The Blvd. | Moving to Riverside Ave.

Well folks, tonight marks the end of The Blvd's five year run as a Spokane live music venue. At their current address anyway.

For some time the Spokane Public Facilities District have been looking forward to expanding the convention center complex to the south side of Spokane Falls Blvd and tonight brings the inevitable one step closer.

We've caught no word on when the actual demolition of the 100 year old building will happen but we plan on having some great and sad pictures on The Blvd's final day.

Tonight's show, reportedly the last at the venue will be the annual Wig Bash 2009 co-presented by Seattle's The Wig, our very own Platform Booking & The Inlander. Photography by Blush Response.

We're listing the show something like this:

Shim - Myspace (Seattle, Wa)
Cyrus Fell Down - Myspace (Spokane Valley, Wa)
See Me River - Myspace (Seattle, Wa)
Truckasauras - Myspace (Seattle, Wa)
$5 / 9p / 18+

After this weekend of shows, The Blvd. will be moving to 230 W. Riverside Ave.

Aside from jokes about having to change the name, the address should serve the new tenants well as it has played host to past venues such as The B-Side, The Spread and most recently The Zombie Room.

We look forward to many more years with The Blvd as a great place to be here in Spokane. A little closer to downtown, a little further from the rowdy opera house scene, a hell of a lot of good music to come.

The Blvd. | To be condemned?

The Blvd. | To be condemned?

I read a Myspace comment posted Nov 15 2007 3:31 PM on http://www.myspace.com/hailthegunfire by Ryan Levey [ERC] that said:

"Alright, so here's the deal with The Blvd, the Spokane Convention Center is trying to get the building condemned so they can build an expansion over on that side of the street.

"So The Blvd is being taken to court. This process takes several months, so we only have to worry in the long run. It's not even a for sure thing yet. But knowing the luck of the music scene, it'll go down just like Fat Tuesday's. And The Big Dipper. And The Detour. And every other venue we can get going for us."

I couldn't quite understand how The Blvd as a business could be "taken to court" over a property issue such as this. After some searching around, I found an article, which I've linked to below, that explains what has been going on. All my research came from this article. I couldn't however, find out what is going on now; as far as a master plan. It sounds like a waiting game.

Pretty much, the Spokane Public Facilities District, who owns things such as the Convention Center and the INB Performing Arts Center (Opera House) and the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena would like the property for expansion. It has been said that the SPFD is claiming that the owner of the property and the single building at 333 W. Spokane Falls Blvd., is refusing to sell his property to them.

The Executive Director of the SPFD was quoted in an article by Richard Ripley in the Spokane Journal of Business issue dated March 08, 2007, as saying "...property is needed to do something for the public good, and someone is not willing to accept market value for their property.”

The SPFD did infact ask the city to condemn the property [1] for "the good of the public" which it makes this an eminent domain issue. Read the definition of eminent domain at Wikipedia.org.

The owner, Glen Cloninger, says he just wants market value for his property and is not refusing to sell.