Greenacres community will write neighborhood plan

The Greenacres neighborhood no longer wants to abandon its request for a rezone.

Residents, who raised $1,800 last summer to apply for a change that would reduce the housing density in their 457-acre area, had asked the city of Spokane Valley to drop their request late last month. The neighbors were frustrated with the process, especially once they learned that the change they were seeking could easily be undone if a developer paid $1,800 to seek a rezone that would again allow higher density.

Residents have decided that writing a formal neighborhood plan will be the best way to shape the future of their neighborhood, but they will allow their original rezone application go through as well.

Neighbor Mary Pollard urged other Spokane Valley neighborhoods to begin plans of their own.

“None of us in this community can be passive bystanders (in the development of the city),” she said Wednesday. “They need to get in on the ground floor instead of being victims of a (comprehensive) plan that doesn’t reflect what they want.”

City staffers weren’t sure whether simply asking the city to abandon the request in December would have been enough to stop the rezone application process anyway. They briefed the council on the situation Tuesday and suggested a process that would involve the neighbors who signed the original petition for the rezone signing a new petition to revoke it.

It became a moot topic, though, when Pollard said to go ahead with the original application.

The neighbors still hope to be given back their $1,800 or be credited that money as the neighborhood plan process moves forward, Pollard said. She said a city staffer might have warned them before they made the rezone request that their lower density zoning could be overturned by a developer’s application, but that it didn’t sink in.

“With our lack of experience, we did not understand what he was telling us,” Pollard said.

At one point, neighbors were so frustrated they planned to put signs in their yards that read “Choose another neighborhood” to deter potential buyers and studied asking the city of Liberty Lake to annex the area, Pollard said.

Greenacres’ neighborhood planning process is now under way. It encompasses an area roughly bordered by Interstate 90 to the south, the Spokane River to the north, Barker Road to the east and Flora Road to the west. Some of the pieces neighbors are talking about putting into the plan are allowing large animals, making space for horse trails and building a park.