Plans to develop a Burger King restaurant at the site of a former Shari’s restaurant at the southwest corner of the busy intersection of Monroe Street, Indiana Avenue, and Northwest Boulevard have been shelved, sparking complaints from a commercial real estate broker about city regulations. 

Torgerson Properties, of Spokane, had filed a predevelopment application with the city of Spokane last month, listing its intention to demolish the former Shari’s building at 1829 N. Monroe and replace it with a Burger King restaurant. 

The Shari’s outlet has been closed now for three years, says Lloyd Torgerson, who owns the property. While he declined to disclose further details about the Burger King project, he says it’s been difficult to secure a new tenant for the site. 

He says original plans for the property won’t be moving ahead at this time, as a result of its design not meeting city regulations. 

Plans indicate that the Burger King building would be just over 4,000 square feet, with a drive-thru lane along its east side, parallel to Monroe Street. 

Tami Palmquist, an assistant planner at the city, says the design, particularly the drive-thru portion, was rejected because it doesn’t meet the city’s regulations. 

“Our centers-and-corridors regulations were revised last summer, and drive-thrus were a big part of some of those changes,” she says. 

The city’s centers-and-corridors design guidelines state that drive-thru lanes shall not be located between the building and the street.

 “Monroe is a pedestrian street, and we want to emphasize that. Locating a drive-thru between the building and the street is not the type of environment we want to create,” says Palmquist.  

She says the next step would be for Torgerson Properties to review and modify the areas of its design plan that need attention and to resubmit the plan for approval. 

“We’ve highlighted the areas of that design that were of concern to us. Now it’s up to their designers to come back with something that better represents centers-and-corridors design standards,” she says. 

Marshall Clark, president and broker with Clark Pacific Real Estate Co, says he has been struggling to assist Torgerson in finding a suitable tenant. 

“We had been negotiating with Burger King for a location there, but they became so frustrated with the city’s regulations that they gave up,” he says. 

Clark says he views the updated regulations, as well as planned changes to north Monroe Street, as being anti-business. 

“The bottom line seems to be that the city doesn’t want fast-food restaurants on main streets like Monroe,” he says. “Between the planned road changes and the updated regulations, they’re really fighting to make it impossible to have a drive-thru style restaurant in those areas.” 

Some of Clark’s comments related to modifications the city plans to make along north Monroe Street. Last year, the city announced it received grant funding totaling $4.1 million to improve a portion of that arterial. The project is planned for 2017, and aims to improve pedestrian safety, enhance the streetscape, and reconfigure traffic from its current four travel lanes with a narrow center turn lane, to two travel lanes with the a center turn lane. 

The project will run from just north of Indiana Avenue to Kiernan Avenue, near the top of the Monroe Street hill. The reconfiguration, however, will be limited to the section between Shannon Avenue, which is one block north of Indiana, and Cora Avenue, at the base of the hill.

Clark says he thinks the planned reconfiguration will only increase traffic congestion, encouraging drivers to cut through residential areas and increasing the danger to pedestrians. 

He says the area’s one fast-food restaurant, a McDonald’s outlet at the southeast corner of Indiana and Monroe, has a consistently busy drive-thru lane. 

“There’s definitely a need for another fast-food option there, and we do still have a lot of interested tenants,” he says. “It’s hard to find a tenant that is willing to go through this hassle with the city, but for now, the plan is to keep trying.” 

City Council member Amber Waldref, who was instrumental in creating the updates to the city’s centers-and-corridors regulations, asserts that the changes ultimately will benefit the area, generating new business. 

“The public improvements taking place along Monroe in the coming years will drive investments for many different businesses other than drive-thrus,” says Waldref.  

She acknowledge that the changes in the design guidelines will make it more difficult for those businesses focused on developing a traditional drive-thru model. 

“I would encourage them to consider redesign, or look at building on those streets zoned for commercial uses,” she says. “We’re doing all we can to keep pedestrian access the primary focus, while still leaving room for architects to achieve their design goals.”