City’s proposed zoning plan may put a stop to pharmacy

A new Rite Aid store planned at Sprague and Pines may be halted by the proposed zoning code city officials hope will revitalize the Sprague-Appleway corridor.

The Sprague-Appleway Revitalization Plan calls for buildings to be built close to the street with parking in back, a lot like the buildings to be demolished.

“Rite Aid won’t do that,” land owner Tom Hamilton said. “… There’s no retailer in his right mind that would want to do what the new code calls for.”

Hamilton said city officials told him “months and months and months ago” that he could move an alley 26 feet south to accommodate the new Rite Aid, but they also said the store building would have to abut Sprague Avenue.

“Well, if we have to move the building out to the street, we don’t need to move the alley,” he said.

The Spokane Valley City Council approved the alley relocation in June, and Hamilton said he will apply for a building permit under the old rules if Rite Aid signs a lease in time.

“I think we’re getting close,” he said.

Store officials have said they’ll keep their store in its current location across Sprague if they’re subjected to the proposed code, according to Hamilton.

Even so, he said the code would have to be met if the existing store were remodeled. The threshold – renovations costing 20 percent or more of the store’s value – would guarantee that.

“Twenty percent is not much,” Hamilton said.

He predicts a revolt.

“I question if the Valley isn’t going to have lawsuits over that proposed plan,” Hamilton said. “I would almost assure there will be lawsuits that will try and stop it.”

The plan overreaches its original goal of building a “city center” district, and should be pared back to keep from stifling retailers, Hamilton believes.

“That thing’s pretty complicated, and I haven’t tried to digest all of it,” Hamilton said. “But this nonsense of moving buildings out to the street and then putting housing above it, I don’t know …”

Other businessmen feel the same way, he said.

“I haven’t talked to anybody that doesn’t, and I’ve talked to dozens,” Hamilton said.

But he’s not optimistic that the Spokane Valley City Council will reconsider.

“They’re nice people, and I think they mean well,” Hamilton said. “They listen, but I don’t think it changes a thing. I think their mind is totally set.”

In his view a plan that encourages people to walk and ride bicycles in a miles-long city like Spokane Valley is doomed to failure.

“In my lifetime, we are not going to be a walking community,” he said. “People drive cars.”

Even in relatively confined Liberty Lake, where he recently completed a street-front Walgreen’s project, Hamilton said the “total complaint of the community is that fact that it’s sitting out at the sidewalk area.”

However, there are aspects of the Sprague-Appleway plan Hamilton likes, particularly a city center with two-way traffic restored on Sprague Avenue.

“There’s not a consumer out there that wants it to go back to two-way,” he conceded. “Everybody loves it, and I do, too. It moves traffic and it’s wonderful in that regard, but it killed Sprague Avenue.”

Hamilton said he owned several Sprague Avenue businesses that failed when the Sprague-Appleway one-way couplet was created.

He said he’d like to see a compromise in which Appleway Boulevard remains one-way eastbound and Sprague Avenue is restored to two-way traffic only east of Dishman Road.