As part of a historic $19.9 million grant awarded to the Climate Institute from the Inflation Reduction Act Community Change Grants Program, starting in 2025, the Climate Resilience Project will launch the Spokane Community Resilience Hub Network.
The Spokane Community Resilience Hub Network
The Gonzaga Climate Institute will create and administer a three-tiered recruitment, training, and certification program (see Figure 2 below) to establish the Spokane Community Resilience Hub Network, modeled after the approach developed by Communities Responding to Extreme Weather in Boston, MA. We will help establish ten Level 1 Engagement Hubs and five Level 2 Relief Hubs. The project will create capacity for the future establishment of Level 3 Emergency Hubs in partnership with the City of Spokane. Recruitment for the Level 1 (L1) Hubs will take place in 2025, and the five Level 2 (L2) Hubs have already been identified:
- The Northeast Community Center
- The West Central Community Center
- The Carl Maxey Center
- Spokane Public Library- Central
- Spokane Public Library- Liberty Park
See Figure 1 below for a map of the L2 Hub locations.
Each of these L2 Hubs will be equipped with a solar panel array and battery backup to create a microgrid for community energy resilience. This onsite renewable energy generation and storage will allow the L2 Hubs to keep their doors open during climate events that threaten the main power grid.
For each of the fifteen hubs, the Climate Institute will provide the necessary infrastructure, supplies, and training to meet certification standards. Staff and community member trainings will be built around FEMA CERT standards in partnership with the City of Spokane Office of Emergency Management.
This network of resilience hubs will help address important climate impacts, risks, and challenges, especially those associated with extreme heat and wildfire smoke in Spokane, by enhancing infrastructure resilience to natural disasters and increasing community awareness of emergency preparedness. Onsite solar and storage will also lead to lower consumption of heating fuels at these facilities, which will reduce associated greenhouse gas emissions.
Partnerships and Oversight
The creation of the Spokane Community Resilience Hub Network is informed by the Spokane Community Resilience Collaborative (SCRC). The SCRC is in the process of developing city-level heat and smoke preparedness plans to be utilized by the City of Spokane Office of Emergency Management, which, among other things, will provide guidelines and a system of review for the resilience hub program. The SCRC will also oversee the development of a building-level planning tool that can be utilized by each hub to develop resilience plans specific to their building's and community's needs.
Staff members at each of the hubs and the community members who utilize the hubs will be instrumental in providing feedback to inform the development of the hub network so it can adapt to community needs and existing resources. Stay tuned for neighborhood events in 2025 where you can learn more about the resilience hubs, ask questions, and provide feedback! The best way to stay informed about these events is to join the mailing list at the top of this page.
Timeline
L1 Hub recruitment will take place in spring and summer of 2025 while L2 Hub infrastructure upgrades are taking place. Over the summer, several neighborhood educational events will take place to share information about the resilience hub network and collect community feedback to inform the program. Hub training and certification will begin in fall of 2025.
If you have questions about the community resilience hubs, please contact Climate Resilience Program Manager, Dante Jester, jester@gonzaga.edu.