New drive-thrus, service stations banned along some major Spokane arterials, paving way for bus-centric development

New drive-thrus, gas stations, car washes and other service stations cannot be built in large swaths of Spokane for a year.

The emergency moratorium passed by the City Council on Monday came with little warning and was approved by a 5-2 vote under emergency provisions, meaning it takes effect immediately.

The moratorium will affect most of the Division Street corridor north of the river, along with large sections of Hamilton and Monroe, a chunk of East Central around Sprague, and a number of other isolated areas of the city. The moratorium would not affect drive-thrus or service stations that already have building permits approved by the city, nor does it impact existing businesses.

“This isn’t punishing existing businesses,” Councilman Paul Dillon said ahead of the vote. “Your Starbucks, they’re grandfathered in. Your Zip’s, they’re grandfathered in. Your Dutch Brothers, they’re grandfathered in.”

The moratorium is targeted to areas of the city near existing or planned high-traffic transit stops, including the Division Rapid Transit line expected to launch in 2030. City staff argue that a sweeping ban in these areas is necessary to reduce the potential for collisions between vehicles regularly going in and out of businesses and pedestrians walking to and from bus stops.

“I have two small, young children who I would not have survived their infancy without drive-thrus,” Councilwoman Kate Telis said Monday. “There will still be drive-thrus. I also would like (my children) to be able to bike wherever they grow up without possibly being hit by a car, which we know that these sorts of facilities create more danger of.”

The call to halt new drive-thru construction comes as the city works to update its development codes and comprehensive plan, both of which would permanently steer what can be built where in city limits. Spokane Development Services Director Spencer Gardner suggested that drive-thrus and service stations may eventually be allowed in some areas now covered by the moratorium, and some areas not covered may have this kind of development banned during permanent code changes.

In the interim, the moratorium would halt projects that “run counter to the adopted goals, plans and aims” of the city, according to council documents.

“Once those uses are established, there really isn’t a realistic mechanism to remove them,” Gardner told council members Monday. “Preventing them from being established in the first place are an important part of making sure we don’t live with decisions that are happening now for potentially generations.”

Councilman Michael Cathcart noted that many of the corridors where the moratorium would take effect, especially the Division Street corridor, are already heavily developed with the kinds of businesses now being banned, and those that would be allowed still lead people to turn directly onto and off of the arterial.

“So are we planning to close a substantial portion of those so you no longer have those access points on Division?” Cathcart asked Gardner. “Are we going to force existing businesses to use alleyways?”

Cathcart added that part of the push for “transit-oriented development” along that corridor focuses on high-density housing along the future rapid bus route.

“The impact of this (ordinance) is going to be minuscule compared to existing impact and potential future impact from residential development, so how are we rectifying those?” Cathcart asked.

Gardner acknowledged that “an important part of success on Division” would be to push more ingress and egress points off of the arterial and onto perpendicular streets and alleys, but that this would have to be done slowly as existing businesses were redeveloped and replaced.

“At this point, there is no proposal, and I would not anticipate a proposal for the city to go in and forcibly close access across large portions of Division,” Gardner said. “The concern with the moratorium is that we really need to stop the bleeding now … and then there’s a lot of repair that needs to happen to address what happened in the past.”

Council President Betsy Wilkerson expressed some confusion over why the proposal was coming to the council now, as opposed to two years ago or at any prior point when the city was considering development along its transit-dense arterials. She also questioned why it had to be approved as an emergency, rather than going through the normal roughly two-month process for council approval.

Gardner argued his department had expected to address the issue with permanent code changes, but recent development trends made it clear that too much of this type of development would occur before those changes were made. In an email, he said the city could not point to specific examples that drove the sense of urgency.

As for why it was an emergency, Gardner wrote in an email that this is standard procedure for a development moratorium.

“Leaving a window open for people to vest after adoption creates an opportunity for people to rush in and permit development,” he wrote.

Cathcart questioned that reasoning, arguing that the city could have gone through its standard process without consequence.

More broadly, Cathcart opposed regulations prohibiting the development of drive-thrus and argued that prior attempts to push transit-oriented development to spur residential growth along Spokane’s major corridors have borne little fruit.

“At the end of the day, I think we need to allow the market to work,” Cathcart said. “We should implement standards if we really want them, but to just ban things, I’ve been so opposed to banning things.”

Both Cathcart and Wilkerson voted against the moratorium; Wilkerson said she supported the concept but disagreed that there was an emergency. She expressed skepticism that the development of drive-thrus on Division Street was somehow a surprise to development staff demanding immediate action.

It’s not the first time in recent years that this council has tried to pump the brakes on new drive-thrus in congested areas of the city. In 2024, Dillon worked to change the zoning on a busy stretch of East 29th Avenue to prohibit new drive-thrus in the area, putting an end to plans for a new Chick-Fil-A there.

In 2025, that business pivoted to seek a permit at the intersection of Ruby and Mission – which lands squarely inside of the new, much larger moratorium area being considered. City officials could not be immediately reached to confirm whether that permit has been approved.