This day in history: Proposed Valley shopping center hit snag. Bootlegger shot during arrest gets 1-day sentence

From 1976: Developer James S. Black proposed a major shopping center in the Spokane Valley at Broadway and Sullivan Road but the Spokane County Planning Commission put the brakes on it.

The commission ordered its staff to prepare an environmental impact statement for the 38-acre site.

The proposed center would have “two department stores, a grocery store, a drug store, a hardware store and parking for 2,500 cars.”

Black said it would have more floor space than Shadle Center, but less than half as much as Northtown.

Black was not exactly thrilled with the commission’s decision. He said he felt as if he had fallen into a “bureaucratic morass” and a “snakepit.”

“What you are presiding over is the demise of the capitalist system, and I’m not so sure you aren’t presiding over the demise of the small, local developer,” Black said.

From 1926: Harry Edlund, operator of a Freeman moonshine still, was sentenced to only one day in jail – for a very good reason.

He had been shot three times during the dry squad’s raid, and the judge apparently decided that Edlund had suffered sufficient punishment.

Mary Holmes, mother of three, did not get off so lightly. She was sentenced to 90 days in jail for violating the liquor laws.

The judge said “she has been before me time and again.” If she showed up one more time, he would impose an even more severe penalty.