Chick-fil-A owners seek building permit on the South Hill as effort to quash drive-thrus picks up steam in neighborhood

What came first, the Chick-fil-A or the newly hatched plan that would prohibit drive-thru businesses on East 29th Avenue on Spokane’s South Hill?

The chicken sandwich wins, by a feather.

Developers this week submitted a building permit request for a new Chick-fil-A at 2820 E. 29th Ave. near the busy intersection with Regal Street.

That request was submitted just days before an agenda item scheduled for Monday by the Spokane City Council that, if passed, would prohibit new drive-thru businesses in what is described as a more pedestrian friendly designation for that area.

Chick-fil-A representatives “presented to us all of the components needed for a building-permit review,” said Donna deBit, senior planner with the city. “We accepted their plans for review. Now, we will perform our review.”

When the same crew met city planners in 2022, the initial plan for the land owned by the late Harlan and Maxine Douglass called for a quick-service restaurant with a double drive-thru. But it did not meet city code.

The city’s deBit explained that the initial proposals included more than 100 parking stalls. However, the current zone at that location allows only 21. The building permit request submitted this week included only 21 parking stalls.

“We are not seeing anything about this that would be against code,” deBit said of the proposal.

Despite the submittal this week, neighbors should not expect to see heavy equipment tearing up the largely vacant parking lot anytime soon.

“Even for an initial review, we are five to six weeks before we get to the first round of comments,” she said. “And that’s not taking into consideration the traffic review, which is not done yet.”

The developers submitted a traffic study with what they expect would be the maximum vehicle trips generated by the popular restaurant at peak business.

For example, when the only area Chick-fil-A opened in December 2020 at 9304 N. Newport Highway, Spokane Police sent six patrol officers and a supervisor to help manage lines of traffic as some customers waited hours to order sandwiches.

The proposed South Hill site could be the third location after the company announced earlier this month that it plans to build a $2.1 million restaurant near Gonzaga University on the southeast corner of Mission Avenue and Ruby Street, according city documents.

That proposed restaurant near Gonzaga is under what’s called a “SEPA review,” deBit said, which entails an environmental assessment named after the State Environmental Policy Act. Development essentially stops until that review is completed.

As for the South Hill plan, traffic concerns are expected to become a major hurdle before customers start lining up for chicken sandwiches.

Councilman Paul Dillon, who is cosponsoring the Monday ordinance that would reclassify this portion of East 29th Avenue to a pedestrian street designation and block new drive-thrus from coming to the area, said on the campaign trail last year that he opposed Chick-fil-A from coming to this site, pointing at the time to news reports of heavy traffic created by the restaurant chain.

In a brief Thursday interview, however, Dillon said the zoning change was needed regardless of whether Chick-fil-A was able to apply for a permit before the rule change.

“This ordinance is not about any specific drive-thru, it is about the long-term planning for the neighborhood,” he said. “The language in the ordinance really reflects what the Lincoln Heights neighborhood has been asking for for years, which is better pedestrian access and traffic calming.

“This does not change that at all,” he added.

Dillon acknowledged that he personally disagrees with the politics of the fast food chain, whose CEO, Dan Cathy, stated in 2012 that “we’re inviting God’s judgment on our nation” by legalizing same-sex marriage. But Dillon said the motivation for the ordinance was strictly about traffic concerns and a broader push to increase residential development in certain corridors.

“It’s about scale, really,” Dillon said of his particular concerns with a Chick-fil-A at that site. “It’s about the size of the parking lot, the specific concerns around increased congestion, and 29th already has a crowded cluster of drive-thrus.”

Senior Traffic Planning Engineer Inga Note wrote in an email Thursday that the city expected an updated traffic analysis on the potential impacts the restaurant could have for the area in the next week or two.

Dillon noted that portions of nine other streets, such as East Sprague Avenue, West Garland Avenue and North Monroe Street, already have similar pedestrian designations.

“As a council member, my job is to represent the neighborhoods and not a big corporate drive-thru, who don’t need me as their representative because they have plenty of representation already,” Dillon said.

Reporter Emry Dinman contributed to this article.