Garland In Late August: A Two-Stop Block, Not A One-Stop Errand
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
For a decade, Garland Avenue functioned like most Spokane residents used it: a single-purpose stop. A slice at Milk Bottle, a matinee at the theater, coffee at Brew Werks, then home. You did one thing on Garland and left. That shape held even as the surrounding streets filled in with houses and the district accrued the kind of loyal regulars most commercial corridors would trade a parking lot for.
That is not the shape of Garland in August 2026. Between February and midsummer, two addresses one block apart quietly reorganized the geometry of the district into something closer to a small downtown: a dinner stop, a drinks stop, and a movie stop, all inside a five-minute walk. If you already live within the walkable ring, the practical result is that Garland now supports a full evening without a car, and the block's rhythm has shifted from errand to itinerary.
The first is at 706 W. Garland. The Temple Tavern, a casual Italian restaurant and a trade name for Pizza Party LLC, opened Friday, Feb. 13 inside the historic Masonic Temple building constructed in 1922, according to owner Taylor Rainwater. The space is not new to food service. It previously housed North Hill on Garland, which closed a few weeks before the handoff. Temple Tavern is open Tue–Sat 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sun 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., which is the schedule of a neighborhood dinner house, not a destination restaurant.
The menu runs four signature and five classic pizzas on hand-tossed double-zero dough baked in a deck oven, with a crust Rainwater describes as East-Coast-adjacent but slightly thinner. The reason to know that detail is not the pizza itself. It is that Rainwater made a specific bet before opening day about what Garland was missing.
"The Garland District has limited pizza and Italian food options," Rainwater said before opening. "I'm excited to give the neighborhood another option, and I hope that people are excited as well."
One block west, at 828 W. Garland, the second address is still finishing tenant improvements. Red Rose Social, a new bar, is replacing the previous tenant, the Garland Drinkery, which closed in 2025. Red Rose Social will serve craft cocktails, beer, and other bar food. Ongoing renovations at the 850-square-foot space will add a new ADA-compliant bathroom and bar, according to permit information on file with the city of Spokane. Owner Aaron Fiorini also owns Market Street Pizza.
A block apart. Neither a chain. Both from operator-owners who studied the specific block before signing.
This is where the story stops being a restaurant announcement and starts being about how a district works. Downtown Spokane draws foot traffic from offices, hotels, and event nights. Garland draws from the houses within a fifteen-minute walk. Those are different economies. An Italian house on Garland has to become the kind of place a neighborhood eats at four times a month or it closes. A pizza slice near a downtown convention hotel serves whoever happens to be a block away at noon. Both models work. They solve different problems.
Rainwater and Fiorini both solved the Garland version of the problem by anchoring one block of a residential district rather than chasing a downtown corridor. That is a durable local pattern worth noticing, not a coincidence. It also explains why the pair opened within blocks of each other rather than spreading across the district. Clustering is what turns "a new restaurant" into "a different neighborhood."
The other reason 706 and 828 matter is what sits two blocks east. The Garland District is home to the historic Garland Theater, a 1940s-era movie theater; Mary Lou's Milk Bottle Desserts; Brown Derby; and Ferguson's Cafe. For years, the post-show dinner options on Garland itself were narrow. If you wanted a proper sit-down after a 7 p.m. show, you drove.
With Temple Tavern open until 9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and Red Rose Social preparing to open one block west, the sequence a resident can now string together on foot is: theater, dinner, drink, walk home. That loop existed nowhere on Garland this time last year. It is the single change most likely to alter how people who already live on the near north side actually use their own commercial street.
Garland Brew Werks, at 603 W. Garland, is the third piece of the geometry. It is not new, but its programming is what makes the block feel populated on nights that used to be quiet:
None of that is a headline. All of it is the reason a Thursday on Garland now has a reason to exist. When residents ask why the block feels busier than it did two years ago on nights that are not Fridays or Saturdays, this is a large part of the answer.
Late August compresses two of the district's bigger public days into eight nights. Neither requires a ticket, and both close portions of Garland Avenue to traffic, which is worth knowing if you live on one of the side streets that catches the overflow parking.
If you live inside the walkable ring, plan grocery runs and dog walks around those two afternoons. If you live outside it and want to come in, arrive on foot from a side street rather than trying to park on Garland itself.
None of this replaces the block's older rhythm. Mary Lou's Milk Bottle, Brown Derby, Ferguson's Cafe, and the Garland Theater remain the longstanding businesses that give the district its shape. The addition of an Italian dinner house and a cocktail bar does not push those anchors out of the story. It fills in the gaps between them. The block reads more layered now, not more crowded.
That layering matters if you are thinking about what your home's block feels like day to day, which is a different question from what it appraises for. A commercial corridor with a working weeknight rhythm is a quiet asset for the houses within a five-minute walk. It shows up in how often people walk versus drive, how long the sidewalks stay populated after 7 p.m., and whether Thursday feels like a night or a placeholder.
You do not have to be planning a move to care about this. If you own a home in the near-north neighborhoods above the river, the change is showing up as small, cumulative things: longer waits on Friday after 6, sidewalk foot traffic on Wednesday, a walk-home option after the 7 p.m. show that did not exist in 2024. Those are the details that make a district feel like it has momentum rather than drift. They also tend to be the details out-of-town buyers ask about when they are comparing Garland to South Perry, Kendall Yards, or Perry Street.
If you spend time walking Garland this month, the useful mental model is: two new addresses, one block apart, two blocks from the theater, three from Brew Werks. That is the whole shift. Everything else on the block is doing what it has been doing.
For a broader look at how the surrounding Spokane neighborhoods are trending this summer, or if you are quietly curious what your own block is worth after another year of this kind of infill, The Bill Richard Group is happy to walk through it. Get a Free Home Valuation whenever you are ready, or just say hello the next time you see us on Garland.
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