Appealing Plan Neighborhood Plan For Indian Trial Hits Glitch When Developer Appeals For Exemption

With confusion and uncertainty in its immediate future, the Indian Trail neighborhood plan fell into a legal quagmire this week when the city council postponed a hearing pending a challenge by developer Harlan Douglass.

The city council was supposed to hear testimony Monday on the landuse document, which has been three years in the making. Instead, council members were informed of a formal appeal filed by Douglass, a developer who owns the majority of the vacant property in the northwest Spokane neighborhood.

Douglass, the largest individual property owner in Spokane County, was at the Monday council meeting along with his development partner, Cliff Cameron, his attorney, two traffic consultants hired to study Indian Trail, and his two sons, who are also developers.

Also at the council meeting were a dozen Indian Trail residents, including Tim Shelton, chairman of the neighborhood task force that drafted the plan.

The council set a separate hearing Sept. 25 to resolve the appeal and hear further testimony. Even though the council may take action that night, a challenge in Superior Court could delay the plan for months, even indefinately.

In his appeal, Douglass asks that he be allowed to develop his property under current regulations without having to pay impact fees or contribute to road-improvement projects. Allowing the density he wants would mean an additional 1,000 units in the neighborhood - an increase of 30 percent from what is proposed in the neighborhood plan.

The county treasurer lists Douglass as owning 295 parcels of land valued at $87.5 million. His 1995 Spokane County property tax bill was $1.3 million. Shelton said he spoke with Douglass and Cameron and doesn’t think their concerns about the plan are insurmountable.

“I have to believe that Harlan and Cliff are good people and will sit down with us and resolve some of these issues,” Shelton said.

Planning Director Charlie Dotson hopes the council could approve the Indian Trail plan before a Sept. 30 moratorium on new plats in the neighborhood expires. The moratorium was imposed to give the neighborhood breathing room enough to complete the plan.

City attorneys say they could probably extend the moratorium long enough to pass the plan with modifications.

But Stan Schwartz, assistant city attorney, acknowledged the procedures on what happens next are not entirely clear and may have to be resolved by a Superior Court judge.

No one has ever before asked the city council to set aside an entire neighborhood plan already approved by the plan commission, he said.

Dotson said it’s clear in his mind that Douglass is looking to delay the plan long enough to get his projects approved under current zoning.

“The appellant is trying to extend this process until after the moratorium expires,” Dotson said.

“With no plan you’d have a free-for-all,” councilman Orville Barnes said during a briefing on the issue last week.

Michael J. Murphy, a Seattle attorney representing Douglass, said making a case for Douglass won’t be difficult. He doubts the city had authority to impose the moratorium in the first place.

Murphy said Indian Trail Road is not operating below city standards and key intersections along Francis Avenue may have future problems meeting air quality guidelines but that is not the case now.

“There wasn’t an emergency then and there isn’t an emergency now,” he said.

Murphy said Douglass didn’t challenge the moratorium earlier because he wanted to give the planning process a chance.

Yet, there is no legal basis for either the density cap or the transportation requirements and each was added to the plan at the last minute to satisfy neighborhood groups, he said.

The proposed plan not only violates the city comprehensive plan but new state growth laws as well, he said.

Murphy raised his concerns about the plan to the planning commission, but it “didn’t really do anything” except rubber stamp what the neighborhood task force requested.

The Indian Trail plan is unique not only in that it is the first to look at the cumulative effect of new development on the existing Indian Trail neighborhood.

The plan:

Allows for impact fees and promotes a new taxing district that would enable residents to purchase open space in order to protect steep slopes and other sensitive environmental land.

Provides for development at the existing suburban density and establish a cap of 3,324 new housing units.

Encourages the clustering of new community facilities such as a community center, library, new school and police substation around the existing Fire Station No. 7.

Promotes development of a 30-acre shopping center, with an STA park-and-ride lot and higher-density housing around the center.

Mandates design review standards for multi-family housing.

The plan is also the first in the city to take on the issue of planned unit developments, a term used for multi-family housing often built with fences and gates to isolate it from adjacent homes.

The Indian Trail plan severely limits where PUDs can be built, increases the minimum lot size, and encourages development without fences and gates.

PUDs have become like “little islands in an existing neighborhood,” said Stan Stirling, chair of the city plan commission. “I wouldn’t want to live up next to a PUD that’s walled up.”

In an interview before the Douglass appeal, Stirling said the plan represents a good compromise among neighborhood forces.

“Probably nobody is completely happy with this,” he said, “but it puts them on the right track.”

But whether the neighborhood has a chance to get started remains to be seen.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo