Council sticks with higher development densities

The Spokane Valley City Council won’t give back the big yards it took from Greenacres residents in a zoning flip-flop.

A motion to keep faith with a zone change the council granted in January 2005, and later nullified, died Tuesday in a 3-3 tie.

The motion might have passed except that Councilman Gary Schimmels was absent because of illness.

Schimmels voted March 4 to place the issue on this week’s agenda. He joined Mayor Rich Munson and council members Rose Dempsey and Bill Gothmann in calling for restoration of the lower development densities the council granted and took away.

“I don’t think we were honest with those people, and that troubles me more than anything,” Schimmels said in March.

Munson, Dempsey and Gothmann voted Tuesday to ask the Planning Commission to recommend a comprehensive plan change that would allow the council to restore lower densities in the northern part of Greenacres in 2009.

Council members Diana Wilhite, Dick Denenny and Steve Taylor opposed the motion. Under council rules, a tie vote is defeated.

Munson pointed out that council members could have delayed the vote until Schimmels could participate, but proponents didn’t ask and opponents didn’t offer.

The issue is rooted in zoning regulations inherited from Spokane County when Spokane Valley was incorporated five years ago. The county had rezoned Greenacres and other areas to allow smaller lot sizes.

After incorporation, the City Council adopted the county zoning on an interim basis and angry Greenacres residents persuaded the council to restore the old zoning in the northern part of Greenacres – the area bounded by Mission Avenue, Barker Road and the curving Spokane River.

But the city officials subsequently developed a new code that essentially took back the zone change and established development densities similar to those county commissioners had imposed.

Tuesday’s motion would have asked the Planning Commission to consider a comprehensive plan change that would rezone northern Greenacres from R3, with 7,500-square-foot minimum lot sizes, to R2, with a 10,000-square-foot minimum.

Munson warned audience members the motion was probably dead on arrival, but residents and developers still gave their views.

“Times have changed,” and many home buyers no longer want or can afford the 10,000-square-foot minimum lot sizes that residents demanded, real estate salesman Eric House told the council.

Daniel Melville, of Landed Gentry Homes, a Burlington, Wash., development company, said the proposed change would reduce property values by $10,000 to $15,000 an acre by driving up development costs. He said he was looking for 30 to 40 acres for a subdivision aimed at “active adults” who want to be near the Centennial Trail.

“The Constitution begins, ‘We the people.’ It doesn’t begin, ‘We the developers who get to talk longer than everybody else,” said Jennie Willardson, who followed Melville to the podium.

Willardson and others said families with children want larger backyards where their children can play safely without going into the street.

“There is a right and a wrong,” real estate broker and Greenacres resident Pete Miller said, reminding the council that hundreds of residents petitioned for the zone change that was granted and gutted.

Munson said he thinks the Greenacres area eventually will be more densely developed, but the difference between the current and proposed zoning would make a difference of only 72 lots and an estimated 180 residents.

That’s not enough to warrant rescinding a zone change based on a plan the City Council encouraged the neighborhood to develop, Munson said.

But Councilman Dick Denenny took an opposite view of the numbers: Needed flexibility would be sacrificed to keep out only 180 people and make lots just 15 feet wider.

Councilman Steve Taylor, who is government affairs director for the Spokane Home Builders Association, said he was concerned about sending the wrong message to businesses.

“The one thing that we need to provide to be friendly to business, that will allow jobs to come in so people can have a high quality of life, is having consistency in our regulations,” Taylor said.

Also, Taylor said, failure to allow denser development in the city will put pressure on other areas.

Earlier in the meeting, he noted, a representative of an Otis Orchards group urged the council to rule out future annexation of that area. But “what is being requested here in Greenacres is what is going to force development into Otis Orchards,” Taylor said.

Councilwoman Rose Dempsey called on the council to defend residents, not developers. She said developers have no right to change Greenacres, but residents are entitled to “maintain what they moved there for.”

Councilman Bill Gothmann took exception to testimony that older people want smaller yards.

“I am a senior,” Gothmann said. “I’m one of those guys that everybody seems to like to build small houses for.”

But he prefers to keep his big backyard where he can watch deer and grandchildren.