Spokane7
36°
August 14, 2009 in City
South Hill group bows out of fight against big retailers
A neighborhood vote this week smooths the way for the biggest retail center the South Hill has seen in decades, if not ever.
The Southgate Neighborhood Council ended its long battle to prevent big box development along Regal Street near the Palouse Highway. Members of the council said they will give up their legal fight to focus on holding developers to a series of agreements, which they approved Wednesday 15-0 with two abstentions. The same agreements are expected to be approved Monday by the Spokane City Council.
“Most of us were pretty much opposed to a big box development, but we lost that battle,” said Pat Hickey, Southgate’s chairman.
The approval clears the way for construction of three stores up to 105,000 square feet – or up to 135,000 square feet for a Target. One site had been planned for Home Depot, but the retailer backed out late last year, citing the poor economy.
Smaller stores, up to 50,000 and 55,000 square feet, also will be allowed.
Neighbors at the meeting continued to question how Regal Street, part of which is only three lanes, can handle traffic from large stores. They also cited storm water concerns and said suburban-style big box development isn’t compatible with a city neighborhood.
Supporters of the projects argue that the South Hill is woefully underserved by retail stores, sending south side residents – and their money and sales taxes – to Spokane Valley.
Stan Schwartz, an attorney for some of the property owners, said the agreements, which require the projects to go through the city’s Design Review Committee, create bike and pedestrian links and meet other conditions, make possible development that is “integrated into the community fabric.”
“Will there be a 105,000-square-foot box? I don’t know. Respectfully, it ain’t going to look like Shopko, if for no other reason than (this) agreement will not allow that,” Schwartz said, referring to the nearby store that neighbors have criticized as blight.
Last year, city leaders worked with developers and the neighborhood council to find compromises in plans for big box stores on the 45 acres owned by Black Development, KXLY and others.
The City Council voted last summer to change zoning to allow big box stores, with restrictions. The neighborhood challenged the decision.
Rick Eichstaedt, an attorney for the neighborhood council, said fighting the zoning change may not yield much more than a “paper victory,” because developers could submit an application and begin construction, even if a court later rules the zone change was illegal.
Catalyst for activism
Southgate is one of a few development hot spots in town that, in part, sparked the creation of Envision Spokane, the group that placed a controversial set of rights on the November ballot, including the right of neighborhoods to veto development under certain circumstances.
Brad Read, president of Envision’s board, said it was the proposed Wal-Mart at 44th and Regal, which has since been abandoned, that led him on a path to work on Envision’s Community Bill of Rights.
Southgate is one of five neighborhood councils that have representatives on Envision’s board. Others include Peaceful Valley, which organized in the past few years against a condo tower, and Five Mile, where residents have long argued that development has overburdened roads and other services.
“It would give us a chance to have input into what goes into our neighborhoods,” said Ginger Patano, vice chairwoman of Southgate and an Envision board member.
No elected city leader or anyone running for City Council in next week’s primary has endorsed Envision Spokane’s plan. Council candidate Jon Snyder, for instance, said the proposal goes too far, potentially endangering private property rights.
Candidates weigh in
Incumbent Councilman Mike Allen voted in favor of the Southgate zoning change. He said creation of retail center in the Southgate area would be good for Spokane.
“There’s also a lot of population density around that center which should make it very vibrant and successful,” Allen said.
Two of Allen’s opponents said they would have voted against the zoning change.
“The whole Southgate matter is and will be a sad chapter in the history of the development of a livable Spokane community,” said former City Councilman Steve Eugster in an e-mail. “Quite honestly, it is senseless.”
Snyder, publisher of Out There Monthly, cited the city’s comprehensive plan – its long-term growth guide. Neighborhood leaders argued that the city couldn’t make the zoning changes until a more intensive city planning process for the area was completed. That process is under way.
“There’s just not adequate reason to amend the comp plan to allow more big box stores in Southgate, especially without doing the neighborhood planning process as called for in the comp plan,” Snyder said.
Public safety tops mayor’s list 
Enter to win tickets to see Adam Carolla at the Knitting Factory 
WSU Text-to-Win Contest 
EWU Text-to-Win Contest 
Lulubelle on August 14 at 7:13 a.m.
Too bad for us. I’ll continue to shop at ACE Hardware……guess I’ll just have to take the back way in since Regal will be bumper to bumper…..what a mess! The surrounding neighborhoods are going to love their extra traffic. I’m not setting foot in any “big box” that goes in. I hope the development requirements include a clause requiring big-box hulks to be removed once they go out of business and are abandoned for any length of time. Nothing more attractive that boarded up buildings with weedy parking lots. Just check out Division…..lovely.
wa7qzr on August 14 at 8:24 a.m.
Isn’t it too bad that “someone” conspired with these myopic real estate developers, (that’s essentially all of them), and encouraged them to satisfy their lust for money by paving over every inch of ground in Spokane and then, erecting storefronts for multi-national corporations whose products are foreign made. The question all this treachery brings to mind is: Where are all the customers coming from? Who’s going to buy from those stores, (or, for that matter, live in all those crime-laden, sardine can multi-family housing units they’ve been building all over the place), when anyone with common sense and the ability to do so, has gotten the heck out of Dodge? When the economy’s tanked and all that’s left wandering the streets of our neighborhoods are thugs, hoodlums, and looters, the legitimate step-children and expected aftermath of greed; where will those developers be then? I’ll tell you where; they’ll be in Pablo San Lucas and the Mexican Riviera enjoying their ill-gotten gains. I guess that too many years of control by greedy, self-serving politicians, bureaucrats and propagandists have finally come home to roost.
stroupe55 on August 14 at 8:31 a.m.
Once again the City Counsel has put the cart before the horse by a zone change that will surely increase the traffic on an already burdened Regal without widening the street to five lanes to accomadate this increase. We went through a road project a couple of years ago that could have done the job, but our penny wise Counsel couldn’t see the writing on the big box walls. I’m not against the Southgate Mall if done right. But that’s asking a lot of a Counsel that cowtows to developers and infills at the expense of neighborhoods. The backlash from years of abuse is Envision Spokane’s “Bill of Rights” I’m just a citizen that has watched 25 years of mistakes by an overpaid City Counsel. I’m sure the tax break those developers will get is enormous, just so residents will spend their hard earned money in the City limits to support tax breaks for more development.
skeugster on August 14 at 8:58 a.m.
The comprehensive plan amendments and the three zoning decisions to be made this coming Monday concerning this area at the southeast edge of the City of Spokane will create a new “central business disctrict” in the midst of a residential area.
What will happen if the development sought to be allowed actually takes place (and it will)? The area will become a shopping and commericial destination for an area having at least a ten mile radius. The stores will need dense residential and major highways to profit from their investments. The stores and the apparatchiks who are the local cheerleaders of the stores will demand ever increasing urban development.
This is just the way it is, just the way it works. This lovely area of southeast Spokane will never be the same.
One must wonder — how did the developers ever get the Spokane City Council to go along with this. Did they provide financial and social support for the council members? The decisions are so contrary to good comprehensive planning under the Growth Management Act one has to wonder.
I have said these decisions are “senseless.” Quite possibly they are worse than that, they are destructive a liveable residential area and areas which should not be developed as commercial sites or residential areas. It is as though a cancer has been invited to the area.
fletchbiz on August 14 at 1:43 p.m.
With respect to Michael McCarrey’s comment, “Who’s going to buy from those stores, (or, for that matter, live in all those crime-laden, sardine can multi-family housing units they’ve been building all over the place), when anyone with common sense and the ability to do so, has gotten the heck out of Dodge?”
I moved to Spokane four years ago after selling my single-family, owner-occupied home in rural Kentucky. It was the fourth home I had owned, and I was frankly tired of the whole real estate program. So I sold my piece of the “American dream” and invested my assets outside the real estate market. Then I fulfilled a decades-old dream of living in my dream city, Spokane, which I first saw in 1973 from the windows of the Empire Builder on my way to Seattle from New York.
Now I live with my wife and four daughters in one of those apartments that Mr. McCarrey derides. It is clean, well designed and as comfortable to live in as any single family city home I’ve ever owned. My unit in the Regal Ridge Apartments is certainly not a sardine can, and it is most definitely not crime laden, but rather it is well managed and as orderly as a Spokane neighborhood will ever be.
I invite Mr. McCarrey to reexamine his point of view, which I think is quite biased against apartment dwellers and in favor of home owners. While multifamily housing can be poorly constructed and badly managed, it’s not fair to assume this is always the case. The owners of these apartment complexes have millions of dollars invested in them and are often quite attentive to attracting and maintaining reliable and satisfied tenants.
In these days of underwater mortgages and uncertain economic times in general, increasing numbers of people are choosing to live in apartments. Given that the city made the commitment to plan for and allow the construction of these dwellings in this area, it is foolish to argue against planning for how the area will accommodate to the needs of the people living here. Given the facts, derisiveness is not helpful. Constructive ideas and vision for the future are what’s called for.
Thanks for listening. :-)