(The Center Square) – With little notice, the Spokane City Council approved a one-year moratorium Monday for drive-through facilities along major arterial roads to protect future transit-oriented growth.
The proposal came out last Friday, ahead of the council’s Monday committee meeting, where Planning Services Director Spencer Gardner briefed the dais on his plan. It typically takes weeks or months for the council to reach a final vote, but Gardner fast-tracked the moratorium as an emergency ordinance.
The council people ultimately approved it with a 5-2 vote, meeting the threshold required to pass emergency measures. Gardner said it allows time to plan for the upcoming comprehensive plan update, which will guide development for years to come, arguing that it’s hard to undo construction once a building is up.
“We debated this for a while on Friday, and of course, it’s sort of a set deal, so it’s going to happen,” Councilman Michael Cartcart explained before voting against the moratorium. “There’s better ways we can go about a lot of this stuff so that we’re not chasing away the development we want to see.”
The moratorium prohibits the city from accepting and approving permit applications for drive-throughs and quick-vehicle servicing facilities along the Division Corridor and portions of the Hamilton Corridor, North Monroe and East Sprague. It does not apply to existing facilities or pending permit applications.
The ordinance applies to permit applications for fast-food joints, coffee stands, pharmacies and banks with drive-throughs, car washes, gas stations, oil-change centers and more. Gardner said it came out of a 2024 study that included public feedback favoring walkability near transit-oriented development areas.
He said development planning along the Division Corridor is underway alongside the Spokane Transit Authority’s upcoming Bus Rapid Transit project, which is scheduled to launch in 2030. The moratorium allows the city to plan for transit stops in the area, but not everyone is happy with how it came about.
Brad Barnett, president of the Spokane Business Association, called the move a “legislative ambush.”
“It’s a cloak-and-dagger assault on working families and entrepreneurs in Spokane,” Barnett testified Monday. “You are blinded by an entitled vision of this walkable, bikeable utopia that we would love to see in our community, but is not a reality. You’re choosing transit-oriented theory over human reality.”
Councilmembers Paul Dillon and Sarah Dixit noted the moratorium grandfathers in existing businesses and plans for a future built around pedestrians, cyclists and public transit. Cathcart said he prefers the economic development, calling the 2024 study a “failed policy.” He doubted the recommendation would lead to more housing options and warned against adding it to the comprehensive plan update.
“I don’t care, you know, what sort of lipstick we want to put on that pig,” he said, “but it is still a failed policy that will be a failed policy if it is included in our new and updated comp plan, and that gives me grave pause over what is being proposed right now with our comprehensive plan; it does not work.”
Councilmember Kitty Kitlzke shared some of those concerns but said the moratorium doesn’t prevent them from addressing weaknesses in the study. She attended Monday night’s meeting virtually from Washington, D.C., and argued that the moratorium’s timing allows for better planning to maximize the economic impact of $82 million in STA funding she is currently seeking from the federal government.
She said the upcoming BRT project will bring construction jobs to the city with a “multiplier effect.”
“Add that to the total of $124 million this project would bring to the community,” Klitzke said Monday. “Every dollar that the public invests in transportation, infrastructure for transit, there’s a five times impact, so if we do this right, that could mean $500 million into our local economy for this project.”
Dillon and Councilman Zack Zappone said that they wish the council had approved this much sooner.
Council President Betsy Wilkerson said she isn’t opposed to the moratorium, but raised concerns about how it was pushed as an emergency rather than following the standard process. She said these issues with transit planning along Division are not new and expressed frustration with the lack of outreach.
“The way an emergency ordinance reads is that the need for the moratorium established under this ordinance is sudden, unexpected and requires immediate action,” Wilkerson said before voting against it Monday. “Division is not sudden. It’s not unexpected, and the threat has been there for a long time.”
