Stored Cars Violate Zoning Code, Spawn Complaint Pawn Shop Owner Says Cars Are Legal In Business Zone In/Around: East Spokane

Bruno Cardone wishes the dozens of cars next to his South Custer property would disappear.

Gordon Schuler, who owns the Dog Bone Pawn and Loan, has been storing vehicles at E4606 First for about a year.

The process of bringing the Valley lot into code compliance isn’t making either Cardone or Schuler happy.

Although Spokane County permits most of the vehicles to be parked in the community business zone there, several inoperable or unlicensed cars violate the zoning code.

Cardone doesn’t particularly care what shape the cars - many of which are pawned - are in. “I’d like to see them go, period,” he said.

He complained to the county last summer, but was frustrated with the response. “Nobody can do anything,” the longtime Valley resident said.

Schuler said, “I think I’m being treated unfairly. There’s nothing wrong with what I’m doing.”

According to Louis Webster, the county’s zoning enforcement officer, cars must be licensed and working to be parked in the lot.

Webster investigated the property last August and informed Schuler of the violation, but nearly five months later, two disabled vehicles and eight unlicensed vehicles are being stored there, Webster said.

If Schuler doesn’t remove the illegal vehicles soon, Webster said the case will go to court.

If convicted, Webster said, Schuler would face a maximum fine of $1,000 or 30 days in jail, with another four days for each day the offense continues.

“When a vehicle is not licensed or operable,” Webster said, “it ceases to be a vehicle, it becomes a stored item.”

In a community business zone, he said, such items can only be stored inside buildings.

Schuler said that his policy is to only accept licensed, running cars.

But if someone pawns an unlicensed vehicle for a loan, Schuler argues, they probably don’t have enough money to buy a license.

“Sometimes people haven’t been able to afford to get them right away,” Schuler said.

And if a tire goes flat while the car is in the lot, that vehicle becomes inoperable and illegal.

“How is that supposed to make whoever made the complaint feel better if the cars are licensed and don’t have flat tires?” Schuler said. “It’s not doing anybody any good.”

According to Schuler, the property he has owned for about a year has been used for storing vehicles for years. “When I bought it,” he said, “there were boats, trucks, cars and buses there.”

But Schuler said that he has been working on bringing the site up to code.

After Webster’s first inspection on Aug. 29, he has visited the site several times and extended the deadline for Schuler to end the violation.

“Getting the property into compliance is my main objective,” Webster said.

Schuler said that county officials have noted improvements, but then told him about others requirements, such as removing refrigerators and a dishwasher from the property.

“I’m getting sick of it,” said Schuler, who has no plans to move all the cars. “It’s an improper complaint.”

But Cardone complains that the yard’s appearance has lowered the value of his property. He doesn’t live right next to the car lot anymore, but he still owns several houses and a duplex nearby.

“It’s terrible,” he said. “It should go out in the country, not in the middle of town.”

The pawn shop owner said that letting people borrow money against their cars is providing a needed service in the community.

“A law should have some kind of meaning,” Schuler said. “Storing cars isn’t junking them.”