Planners say Valley area could fit in 16,400 new homes

About 16,400 homes could be built on vacant land in and around Spokane Valley, city planners said. That would bring a 47 percent increase in the city’s present population – or roughly 40,000 additional residents inside the Valley’s existing urban areas.

At its regular meeting Tuesday night, the City Council reviewed new data on the land capacity of Spokane Valley and other urban areas on its borders.

“This is just purely an analytical first step,” senior planner Scott Kuhta told the council.

As part of Spokane County’s ongoing review of its 20-year land use plan, Spokane Valley and other cities are figuring out exactly how many people can fit within their borders. To do that, officials use property data from the county assessor’s office and mapping software to calculate the amount of land where new housing construction is feasible.

The figures don’t necessarily reflect the number of people expected to move to Spokane Valley, planners stressed, but only the amount of land available to house them if they did.

Spokane County commissioners will consider cities’ land capacity as they look to stretch urban growth boundaries required by Washington’s Growth Management Act. Under it, the state gives counties an estimate of what the population will be in 20 years. If it’s needed, new land can then be opened up to development to accommodate future newcomers.

After cities figure out their thresholds for new housing, “then you have to see what is left over and start to adjust the urban growth boundaries based on the population that you can’t accommodate within the existing urban growth area,” said Spokane Valley planning manager Greg McCormick.

Where and how the growth boundary moves is a controversial topic because new development can affect both the revenue and the spending of governments providing services to the area. Changes also can raise the ire of neighbors as previously pastoral land near them becomes available to developers.

As for available space in the Valley, the study found:

•There are about 1,680 developable acres inside the city limits

•That land could accommodate up to 9,800 new housing units for an estimated 22,000 people

•In urban growth areas contiguous to the city limits there are about 1,650 developable acres

•The land could hold about 6,600 housing units with more than 17,700 potential tenants