McGlades Reversal

Appeals court sides with north Spokane area neighbors and Center for Justice in dispute over the reach of the state’s Growth Management Act.

In a pivotal ruling on the reach of the state’s Growth Management Act, a state court of appeals panel has unanimously ruled that a state Growth Management Hearings Board does have jurisdiction over alleged land use violations at a controversial development in north Spokane County. A Spokane County Superior Court judge had previously ruled otherwise.

The McGlades Bistro north of Spokane

The case involves a restaurant—McGlades Bistro and Wine Bar—that opened in 2006 on the site of a former fruit stand in the foothills leading to Mount Spokane. The Center for Justice represents neighbors in the area who’ve long contended that the restaurant’s existence and operations on the site violated state land use and environmental protection laws.

In 2008 the Eastern Washington Growth Management Hearings board emphatically agreed with the Center and the neighbors. In a withering decision it not only agreed that the development violated several substantive provisions of state law, but it capped its ruling with a formal finding of “invalidity.”

The restaurants owners appealed the hearings board’s decision to Spokane Superior Court, where Judge Jerome Leveque ruled that the hearings board did not have jurisdiction because Spokane County’s 2007 decision to change the land use designation at the site (to allow the restaurant to operate legally) was a “site specific” decision outside the state hearings board’s purview.

In an unpublished opinion made available Thursday, the appeals court panel found that Judge Levesque got it wrong.

While the appeals agreed that the hearings board does not have jurisdiction over challenges to site-specific land use decisions, it noted that the site-specific change sought in the McGlades case was rooted in a petition to the county from McGlades to make the change was part of a county comprehensive plan amendment.

“The Growth Management Act (GMA) does not make a distinction between site-specific and general comprehensive plan amendments,” the appeals court concluded. “Neither does the GMA recognize a single reclassification approach of ‘site specific Comprehensive Plan Maps,’ urged by McGlades. The Hearings Board had jurisdiction to review the petition.”

“What this does,” says Center for Justice attorney Rick Eichstaedt, who represented the neighbors in the appeal, “is affirm that the Growth Management Hearings Board decision was correct, that this was not an appropriate land use designation.”

Where the case goes from here remains something of an open question, because the McGlades owners can choose to challenge the substantive findings of the legal violations contained in the board’s 2008 ruling. In a separate action, the Center, again on behalf of the neighbors, has alleged that the restaurant’s operations violate the county’s critical areas ordinance. A superior court judge has rejected that argument but the Center has appealed that decisions, as well, to the appeals court.

As of the January 1st, however, the McGlades ownership posted a notice on the restaurant’s website that it is “no longer open for business,” but that it would honor “all prior reservations made.”

–CFJ