Golden Arches Reach Into The Garland District

A business icon has found a new home between the historic Garland Theater and the landmark Milk Bottle Restaurant. The Golden Arches have arrived on Garland Avenue.

Franchise owner Mark Ray opened a McDonald’s Express restaurant recently in the Garland Theater building.

The McDonald’s Express - an experimental 30-seat restaurant serving a limited menu of soft drinks, french fries and hamburgers - has received mixed reviews from merchants in the quaint Garland Avenue business district.

“Ready or not, the Big Mac is here,” said Holly Ann McConnell, owner of Holly Ann’s Health Food Store.

Putting Spokane’s fourth McDonald’s Express on nostalgic West Garland is a compliment to the stability of the little business district, she said. But limited parking has made the restaurant a hot topic of coffee talk up and down the street.

“The unique thing about Garland is every business - except the bank, the 7-Eleven and now the McDonald’s - is operated by the owners,” said Charlie Wash, owner of Bud Browne Appliance.

Some merchants grumble that parking could be an extra problem with the Golden Arches around.

As a tenant in the Garland Theater building, McDonald’s can offer its customers parking in the lot behind the theater. But some wonder whether people suffering a Big Mac attack will park in the theater lot and walk halfway around the block to the restaurant. The owner of Corky’s Drive In, a restaurant across the street from the McDonald’s Express, says McDonald’s customers already are parking in his lot.

Ray said parking should not be a problem. He’s expecting the Garland district’s foot traffic to generate most of his business. The McDonald’s Express restaurants are designed to cater to foot traffic.

“Our thought was there were some McDonald’s customers we were missing,” Ray said.

Customers with cars would likely choose to patronize one of the four full-fare McDonald’s restaurants within two miles of the new McDonald’s Express, he said.

The Garland business district’s eclectic collection of family-run shops draws foot traffic along the avenue. And the Garland Dollar Theater guarantees that crowds of people will pass McDonald’s door whenever a popular movie is being shown.

Theater manager Paul Quam even plans to let customers carry McDonald’s food into the movies.

For him, McDonald’s promises to be a clean, well-kept neighbor. Quam has even installed high wattage lights outside the Garland to keep up with the McDonald’s Express, which emanates yellow light at night.

Like Quam, many Garland merchants welcome McDonald’s as a business neighbor.

Only one Garland business is gearing up to compete directly: Corky’s Drive In. Ron Campbell, his wife and another partner bought the 30-year-old restaurant on Jan. 12. For them, the prospect of competing head to head against McDonald’s is a little unsettling.

“When you have your whole life savings wrapped up in a place, you don’t like McDonald’s moving in across the street,” Campbell admitted. But, he said, Corky’s is expanding its deli and ice cream offerings - and hoping to hold onto a piece of the Garland market.