Spokane Way reopens soon – but one business owner suggests an alternative

Road repairs, closures and detours in commercial districts can be a pain point for nearby business owners – sometimes measurable in loss of revenue if potential customers avoid the area. 

But the owners of one longstanding business in central Grand Coulee would like to see the lower portion of Spokane Way – closed for an emergency sewer line repair since April – remain closed to traffic permanently. 

Carrie Riechmann owns the TeePee Drive-In restaurant along with her husband Jesse. She said her family has serious safety concerns after witnessing several near misses of pedestrians by drivers traveling too fast, cutting the curb corner, or not obeying the stop sign where Spokane Way meets highway 155.

“We’ve seen three kids almost get run over by a car,” she said. “Honestly, for us, I would prefer them to keep the road closed forever, and turn it into some kind of parking.”

The portion of Spokane Way has been blocked off to through traffic since early April, when crews discovered a badly corroded sewer line, forcing the city to hire a contractor for emergency repair of the section under that block.

That work began April 17 and was supposed to take a week, according to then-Public Works Director Dennis Francis, who has since retired.

While the line repair happened promptly, the road has remained closed to through traffic until the surface can be repaved over the repaired line — something that will hopefully happen in the next couple of months, according to Lorna Pearce, the Grand Coulee clerk.

It is slated to be part of a package of chipseal and crackseal repairs happening on roads in Electric City, Grand Coulee and Coulee Dam this summer, she said.

Riechmann’s safety concerns for that intersection go back to when she and her husband purchased the TeePee Drive-In four years ago. One particularly scary day was Kids Fest a couple of years ago.

“My dad and I were outside working on the building, two Junes ago,” she said. “They didn’t shut the road down. And that’s when we saw two kids that day almost got run over by trucks. So my dad and I were like, ‘We’re quitting for the day. We’re not watching this happen.”

Riechmann said one of her employees taking out the trash last summer was almost struck by a car that jumped the curb due to high speed.

“People go way too fast down that [Spokane Way] hill,” she said. “And then you get the tourists that have boats or trailers attached, and they don’t stop. They can’t stop.”

Other businesses in the area weren’t sure about a permanent closure, though they sounded open to it when asked.

“It might not be a bad idea if there was parking there,” said Shirley Palanuk, an owner of Sweet Pickens store, which moved to 1 Spokane Way in mid-June from their previous location in the Centerline Building on Midway. “I don’t know how I feel about it.”

Palanuk said she and her co-owners are certain the limited access has impacted their sales, though they can’t point to any positive proof.

“The problem is we know it’s affecting it but we cannot tell how much, because we were not there [at that location] before,” she said. “We have no idea if it’s $10, $100, or $1,000.”

At the request of the shop owners, the city opened the road for local access in June, so people could drive up and park on the street.

Marlene Oddie, who owns nearby Kissed Quilts, said she sees the big trailers and RVs having a difficult time turning left onto Main Street, when they’re driving down from the motels.

“There should be a sign way above Voltage, way above the hotel, that says Local Access Only,” she suggested.

Overall, she said, “I haven’t seen it as a problem. To have Main Street being more of a destination would be huge.”

The city expects the road to be re-paved this summer and has no plans to close it off. The repairs will be funded by a grant from the state Transportation Improvement Board.