Walk North Monroe Street this September and you'll pass three storefronts that have changed hands within the past year. None of them belong to first-time restaurant owners testing an idea. Every operator moving into this stretch already runs a business somewhere else in Spokane, and that pattern says something about the corridor that a simple list of openings would miss.
Start at the corner of Cleveland and Monroe, where Kindred Public House has been serving short rib street tacos and a Szechuan-spiced martini since September 2025. The owners, Jordan Smith and Robby Hatch, didn't invent their concept for this address. They built it first at Cascadia Public House in North Spokane's Five Mile neighborhood back in 2017, proved it worked, then brought the same instincts to Monroe with a menu that leans further into international flavors. Kindred isn't a gamble on an unproven street. It's a replication of something that already paid off a few miles away.
A few doors down, the former home of Dan's Barbershop was slated this spring to become a third location for Jennifer Davis, who owns The Scoop ice cream parlors and their attached Hidden Bagel counters on the South Hill and in Kendall Yards. The North Monroe build-out is set to pair both brands under one roof, the same combination that's kept lines out the door at her other two spots. Right next door, in a Victorian home built in 1899, the Velvet Fox wine bar was preparing for an opening of its own.
None of this is a coincidence of timing. It's a pattern of local operators who already know Spokane's tastes choosing to plant their next flag on this specific half-mile of Monroe Street.
The corridor's other kind of expansion
The pattern isn't limited to restaurants. Spokane City Credit Union, which has held a branch on North Monroe for years, broke ground this summer on a 2,700-square-foot administrative annex at 1914 N. Monroe. The new building will house additional offices, a break room, a covered patio, and a boardroom the credit union says will be available for community use. The site wasn't vacant land. It's the former home of Prohibition Gastropub, which closed and was demolished to make room for the expansion.
That detail matters more than it looks. A restaurant closed on North Monroe, and what replaced it wasn't another restaurant chasing the same crowd. It was a financial institution that already had equity in the street choosing to grow its footprint rather than relocate away from a closed storefront. When a credit union bets on more square footage in the same three blocks where it's operated for years, that's a different signal than a new tenant filling empty space. It's an existing anchor doubling down.
What never left
The new openings sit next to businesses that have anchored this stretch for decades and show no sign of changing. The Hub Tavern, at 2926 N. Monroe, started life in the early 1920s as a butcher shop before its owners discovered they made more money selling beer out the back door than beef out front. It's now one of the last true taverns left in Spokane, a beer-and-wine-only license that predates the cocktail bars now opening around it. A few doors down, Moezy Inn Tavern wears its dive bar reputation as a badge, complete with dollar bills signed and taped to the ceiling by regulars going back years.
These two bars are why North Monroe doesn't read as a district manufactured overnight. The new wine bars and gastropubs are opening in the same three or four blocks where a cash-only tavern has operated since a 1920s butcher shop started selling beer out the back door, and neither side seems to be pushing the other out.
The retail side tells a similar story. 1889 Salvage Co., at 2824 N. Monroe, has spent years turning reclaimed and vintage goods into a shopping destination that pulls people from across the city. Kingsley & Scout, next door at 2810 N. Monroe, sells made-in-America workwear and handcrafted goods out of a space built as much for community as commerce. Brickyard Barbershop, at 2802 N. Monroe, has built a reputation as one of the best-reviewed barbershops in the city, the kind of shop where the haircut is secondary to being known by name. None of these businesses are new arrivals riding the current wave. They're the reason the wave has somewhere to land.
The newest addition to that retail mix, Vintage Print and Neon, opened more recently and slotted right into the same secondhand-and-handmade identity the street has cultivated for years, proof that even the newcomers on the retail side understand what North Monroe already does well rather than trying to reinvent it.
What's actually opening this year
For anyone tracking the corridor block by block, here's where things stand as of this fall:
- Kindred Public House (Cleveland and Monroe) — open since September 2025, seven days a week
- The Scoop / Hidden Bagel (former Dan's Barbershop location) — announced this spring as a third joint location for owner Jennifer Davis
- Velvet Fox wine bar (1899 Victorian home next to the Scoop/Hidden Bagel build) — announced this spring, in the buildout stage
- Spokane City Credit Union annex (1914 N. Monroe) — broke ground this summer on the former Prohibition Gastropub site
- Vintage Print and Neon — recently opened, joining the district's cluster of vintage and handmade retail
Layer that against Bellwether Brewing Company, which has anchored the district for years and now operates a second location in the Hillyard District, and you get a corridor where growth is happening in two directions at once. Established local names are expanding into North Monroe from elsewhere in the city, and North Monroe's own long-timers are expanding out into other Spokane neighborhoods.
Why this matters if you already live nearby
None of this is really about a boom. North Monroe already went through its major transformation when a multi-million-dollar road project turned what used to be a pass-through into a real destination. What's happening now is the second act. The businesses opening this year aren't testing whether this street works. They're operators who've already succeeded somewhere else in Spokane and decided North Monroe is worth a second or third location.
That's a useful thing to know if you live within walking distance and you're deciding whether to try the new wine bar before it's finished, or whether the credit union's construction fence at 1914 N. Monroe is worth the detour. The people making these bets aren't strangers to this city. They're the same names behind Cascadia Public House, The Scoop, and a credit union that's operated on this street long enough to tear down a closed restaurant and build something bigger in its place.
The volunteer group behind the district, run under the name Meet on Monroe and chaired by Megan Schuyler Kennedy with Bellwether's Bri Musser as vice chair, has spent years coordinating the businesses that make up this stretch. What they've built isn't a district that reinvents itself every few years. It's one where the new tenants keep choosing to look like the old ones, just with better cocktails.
If you're weighing what a neighborhood like this means for your own plans on the North Side, whether that's a future move or simply understanding what your street is becoming, The Collection can walk you through it with the same local detail. Request a complimentary consultation and home valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
