PRESERVE DOWNTOWN
What will Downtown Moscow look like in 20 years? Will we see more window shops attended by various boutiques, cafés, and restaurants, or will the growth of two separate universities consume our unique shopping district? Both our Comprehensive Plan and our Zoning Code call for the former. But our good neighbors at New St. Andrews College (NSA) prefer the latter. Which vision should be enforced?

In 1990, city officials removed educational institutions from the list of permitted land-uses in the Central Business District (CBD) because they did not want Moscow’s most intensive commercial zone converted into a hodgepodge of retail and non-retail uses. City planners understood that a growing campus threatened Downtown’s ability to supply a cohesive shop-to-shop outdoor mall coupled with sufficient parking, and they sought to protect it. They realized that, if left unfenced, the CBD would lose its primary consumers to a burgeoning student body. And these common-sense principles did not change in 2003 when NSA occupied the Verizon building in violation of Moscow City Code.

The immediate negative impact caused by NSA on Downtown Moscow can be seen everyday in the Jackson St. parking lot where students, faculty, and staff fill spaces laid aside for consumers. The Comprehensive Plan anticipated a Downtown parking problem caused by students and specified, as one of its goals, that the City “provide adequate parking in the central business district for shoppers and employees.” This provision, however, only considered students from the University of Idaho. It was written in 1999, before NSA moved into Friendship Square, while they had only one zoning violation on their record.

Now we see that NSA is exacerbating a problem that will eventually force the City to acquire (with general tax-dollars) a parking structure or other off-street parking services for Downtown. Moreover, since NSA does not produce retail-sales tax revenue for the City, they will not help finance the burden that they created.

Another negative impact created by NSA’s Downtown presence can be seen in the long-term consequences. When NSA bought the Verizon building in 2002, it was too small to facilitate their student body, forcing them to use the Nuart Theatre for some of their sessions. Currently, their student body is about 150, and they say they intend to cap it at 200. In other words, with or without future caps, they still don’t have enough space to accommodate all of their needs. Following the trajectory, where will they most likely buy more property?

Moreover, after 11 years of continuous growth, it would be imprudent for city officials to assume that NSA will permanently freeze its expansion. The recent challenge to NSA’s property-tax exemption illustrates this point. During the summer of 2002, when NSA was negotiating to purchase the Verizon building, they assured the community that they intended to pay property tax. But now they have tied up local citizens as well as tax dollars in court by appealing the revocation of their property-tax exemption — the very exemption they told us they would not seek.

Allowing NSA to remain Downtown has other long-term implications. If they are allowed to stay, then it would be reasonable for city officials to assume that the University of Idaho will eventually commence educational activities Downtown. Indeed, it would be difficult for the City to justify conferring a discriminatory benefit to one educational institution while totally denying it to another. More specifically, under State and Federal equal-protection doctrines, the City cannot interpret its code to permit one higher-educational institution to conduct all of its operations Downtown while denying another one the same right.

Like most people, we are thankful that New St. Andrews College opens their restrooms to the general public, just as the previous owners of the Verizon building did. We also appreciate their blood drives, knowing that you have to take the good with the bad. But we contend that the unique character of Downtown Moscow should not be sacrificed at anyone’s altar. Rather, we believe it is in everyone’s best interest to preserve Downtown.

The following pages of this website provide an outline of the legal argument favoring the exclusion of higher-educational institutions from Moscow’s Downtown.