Developer Offers Payment For Pavement In Lieu Of Sidewalk

For developer Rod Plese, the issue is how to best spend a scarce resource: money.

For city officials, it’s a question of enforcing their policy on sidewalks, required for all new residential developments.

Plese is asking the city to waive the sidewalk for one side of a new street in Sundance Hills 11th Addition. The street would weave around and connect two 76-lot plats. There would be no homes on the street, and it would be built north-south under the Bonneville Power Administration power lines.

Plese is not disputing the need for sidewalks on one side of this street to serve walkers moving between subdivisions.

But he is offering the city a check equal to his cost of building the second walk: Take the money and put in pavement where it is more needed, said Plese.

“It’s foolish to pave two sides of the street when there are few people walking down it,” said Plese. “Take the money and utilize it where it’s needed.”

He suggests the city start a kitty for laying a concrete sidewalk along Shawnee Street on the route to Woodridge School.

Those homes were built before the city’s sidewalk ordinances. Hundreds of kids are forced into the street to reach the school.

But it is that very reason the city has been leery of releasing developers from sidewalk requirements and insists they be built even on cul-de-sacs and roads that go nowhere.

No one knows where future development will occur, and after homeowners landscape and install fences and sprinklers, the cost of and resistance to sidewalks increase.

“Sidewalks are more than just in front of houses; they’re supposed to tie the neighborhood together,” said Brad Blegen, city public works director. “There are pros and cons either way, but our feeling is the walks ought to go in.”

Plese agrees but insists some common sense must prevail.

The city public works committee heard the arguments and will pass the issue on to the City Council.

Among those against the change is Councilman Chris Anderson, who said a change would sacrifice the well-being of future residents.

“If my predecessors had done the same thing for developments just like the one I live in, we wouldn’t be faced with the debate over how to put in needed sidewalks after the fact,” said Anderson. “It seems penny-wise and pound-foolish.”

Anderson is also concerned about lifting the requirement and its precedent for other projects and why Plese is putting in so much time and effort when he’s already said he will write a check for the money anyway.

But Plese said there is no ulterior motive.

“Money, money, money - it’s not about money,” he said. “Everybody’s looking for my ulterior motive. There is none.”

, DataTimes