Tall towers would be allowed in much larger swathe of downtown Spokane under likely reform

Building a tower is complicated for many reasons – engineering, financing, navigating regulatory frameworks – and elected leaders in Spokane are hoping that easing that last variable will be enough to get more towers built .

The city will likely soon expand the areas of its downtown where there’s no limit on the maximum height of new buildings, according to a recent reform proposal from Mayor Lisa Brown and the City Council.

There are already no height restrictions in the city’s downtown core, between Bernard and Monroe streets to the east and west and between Spokane Falls Boulevard and the railroad tracks to the north and south. There are around a dozen towers in downtown Spokane higher than 12 stories tall, with the largest being the 20-story, 288-feet-tall Bank of America Financial Center, according to city records. Most of these are located inside the existing no-restriction zone.

But across most of the rest of the city’s downtown, new buildings cannot be built higher than 12 stories under current code.

City leaders hope that temporarily lifting these restrictions altogether could spur more development on relatively pricey land downtown.

“By eliminating building height limits, we can unlock new opportunities for housing, business growth, and job creation,” Brown said in a Feb. 12 prepared statement.

In an interview, Brown said that she was not aware of specific developments that will definitely progress if the restrictions are lifted, but that developers with whom her administration has spoken broadly expressed interest in seeing relaxed requirements.

“We have been having conversations with some developers who are not headquartered in Spokane, from Salt Lake City and Seattle, that have expressed some interest in the city,” Brown said. “And the question is always what are your rules, what are your incentives?”

If approved by the City Council, whose members across the aisle have in recent years pushed for relaxed development standards, the proposed waiver would last for at least six months. If successful, the waiver could be extended or made permanent when the city updates its comprehensive plan, the guiding document for building across the city, in 2026.

“The idea was: Let’s set this up as a six-month period, kick off a community conversation on it, gauge the interest,” said city Planning Director Spencer Gardner. “And then depending on how the feedback goes as we proceed with our comprehensive plan, or we could just allow it to expire.”

Some exceptions to the proposed height limit waiver won’t be removed without community feedback, Gardner noted. These include city code that restricts buildings from blocking the view from the river to the county courthouse, or tall buildings that could cast shadows onto Peaceful Valley like the 15-story Riverfalls Tower apartment building.

The proposed ordinance also waives requirements for buildings to “set back” the floors above the seventh, meaning additional floors above that point normally have to be smaller than the ones below, and potentially drastically narrower.

The next hearing for the proposed ordinance is scheduled for the March 3 Spokane City Council meeting.