Spokane expands 'festival streets' designation, requiring better coordination with local businesses
More of Spokane's roads have been designated "festival streets," making it easier for event organizers to request to close the streets temporarily to vehicle traffic, following a unanimous vote Monday by the City Council .
The city already designates more than a dozen stretches of its streets for local festivals, but Monday's action adds a few more and extends others. It also added new rules to improve communication and coordination between event organizers and the brick-and-mortar businesses that call those streets their homes year-round.
"What I hear from folks all the time is we want a more livable, vibrant, walkable city, and we're using all the different levers we can," Councilman Zack Zappone, who has spearheaded several changes to local law in recent years to ease restrictions for festivals and other public events, said in an interview.
Garland Avenue's festival street designation, for instance, had already existed for the two blocks between Monroe and Post streets, but now extends farther east to Howard Street.
In other cases, the new designations bring festival streets to areas of Spokane that didn't have them, like two stretches of Fifth Avenue in the East Central Neighborhood - between Lee and Altamont streets and between Haven and Green streets - as well as a stretch of Sprague Avenue between Bernard and Division streets near nYne Bar & Bistro and the Greyhound station.
Beyond spurring more community engagement and getting Spokane families outside during the warmer months, Zappone also said street festivals boost nearby businesses.
They can be a mixed bag, though, said Dave Jones, owner of the historic Fergusons Fountain Cafe. The since-discontinued Garland Street Fair was a huge boon for his business - almost too much of a boon, Jones said, musing about his age.
"I'm all for whatever we can do in the Garland District to promote things," Jones said. "If I had any complaint, it would be about the food trucks - it takes away from what we make. The Garland Street Fair, we killed it every time, but the new ones seem to have a lot of food trucks getting in the way of the stores getting business."
The closed street itself does not seem to dampen traffic to the shop, however. If anything, Jones estimated they are busiest during events that do shut down the roadway.
Monday's vote also mandates greater coordination between organizers and local businesses.
"We also heard from businesses, particularly in the Garland Business District, worried they weren't getting notice about when streets would be shut down," Zappone said. "They wanted better communication from the city and event organizers when that happens."
Organizers of street festivals must now notify any businesses, business associations or similar organizations in the vicinity if they plan to shut down the street for an event. Failure to do so would be grounds for the city to deny an event permit.
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