Совет города Спокен продлил в третий раз отмену ограничений по высоте для небоскребов в центре

Spokane council again extends waiver on height restrictions for downtown high-rises, expecting to make change permanent For the third time, Spokane’s City Council on Wednesday extended a waiver on height restrictions and other limitations on new tall buildings in its downtown core. Eighteen months after it was first implemented, no building permits have been filed to construct the city’s newest high-rise, though city planners expect it’s only a matter of time. “We don’t have any yet, but we anticipate some are coming, and when those come in, we’re going to work hard with those people to make it work,” said city Spokeswoman Erin Hut. The waiver was first approved for six months in early 2025, sponsored by Councilman Zack Zappone and former Councilman Jonathan Bingle, and had been extended twice before for six months at a time, a quirk of adopting temporary changes to building code, Planning Director Spencer Gardner told the council in mid-August. Gardner noted the city intends to make the change permanent in its ongoing code updates. “I anticipate this will be the last extension,” Gardner said. “Our hope is to have our code update completed by the time this would expire.” There already were no height restrictions in the city’s downtown core, between Bernard and Monroe streets to the east and west and between Spokane Falls Boulevard and the railroad tracks to the north and south. The interim reforms greatly expanded where developers can build as tall as they want. The new interim law also waives requirements for buildings to “set back” the floors above the seventh, meaning additional floors above that point previously had to be smaller than the ones below, and potentially drastically narrower. There are around a dozen towers in downtown Spokane higher than 12 stories tall, with the largest being the 20-story, 288-foot-tall Bank of America Financial Center, according to city records. Most of these are located inside the permanent no-restriction zone. But across most of the rest of the city’s downtown, new buildings could not be built higher than 12 stories under prior code. “I remember walking downtown one day and looking up at the buildings and thinking, we haven’t had a new big building since at least the (Davenport) Grand, and before that, Bank of America,” Bingle said in a Wednesday interview. “Why don’t we have cranes in the sky?”