Developer’S Rezone Request Opposed By Area Residents Colbert Neighbors Want Any Future Developments To Stay Consistent With Semirural Zoning Designation

About a year ago, Bill and Linda Waddell moved to the far reaches of Spokane’s North Side. They were drawn to the open space. They wanted to raise horses.

And now they do. Their home sits on a wide parcel of land, with a pasture out back for their four horses, two colts and a llama. They love the quiet, rural lifestyle and such simple pleasures as watching a herd of white-tailed deer bound over their fence and nibble their neighbor’s alfalfa fields.

But a recent request to rezone the area has put their lifestyle in peril, and has them ready to fight.

“We’re not against development,” Linda Waddell said. “We just want it to be consistent with the five-acre lots.”

The area is located just west of Highway 2, north of Colbert Road and stretches right up to the Waddells’ back yard. It is sliced east to west by the Burlington Northern Railroad right-of-way.

Now, the area is zoned as semirural residential-5, meaning development occurs in five-acre lots. But the requested rezone by Harley Douglass and his agent Cliff Cameron asks for a change to semirural residential-2. They want to divide about 419 acres into 189 lots for the creation of the Autumn Ridge at Colbert subdivision.

That would create a subdivision of lots about as big as the Waddells’ horse pasture.

In addition, Douglass also wants a zone change to neighborhood business for the creation of a 4.6-acre business park with 58,000 square feet of retail space at the south-east corner of the development.

Neither proposal has preliminary approval, nor even a hearing date. But that hasn’t stopped neighbors from expressing their opinions.

“It’s time for someone to put their foot down and say this will stay five acre lots as it’s already been proposed in the GMA (growth management act),” Bill Waddell said.

The building and planning file for Autumn Ridge at Colbert contains more than 20 letters of opposition, several signed by groups of people like the Friends of the Little Spokane River Valley.

In a recent letter to senior planner John Pederson, the group said it opposes the rezone because it is “not in accord with the Decision Guidelines of the Comprehensive Plan…and it would probably create severe impacts on…schools, water, police protection, fire protection, quality of life for the existing property owners, and property values.”

Cameron, however, cited the transitional use policy of the comprehensive plan as one reason for the planned change to two-acre lots.

Because properties south of Colbert Road are almost all two-acre lots, “it’s a historical use that way,” he said. “That makes what I’m doing hugely supportable.”

The Friends’ letter acknowledged the two-acre lots south of Colbert, and their function as a transition from lower to higher density developments.

“The project property is not appropriate as a transition to lower density because the development south of Colbert Road is the transition,” their letter said.

Neighbors have many other concerns as well, such as how the development’s septic system could harm the aquifer and Little Spokane River.

“And if our wells go bad, who pays?” Waddell wondered.

Hundreds of extra car trips, too, would likely have a detrimental effect on old roads like Woolard and Highway 2’s frontage, Waddell said. Cameron said he is in the process of commenting on the letters.

“I am going through the letters one by one and responding to each matter brought up,” he said. The Autumn Ridge project is “on hold” until Cameron completes studies that are looking into such concerns as school shortages in the Mead district and roadway capacity issues, he said.

But members of the Friends of the Little Spokane River Valley and neighbors are open to change and willing to work with the developers toward a compromise.

“While we oppose any rezone of this property…We would actively support a development of five-acre-or-larger lots with considerable open space, most trees and native plants left standing, paved roads (for dust control), public water (since it appears to be available), utilities (except sewer)” and various road improvements, the group said in its letter.

Cameron said he, too, is willing to work with the neighbors.

“If there’s something I can do simplistically to make things palatable,” he will, he said. “Sometimes you can get to a middle ground.”