Development has neighbors seeing flames

There’s always smoke when developers propose housing for Spokane Valley’s Ponderosa neighborhood.

Residents of the wooded community twice burned by fire predict overcrowded roads and botched evacuations as a result of new neighbors. They see flames.

But that’s not what Michael Murphy sees. Murphy, the attorney for Lanzce Douglass, a would-be creator of 182 new homes in Ponderosa, peered into the hazy controversy surrounding a two-day hearing on the project, and saw mirrors.

In closing arguments, Murphy accused the neighborhood of using fire danger as an excuse to keep new development out. He cited a traffic study requested by fire officials and paid for by Douglass that suggested more than 6,000 carloads of Ponderosa residents could be evacuated from the area in 30 minutes.

In truth, the piney neighborhood just north of Browne Mountain has about 2,000 vehicles, Murphy told Spokane County Hearing Examiner Mike Dempsey.

“This whole notion of a 30-minute evacuation of all these people is absolutely absurd. Yet, that’s what we were asked to do,” Murphy said.

It was the first of two hearings about the development for Dempsey. One hundred of the homes proposed by Douglass are in Spokane County, for which Dempsey is hearing examiner.

The property straddles the Spokane Valley city limits, and the other 82 homes are planned on the city side of the line. Dempsey is also hearing examiner for Spokane Valley, and eventually will hear that request.

Much of the 16 hours of testimony preceding the attorney’s closing remarks on Thursday centered on two wildfires that burned into the Ponderosa neighborhood in the last 20 years.

The worst of the two, the 1991 firestorm, sparked a midday evacuation of the area.

Neighbors’ accounts of the emergency included traffic snarls, an oiled dirt road that caught fire, and someone’s llama blocking cars as it galloped down the street.

No one died in Ponderosa during the firestorm, but the neighborhood lost 15 houses and residents found exiting difficult.

There are only two roads into Ponderosa, and both cross railroad tracks. After the 1991 fire, Spokane County officials and residents agreed another road was needed, but it never came.

Murphy said if the neighborhood wanted to start a self-taxing residential improvement district – or RID – to raise money for a third exit, Douglass would support it.

He had questioned neighbors about why they’d never bothered to start an RID, speculating that half of them would oppose it for fear more development would result.

But neighbors said the developer was understating the danger.”If you add a hundred more houses, plus the 82 if the city side goes through, how is that not going to exacerbate the problem?” said Brian McGinn, attorney for Ponderosa Neighborhood Association.

The neighborhood association hired a Seattle traffic consultant, Rob Bernstein, to give credibility to their argument.

Bernstein testified Ponderosa roads – some steep, some soft-shouldered – and their limited exits demanded a comprehensive improvement plan.

Typically, when new developments are reviewed, the only thing scrutinized is whether extra cars from that development alone will overwhelm neighborhood roads, which isn’t scrutiny enough, Bernstein said. Meantime the cumulative consequences of all new developments on community roads are ignored.

Further, Ponderosa neighbors alleged Spokane County Planning officials ignored the cumulative affects of the project on the environment. The development, dubbed “Ponderosa Ridge,” was slated for 27 steeply-sloped acres considered prime deer habitat because of thick foliage.

Soil erosion and stream protection were key issues ignored by the developer, the neighborhood argued. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife concluded “wildlife was an afterthought” in the proposal for the development.

McGinn requested the project’s environmental impacts be restudied. The city of Spokane Valley concurred with the neighborhood and filed an appeal, contending in part that the city should be the lead agency for both city and county portions of the project.

Murphy countered that Spokane Valley didn’t have the required credentials to handle the entire project and further faulted the city for missing the deadline by more than 10 months to apply for such a position.

Later, after learning that the city’s appeal had been made by its community development director, Marina Sukup, without consent of Spokane Valley’s City Council, Murphy filed a motion to have the matter thrown out.