Developer offers donation of Liberty Lake park land

Developer Jim Frank on Tuesday offered Spokane County commissioners 120 acres of free parkland overlooking Liberty Lake and water needed for the county’s nearby Liberty Lake Regional Park.

“Even if we had no water issues, I’d be here jumping up and down with a smile on my face,” parks director Doug Chase said.

He said he was “thrilled” about the donation of prime recreational land that Frank valued at $3 million. The hillside property is crisscrossed with hiking trails and comes with a 100-foot-wide corridor to the rocky lakeshore.

The donation is part of Frank’s plan to preserve as much as possible of a family holding that has been largely undeveloped since it was acquired in the early 1890s.

Pioneer Spokane cattleman Roderick MacKenzie acquired hundreds of acres along Liberty Lake at a time when the only way to get there was by horse and buggy. Some of the land included an orchard planted by the Hudson’s Bay Co., according to newspaper reports.

In addition to a getaway home for his family, MacKenzie and others developed popular resorts that later were served by the Inland Empire Electric Railroad. He also offered some residential lots for sale.

MacKenzie died in 1958 and was survived by his wife, Anne Harder MacKenzie, who had been a secretary to Spokane founder James Glover. She remarried but had no children, so when she died in 1995, the MacKenzie property passed to seven nieces and nephews of Anne Harder MacKenzie Wyatt.

County records show one of the heirs, Rex Harder, got permission in 1996 for two subdivisions – MacKenzie Bay Beach, with 48 lots on 24 acres, and The Orchards at Liberty Lake, with 37 lots on 109 acres – but neither was built.

MacKenzie Bay Beach proved controversial, and Frank said family members couldn’t agree on how to proceed. Now, Frank said, he has put together a deal in which he will acquire 140 acres and build a compact residential development to pay the heirs while keeping most of the property in open space.

Only 12 acres of the 20 that won’t be given to the county is to be developed, and the rest is to be kept as private open space, Frank said. The open space will be protected by a conservation easement.

Frank’s plan, which might make use of an amended 1912 plat, calls for developing six lots for sale and four for retention by the current owners. It would bring water from the Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District within 3,500 feet of the county’s existing Liberty Lake park, which has had water problems for two decades.

So Frank offered county officials a choice: Take the 120 acres as a gift or “buy” them for $400,000 and get a water line to the existing county park.

Chase said a 2004 study indicated it would cost $431,332 to $1.2 million for a long-term solution to a water shortage that hasn’t been adequately resolved by extending a line from a nearby private water system.

Frank’s proposed $400,000 solution might be largely covered by money set aside for the water problem in 2005, Chase said.

Commissioners Bonnie Mager and Mark Richard, with Todd Mielke absent, instructed Chase to negotiate a deal with Frank and report back.