Attorney Challenges Restrictions On Barker Road Development

The way attorney Steve Eugster sees it, Spokane County entered into a contract with Donwood Inc. 19 years ago and it can’t renege now.

A recent string of conditions placed on the company’s plans for 20 acres near Barker Road and Interstate 90 is unacceptable, Eugster told county commissioners Tuesday night.

The conditions violate the contract, said Eugster, who represents Donwood, and the company wants them removed.

“That’s not the way we do business in Spokane County,” he said.

Commissioners will decide whether it is or not.

A county attorney is reviewing the case, and commissioners are expected to issue a decision in two weeks.

The dispute had its beginnings in 1976, when the county gave the company a zone change that allowed it to develop a truck stop, motel and restaurant on the land east of Barker and just south of I-90.

The project never went through, but the freeway commercial zoning remained intact.

Fifteen years later, the zone was switched to regional business during a county-wide zone change.

Just last year, Donwood asked for permission to build anything allowable in the regional business zone on the property.

That could range from a Costco to an adult entertainment store.

The county planning department ruled that the plan was too general, and the hearing examiner committee, a volunteer panel that rules on land-use changes, attached a long string of conditions to the proposal.

One of them requires that the company go before the hearing examiner each time the firm sells a piece of the land.

Planner Stacy Bjordahl said that was necessary so that planners would have an opportunity to review the potential impacts of the individual projects.

Eugster said that was unnecessary and was not one of the original conditions placed on the zone change that his client was given in 1976.

“To force these people to come back at $3,000 a shot every time they want to sell off one of these lots is unfair, illegal and just not right,” Eugster said.

Another condition requires the firm to do a traffic study when more than 1,600 cars per day begin using the development.

Donwood partner Gordon Curry said the company has agreed to many road upgrades in the area to accommodate traffic and that a study would be extraneous.