Mayoral Candidate Wants Density in Spokane, But Do Voters?

Spokane Mayoral hopeful Ben Stuckart says he read Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking and was convinced on the ills of parking minimums. In his time as a local politician, he's sided with restaurants that wanted to turn their parking lots into a patio and removing downtown surface parking lots before taking more sweeping action. "He passed an ordinance last week that would allow residential developers to build apartments in some dense areas of the city without any parking lots at all," Daniel Walters writes for Inlander.

None of that pro-density work was without opposition within the council and from people in Spokane. Stuckart acknowledges that trying to make a denser more walkable downtown Spokane may cost him politically in the mayoral election, but says its worth it because it’s the right thing to do for the future of city tax revenue, the environment, and for affordable housing.