Tidyman’s Argonne Siting Protested Eugster Files Appeal Claiming Extra Traffic Would Hurt Business

Tidyman’s is facing a delay in its plans to build a new grocery store near the corner of Argonne Road and Interstate 90.

Spokane County approved a zoning change allowing the store to be built, but a San Francisco-based investment company that owns Argonne Village has appealed that decision.

The Board of County Commissioners will hear the appeal Feb. 28.

Last month, the hearing examiner committee unanimously approved Tidyman’s Warehouse Foods Store’s request to make the six-acre site one commercial zone.

Attorney Steve Eugster, representing GVL Investors Partnership, filed an appeal Dec. 23, claiming that the rezone would have a negative effect on the area’s traffic.

The proposed Tidyman’s grocery store - the Valley’s second - would contain about 50,000 square feet of space. It would cost about $6 million to build and stock.

The site is about a block south of Argonne Village, a strip mall whose tenants include The Hungry Farmer restaurant and Super Save Drug Store.

According to the appeal, the rezone would dramatically affect traffic flow on Argonne at the proposed Tidyman’s site and the I-90 off-ramp.

No traffic studies have examined the number of vehicles that will go in and out of the Tidyman’s site, said Eugster.

Based on national studies, Eugster estimates that a store of that size would generate about 7,000 to 9,000 vehicle trips a day.

“Why is a person going to want to exit off the freeway (at Argonne) if word gets out that they’re going to be slowed up?” he said.

Mike Davis, chief financial officer for Tidyman’s, said that the appeal probably won’t set back plans for starting construction in the spring.

Davis said that Tidyman’s had presented reports by the state Department of Transportation and the county’s planning department. “They felt that traffic was not an issue for this site,” he said.

“We’ve done everything that’s appropriate,” Davis said. “That’s why we received the approval.”

Eugster said that rezoning the proposed Tidyman’s lot does not follow urban growth management principles.

“Part of the plan here is not to end up having blighted urban areas because we have a sprawling kind of growth,” he said.

Since commercial space already exists, Eugster said, that should be used instead of rezoning other property for commercial use. “The county is replete with areas that are being left empty.”

But GVL Investors’ interest in the proposed Tidyman’s site may also have to do with plans to develop its own lot next to Argonne Village, according to one Argonne Village store manager.

Kevin Olson, manager of Super Save Drug Store and president of the Argonne Village Merchants Association, said that he wants a grocery store to move in between Super Save Drug Store and Stroh’s Fitness & Racquet Club on Montgomery.

“The tenants would like to see a Tidyman’s or a Rosauer’s or whatever in their shopping center,” Olson said.

That would make use of currently vacant space, he said. “Why do we have to go and rip up other land?”