Drumheller Springs project draws concerns

Jenny Rose, a Nez Perce tribal descendant, cried when she thought about nine new homes being built across from a park that was once a time-honored campsite for Spokane tribal members.

A developer wants to take advantage of a 2-year-old change in the city zoning code that allows for clustered, cottage-style housing on single-family lots.

The Ash Court project is adjacent to Drumheller Springs Park, a natural area that is revered as a gathering and trading site for Native Americans. Spokane Chief Garry ran a school there in the late 1800s.

Rose and other neighbors fear that the construction of nine new homes will bring more people, traffic and pets to the fragile environment of the meadow and wetlands that make up the traditional camping area. They would prefer that the developer be allowed to build only one house each on the four lots that make up the land for the proposed project.

“I guess it just really hurts me that people are looking more at the money side of it than the historical side of it,” Rose said last week during an interview at her home not far from the development site. “It just tears at my heart,” she said.

Property owners Wayne and Marcie Endicott would be the first developers in Spokane to take advantage of a new zoning option that allows for the clustering of homes on existing single-family lots.

The City Council approved the new rules in 2006 as a way to encourage development on under-used sites or locations with challenging topography.

Dan Wolf, agent for the Endicotts, said the choice to use cottage-style housing was made because of the high cost of developing the parcels on a bluff overlooking Ash and Maple streets where they traverse up and down the North Hill.

Each of the new homes would be built on 650 square feet of land, but have about 1,000 feet of living space each through the use of second stories. All of the homes would take advantage of the great views out over the city to the south and east and westward toward the city park. Although the development includes four lots, only three of them are available for housing since the fourth fronts on Ash Street where is sweeps southward down from the North Hill along a broad curve near Drumheller Springs. That lot has access problems, Wolf said.

Wolf said the project will include paving of a gravel portion of Ash Place, an improvement that will benefit neighbors.

Rose said the concern is putting a lot of people into a relatively small space, and traffic would increase in the area.

Wolf said the development would increase traffic only by a small amount.

According to a monument placed adjacent to the park in 1964 by the Daughters of the American Revolution, Chief Garry was born in 1813 and taken as a boy by the Hudson’s Bay Co. to the Red River School near Winnipeg, Canada. A neighborhood brochure about the park history said that Garry learned English, French, agriculture, literature, geography and religion. He returned to his tribe in 1830 and established a small school at the park, becoming a missionary and teacher to his people for 60 years, the monument states.

Settler Dan Drumheller established a slaughterhouse in the area in the 1880s and used the springs for a water supply. The neighborhood brochure said that James Monahan platted Spring Hill Addition in the area in 1888.

Rose points to the rich history of the area when arguing that the Ash Court development violates the spirit of the area. “You are not honoring the culture of the area and what Chief Garry did with his school,” she said.

Wolf said he could not respond to that argument other than to point out, “You can’t take privately owned land and preclude it from development.”