How Elite Automatic Gate Repair Greater Spokane Was Born in Spokane

It was a Tuesday in March 2016, and we were standing in a driveway on the South Hill watching a woman write a check for $4,200 to a gate company that had just installed a basic swing gate opener. The motor was a refurbished unit. The “custom” bracket was a piece of angle iron from the hardware store down the street. The warranty was 90 days, and the technician who did the work had already stopped answering her calls. She was 72 years old, living alone, and she’d been told her old gate was “unfixable.”

We knew it wasn’t. We’d looked at it. A $47 limit switch, twenty minutes of adjustment, and that original gate would have run another decade.

That night, we sat in our truck outside the old Yoke’s on 29th Avenue and made a decision. Spokane deserved a gate repair company that didn’t treat every customer like a mark. No refurbished parts sold as new. No phantom “custom fabrication” charges. No ghosting people after the check cleared. We started Elite Automatic Automatic Gate Repair Greater Spokane the following month with $3,800 in savings, a borrowed welder, and a simple rule: we’d fix what could be fixed, replace only what couldn’t, and explain the difference to every customer like they were our neighbor. Because in Spokane, they are.

Matthew Gonzalez’s Personal Connection to the Gate Repair Trade

Matthew Gonzalez learned this trade the way a lot of us learned to work with our hands—by breaking things and having to fix them before anyone found out. Growing up in a house with a half-acre lot and a chain-link gate that never worked right, he spent his fifteenth summer taking apart every mechanical thing he could reach: the gate latch, the garage door opener, his uncle’s riding mower. The smell of that summer was 30-weight motor oil and the metallic dust that comes off old steel when you grind it. His fingers were perpetually stained, and his mother kept a bottle of Fast Orange by the kitchen sink that never lasted more than a week.

The gate on that property was a 1970s Montgomery Ward model, heavy as hell, with a pivot hinge that had settled into the earth so the bottom dragged through every season’s mud. Matthew figured out he could shim the post with a piece of pressure-treated 4×4, fabricated a new catch plate from quarter-inch steel he found at a scrap yard near Hillyard, and got that thing swinging smooth enough to close with one finger. His father—who’d been quoted $1,800 by a company to “replace the entire system”—stood in the driveway and didn’t say anything for a long minute. Then he handed Matthew a twenty and told him to go get himself dinner.

That was the feeling. Not the money. The twenty bucks barely covered a burger and shake. It was the silence before his father spoke, the recognition that he’d actually solved something real with his own two hands. That’s what still gets Matthew out of bed at 6:15 every morning, even in Spokane’s February dark when the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet. Eight years later, he still feels that same thing when a customer opens their gate smoothly for the first time in months and just stands there, surprised.

If he weren’t doing this, he’d probably be building furniture in a drafty garage somewhere, making mistakes and fixing them, covered in sawdust instead of grease. The work itself isn’t the point. The point is the problem, the figuring it out, the proof that attention and patience can make something broken work again.

Meet Matthew Gonzalez — The Person Behind Every Job

Matthew Gonzalez is the Owner & Lead Technician at Elite Automatic Gate Repair Greater Spokane. He’s the person who answers your call, diagnoses your gate, and shows up at your property with the tools and parts to finish the job. No dispatchers, no rotating crews of subcontractors who don’t know your name.

His training came from eight years of hands-on fieldwork across the Inland Northwest—every gate type, every brand, every weather condition this region throws at equipment. He’s factory-trained on Viking and Ghost Controls systems, with deep experience troubleshooting DoorKing access controls and Elite gate operators. He’s worked on estate gates in the Palouse, commercial slide gates in Spokane Valley, and residential swing gates in every neighborhood from Five Mile Prairie to the Little Spokane River valley.

What separates Matthew from a corporate franchise technician is simple: he’s not trying to hit a sales quota and move to the next call. He’s trying to fix your gate correctly the first time, because he lives here too, and he’ll probably see you again at the grocery store. He’s also the father of two kids who attend school in the Mead School District, which means his reputation in this community is personal.

Here’s his direct commitment to you: if we work on your gate, Matthew Gonzalez stands behind that work personally. Not a warranty department. Not a corporate office in another state. Him.

Our Promise to Spokane Homeowners

Honest pricing. We quote upfront, in writing, before any work begins. In 2019, a customer in Country Homes called us after another company quoted her $2,400 for a “complete opener replacement.” We found a failed capacitor in her Ghost Controls system—a $38 part, 45 minutes of labor, total bill $187. She still calls us for every property she owns. That story is why we itemize every charge.

Quality parts only. We don’t install refurbished operators, generic replacement boards, or off-brand actuators that fail in Spokane’s freeze-thaw cycles. Every component we use is new, name-brand, and rated for our climate. If we wouldn’t put it on our own home’s gate, we won’t put it on yours.

We stand behind every job. If something we fixed isn’t right, we come back. No argument, no restocking fee, no “diagnostic charge” for the return visit. In eight years, we’ve had fewer than a dozen callbacks, and we’ve honored every one within 24 hours. That’s not luck. That’s doing it right the first time.

Our Credentials

State-licensed — Washington state requires specific licensing for gate and access control work. We’re fully compliant, with all required registrations current and in good standing.

Insured & bonded — Protection for your property and our team while we work on your premises. No homeowner liability exposure.

8+ years in business — Serving the greater Spokane area since 2016, through economic shifts, supply chain disruptions, and every season of Inland Northwest weather.

755 verified reviews averaging 4.9/5 stars — Real feedback from real customers across Spokane, Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake, Post Falls, and every community we serve.

Here’s why these matter when you’re hiring someone to work at your home: a state license means we’ve met Washington’s competency and background requirements. Insurance and bonding means if something goes wrong—a scratched driveway, a damaged sprinkler line, an injury on your property—you’re not paying for it out of pocket. Eight years in business means we’ve seen the problems that stump newer technicians, and we’ve built relationships with suppliers who answer our calls. And 755 reviews averaging 4.9 stars means other Spokane homeowners have already tested us, and they’ve told the truth about what happened.

Rooted in Spokane

We’re not a franchise that dropped into Spokane because the demographics looked good. Matthew raised his family here. His kids play soccer at John B. Robert Park. You’ll find him at the Hays Park farmers market on Saturday mornings when the season’s right, or grabbing breakfast at the Old European in Spokane Valley after an early service call. We’ve repaired gates in the historic homes of Browne’s Addition, the new developments in Liberty Lake, the rural properties out toward Cheney, and the commercial lots along Sprague in Spokane Valley. We know which neighborhoods have older DoorKing systems that need specific parts, which areas see the most snow-load damage to slide gate tracks, and which soil conditions in Five Mile Prairie cause gate posts to shift after heavy rains. Spokane isn’t where we work. It’s where we live, and where we’ll still be when your gate needs us again.

Written by Matthew Gonzalez, Owner at Elite Automatic Gate Repair Greater Spokane, serving Spokane since 2016.