Schools Plotting For Future District 81 Updated On City’s Housing Activity
More than 1,800 new homes, duplexes and apartments are approved for construction in Spokane School District 81, but the impact on schools is hard to predict.
“New houses don’t mean new families,” district planning coordinator Ned Hammond cautioned the school board Wednesday. “You can’t look at housing starts and say that’s going to generate kids.”
Only about 35 percent of the people moving into the new homes will be new to Spokane, Hammond predicted. The rest will be people relocating within the district.
Nevertheless, it’s still prudent for the school district to buy land in growing areas while it’s available, Hammond said after the meeting.
The district bought land in March near Indian Trail Road in northwest Spokane for a possible new elementary school and has identified an elementary school site in the northeast. In addition, the district is looking for property in the southeast and southwest.
Hammond counted 1,823 housing units approved since November for his annual report.
Recent patterns suggest each new home produces, on average, six-tenths of a student, he said.
That would translate to 273 students in the northwest and 91 students in the southeast, if the pattern holds. The southwest could generate 302 students by that formula.
The northeast, with three new apartment complexes under construction, is trickier to call.
Some apartments don’t attract families. But that could change with the Northwest Fair Housing Alliance’s recent legal action targeting discrimination against families with children, Hammond said.
How quickly new homes go up will depend on the market, which seems to be slowing for homes costing more than $125,000, Hammond said.
Most new units are in the northeast. The 700-unit Cedar Springs Estate, on Lincoln Road between Nevada and Crestline, accounts for most of that growth.
The second-highest concentration of growth is in the northwest, where 456 homes are being built in the Indian Trail and Sundance areas.
The southwest, near Hatch Road, is another high-growth area.
The Eagle Ridge development, across U.S. Highway 195 from The Creek at Qualchan Golf Course, gained approval for the first 133-home phase of an eventual 2,000-unit development.
Homes in Eagle Ridge’s first phase will feed students to Spokane’s Wilson Elementary attendance area. Much of the next phases, to be built over 15 years, are in the Cheney School District.
Growth is slowing in the southeast, Hammond said. But that could pick up with the Moran Prairie area included in both the city’s and county’s proposed urban growth plans under the state Growth Management Act.
In related action, the board agreed Wednesday to hire ALSC Architects of Spokane to study school construction needs.
The study will include the possible remodeling of Lewis and Clark High School. It is likely to lead to a construction bond vote in 1997 or 1998.
The board specified ALSC will receive “no more than $64,000” for the study and “no more than $30,000” for other work, including site evaluations in preparation for the bond.
District officials interviewed three other firms before recommending ALSC.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: Residential housing activity