Weighing in
A weekly look at reader comments and reactions to the news
A South Hill group last week ended its long battle to prevent big-box development along Regal Street near the Palouse Highway. The Southgate Neighborhood Council is giving up its legal fight to focus on holding developers to a series of agreements. The Spokane City Council is expected to approve those same agreements tonight, which would allow development to proceed on those sites.
To see the comments in full, check out Friday’s story at spokesman.com/ tags/big-box.
Lulubelle: 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.
Michael McCarrey: 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 multifamily 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?
stroupe55: Once again the City Council 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 accommodate this increase. We went through a road project a couple of years ago that could have done the job, but our penny-wise Council couldn’t see the writing on the big-box walls. I’m not against the Southgate Mall if done right.
Stephen Eugster: 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.
Charlie Fletcher: 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.
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 the needs of the people living here.