Spokane Transit Plaza
701 West Riverside Avenue
by Orion Moon


If one wanted to catch a bus in downtown Spokane twenty years ago, they would wait outside at one of a dozen stops distributed unevenly within a quarter-mile radius of the intersection of Howard and Riverside, more often than not in the cold or rain. These stops were positioned directly in front of businesses, much as they are today in Seattle, and small crowds would form and make it difficult to enter or leave at peak hours.

Across the street, where the Bank of Whitman building is now, there was a Newbury's five-and-dime with a cafe on the ground floor, very much like the Satellite, and I would wait there for the number 24 route that served the Garland district. The surrounding blocks are, at street level, unrecognizable now to a visitor that's been away since that time.

The site of the plaza was an open crater for eight years, surrounded by cyclone fencing. The flaking outline remnants of the ghost-rooms of the demolished building that once stood here loomed over the site, visible on the exposed wall of the building next door. The squabbling over what would be built here seemed interminable. There was to be a bus station with a 25-story skyscraper above it. There would be a simple concrete-floored open-air shelter with a small indoor kiosk. There were a number of competing concepts, and an equal number of competing financing schemes and private developers with ambitions larger than their wallets. The compromise solution became what you see around us.

The Plaza opened on July 20th 1995. I was present that day as much out of excitement as necessity, having watched the yearlong construction process from across the street. There was a considerable degree of controversy about the cost of the project (34 million dollars adjusted for inflation), about the materials used (imported Italian marble tile!), and the design features (The glass elevators, skylight, and weirdly ostentatious escalator waterfall, with COUGARS). This facility is unusual, a bit surreal, and possibly unique.

The central location of the Plaza, the accessibility of all system routes here, the arrival/departure displays, the connection to the skywalk network, the proximity to rail and Greyhound service only blocks away, and simply having an enclosed, warm, secure place to wait for a bus are all massive advantages for transit users. It's possible that nothing quite like this exists in any other US city. We're kinda spoiled rotten here.

Let's digress and use a hypothetical scenario to illustrate the volume of time that one might spend there. You're a waitperson at Denney's on North Division, and you live in West Central. Let's say you spend an average of forty minutes here each day waiting for a transfer both ways (assuming everything goes well), twice a day, five days a week. I've subtracted two weeks of vacations and catching rides with friends occasionally. You work there for three years. In the course of those three years, you spend almost precisely three weeks of notional contiguous time in or around this building. Over the course of those three weeks, you bear witness to or experience thousands of interpersonal encounters. How many of them are memorable? This place is filled with all these tiny, fragmented stories.

Your home is the Great American Novel. Your workplace is ugly paid-by-the-inch bestseller pablum, if you tart it up enough. What happened during your commute is a cheap Micheal Bay action movie script, especially if you had to run to catch the bus and you're still sweating when you get where you're going. What happens here are the strange little Ray Bradbury compilation tales...the Old Guy who spun around and waved endlessly, the Smoking Nazis herding people into a fifteen square-foot triangle out the east door, The Plaza Rats you see every single day occupying their living room away from home. All of it happens with this amazing, kind of dreamlike backdrop.

I wanted to write about the Plaza intending ridicule, and found out how much I appreciate it. That doesn't mean I want to spend any more time there than I need to. I hate waiting for things, and waiting for them in public, fidgeting and glancing around with nothing to do, makes me feel like an asshole.


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