Red Lobster Searching For Spokane Site
Red Lobster will start construction in June at its north Coeur d’Alene site on Neider Avenue just south of Kmart. But the seafood chain has yet to find a site in Spokane.
This is the lastest from the Orlando, Fla.-based seafood giant’s broker in this area.
“I just talked with General Mills (Red Lobster’s parent corporation,” says Marshall Clark. “They’ve purchased a liquor license in Coeur d’Alene. And they are in the process of securing other necessary permits.
“I expect the property transaction to close within 60 days,” said the owner of Clark Commercial Real Estate in Spokane, “and construction will begin immediately thereafter.”
Another bit of good news, Clark reports, is that Red Lobster has decided to take his advice and expand, even before it builds.
“Originally, the restaurant was going to be something like 4,300 square feet,” says the real estate agent. “Now it’s going to be 6,000.”
Clark says resizing the project in anticipation of extra-heavy dining pressure on the first Red Lobster in the Eastern Washington-North Idaho market added to the time it has taken to get the project off the ground.
In Spokane, the broker says, site selection continues to be stalled.
“The prices in Spokane are so high, and they need so much land for the size restaurant they want to build,” says Clark, “that the real estate costs are more than they are ready to pay.”
Asked if he had any idea when the longsought restaurant chain might come to this city, Clark said, “I just don’t know. I wish I did.”
Likewise.
Readers inquire constantly. And, obviously, they rave about the food.
Many complain that Red Lobster is so slow. A few complain about the attention this column has given to what they assume to be my favorite restaurant.
The fact is, I’m not fond of it. But overwhelmingly, readers are. And the news is for them.
However, since the issue has been raised, my taste in restaurants runs to the more experimental or avant garde - Fugazzi, II Moon, the Au Croissant on North Howard at night.
On the other hand, Betty Thornton says, “I travel all over the region just to eat at Red Lobster - in Seattle, in the TriCities, in Boise.
“I grew up in New York City,” says the Spokane transplant, “and nothing can compare with the food there. But out here, Red Lobster’s the best.”So, while Red Lobster may not exactly suit my taste or come up to the standards of some who style themselves as connoisseurs, it would appear these restaurants have something going for them.
Back in Idaho again, a mutual acquaintance reminded me that Festival at Sandpoint executive director Connie Berghan and Sandpoint Mayor Ron Chaney are father and daughter.
At least they were before the mayor turned thumbs down on the community’s No. 1 cultural claim to fame, voting with members of the city council to evict the concert series from its home of many years.
Now other communities are bidding for this prize. And insiders say Berghan is steamed. Even the Spokane City Council couldn’t top this act.
Sharon Armstrong of Spokane, you are so lucky that you live on the north side of College Avenue.
If you lived on the south side, your house would be in the Downtown Action Committee’s proposed new Parking Business Improvement Area.
And being that your home is a duplex and is taxed by the city as a commercial enterprise - even though only your family members live in both sides of the duplex - you’d probably get taxed as a business.
“It is not a business or businessrelated,” Armstrong wrote in a letter seeking my help. “It is just my very fragile, very old house and home for more than 30 years.”
And, she says, there are four neighbor homes - three in her block, and one a block down. All, like hers, are on the north side of the street.
No problem, says Karen Valvano, consultant to the Downtown Action Committee - the center line of College Avenue is the north boundary of the special taxing district for businesses.
“Whew!” says Armstrong. “That’s a fine line.”
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