City’S Growth Plan Back On Track Comprehensive Plan Not Likely To Be Adopted This Year

After two years of delays, the city of Spokane is again moving toward adopting a plan outlining how the city will grow over the next 20 years.

But even at the new pace, the comprehensive plan won’t be adopted this year, officials said.

City Council members gave preliminary approval at a council workshop Thursday to the latest proposed Urban Growth Area boundary - allowing city planners to move ahead with their work, and giving the Spokane County Commissioners an idea of what’s coming. The council is expected to vote on the boundary at their July 26 legislative meeting.

“Since January, we have been on a slight roller coaster because of changing population numbers and uncertainty about the council’s direction on the boundaries,” City Planner Chris Hugo said. “This gave us some specific direction.”

It’s the first of several maps showing three proposed growth alternatives and their associated boundaries.

The council will choose one of the alternatives next year following a series of community meetings and public hearings. That alternative will be the focus of the new comprehensive plan. A final boundary won’t be sent to county commissioners for adoption until the city approves its comprehensive plan next year.

The preliminary boundary shown to council members Thursday is for the “current patterns” scenario (with the city growing outward), the most expansive of the three alternatives.

The boundary has been whittled back from the March map that Commissioner Kate McCaslin called a “land grab.”

“We went back to the drawing board and came up with something that should be much more palatable,” said Nick Dragisich, assistant city manager in charge of operations.

The new proposal takes in less land to the east and south of the city limits. However, it still makes the city responsible for providing services on the North Side up to Gleneden and includes the Kaiser Mead area.

City Planning Director Charlie Dotson said the northern boundary still remains the “hot spot,” with both the city and county planning to provide services.

Dotson said the boundary represents a “balance between future population and future jobs.”

The state Growth Management Act requires the city to show how and where it will provide services, such as sewer, water and transportation, for 68,768 new city residents expected to arrive during the next 20 years.

City planners will create two more maps showing the boundaries under the “central city” and “centers and corridors” scenarios. Under the central city idea, growth with be concentrated around the city core, then spread toward the edges in lesser densities.

Under centers and corridors, the population densities will be spread among a dozen different areas throughout the city.

The plan is two years behind schedule. At least $300,000, mostly in staff time, has been used responding to appeals, lawsuits, and satisfying requirements of the Growth Management Hearings Board.