Lumber Site Chosen For Repair Center Council Votes To Buy Mallon Facility, But Start-Up Unclear
A proposed maintenance center has a home in the Garry Park neighborhood, but that doesn’t mean it will be going there any time soon.
On Monday, the Spokane City Council voted unanimously to buy the former Long Lake Lumber site at 2306 E. Mallon for $5 million as a future location for the center.
But council members cautioned it could be many years - if ever - before the site is used as a central location for the fixing and storing of city vehicles.
Building the maintenance center depends on city officials finding $32 million for construction. That’s money they don’t currently have.
“It’s up to the community to find out where this fits into our priorities,” said Councilwoman Roberta Greene. She added the city is swamped with deferred maintenance projects, ranging from replacing police and fire equipment to upgrading parks and streets.
The city’s focus on the former lumber yard is a departure from a year ago, when officials seemed bent on building the maintenance center in the Logan area.
In fact, the city has spent more than $400,000 studying the Logan site as the center’s eventual home. Only some of that work can be transferred to the lumber yard site, said Roger Flint, the city’s director of general services.
Logan residents fought the proposal, saying they’d been left out of the planning process. Besides, they said, their neighborhood couldn’t handle more traffic.
City officials turned their attention to the lumber yard last fall after members of the community assembly ranked it at the top of eight possible locations for the center. The assembly - made up of representatives from seven neighborhood councils - ranked Logan at the bottom.
Garry Park resident Walt Shields applauded city officials for immediately including residents in the planning process. Shields, who chaired a neighborhood subcommittee studying the proposal, said officials let the committee look at several design options. Committee members eventually eliminated all but one.
“This is probably the first time I know of that the city has been so open in the process of negotiating with a neighborhood,” Shields said, adding that only two members of the 10-member committee oppose the plan.
Jack Ramm was one of them.
“This complex is too big for any neighborhood,” Ramm told the council. “I believe it belongs in an industrial neighborhood where it doesn’t butt up against a neighborhood.”
Councilwoman Phyllis Holmes assured Garry Park residents that buying the land wouldn’t end their involvement in the process. “We will insist the neighborhood be involved in the next steps,” she said.
, DataTimes