Comin’ Through Freeway Interchange Project Will Transform Evergreen Corridor

When John and Cheryl Haley moved to the Spokane Valley 13 years ago, they found a little slice of paradise: A two-story home on the quiet corner of DeSmet Avenue and Evergreen Road. Rose bushes out front. Horses grazing across the street.

But that scene is soon to change.

A new freeway interchange is going in three blocks north of the Haleys’ home. Evergreen will be transformed from a two-lane road to a five-lane arterial heavy with traffic.

For years the Haleys have heard about the long-planned interchange. Now that it’s finally becoming reality, they’re hungry for details.

“I just think it’s kind of rude that nobody told me what’s going to happen,” John Haley said. “Why haven’t the families (living along Evergreen) been contacted?”

Next year, the state will begin building the new interchange at Interstate 90 and Evergreen Road. It will include a seven-lane bridge spanning the freeway. Before the new interchange opens in 2000, Evergreen will be widened from two to five lanes between Mission Avenue and Sprague Avenue.

The state and the county haven’t held public meetings to discuss their plans with residents. They say they’ll do that when all design plans and appraisals are complete - probably some time after the first of the year.

Since county commissioners signed a deal with developers to build a $23.4 million interchange, business owners and residents along Evergreen are asking:

Will this be the next Sullivan Road?

“It’s possible, but in reality it would take a decade or more to do it,” said Max McNett, associate broker with Clark Pacific realty company.

For one, property along Evergreen is mostly developed as small residential lots, unlike Sullivan, which was bordered by open fields with only a few homes.

And most of the land along Evergreen is zoned residential. It will stay that way unless there’s a change in the county’s comprehensive plan. The new plan will be adopted next spring.

Planners are discussing Evergreen’s commercial future, but nothing has been decided, said Tim Lawhead, senior planner with the county’s Long-Range Planning Department.

But most say it’s highly unlikely Evergreen will explode at Sullivan Road’s magnitude.

It might develop more like Pines or Argonne did, changing from residential to commercial over a 10- to 20-year period.

Right now, Evergreen carries anywhere from about 3,300 cars a day at Mission Avenue to about 7,400 cars at Sprague Avenue.

County engineers estimate it will carry 25,000 to 30,000 cars a day by 2010.

On Sullivan Road, only 15,000 cars a day passed through the Mission intersection in 1994. That number had more than doubled to 37,500 cars a day last September.

Over backyard fences and at block parties, neighbors have talked for years about what could happen to their tiny stretch of life.

Two next-door neighbors agreed not to sell their houses unless the other did. Others worry about kids walking home from school and having to cross a high-traffic arterial.

Still others say there’s not much they can do now.

“When something like this is decided to be done, you can get upset about it, but it’s not going to change things,” said Arlene Canton, who has lived at the corner of DeSmet and Evergreen for 30 years. “We’re wondering if there will be businesses on both sides of us, that one day you’ll smell more tacos and hamburgers than you smell fresh air.”

While Evergreen’s transformation may not be as explosive as Sullivan’s, growth is still good news to Kris Ritchie, co-owner of Mary Lou’s Ice Cream just north of Evergreen and Broadway.

“We’ve been waiting for this,” said Ritchie, who began remodeling the 20-year-old ice cream parlor this winter with husband, Ed.

They’ll be adding a full lunch menu.

“Our first customers will be construction crews,” she said. “You can’t lose having a restaurant off a freeway exit like that.”

The interchange bridge will be seven lanes wide, spanning up to 10 freeway lanes to accommodate for future widening of I-90.

The bridge will have only a 2 percent grade from one end to the other. Plans are to cut into the side of the bluff north of Mission Avenue and have Evergreen pass beneath a bridge carrying Mission Avenue. Ramps would connect the two roads.

The interchange won’t take out the water tower that sits just south of the freeway, said Al Gilson, spokesman for the state transportation department.

Neither will the widened road take out Vera Water and Power’s river-rock well, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, said Gary Nelson, project engineer with Spokane County.

Engineers plan to weave the roadway through residential areas, wherever possible biting off chunks of undeveloped land rather than cutting into small residential lots. Nelson said 94 pieces of property will be affected.

It will be at least the first of March before the county can start approaching people with appraisals, said Sherman Johnson, the county’s right of way supervisor.

Gwen Melcher, who owns the Valley Montessori School at Mission and Evergreen, said she’s glad the process is finally in motion.

Years ago she wanted to add improvements to the school, but was told to hold off because their building would be demolished.

“It was delay, delay, delay,” she said. Finally she had to add the $370,000 in improvements, because she didn’t know if the interchange would ever come.

Now the building will be demolished.

She’ll begin preparations around the first of the year to move to a new location a few blocks away.

“It’s far from over, but it’s finally in the process to begin the finish,” she said.