Spokane leaders turned for advice to Seattle, which had hosted a fair in 1962, Youngs said. They were told a world’s fair was an excellent idea that should be pursued.
Fair leaders got pledges of $1.3 million in start-up money, mostly from Spokane businesses. The Washington Legislature provided nearly $12 million in state tax dollars to build the Washington State Pavilion, which would later become the Spokane Opera House and Convention Center.
The Spokane City Council, meanwhile, passed an unpopular business and occupation tax which raised $5.7 million to tear out the railroad tracks and prepare the fair site.
In October 1971, President Richard M. Nixon gave Expo ’74 his official sanction. King Cole and a Spokane delegation then went to the Bureau of International Expositions in Paris, where they received the bureau’s unanimous sanction as an official “special exposition.”
Washington’s powerful Congressional delegation, led by Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Sen. Warren Magnuson and Rep. Thomas Foley, garnered an $11.5 million appropriation to build the U.S. Pavilion.
City officials persuaded Spokane’s three railroads to move. The Union Pacific, Milwaukee Road and Burlington Northern donated 17 acres of land to the city, worth many millions, and consolidated their routes on tracks away from downtown.
Now Cole’s job was to persuade the world to show up. He eventually got commitments from the Soviet Union, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Canada, Australia, Iran, West Germany and the Philippines.
Luring corporate pavilions proved easier.
Ford, General Motors, General Electric, Eastman Kodak, Boeing and the Bell systems signed up for pavilions. So did the states of Oregon and Montana, as well as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Nicholas K. Geranios
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