Palouse residents eye future of Brownsfield site future

What business entity would fit neatly into Palouse’s economic puzzle?

A forum to hear just those kinds of ideas on the economic feasibility of the Palouse Brownsfield project drew 15 people to city hall Jan. 19.

The Department of Ecology (DOE) and the city are working to repair and restore the half-acre patch of polluted land along Main Street into a useful community feature.

Greg Pearce, the spouse of one downtown business owner, spoke openly about what he sees as the paltry earnings made by downtown Palouse businesses.

Most stores are operated by one person whose spouse works at WSU, he said.

Pearce’s wife, Bev, owns Small Town Quilts, and he works at WSU.

“I think a lot of thought should go into what would be sustainable because it’s not an easy environment,” Pearce said.

Pearce encouraged the consulting firm leading the project, Maul Foster Alongi (MFA), to find a business that could last.

Another audience member affirmed Pearce, saying he could only think of two downtown Palouse businesses where the spouse wasn’t working at WSU.

Palouse last year received $200,000 from the DOE to hire MFA to guide the city to strategizing a future for the site, legal advice for clean-up and other options.

Leading the group of citizens through the discussion was MFA project manager, Michael Stringer.

Top three citizens’ picks for the site were a retail business, office/commercial space and a retail business with a residence above it, said Stringer.

These are the results of surveys MFA has done within Palouse for the past few months.

One member of the MFA team pointed out they aren’t interested in bringing in a “category killer,” or a large-scale business like Best Buy which would kill any local stores supplying those same things.

In line with Pearce’s comment on paltry downtown earnings, Palouse teacher Dennis Griner added school enrollment is dropping.

“Have some more kids, will you!,” Griner joked with the crowd. He went on to say he was interested in some type of entity that matched the colorful storefronts already in town.

“What about something that fits the color, the theme of the town?” Griner said.

In the 1980s, frequent petroleum spills from a former fertilizer business, Palouse Producers, left the site a hazard, and it was deemed as such by the DOE.

The DOE term “brownsfield” is defined as a “real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.”