overlay may be useless as well, based on this result. What do we do instead?

ALAN BARBER

Sandpoint