Meeting draws crowd, questions

More than 100 people packed the West Central Community Center Tuesday night for the public unveiling of a 77-acre development planned for the north bank of the Spokane River, across from downtown.

The Kendall Yards project will eventually stretch from the Monroe Street Bridge west to Summit Boulevard, south of Bridge Avenue. Developer Marshall Chesrown, who bought the land in January for $12.8 million, promotes it as an “urban village,” which will include 2,500 residential units and 1 million square feet of retail and office space.

Principal project designer Todd Johnson said the 77 acres would be broken into districts connected by a central, tree-lined boulevard, which still has to be named. Plazas would be developed in each of the five districts with lighting, seating and access to river views.

Closer to the river, buildings likely will be higher, perhaps six or eight stories, to take advantage of the views, he said. Moving north, closer to Bridge Avenue, buildings would be scaled down to two or three stories to fit in better with the neighborhood, he said.

“It’s unusual to have something this dramatic in the middle of a city,” Johnson said of the undeveloped property.

West Central residents yelled out questions throughout the 90-minute meeting, concerned about everything from traffic to property taxes to whether power lines would be underground (they will be). They wanted to know what the impact would be on Holmes Elementary School and how the development would access the Maple Street Bridge.

From Monroe Street to Maple Street, the development would include ground-level retail, such as restaurants and shops, with office space and residences on upper floors, Johnson said. As the development moves west from Maple, it would be primarily residential and would include “mid- and upper-range” apartment complexes, townhouses and condominiums to appeal to a broad range of people.

“Any low-income?” one woman asked.

“That’s not envisioned,” Johnson said.

Answering audience questions, project manager Tom Reese said the project team doesn’t believe Holmes will be overwhelmed because they don’t expect many families with children to move in.

Traffic consultant Dave Hattan said the plans call for a separate access point onto the Maple Street Bridge from the development. Also, a traffic signal at Monroe Street and Bridge Avenue would create a “gateway” to the development, with shops and restaurants at the intersection, Reese said.

One man in the audience cautioned that the speed limit on the bridge should be lowered to prevent a traffic bottleneck north of the bridge.

The plans call for the Centennial Trail to run under the Monroe Street Bridge, then to the west, along the southern edge of the development. Though the city’s plan to eliminate traffic on the Post Street Bridge is still in place, Reese said, the developers would like to see some vehicle access there, such as a trolley, to help connect the development to downtown.

One woman asked how the development would affect property taxes.

Reese said property values are already rising in the area but that developers were looking for ways to ease the impact of fast escalations. However, he said, rising property values also can benefit homeowners by making their homes worth more money.

The cleanup of contaminated dirt on the site should be complete within 60 days, Reese said, and land grading should begin after that.

Leroy Eadie, a city planning manager, said the city has not heard anything negative about this project from residents, in part because the developer has met extensively with the West Central community.

“The public’s always been very much for this project,” Eadie said.

The community meeting precedes the official planned unit development application being submitted to the city. Reese said the application will be submitted within the next few months. After that, the city will open a public comment period, followed by a public hearing.