Peaceful Valley Area Hopes To Become Historic District

The area on the south bank of the Spokane River, just west of downtown, used to be called Poverty Flats.

Around the turn of the century, it was a neighborhood filled with immigrants, drawn to the possibility of owning their own homes and property.

The men worked as laborers and many of the women were servants for the well-to-do families in nearby Browne’s Addition.

Years ago, Poverty Flats was platted and renamed Peaceful Valley. But the neighborhood looks much the same, with many of the original and ornate frame houses still intact.

Peaceful Valley residents would like to keep it that way.

The neighborhood has received a $7,500 state grant to work on becoming a local historic district. Such a designation would allow the neighborhood to draw up strict guidelines for the area’s buildings and landscaping.

While 13 Spokane neighborhoods, including Peaceful Valley, are national historic districts, only Corbin Park has met the more-stringent guidelines required for local historic district status. It became the city’s first such district in 1992.

Peaceful Valley residents will spend the next year using the grant to draw up their own guidelines in hopes of becoming the second.

Sali Combelic is one of the driving forces behind the process. A Peaceful Valley resident for nearly 10 years, she said the neighborhood is falling victim to developers. A triplex built last year on Clarke Avenue served as the first warning, she said.

“It’s pretty unbecoming to the neighborhood,” she said of the triplex. “People like the funky old houses here and this just didn’t fit in.

“I came to the realization that we’re losing the whole neighborhood.”

Combelic began researching what could be done to preserve the feel of the community, of its pitched roofs and wood houses. Her investigation landed her in the office of Teresa Brum, director of Spokane’s City and County Historic Preservation Office.

“The residents came to me and said they wanted assistance,” said Brum. “And that’s my only personal criteria - whether the residents want it.”

Brum said this is the first time a low-income neighborhood has attempted to use the local historic district designation as a tool for revitalization.

Local historic status would keep the area from losing its dignity to new construction and remodeling, she said.

To qualify as a local historic district, the neighborhood must prove its historical significance either through its architecture, its people or its archaeology and historic events. Fifty-one percent of neighbors must approve of the project for it to be approved.

A meeting is planned for tomorrow evening at the Peaceful Valley Community Center to celebrate the grant and begin the process of writing neighborhood guidelines.

“We want to try to get people to think about what it is we want as a neighborhood,” said Combelic. “People don’t object to new construction. But they do object to something that’s not sensitive to the architecture already here.”

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: MEETING PLANNED A representative from Spokane’s Historic Preservation Office will discuss what it means to become a local historic district at the Peaceful Valley Community Center at 7 p.m. Friday.