Visions of the Valley future
Maxine Davidson, 82, can picture Spokane Valley’s future.
The city will have a pedestrian-friendly center where young couples, families with children and older citizens mingle daily because they live door-to-door in attractive apartment buildings. Outdoor cafes will spill out onto a plaza, where the community will gather on Saturday mornings to hear the high school bands play.
“People are going to be living longer and I think, mentally, people need interaction,” said Davidson, an artist and retired school principal. “I think (a city center) will attract people from outside areas.”
Although Davidson’s ideas are only one person’s vision of the future, an alternative along those lines is among those the Spokane Valley’s city staff is considering as it writes its first unique comprehensive land-use plan.
The plan, required under the state’s Growth Management Act, will outline how the city will look during the next 20 years.
The city’s staff recently completed a draft chapter on land-use. The chapter suggests three alternatives for future growth: developing a vibrant city center, concentrating businesses into smaller centers connected by pedestrian-friendly corridors, or allowing growth to continue as it does now, with no real focal point in the Valley.
The City Council eventually will settle on one of those options, and now is the time for citizens to have a say. Not next summer, when the plan is expected to be adopted. Not in 2014, when you might notice a park replacing a vacant big box building next to a new city hall – or, alternatively, when you wonder where the parks went. Not in 2024, when 20,000 more people are expected to live in Spokane Valley.
Now.
“It’s always better (to hear feedback) sooner than later,” said the city’s long-range planning manager, Greg McCormick. “It gives us more time to respond and make other changes.”
The staff will hold a meeting Thursday night to hear more public input on the land-use chapter. It’s the first of four fall meetings to discuss the options.
•Option 1 involves creating a pedestrian-friendly city center in the area of Sprague Avenue and University Road. The center would be the social and economic focus of the city.
The sprawling commercial development on Sprague, the city’s eight-mile-long strip mall, would be reined in. New north-south streets would be cut into the Sprague corridor every 200 to 400 feet.
The city center alternative would require some investment of public money, such as for those new streets, a new library or city hall.
“More than just the investment, it’s going to require a public-private partnership there to make that plan a reality,” McCormick said.
A city center would cost about $20 million in public money, and the city could expect an 11-to-1 return on that investment from the private sector, a study done by an urban-design firm last winter found.
•Option 2 calls for several smaller community-and-business centers. Those might include the University City Shopping Center, the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center and Mirabeau Point.
High-density housing, such as apartments, would be encouraged along the corridors that connect the centers.
Of the three options, the centers-and-corridors alternative would be the most dependent on upgrading the public transit system, McCormick said. Citizens without cars would need a safe, easy way to get from one center to the next.
Spokane Transit Authority has been studying the possibility of building a light-rail train system or starting bus-rapid transit service.
•Option 3 is the status quo. The city would make few changes to the land-use plan Spokane County used for the area.
In all the scenarios, residential areas of the city would be dedicated to just that – residences – with some grocery stores and other conveniences allowed. Residents won’t see office buildings going up next to their four-bedroom, two-bath havens, according to the draft chapter.
But the city still will need new housing in undeveloped areas, and more infill homes in existing neighborhoods, to handle the population surge that’s expected, McCormick said.
The draft chapter calls for two neighborhoods, Rotchford Acres and parts of the Ponderosa area, to be maintained as more rural settings. Only one house would be allowed per acre there. Those areas recently won that status, but only for a year.
The staff is suggesting that other residential lots would range from 5,000 to 9,600 feet. If apartments are concentrated near the city’s core or along corridors and most home lots are kept under 10,000 square feet, Spokane Valley will be able to handle all the new people, McCormick said.
During a series of public meetings last spring, building a city center was the most popular option among residents. McCormick said that alternative makes sense on several fronts.
“The city center focus, I feel, would have the most potential to be a positive change for the city, not only in economic-development terms, but in sense-of-community and sense-of-place terms,” he said. “It would give more of a feeling of having an actual city rather than just a name on the map.”
After citizens give further feedback this fall, the Planning Commission will OK a land-use chapter and make its recommendation to the City Council. The council has the final say, but there will be public hearings along the way for even more input.