Kendall Yards moves forward

An 80-acre development north of downtown Spokane has been given the green light by Mayor Dennis Hession despite lingering concerns raised by city and state planners.

The mayor makes no apologies for the move, saying Kendall Yards is the largest project of its type the city has ever seen. The Spokane Area Economic Development Council has estimated the 20-year residential and commercial project will ultimately have an economic impact of $3 billion.

“I committed to becoming involved in this project because it is the most substantial project that has ever occurred in the city of Spokane,” said Hession, noting that the developer has verbally agreed to address the issues raised by planners. “Because of its sheer size, it necessarily requires more attention. You have to remember that this project is very unique in that it is a huge project within the central core of the city.”

The action is the latest example of the extra effort the city is expending to assure the planned 2,600-residence Kendall Yards development moves forward. Those efforts include a special task force formed to guide the development through permitting, a trip to Colorado by the city’s traffic engineer to meet with the developer’s consultants and an “update” e-mail the mayor sent to dozens of business leaders to keep them posted on progress. In addition, John Pilcher, the city’s economic development director, personally requested that a hearing date proposed for the development move up a week, to July 27.

However, the extra attention has some in the development community calling for equal treatment.

“I don’t have any problem with Kendall Yards,” said developer Rob Brewster, who has proposed the $40 million, 300-foot-high Vox Tower of condominiums and apartments on the east end of downtown. “The problem I have is we all need to be treated the same way. We have not had even a single phone call from the city asking what they can do to help on the Vox project.”

At this point, the Kendall Yards project application has been declared “technically complete.” That means it’s been scheduled for a public hearing, before the hearing examiner, who has final say to approve or deny it. Despite that, the mayor’s actions June 16 caused a flurry of e-mails among city planning employees and a Washington State Department of Transportation planner, wondering whether traffic concerns would be fully addressed.

“I was made aware that the city has deemed the Kendall Yards project technically complete without the traffic issues that we had discussed at our June 6th meeting being addressed or mitigation being proposed,” wrote Greg Figg, a WSDOT planner, in an e-mail to the city’s traffic engineer the Monday after the development was approved. “This is a significant concern to us given the traffic volumes that will be added to the Maple/Ash I-90 ramp terminals. With this occurring I was wondering how the traffic concerns on this project are going to be addressed?”

Pilcher and Tom Arnold, the city’s engineering services director, said declaring the application complete just allows a hearing date to be set, but does not prohibit the city from requesting additional information or making corrections to plans. Pilcher said imposing conditions on the development is the job of the hearing examiner, who may also require a development agreement between the city and Kendall Yards. In addition, Pilcher said, a staff report being developed will draw the hearing examiner’s attention to specific issues.

“I don’t believe the city feels like it’s taking a significant risk by moving forward in the project at this point,” Pilcher said. “We’ve come to the conclusion that we’ve got sufficient information to establish the hearing date and continue the dialogue.”

Al Gilson, a WSDOT spokesman, said Tuesday that the city had requested additional information from the state, which it was working to deliver.

Tom Reese, project manager for Kendall Yards, said his team is committed to providing all the information the city needs but felt it had submitted enough to merit a hearing date. That’s why the developers rejected the conditional application approval initially issued by a city planner and asked that the application be approved outright.

“Our concern was that this cycle of asking for new information was going to continue,” Reese said, noting that his traffic consultants analyzed more than 90 intersections around the downtown core as part of its study. “You have to have certainty at some point about when you’re going to get a hearing date. That’s why we rejected that. We didn’t feel any substantive information would come out of it. We just felt like there has to be an end to this process. We just have to get to hearing and let the project stand on its own and let the hearing examiner decide.”

Declaring an application “technically complete,” Reese said, “is not approving the project. It’s merely allowing it to get to hearing.”