Ruling Near On Downtown Work-Release Home

Superior Court Judge Neal Rielly is expected to rule next week on whether work-release inmates can move into the Brownstone building in downtown Spokane.

Neighbors, including a day-care center and a florist, are fighting a city permit allowing former Cornelius House inmates to relocate on West Third Avenue.

On Wednesday, the businesses’ attorney, Michael Connelly, argued that the city hearing examiner wrongly had classified the 84-bed facility as a group home and had ignored neighbors’ fears and a state law on siting work-release facilities.

But attorneys for the city and Second Chance, the halfway house operator, disagreed. They said the hearing examiner classified the program the same as two other work-release facilities in Spokane. And, they said, the state law didn’t apply to independent contractors until later.

The stakes have risen for both sides since the appeal was filed last year.

Last month, Second Chance’s Cornelius House on West Mallon was declared structurally unsafe by safety engineers. Its contract with the state Department of Corrections was suspended pending the appeal and its inmates were moved to the Geiger Corrections Center.

Federal prison authorities have postponed moving inmates into the Brownstone as well. Without its inmates, Second Chance was forced to lay off 17 employees. Brownstone owner Mick McDowell has spent $1.5 million renovating the decrepit apartment building into a group facility, but it has sat empty for two months.

Neighbors, meanwhile, have grown increasingly upset over a string of problems at Second Chance’s juvenile facilities in Western Washington, including a resident accused of murder in Stanwood.

One embarrassing element of the local dispute is that when the city of Spokane granted the special permit for the Brownstone, everyone - including the hearing examiner - looked forward to the City Council hearing the appeal. Neighbors say they had dozens of people lined up to testify.

All sides apparently failed to notice that months earlier, the council had passed a law sending such appeals directly to Superior Court.

Connelly says he believes the hearing examiner would have ruled differently if he’d realized the council would not hear the matter.

“My approach would have been different, too.”

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