After a bill legalizing neighborhood cafes in residential areas across Washington failed to advance last year, the bill’s sponsor Mark Klicker (R-16th, Walla Walla) is back with a new version that goes even further. House Bill 1175 would force local cities and towns to allow both restaurant cafes and corner stores in all residential areas, ending current bans that exist throughout the state on commercial uses in lower density neighborhoods.
Representative Klicker’s 2024 neighborhood cafe bill was initially well-received, sailing through the state House without a single vote in opposition. With a fairly broad definition of cafe, it would have allowed numerous types of small shops as long as they offered a “limited menu of food items” and also would have allowed alcohol sales on top of food sales. But it stalled out in the Senate, after concerns were raised by local governments. After the Senate’s Local Government Committee adopted a full rewrite of the bill that merely made it voluntary, it was never brought to a floor vote.
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Neighborhood cafes like Wallingford’s Irwin’s Bakery and Coffee House are mostly banned in residential neighborhoods across the state, with land use regulations only allowing residential uses. (Ryan Packer)
While the bill includes a 500-square-foot minimum size on shops, it lets cities set the maximum limit, which could be a way to not actually allow very many commercial storefronts in practice. And it allows cities to regulate parking at neighborhood cafes, only stipulating “that the regulations are not infeasible,” with no clarification on what infeasible means.
