On a weekday afternoon this summer, a handful of Spokane Valley Tech students showed up at Balfour Park to play ultimate frisbee, same as they do most weeks. Half the field was open grass. The other half was fenced off, full of freshly poured concrete and rebar for courts that did not exist yet. That is Balfour Park right now: a park you can already use, being built out from underneath the parts you are using.
Fire science instructor Matthew Phippen brings his students here because Spokane Valley Tech does not have a field of its own. It is a small, ordinary fact, and it is also the whole story of this park in miniature. Balfour Park has spent the last two years absorbing the things the Valley did not quite have. A field. A gathering plaza. Now courts. Soon a playground. Eventually, maybe, a concert venue. None of it happened all at once, and none of it is finished yet, which is exactly why this summer is worth paying attention to.
From a defunct mall to a civic block
Before it was a park, the land at 105 N. Balfour Road was the site of Spokane Valley's first retail mall, back in the 1970s and 80s. The city bought the property in 2012, long before most of what stands there now existed. What sits around it today is not an accident of geography. Balfour Park is directly across the street from Spokane Valley City Hall, next door to the Spokane Valley Public Library, which opened in its current building in June 2023, and a short walk from the city's fire station.
Parks and recreation director John Bottelli has said the quiet part out loud. Asked about the park's direction, he put it this way: "We're creating a bit of a downtown community civic center down there. Now that the library, City Hall, fire station and this park is there, Spokane Valley has a central place." That is a notable thing for a city of roughly 108,000 people to say, because Spokane Valley, incorporated in 2003, has never really had a downtown in the way older cities do. It has commercial corridors along Sprague and Appleway. It has not had a civic core. Balfour Park is the deliberate attempt to build one, in phases, as funding allows.
When the full build-out is finished, the city estimates around $10 million will have gone into the park. Right now you can watch two of those phases sitting side by side: one finished, one still curing.
What's finishing this summer
Phase one wrapped in the fall of 2024 and cost about $5 million. That money bought the Sounders FC soccer mini-pitch, a Veterans Memorial dedicated in May 2024, an events plaza, new pathways, lighting, landscaping, restrooms, and expanded parking. It also grew the park itself. Balfour started as a modest 2.8-acre lot and is expanding to roughly 8.3 acres as the city folds in adjacent land.
Phase two broke ground in early May 2026. It is a smaller project on paper, $715,000, split between $673,000 from Washington State Appropriations and $300,000 from the city's Capital Improvement Program funds, but it is the part most residents will actually use day to day: one full basketball court, two half courts, four pickleball courts, sports lighting, and an expanded sound system for the park. The city's own project page still lists the work as "anticipated to be completed later this summer." Past mid-August, that means the courts should be finished or close to it, whether or not the ribbon has officially been cut.
The Friday nights already happening
You do not have to wait for the courts to use the park this summer. Balfour has had a running events calendar for months, put on by a mix of the city, the library district, and community groups.
Movie Nights at Balfour Park is a free Friday series presented by the Kiwanis Club of Spokane Valley and the City of Spokane Valley, shown right on the park grounds next to the library. The 2026 lineup has included:
- July 31: The Incredibles (PG)
- August 28: Cars (G)
- September 25: the series' final screening of the summer
The park also hosted a free outdoor concert from the Spokane Symphony's BeethoVAN this summer, complete with an instrument petting zoo before the show, timed around the longest days of the year. And on Saturday, August 29, from 4 to 7 p.m., the park hosts its second annual Cops and Kids Car Show, a free community event pairing local law enforcement with families and their cars.
None of this required the amphitheater the city has been talking about. It is happening on open grass, in a park that is still, technically, a construction site in one corner.
What's still just grading
The amphitheater is the piece everyone asks about and the piece with the least certainty attached to it. Bottelli has said the grading for it is already done, in the park's northwest corner, but detailed design will not start until the city has funding and a timeline. The rough cost estimate is more than $3 million for a covered stage, a grassy audience area, and an arching pathway.
He is not shy about what he wants it to become. "It would be great to have live music," he said. "You could have the symphony there with people on blankets and picnics." He has also floated a rough capacity: something like 4,500 people if the city wanted to pack it in for a bigger event, according to reporting from The Spokesman-Review. That would not put it in the same league as the Gesa Credit Union Pavilion at Riverfront Park or BECU Live at Northern Quest, and Bottelli has been clear it is not meant to be. It is meant to give the Valley its own version of a room that size, something it currently has to borrow from Spokane or Airway Heights.
The next funded phase is more concrete. In 2027, the city plans to build a 15,000-square-foot playground and a splash pad, and the money for it is already largely in hand: $500,000 from a Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program local parks grant, $2 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and $1.5 million from the city itself. Construction is expected to run from spring to fall once that funding is formally released.
Dinner before or after
Balfour Park sits close enough to a couple of established spots that a movie night or a pickleball session can turn into an easy evening out. 45 Degrees Brewhouse is about a two-minute walk from the park gates, and Shogun Hibachi Steak & Seafood House is a few blocks further, both regulars for people spending an afternoon at Balfour.
The rest of the Valley's food scene has had its own busy stretch this year, even if it is not walking distance from Balfour. Out in Greenacres, chef Joe Absolor and his childhood friend Todd Zyph opened Dodos at the High Spot in December 2025, in the former Stupid Cow cafe space on East Sprague. They are installing bike racks in partnership with the Spokane Conservation District so cyclists can pull in straight off the Appleway Trail, which runs behind the restaurant. And earlier this month, longtime restaurateur Erdem opened Capitol Bar & Grill at the corner of Appleway Avenue and Barker Road, his fourth restaurant after White House Grill and Oval Office Bistro in Post Falls and the Pentagon in Liberty Lake, this one bringing in his nephew Emre Basar as a new ownership partner.
A park still becoming itself
What makes Balfour Park worth watching this year is not any single ribbon cutting. It is the layering. A soccer pitch and a memorial in 2024. Courts finishing now. A playground and splash pad locked in for 2027. An amphitheater sitting graded and waiting for money it does not yet have. Spokane Valley is assembling a civic center the way most cities never get to, in visible, fundable pieces, next to its library and its City Hall, on the site of a mall that closed decades ago.
If you have watched this stretch of Sprague and Balfour Road change over the last two years, or you are just now noticing the courts going in, it is a good year to pay attention. The next phase is already funded. The one after that is still just a grading plan and a number on a page.
If you are thinking about what a changing Spokane Valley means for your own home, or for a move you are considering here, the agents at The Collection work this market block by block. Request a complimentary consultation and home valuation, and let's talk about what you're seeing.
