New Hope House shelter to be built on downtown Spokane site long used by restaurants
Permits have been issued for the new Hope House shelter for homeless women on the west end of downtown Spokane.
The four-story, 57,000-square-foot building at 1301 W. Third Ave. will replace the existing structure, a former diner and Thai food restaurant has been vacant for a year and a half.
When complete, the building will include a ground-floor homeless shelter with 120 beds exclusively for women. Its upper floors will contain 60 studio apartments for recently homeless women. The building also will have classroom space, meeting rooms, offices for case managers and a full kitchen to cook meals for those in the shelter. The apartments will have their own kitchens.
The building is projected to cost $7 million to build, according to documents filed with city.
The Hope House shelter is a project of the Volunteers of America Eastern Washington & Northern Idaho. The new shelter was made possible with a $1 million grant from Premera Blue Cross, the Washington-based health insurer. The project also was supported with $500,000 awarded by the state Legislature in its capital budget. That funding led to an additional $600,000 in private donations.
In order to reach full capacity, the organization needs about $250,000 to $300,000 from the city, which equates to about 12% of its funding. The shelter will be closed at the existing Hope House and converted to transitional housing when the new location opens.
Though its identity is about to change, the corner of Third and Adams Street has a long history of serving food to travelers.
In 1926, a 4-foot-by-10-foot vegetable stand was built in front of an existing house on the lot to serve motorists on U.S. Highway 10, or the Sunset Highway, which opened in 1915 and ran right in front of the house on Third.
In 1933, Floyd Cady bought the stand for $100 and converted it into a hamburger and coffee restaurant. He called it the Shack. As Cady’s restaurant grew in popularity, so did the structures that housed it. The house was used to prepare food and was soon enveloped by the growing Shack. The roof of the old house still peaks above the center of the restaurant.
In 1949, the Shanty Room Lounge was opened, and the Spokane Daily Chronicle said the Shack “has grown into one of the outstanding restaurants of Spokane.”
By 1988, the Shack was written up in The Spokesman-Review as one of three legendary restaurants still operating in town, along with Casey’s and Travo’s. And it was still serving food it had been for decades: daily roasted whole turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy; pan-fried oysters; Salisbury steak; and liver and onions.
In 2003, the Shack closed its doors and the building became Linnie’s Thai Cuisine. In 2018, the restaurant moved farther west on the Sunset Highway, near Airway Heights. Some of the red “leather” booths are now in Neato Burrito and the Baby Bar in downtown Spokane.
The Hope House project’s contractor is Inland Washington LLC. Chris Weiland at Spokane’s Architecture All Forms designed it.