SPOKANE, Wash. – Longtime Hoopfest players know some of the best views of the weekend come from playing on the courts lining the Washington St. bridge, overlooking the Spokane River, Riverfront Park and the Spokane Pavilion.
This year, though, parts of Washington St.–including the bridge–are closed for construction, and organizers say they’ve had to adjust their game plan because of it.
“Kind of like every Hoopfest, there’s a construction project we have to work around,” said Hoopfest Executive Director Riley Stockton.
Stockton said they’ve been meeting with the city since December to plan for projects well in advance, including the extensive work planned for the Washington-Stevens corridor through construction season.
“With us growing this year we had to find 25 or 30 more courts,” Stockton said. “There’s a couple more on Post St, there’s more on Riverside Ave., then we have more courts on First Ave. It’s kind of like a puzzle, you’re just trying to make all the pieces fit.”
City spokesperson Kirstin Davis said they have a team dedicated to helping organizations like Hoopfest, Bloomsday and the Spokane Lilac Association plan for their events downtown.
“There’s always some amount of change that’s going to happen [year to year],” Davis said. “[We] work together for months in advance–sometimes years–because we know what projects are going to be on the long term horizon.”
Construction moving Hoopfest courts from their usual spots is nothing new.
“There used to be all kinds of courts in the parking lot that now has One Spokane Stadium,” Davis said. “There were about five years in there when Riverfront Park was being rehabilitated [too].”
The city is also double checking streets are good to go–and pothole free–for a full weekend of basketball.
“Most of those downtown streets had Bloomsday and the [Lilac Parade] already on them,” Davis said. “So, they’re in pretty good shape, but we always do a passthrough to make sure we’ve got their exact site [taken care of], and we work with [the event] so if they see problem areas that we missed, they let us know.”
“We’re flexible, the city’s flexible and we’re able to make it work,” Stockton said.
