Residents, developer at odds over Moran Prairie road

Spokane County commissioners have scheduled a decision May 1 on a controversial request to sell part of a road on Moran Prairie to developers so they can build a strip mall.

County Engineer Robert Brueggeman and people who live in the area are opposed to Black Development’s proposal to put a Yoke’s supermarket and other businesses on top of Ben Burr Road between 57th and 61st avenues.

The proposal is unusual because Ben Burr is a well-used, paved road. Most road “vacations” involve routes that exist only on paper, rights of way that were never used as planned.

In this case, the road has been used as planned since Spokane County acquired part of an abandoned Great Northern Railway line in July 1953. The county established a road on the old rail bed in 1954 and named it after Benjamin E. Burr, the railroad’s pioneer Spokane division engineering chief.

The paved road starts at 57th Avenue and connects with Jamieson Road 1 1/2 miles to the south. It links Moran Prairie Elementary School with Sacred Heart Retreat Center and is popular with runners and bicyclists because of relatively light traffic.

If Ben Burr Road were closed between 57th and 61st, its traffic would be diverted onto Yale Road, next to Moran Prairie Elementary School, or onto the Palouse Highway.

In many ways, the dispute is similar to any other in which residents fight intrusions they fear would disturb their lifestyles or threaten their children’s safety. But the defenders have a more potent weapon this time.

State law says county commissioners must listen to their engineer when they weigh evidence for and against a road abandonment. The law states flatly that, “if the county road is found useful as a part of the county road system, it shall not be vacated.”

A road may be vacated only if it is “not useful and the public will be benefited by the vacation.”

The law is much more restrictive than the one that allowed the Spokane City Council to close streets on either side of the Spokane County courthouse, through the Gonzaga University campus, through the downtown or even the Howard Street Bridge over the Spokane River.

County Engineer Brueggeman said in his report to county commissioners that Ben Burr Road is useful to motorists, who make 450 trips daily on the section that Black Development and property owners – principally Don Jacobson and Allen Williamson – want to close.

There are 60 evening “peak hour” trips each day, Brueggeman added.

Black Development has argued that safety could be improved by eliminating a T intersection at 57th that’s so tight school buses can’t stay in their own lane while turning the corner. But Brueggeman said there has been only one collision at that intersection or the one at 61st Avenue in the past five years, and no one was injured.

“Given the number of trips per day and the lack of accidents at the Ben Burr intersection, it does not appear that the public will be benefited by this vacation,” Brueggeman said in his report.

Black Development’s attorney, Stacy Bjordahl, argued in a March 20 letter to county commissioners that Brueggeman’s interpretation of the law is so narrow that only unused rights of way could be vacated. Brueggeman failed to consider whether the disputed section of road would still be useful after the land on both sides of it is developed, Bjordahl said.

The land is zoned for “community commercial” use, which would allow apartments as well as a small shopping center or individual shops and offices. Much of the land currently is covered with abandoned greenhouses.

“Something is going to happen there,” Black Development spokesman Greg Sweeney said in an interview. “The status quo is an unlikely outcome.”

A shopping center with a 54,000-square-foot grocery store and several smaller businesses is possible only if Ben Burr Road is vacated. Although only 23 feet wide, the road has a 65-foot right of way that would contribute about 2 acres to the proposed 8.8-acre project.

If developers aren’t allowed to buy the right of way at market value, their next-best option for satisfying parking and setback requirements might be multifamily housing, Sweeney said.

He said county commissioners need to take a broader view than Brueggeman’s “narrow traffic engineer’s consideration.”

Ben Burr Road resident Steven Black made his view clear in a letter to commissioners: “We should not vacate the road so local real estate people can line their pockets.”

Physician Patrick Tennican, another of the numerous neighbors who oppose the road vacation, said in an interview that he thinks a lawsuit is “a distinct possibility” if the vacation is granted.

“From a legal standpoint, the commissioners would be overstepping their boundaries if they didn’t uphold the state law,” Tennican said.

He runs on the disputed section of road and is concerned about the safety of children at Moran Prairie Elementary on 57th Avenue, whose grounds adjoin the eastern edge of the proposed shopping center site.

The school’s Parent Teacher Group, which represents 370 families, also has expressed concern about students’ safety. The group said it doesn’t oppose development next to the school, but gave commissioners an extensive list of objections and recommendations with regard to the Black Development proposal.

Commissioners have twice postponed action on the road vacation to give developers more time to negotiate compromises and win neighborhood support, but no deal has emerged.

Among other things, Sweeney said, the developers have offered to help pay for a center turn-lane in the Palouse Highway between 57th and 61st and improvements to the highway’s intersection with 61st.

But the talks have been complicated by the possibility that Spokane County might develop a recreational trail along the unpaved Ben Burr right of way north of 57th Avenue as part of a project to solve a storm water runoff problem.

Sweeney said developers have offered to run a “supertrail” through the shopping center with lanes for bicyclists and pedestrians, but no one can agree on a safe way to connect that trail with one the county might build on the other side of 57th.

The crossing is especially important because children in a large apartment complex several blocks north of 57th Avenue likely would use the county trail to walk to school.

“We’re willing to work with anybody to make this work for everybody, but there isn’t an obvious solution,” Sweeney said.