Automatic captions, reformatted for reading: sentence case, paragraph breaks, and
timestamps at their original cue positions. Word order is unchanged. Caption
mishearings are left as recorded.
[00:01:29]
Okay. Welcome everyone to today's special hearing of the Spokane Plan Commission for April 14, 2026. Before we get started, emily, will you please take roll? President bank? Here. Vice president patterson? Here. Commissioner lenhart? Absent. Commissioner Madsen? Here. Commissioner Tamoush? Here. Commissioner williams? Here. Commissioner yotz? Here. We have a quorum. And then community assembly liaison Linda Carroll? Present. Perfect. Good to go. Okay, very good. So what I like to do at these hearings, especially given the fantastic turnout today, is I just want to go through some hearing procedures to be sure that everyone has an agreed upon level set.
[00:02:22]
So the following rules of decorum by the public will be observed and adhered to during planning commission proceedings. Please silence your cell phones when entering the Council chambers. No clapping, cheering, or booing. No public outbursts. There will be a time limit of three minutes per public comment, and out of respect to the number of public comments we have signed up to speak today, we're going to strictly enforce that limit. All persons and our commission members shall wait to be recognized by the president before speaking. Persons testifying are asked to avoid repetition and limit comments to specific project or code compliance. Each speaker shall follow all instructions from the president so that his or her remarks may be heard, understood, and recorded. All comments to the Plan Commission shall be directed to the secretary to be appropriately entered into the public record. This includes oral, written, and email comments. No modes of expression not provided by these rules, including but limited to demonstrations, banners, applause, profanity, vulgar language, or personal insults will be permitted.
[00:03:21]
In the event such disorders persist, the president may require the removal of the instigators, recess, or adjourn the meeting. And with that, we will call up City Staff to begin presentation. Spencer? Okay. I'll run through the first few slides, and then we'll hand it off to tirrell and kaycee down there. Do I have the clicker, emily, or do I just need to... I can just say next slide or something. Okay. So, I'd like to welcome everybody to the hearing, and we're going to kind of run through our process. Go to the next slide. I'll just give you a sense of the flow of our presentation. So we'll talk a little bit about the process, growth allocations, and capacity. We'll talk about the draft environmental impact statement and the growth alternatives, talk about community feedback, then we'll focus on the preferred alternative, which is the topic for today, and then start to look forward towards the land use plan and the adoption of policies and code.
[00:04:34]
And then we'll open for public comment, of course, and move to deliberations. Next slide. So first, kind of the process that we are following throughout this periodic update. You can go to the next slide. We like to explain or start with an explanation of what plan Spokane 2046 is. So there's been a lot of discussion with the community about this. Hopefully, everybody's aware. Plan Spokane is our comprehensive plan update that requires us to look out over the next 20 years and plan for and accommodate the growth that we expect over that timeframe. The comprehensive plan update is mandated by the State, and they include specific topics or analyses that have to be done as a part of that comprehensive plan update.
[00:05:32]
In this particular case, we have also decided to do an environmental impact statement, and I'll talk about that more in a couple of slides, but that's ultimately the topic of this hearing today. Next slide. We had three specific goals for plan Spokane 2046. As I mentioned, the comprehensive plan update is mandated by the State, and so one of our goals was to meet all of our State legislative requirements. The legislature in recent years has significantly increased requirements on communities who are required to do comprehensive plans. And so there's been a lot of work for us to make sure that we are compliant with the requirements that the State imposes. The second is we wanted to make the plan usable and kind of streamline the information in the plan, make the policies easier for people to understand, and also make them work better for getting the kind of development that we want to see.
[00:06:33]
And the third, of course, is meeting the community's vision. And we'll talk more about the public engagement that has occurred, but that was a primary goal of the plan, is to make sure that we were capturing the vision that we were hearing from the community. Next slide. A couple of key dates. The first, and this is related to the environmental impact statement, we issued a SEPA determination of significance and a scoping notice in February. We took comments between February 5th and April 7th. That's the mandated comment period. As we have received a lot of comments in the run-up to this hearing, we are still taking public feedback on all aspects of the plan, but as part of the environmental impact statement process, there is a specific time period, and so that's what that time period refers to. The draft EIS was made available in December, and we took comments on the draft EIS from December to March.
[00:07:32]
And again, that's a mandated timeline, but we are of course, still accepting comments on the plan. So please continue to send us your comments. We appreciate your involvement today as well. The final EIS is anticipated to be released in quarter three of this year. So we're at an important milestone of the process, but by no means are we at the end of the process. As far as engagement, we've held visioning workshops in all parts of the City. We've held growth and guiding policies workshops in all parts of the City. We held listening hours at libraries around the City where we advertised for people to come in and engage with planners in more of a one-on-one setting. We've had open houses. As I mentioned, there's more information about that. If you look at our staff report, we have information we can share if anybody wants to see all of the touchpoints with the community. That has been an important aspect of our planning process.
[00:08:34]
And with that, I think I'll turn it over to terril. Thank you very much. I'm terril black. I also work for City of Spokane planning and have been spending a lot of the last year and a half of my working life, actually the last two years, preparing for this project. So thank you so much for all the attendance today and all the public comments. We very much appreciate that. Part of getting ready to do this periodic update work, it's called the periodic update, as spencer mentioned. It's a state-mandated look ahead. We do it every 10 years now. We have a 20-year planning horizon, so the goal is to adopt in 2026 and plan through the 2046 planning horizon.
[00:09:29]
We are doing this here at the City of Spokane, but all of Spokane County, all the cities and the County itself are also engaged in periodic updates of their comprehensive plan. To prepare for that, the board of County commissioners, in early '24, I believe, adopted our population forecast. So we receive an estimate from ofm, office of financial management, a State agency. We chose the median or sort of the middle forecast. So there's a high, medium, and low. We chose the median regionally, and then allocations were made through regional planning process and through the steering committee of elected officials and adopted by board of County commissioners, which is what bocc refers to on this slide. So the board of County commissioners gave us our population allocation, which is 23,357 people that we are planning for in the next 20 years.
[00:10:37]
We also have engaged regionally in establishing our housing targets. So this is a new change to State law. So this is the first time we've gone through this as a region, and it's being kind of implemented through the State. So we plan not only for our population number, but we receive a housing allocation, and then we divide that housing allocation up by income bands. I have a slide that shows a little more detail. But our current trajectories or our alternative one that was analyzed in the EIS shows a deficit in our capacity, our zone capacity for the lower income bands, and I'll talk about that a little bit more. We have made a lot of changes, as most people are aware, in the City of Spokane. We have been actively working on housing availability and affordability.
[00:11:41]
We adopted a housing action plan in 2021. We have made all the middle housing code changes kind of ahead of some of the State requirements even. So those were called building opportunity and choices for all, which was an interim ordinance, and building opportunity for housing, we adopted finally middle housing changes. So those remain in effect, and those were analyzed in our alternative one. Some other communities are just catching up now and adopting those at the same time, their middle housing code. The fair housing plan is worked by our chhs department, and then hb1220 is the house bill that we are to look at housing by income bands.
[00:12:38]
As I mentioned, we have already done our middle housing code changes, but still more to do is following commerce's guidance to look for more high-density residential. So we do feel we have a deficit in that. We have the opportunity to add more housing. These are showing the actual housing units over 20 years that we are projected to need. It is close to our population number, but the State is intentionally having it be a little higher so we can make up for underproduction, which has been occurring for some time, not just in the City of Spokane, but that's really a national problem. So especially below 80% AMI, we see a strong need, or we're forecasting a strong need. This is in the staff report and also shown in more detail in the EIS and the EIS summary that's also included in the packet as one of the appendix to the staff report. But this illustrates again that we're not meeting the 0 to 80% target following alternative one, which is stay the course, which is where we are now. We looked at alternative two and three, which are distributed and balanced, and alternative three, we named center City and regional hubs.
[00:14:07]
We have done extensive workshops with the planning commission on this topic in particular, so we're going to be high level, but on the different alternatives, because we are today at the preferred alternative, so that's where we're going to spend more time. But there is a lot of information on our website, which I should have mentioned earlier. It's plansspokane. Org. So we have a lot of our work on housing available there. So this is from Washington State commerce. It's guidance on what type of zone categories should be adopted for different housing types.
[00:15:01]
So, I believe there's some public comment directly related to this kind of consideration, but this is the guidance that we're given from commerce that apartments, condominiums, especially low-rise multifamily. So they're typically called walk-up apartments, two to three stories, walk-up referring to not needing an elevator in these structures. So those are what are more typically serving low-income population, and psh stands for permanent supportive housing. So these are some illustrations of low density. It's what we typically think of for single-family home. Low density also can be middle housing, so I believe that's a six-plex in the illustration there.
[00:16:02]
What the analysis shows is that we need more zoned capacity for moderate density and high density. That doesn't mean ultimately that some townhomes or other types would be not permitted in higher density, but it just shows we need to increase our zone capacity to allow for those types of units to be constructed. With that, I'm going to hand it off to my colleague, kaycee Downey, who's going to do the next few slides, and then I'll come back in a bit. Thank you. Good afternoon, Plan Commission. So in addition to housing, another significant framework for this periodic update is climate planning, which is a new element required for the comprehensive plan. Funded by the Washington climate commitment act, the City has conducted extensive planning related to climate and resiliency.
[00:17:00]
In February, the climate resilience and sustainability board made a recommendation of a package of policies for Plan Commission to consider. Those policies are currently being integrated into draft comprehensive plan chapters, and will be presented for further review and consideration. So I mentioned the draft chapters, but in addition to updating the actual comprehensive plan, again, we are also developing an environmental impact statement. But first, what is an environmental impact statement? We've gone over this a little bit, but an environmental impact statement, also known as an EIS, is an informational document that provides the City, tribes, agencies, and members of the public with information related to the environmental impacts that should be considered during a decision-making process. It is a technical document, but it's also a great tool to understand potential impacts that ideas can have on the City.
[00:17:57]
There are a number of steps in developing an eisas we've gone over, but I'll just keep reminding folks, that we've done a lot of work. So at the beginning of 2025, we did scoping and visioning with the community. Once we had an understanding of what the community wanted, we then developed different ways to meet that community vision and ultimately studied that in the draft environmental impact statement. Again, we've gone over the draft EIS extensively with Plan Commission, but we did provide a summary of the impacts and mitigation in the agenda packet for this hearing. The full document can be found on planspokane. Org. We are currently in the preferred alternative stage of the EIS process. Once a preferred alternative is selected, we will then develop the final EIS. Three different growth alternatives were studied in the draft EIS.
[00:18:52]
Again, growth alternatives are different ways how we can meet that community vision that was developed during the visioning process. So alternative one, stay the course, that is our status quo, our current land uses, our current policies. It is a requirement of the EIS process that we have this alternative one really to compare and contrast the other growth alternatives. Alternative two, distributed and balanced. This one focused on interconnecting the higher intensities throughout the City, focusing on transit and major roadways. And then alternative three, center City and regional hubs. This focused on downtown and the larger center City area, as well as employment hubs near hillyard and out by the airport. We've gone over this chart already, but just wanted to highlight some of the analysis that occurred in the draft EIS. For instance, all of them were reviewed under the allocated housing units. Both provide a mix of housing with single unit homes being the majority of housing units being provided. However, alternative two and alternative three do have a slightly lower percentage. This is reflecting the housing needs that we have by affordability types, and also really just reflecting the general development we're seeing in the region and in the State. The main point of this chart, however, is again, alternative one, our status quo, does not meet the affordability requirements of our lowest income brackets. This means we have to look at alternative two and three in order to meet State affordability requirements.
[00:20:27]
So on one hand, we have the technical analysis of the draft EIS. On the other, we have the experience of community members from the feedback that they provided us, and both of those help develop the draft preferred alternative. I cannot promise this will be the last time you see this graphic, but next time it might be updated with 2026 numbers. But as you know, 2025 was a busy year for community engagement. We had over 3,400 total community responses with workshops, surveys, and focus groups. We held a lot of City boards and commission workshops, and we popped up at various events. The goal was really to ensure the community knew about plan Spokane 2046, as well as how to provide feedback for the process. A summary of the 2025 engagement can be found on the about page of planspokane. Org. It was also in the agenda packet for today's hearing. But how did the engagement actually shape the preferred alternative?
[00:21:26]
So as we stated, we started with community visioning, and during the community visioning workshops, the City received feedback, among other topics, on the types of commercial uses individuals want to see throughout the community, as well as different intensities of mixed use. This information helped develop the draft growth alternatives that were viewed in the draft EIS. Community visioning also helped develop the draft vision statement for the comprehensive plan. This vision statement also helped inform the development of the growth alternatives. Then in the fall of 2025, we held a workshop series on future growth and guiding policies, and with over 100 attendees, we were able to get feedback on the actual growth alternatives to help refine and start shaping the preferred alternative. For first reactions, we asked community members to vote on which growth alternative that they preferred.
[00:22:24]
As you can see, alternative two received the most votes. Now, these are not a lot of votes. This is more of a snapshot of reactions. Most community members opted to provide comments instead of actually voting with a sticky dot. But of those comments, we did get direction of where to put growth. There were comments about directing growth along corridors, transit, where opportunities for growth currently exist, and where infrastructure currently exists. We also heard a desire of community hubs near higher intensity housing, and we heard a desire for more housing in downtown. Mapping exercises helped identify potential areas for mixed-use of different intensities, and again, that helped us really refine the preferred alternative that is being proposed today. There we go. So overall, community members really showed preference for alternative two, alternative three, or a combination of alternative two and three, though there were some highlights of alternative one. In general, community members really liked the interconnectedness of alternative two but did see importance in having that center City focus and ensuring downtown gets attention.
[00:23:47]
Now, in addition to engagement with the community, we also wanted to highlight that we have been working internally with City Staff in order to ensure we are sharing information, identifying any infrastructure concerns, or any other topics that may impact the preferred alternative. These photos are from our kickoff meeting with internal staff that was in December of 2024. Supporting community involvement was also important as we were preparing for this hearing. So we did try to make sure as many folks as possible knew that today was happening. So on the left, you can see the notifications that we did to share about the hearing. We used multiple City newsletters, webpages, blog posts, social media. We also directly emailed any parties of interest, so individuals who have submitted comments or submitted to be on record for parties of interest for Plan Commission. We also directly emailed neighborhood councils. We also put a notice in the spokesman-review, which isn't required, but we wanted to do a little extra to get the word out.
[00:24:46]
We also tried to help explain the draft preferred alternative as much as possible with direction from you all. We updated the story map to include a transition video with some narration, some slider maps, so you can compare where the growth intensity is being proposed. And we also had zoomed in maps of northwest, northeast, and south Spokane so individuals could see how the proposal is maybe impacting or making recommendations in their area. So it takes a lot of people, a lot of voices, to help inform the development of the preferred alternative. So we just want to thank everyone who has been involved in the process and want to thank everyone who has attended today as well. I want to ensure everyone that any comments that were submitted during the draft environmental impact statement comment period, as well as any comments submitted for today's hearing, have been submitted to you all for review prior to this meeting. A few printed versions have been passed out while you're here, so we want to make sure everyone knows comments have been received and have been handed off.
[00:25:49]
So with that, I will hand it back over to terril to talk about the actual draft preferred alternative. Thank you. I wanted to say a little bit more about the process too, for people who might be dipping into this whole plan Spokane work. So the preferred alternative is a map that is before the Plan Commission today. This will give staff direction to work on a land use plan map. This step in the process gives us some formal direction from the Plan Commission, and we will also be sending this recommendation to City Council and asking City Council by resolution to direct staff to work on the final land use plan map.
[00:26:44]
So that's the big goal here is to get some clear understanding of what's in, what's out, so we can go back and finish the work. Because it will take quite a bit of staff time to get us to the land use plan map or future land use plan map. So, preferred alternative is a common step in an environmental impact statement in eastern Washington for planning, where you don't routinely do environmental impact statements. In fact, for the City of Spokane, our last one was adopted in 2001 with our growth management act first compliance comprehensive plan. The planning horizon for that EIS was 2000 to 2020. So it was time for the City to undertake a second environmental impact statement and look at current conditions and do a better job studying for the future.
[00:27:51]
Preferred alternative is a term of art. So we've looked at alternative one, stay the course. We know that's not completely an option. We need to make some changes. We had alternative two and alternative three. So the preferred alternative is a combination of those. We could be calling it alternative four if we chose to, but we're sticking with a preferred alternative. This is still a draft, as I mentioned, so that's what we're... We have gotten some written comments, and I'm sure we'll have more testimony specifically on the preferred alternative. So this is a mix and match of two and three, maybe a little bit more two than three, but it's definitely a mix and match. So it does meet our SEPA objectives, and when we get through City Council giving us a direction of the preferred alternative, that will also give us information to develop the final environmental impact statement.
[00:28:59]
So we will be rerunning the transportation models, things like that at that time, when we have a clearer understanding of where growth would be placed. This is a plug for our webpage. As kaycee mentioned, we have interactive story maps, so doesn't run very well here in this format, but can be very effective on your own computer. So you can go and look at the existing map and then where the preferred alternative is looking at increasing both high-density residential and mixed use primarily. Am I pointing at the wrong place?
[00:29:56]
There it is. Do I get two now? Okay. So this is a... The draft preferred alternative. So, planning commission has had several workshops where we've been making some slight alterations to this map, but this is what we are proposing today. It focuses on both downtown and also corridors, especially around planned transit areas. That's predominantly where we're focusing. We incorporated sub-area plans, so just to keep it exciting, we did not stop some of our sub-area planning at the same time. So we have completed a plan recently for the hillyard sub-area plan. We also have staff that have been working with the east central community, so we have some changes embedded from that, and we've also been actively working with sta and Spokane County on division tod planning.
[00:31:05]
So that work also is incorporated into this preferred alternative. And as kaycee mentioned, we have gotten a lot of strong support in our community outreach over especially a transit-focused plan. We've also tried to buffer off that, so these, if you look closer, they're kind of a red hatched, closer than you can look in this powerpoint if you've been looking through our materials. So these are really establishing as areas where we would go in and look when we're developing the land use plan map, which we would have later this year, with changes to land use plan map that would eventually lead to potentially zoning changes in these areas. We've done sort of a standard buffer. We're not saying that we would do that size changing in the end, but that's where we want to look.
[00:32:11]
So again, establishing where we're going to look, where we're not going to look is very helpful, I think, to the community and especially to us, to get this project complete. Our State mandate is to complete this work by December 31st of 2026. So again, we believe this recognizes investments in transit and transportation that we've heard very strongly from the community, we should support with putting people and retail around, and it does meet our housing capacity at all affordability levels. So, early back of the envelope, we should have 200 to 400 acres of developable units, or developable area. That's just using very crude back of the envelope math. And as I mentioned, planning commission looked at this in their February 25th and March 11th planning commission meetings and helped develop some changes to this map.
[00:33:17]
This is a bit in the weeds, but it's really important to understanding this process. So this is back alt one, two, and three are referring to the environmental impact statement and where a growth was placed. So there's still, in all these scenarios, a pretty significant amount of growth that's allocated to south Spokane. So we did get quite a bit of comment about the Latah area. You're not seeing that in the hatched area for consideration to change the existing zoning pattern, but we do have a significant amount of platting in that area. So we have, in all of the scenarios, identified significant growth in that area. So that's an existing condition that's not changed by this action. So similarly, downtown Spokane, we could anticipate quite a bit of growth in that area. We have a lot of zoning in place.
[00:34:27]
And we have also interim ordinance in place that takes away height limitations in most of downtown. So that is also in the preferred alternative map that the removal of height limitations in most of downtown would stay in place. So it may not be as prominent, but those areas are still holding a lot of capacity in this analysis, but not shown to change significantly, just not shown in the preferred alternative. So just wanted to mention that. I know planning commission's well aware, but again, if you're just coming into the process. We have divided the City into kind of quadrants at the planning commission's suggestion.
[00:35:23]
So I'm going to kind of go through these a little bit. We have them lined up so we can return to them for public comment if that is helpful. So, northwest Spokane, the sort of darker circles are where we're interested in looking at more mixed use areas and the kind of yellow sort of highlighter look, yellow highlighter I think of as more high density residential. So this is kind of showing a mix of what's existing, and that's what we tried to show with the intensities of gray as well. So we're not starting new. The City's already here. Zoning's already here. So we're adding and changing on top of the base that we haveso we heard a lot of interest in northwest boulevard through our community outreach, so we've really added that into this.
[00:36:23]
You did get some comment about the indian trail node there. That is referring to vacant property that is along indian trail. So I anticipate we may get additional comment about that one. It is undeveloped property, so felt it should continue on the map as an opportunity for more capacity. Those are a few of the highlights, but you can read the rest as well there. So again, this is trying to show the red there, buffered a little bit more clearly about where we would look in the northwest. Similarly, for northeast Spokane, we're focusing a lot on both. I should go back here because northwest and northeast Spokane are pretty entwined, so you can also see wellesley is predominant in northwest and northeast Spokane also as areas to be explored for more high-density residential and potentially some new nodes of mixed use.
[00:37:50]
Also around market, there's existing pockets of zoning now that's cc4 or higher density, so that could be more uniformly high-density residential under this scenario. So south Spokane also shows increase, particularly on the 4 line. And that goes through a lot of existing centers. So the idea is we could add some more mixed-use capacity potentially around those, as well as more high-density residential opportunity around the 4 line. With the exception of the 4 line is also on grand towards, I believe, about 38th, 39th. So trying to capture a vacant site in there that's already also in center zoning, which we could add around there.
[00:38:56]
I think what's not showing up very well here is the only sort of lata area is the inland empire way. There are some existing nodes, so that's sort of the vinegar flats is commonly known, that area. There are some existing old neighborhood retail zoned parcels that were in that, used to be, I believe, a State route. So there's interest from property owners in that area in having more mixed use there without encroaching on the residential agriculture is what we're hearing. Okay. She's back. Still outside. Still outside? Sorry, we're getting some extra sound. So that's the high-level flyover for the south Spokane section of the preferred alternative. We're trying to show a little bit. We had some planning commission questions like, are we doing enough?
[00:39:59]
So the little dot there would be we need to make about 1% change to the total area to meet that very minimal 500 acres that the consultant thinks we need to increase. We've heard also, though, that we need to really make sure this is spread citywide. That's been a really strong goal of the planning commission and also Council in a lot of our changes to housing. So we're looking at roughly, very roughly, these are really super crude estimates, grabbing the gross areas of the City, so not taking out streets and things like that. But we've got about 16% of the City that we've got in these little red hatches that we would be looking at. So that leaves most of the City where we're not looking at significant changes.
[00:40:53]
That is, of course, leaving intact the middle housing work that we've already done. Other things that we are doing, kaycee mentioned all the work we're doing on the chapters. So we have as many of the comprehensive plan chapters or also known as elements in GMA language. Those are posted on our webpage, but we're actively working on some of the last ones, including the land use one. So we hope to have a draft of that up by the end of may is our goal for those. So please continue to look for our actual chapter work as we're working on this preferred alternative. The land use plan map ultimately lives in the land use element, which I believe we are going to rename to our growth strategy just to keep it fresh.
[00:41:52]
We're also, of course, continuing to focus on infill and transit-oriented development. We believe this preferred alternative also still supports downtown and meets State requirements. We also, as part of the whole periodic update requirements in State law, not only do we need to adjust our comprehensive plan, we also need to amend our development regulations. One component of that is our critical areas ordinance. We are working on a draft form, but we have not yetbeen working on that with the planning commission, so we don't have a public draft yet, but we are looking to work on that. There have been a lot of public comments and a lot of interest in our work in critical areas. We plan to stay in conformance with State law. There's a very prescriptive State law in critical areas ordinance, but we do definitely need to update those.
[00:42:53]
We did in our analysis, in the EIS, we looked at looking at our SEPA thresholds and infill exemption. So we are still working on that. That is not part of the preferred alternative today, but that will be part of our development code package. Our development code, we are naming build Spokane. So this is plan Spokane for the comp plan. When we get to the development code, we're going to call it build Spokane. That's where we'll actually be working on development standards for buildings, so things like heights and setbacks and also what zoning districts we actually adopt. So, a lot more work ahead. We're looking at some things too that we don't have, like outdoor lighting standards in that project. So as I mentioned earlier, this planning commission today, if you close your hearing, will make a recommendation to City Council.
[00:43:59]
So staff will prepare findings that will be forward to City Council with your recommendations. So of course, planning commission could today, following testimony, in deliberations, make further amendments to the map. We will ask City Council to do a resolution selecting the preferred alternative. We do not yet have a date before City Council, but it is likely to be in may of this year. With the preferred alternative information and direction, we can finalize the environmental impact statement. And as I mentioned, we will be working on the future land use plan map, which is part of the comprehensive plan as a result of the preferred alternative decision. And then the zoning map is actually considered part of the development code, so that will be part of build Spokane.
[00:45:00]
We anticipate this work being done, as far as the date specific, I'm just going to say fall. But again, our goal is December 31st, 2026. City Council typically does not meet the last couple weeks in December, so November at Council would be excellent news for us. And so that would put us here in probably September or October with planning commission again for a hearing on the entire document. This is again trying to illustrate some of the steps. So we're here at the preferred alternative. It's going to assist us with the final environmental impact statement, and will also help us finalize some of the land use plan map and other chapters. Again, the implementation part is when we adopt the new zoning categories, potentially, and the zoning map.
[00:46:01]
It's also important to note that we have other initiatives that support development, such as our MFTE program, other incentives we might wish to place in certain areas. So it's important for us to align those after we get all this work done, to make sure they are in fact implementing the plan. We also have State law has added a five-year check-in that will occur at the City of Spokane, Spokane County, other cities also checking our housing numbers. So, we will get information from commerce about our housing by income bands. We'll also be looking at, there's some acronyms there, so greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled are also now part of the comprehensive plan, studied in detail in the EIS.
[00:46:57]
We don't have time to go into that today. But we also have extensive information on our website about that, and that was a big part of our climate planning work as well. So here's, if you're wanting to use the qr code or if you could have possibly forgotten, it's planspokane. Org for all our documents. We've also really, kaycee's been doing a great job of getting a newsletter out. We really encourage people to sign up for the newsletter at planspokane@spokanecity. Org. We can get you on the newsletter distribution, and we will continue to use that distribution list for the build Spokane. So even if you're like, "I'm not so interested in this part, I'm interested in the other," it would be worth getting onto our email list.
[00:47:54]
We also try to use all the City channels as well, but we do get into more detail about what planning department is doing in our newsletter. So with that, I'm going to take a breather, hand it back over to Jesse Bank to call on people for testimony. It is very helpful to us if you have specific, since this is a map, we have gotten some nice illustrations from people in the written comments. And as I mentioned, there's still, if you aren't ready today or you need to think about it, City Council will also be taking comments. But since this is a map, if you can be as specific to streets and intersections and areas, that is very helpful to us at this point. So thank you very much. And I just wanted to add, I want to thank tirrell and kaycee and kevin Freibott, who are all here and have done a lot of work on this, the lion's share.
[00:48:55]
So I want to thank them. It can feel like a football scrum sometimes, and it's important to get your head up above the crowd and see where we're headed here. So this is a great opportunity for us to start looking forward to the subsequent changes on the land use map and in the zoning, which are following from this. Well, thank you all. You took the words right out of my mouth. I definitely want to extend huge thank you to staff. This has been an absolutely enormous lift, and I know how hard everyone has worked on this. We have certainly not made your jobs any easier, and so we appreciate you putting up with us with all of our changes and semantics and all of that. And I think special note to the updates to the story map online. I think that was really effective, so thank you for taking care of that. Before we move on to public testimony, I just want to make a couple of notes on the public testimony that we've received.
[00:49:51]
There was a series of themes that, as you can imagine, that emerged from those comments. First and foremost, I want to ensure everyone that's in the room and online that we do receive the comments and we do read them. And we take them seriously. This is a really, really important part of the process. I noticed that come up in a number of submitted comments, ideas that we were not taking any of that seriously, and that is a really, really serious opportunity for you to engage with us and for opportunity to engage with Council, and we would encourage you to continue to do that. As we move into the public testimony, given the volume of folks that we have, I know we just discussed this a lot, but just for avoidance of doubt, I want us to all focus on what we're here to discuss today, which is a growth framework to guide upcoming decisions. It is general. It is not fine-grained. It's instructive. It's not about final decisions. What we're not talking about today are zoning changes, code changes, specific policies related to things like environment and habitat and tree cover.
[00:50:53]
We will have all of those discussions, and those discussions will be coming down the line. So please stay engaged, please participate, and please watch out for opportunities to participate in some of those conversations. So with that, we will open the public comment, and we will start with folks online. First, we have, and please apologize in advance for butchering your name. Kirsten Angell, please. And a reminder, you have three minutes. I'm actually present. And you are actually present. Outstanding, then please approach. Sorry, I thought I said I would be present, but it's all good. Good afternoon. I'm here representing myself, Kirsten Angell, as well as Spokane urban nature. Our concern is that there's been a lot of public input favoring natural systems protections, and we're not sure this is being adequately represented in the comp plan revision process. Natural lands and overall natural infrastructure, such as critical areas and open space, need to be identified in the preferred alternatives land use map so that future development will not erase them.
[00:52:06]
We support the idea of infill housing where appropriate, but not at the expense of our remaining natural systems that can enable our community, including the other than human residents, to adapt to the climate disruption we're already experiencing and according to best available science, will continue to intensify. Spokane's natural infrastructure makes us more resilient as the climate continues to change. We have record low snowpack levels this year, which will likely bring more intense drought and fire. Some of you may think that our urban areas are too disturbed to worry about it, but if you take into account the natural environment chapter of the comp plan and you listen to the feedback that came out of the plan Spokane public outreach and Spokane parks master planning process, this community cares deeply about these sometimes small but important natural assets. Our community wants to have a greater voice in the revision of our City's land use map and development and zoning codes. The process should include business and development interests and representatives from the neighborhoods who will shoulder the impacts and consequences of infill development.
[00:53:14]
For example, from the community assemblies, land use subcommittee, or from Spokane urban nature. We need to include critical areas, habitat corridors, and open spaces in the land use mapping process. The community expects the revised zoning and development code to clearly and forcefully protect, restore, and enhance this critical resource in harmony with accommodating new growth and facilitating adequate housing for all. We will be watching closely to make sure that our community's love of nature is being reflected as this process moves forward. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on next to Daniel LeRoy. Yes. Hello. My name is Daniel LeRoy. I am the director of government affairs with habitat for humanity Spokane. Today, I just want to make sure that as the preferred alternative is discussed, we include permanently affordable home ownership as a critical connective housing element to keep in consideration as we plan for future growth.
[00:54:17]
We are seeing a rapidly widening gap between the cost of rental housing and traditional home ownership housing. That is why, as the City plans to grow, it is imperative that housing typologies that come out of this process are ownership ready. Whether this is middle housing, condos, special care, thought, and attention need to go into this planning process to make sure that the resulting units are just as usable for ownership as they are for rental. Over the past 40 years, habitat Spokane has built affordable home ownership opportunities for the Spokane area residents making under 80% of the area median income. More recently, we have introduced the use of land trusts and shared equity models to our program, making sure that all the units that we build are permanently affordable for generations to come. This sort of affordable homeownership program serves to fill a gap between renting and market rate homeownership.
[00:55:12]
And this is a gap that is increasingly out of reach for working Spokane families, and serves as one of the only stepping stones between these two market segments. We realize that in order to serve as many Spokane residents as possible, we need to advocate for the use of diverse housing typologies to maximize the efficiency on very expensive land. This moment matters because this is where the policy direction is being set. The decisions made in this plan will shape what is possible for future code updates. If affordable homeownership is not clearly embedded here, it becomes significantly harder to achieve later. There's also a real opportunity here. Middle housing types like townhomes, cottage housing, and stacked flats are not just about density, they are also one of the most effective ways to deliver ownership at a price point that is attainable, especially when paired with land trust and shared equity models.
[00:56:05]
But that only happens if the policy framework is intentional about supporting them as ownership opportunities. If the City gets this right, we can create a system where more families move from renting into stable, affordable homeownership. And this really mitigates displacement and other affordability concerns moving into the future. So as staff and the commission build out the preferred alternative, we ask that you ensure that future land use code updates enable forms that are feasible for shared equity and land trust ownership, and that the commission recognizes the role of nonprofit developers in delivering permanently affordable homeownership at scale. This is an opportunity to build a more complete housing system, one that increases supply, but also creates real attainable pathways into homeownership for households who need it the most. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Next we have Kevin Campbell. Also in the room. Welcome, kevin.
[00:57:07]
Good afternoon, commission. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Kevin Campbell. I'm here on behalf of the downtown Spokane partnership, and I'm here to express the dsp's support for the City center and regional hubs option as the preferred growth alternative. Downtown Spokane serves as the region's primary hub for employment, culture, education, healthcare, and tourism. Concentrating growth within key centers rather than dispersing it reinforces downtown's role as the economic core while supporting a more efficient and sustainable development pattern. It also encourages higher density housing near jobs and services, supports walkable mixed-use districts, and reduces infrastructure costs and environmental impacts associated with sprawl. This approach aligns with Spokane's long-standing centers and corridors strategy. A key priority within the strategy must be expanding market-rate housing in the downtown core. Today, there's an imbalance between employment activity and residential population, and lack of market-rate housing.
[00:58:02]
In 2025, the dsp initiated a downtown housing study, which identified a need for 3,200 net new market rate units in the central business district over the next 10 years. Right now, I will say currently under construction, we only have 160 units, and so that gap highlights the need to make downtown development more attractive and feasible for developers through thoughtful policy and incentives. Increasing residential density is essential to activate streets and public spaces, support local businesses, improve safety through activity and presence, and strengthen the downtown tax base. Growth must also be supported by strategic public investment. This includes transportation connections to regional employment hubs, utility and infrastructure capacity, and streetscape improvements that make downtown more livable and walkable. Investments in parks, public safety, and public services will also be critical to supporting a growing residential population and enabling private development.
[00:58:57]
By focusing growth downtown, Spokane can build a more vibrant, sustainable, and economically competitive City. Infill development and development housing are not only economic priorities, but essential components of a strong long-term growth strategy. So thank you for your time and consideration. If there are any questions about the downtown housing study or anything downtown related, please feel encouraged to reach out to our organization. Thank you. Next we have brian, and I apologize, muegge, and I know that you highlighted the pronunciation in your public commentary and I've missed it here. So thank you. Please go. That's okay. It happens almost every day- sure it does... For my life, so I'm used to it. Thank you, and thank you to the planning commission and planning staff. My name's Brian Muegge. Echoing just all the herculean effort that folks have done to get this together for our community. Thank you. I'm a local resident naturalist. I also served as a member of the Spokane County comprehensive plans natural and rural lands technical advisory committee, so I just wanted to share my input on that.
[00:59:59]
I'm commenting to strongly urge that the City adopt a preferred alternative that prioritizes conservation connectivity and low impact land use in hangman creek, thorpe, and the greater Latah valley corridor, which, from a name perspective, is likely closest to alternative three. Given that the landscape represents one of the more intact and connected habitat corridors remaining in the Spokane region, just wanted to flag that on our committee, on our comprehensive plan committee, we've been looking at the whca, wa-caps, the Washington habitat connectivity analysis project, and that has identified this area as priority for maintaining regional and ecological connectivity between the channel scablands and hangman creek in the upland areas. Also, this growth strategy is built around directing density towards the centers and corridors, which I definitely support. However, the hangman and thorpe-latah corridor really doesn't function as a transit corridor. It's constrained by steep topography, limited access to 195, and a lack of transit services, and increasing density here, as it's shown in alternative two, I think would be questionable and irresponsible.
[01:01:11]
I also wanted to just briefly address the comment earlier about how there's already existing plats and therefore the zoning won't change. And while that may be in the short term, the preferred alternative still signals where the City intends to fund and grow. And that signal has real long-term consequences. So even though those platted developmentsthey don't guarantee full build-outs with maximum intensity, and they shouldn't, especially in areas like the hangman creek area corridor that has environmental constraints. And so it's really critical that the City not further incentivize or reinforce these higher intensity developments in this plan. Additionally, in this corridor, there's already examples of sites identified for potential intensity increases that can shift away from longstanding and locally serving businesses. So, in preferred alternative to that red line in the hangman valley, there was actually a longstanding local business that was there, that had a plan to sell their business to another local Spokane business. And given some issues with the sale, that transfer was deemed infeasible and now that property is considered for higher intensity development.
[01:02:31]
And so I think just from a concern about displacement of community serving uses, and reduced opportunities for small business owners in this corridor should be considered from an ethical perspective. Clearly the rest of this corridor- and you're at time, brian, so if you can wrap up your comment. Okay. All that is to say, I don't think there is enough content within any of the preferred alternatives to really shore up the connectivity and habitat conservation of this corridor, and would appreciate that in future iterations of the preferred alternative. Thank you. And finally, on this list, we have Eric Lowe. Good afternoon.
[01:03:25]
My name is Eric Lowe. I'm founder and co-executive director of Spokane reimagined. We are a nonpartisan grassroots organization dedicated to remaking Spokane's transportation system. We advocate for safe streets, public transportation investment, and land use that supports those uses. Overall, I think the plan is great. I think trying to focus as much new housing development in the downtown area as possible is a wonderful idea. That's where our most active transit lines are. That's where our businesses are. That's where our jobs are. But I want to be clear that the preferred alternative, while it does have a transit focus, could have more of a transit focus. There are definitely some areas, if you overlay Spokane transit authority's map over the preferred alternative map, there are multiple transit lines that are not included.
[01:04:30]
To me, it looks like those transit lines tend to be in wealthier areas. Not saying that was a decisive factor, but I think it's important that we recognize that while the division BRT is important and all these other transit lines are important, it's going to be difficult to get people to want to live along division, regardless of when the division BRT comes online. And so we should try to include denser development in other parts of the City along other transit lines. And lastly, I just want to say that I think it's critically important that as the preferred alternative moves through the process, that we include an emphasis on active transportation like walking, bicycling, and busing as much as possible.
[01:05:48]
So yeah. I will just leave it at that. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. Next we have Candy Galvin. Hi there. My name's candy. I'm just a concerned citizen, and a citizen concerned with the preservation of our beautiful neighborhoods. I see that the preferred alternative seems to focus around transit areas, which relieves me. But I think since we are going to do that, I'm hoping and I'm begging that we reconsider what's happening to our residential neighborhoods and the infilling, and want to encourage the preservation of residential neighborhoods so that multifamily housing is much more well thought out, not crammed into residential single family housing spaces.
[01:07:00]
We have a beautiful gift in Spokane, in that it escaped urban removal of the past, the '50s and '60s, I think it was. And I think it's very important that no matter what we do in our future planning, that we preserve our neighborhoods. And I see grand avenue on the south plan. I think, if I understand it correctly, it's hard to see on my phone, but it looks like there's big plans for grand avenue, and that concerns me also. That's a very historic area, and I just-anyway, I just want to express my concern and hope that, and even as we are doing development, and we'll get more involved in this, I guess, in the building process, that we are cautious and sympathetic to what we already have. Thank you.
[01:07:57]
Thank you. Next, we have Mr. Frank. Good afternoon. Jim Frank. Since I've kind of retired actively from greenstone, I've been spending a lot of time on housing advocacy issues and spending a lot of time with assisting nonprofit housing providers and small infill developers. I've learned in this process the difficulties, the challenges that affordable housing providers have and small infill developers have. I've made extensive comments on the draft EIS, so I'm assuming you've all read them. I don't want to repeat them all now, except to say that I think that the focus of all these alternatives is a kind of a centers and corridors-focused, high-intensity development focus, and that's a result of a narrative that's developed, I think, partially from department of commerce, partially in a misunderstanding of the narrative from the department of commerce, and a narrative that's just been adopted kind of in general by the planning community, that the only way we can meet the housing needs of low-income families and middle-income families is to build apartments.
[01:09:29]
That is a fundamentally flawed strategy, and it's a fundamentally flawed narrative. And I think it results a lot from that's all that we've ever done. Housing families that make less than 60% of median income takes a subsidy, and all the subsidy dollars essentially come from the low income housing tax credit. It comes from federal money, and that program is an apartment building program. It doesn't consider the building of affordable housing with other strategies. We've done a lot of work with habitat on building what I call small homes on small lots, doing small homes, doing townhouses, doing various kinds of infill development, and we can produce small homes at far less subsidy requirement than you need for building apartments. The commerce-funded subsidized apartments are costing ballpark $500,000 each, and that requires 100% subsidy of the $500,000 because the nonprofit that owns it cannot afford to have a mortgage.
[01:10:44]
Yet we're building 1,000 square foot, three-bedroom houses for habitat in a project in airway heights for $200,000, and the subsidy required for that is far less. So there needs to be a land use plan and a strategy that enables more middle housing and not everything focused on building apartments, which is what your plan does. So unfortunately, there was no alternative that looked at broad-scale, mixed-use development at a neighborhood scale. And mixed-use, a low-intensity, neighborhood-scale mixed use that would allow middle housing and small level retail develop in a broader range of our neighborhoods and not just along arterial corridors and extend to a larger area, and the issue there is the density- and that is time, jim.
[01:11:47]
Thank you. You can achieve moderate level densities of 15 units an acre by using middle housing, and so I think really that's very unfortunate that option wasn't looked at. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Darin Watkins. I hope he took notes because I think he's the smartest person in the room when it comes to developing in Spokane. I'm here to present to you data and information from the Spokane realtors. My name is Darin Watkins. First off, I want to tell you just kind of a benchmark of where we are market-wise in the City of Spokane. First off, you need to know where we're at. Commerce has been underrepresenting the percentage of growth in this town for 30 years, and we can show you that in this study. You were sent this earlier today. Land availability, we're very concerned about how it was done. If you look at the lots that are supposedly available for development, you've got things like parking lots of churches, camp mokogawa.
[01:12:47]
Those are not billable properties. This analysis outlines your actual property loads. To put it in market context, in 2017, we had 1,000 lots for sale per month for building properties. Median price, about $79,000. Today, in 2026, we have three properties for sale, and the median price is about $200,000. If you look at some other studies done by commerce themselves, they will tell you that we're underbuilt by about 20% just in the City of Spokane. There are better alternatives for determining housing need, better formulas, and commerce does allow for you to use other formulas in making those determinations. You'll see that in this study. Finally, the housing preference study that we did. We did a study asking people what they wanted. For 30 years, they have wanted the exact same thing. 68%, as flat a line as you can get, want single-family housing, three bedroom, two bath, small lot. That's what they want.
[01:13:47]
If they're not finding it here at an affordable price, where are they going? If you drive on interstate 90, you will see the additional 90,000 cars a day on that freeway that have developed in the last six years, that are going over to where there is a housing boom that is going on. And price-wise, just announced in post falls, one to 400 units are going to go installed of affordable housing at $300,000 a home, because lots there are still about $85,000. It is supply and it is demand. And a couple of things just as I look at the commentary of what was made here. The types that were planted up, those are recommendations from commerce. Those are not recommendations, those are options. You're the one who can decide what those alternatives should be. Multifamily, as jim said, far more expensive. The latest project in snohomish was $586,000 per apartment unit.
[01:14:42]
We can certainly build single-family density in this town that's affordable well under 60% AMI that people can afford. And then finally, I would just say, what happens when we don't build? We anticipated there would be 1,000 residential units available this year. Instead, there were only 156 residential permits that were issued. That difference, if you just built that out, what that number represents, $60 million in lost surplus revenue just for the City of Spokane, $8.5 million per year in ongoing taxes, 2,500 jobs. As I said to my daughter when she left and she was a teenager, "please make good choices." thank you. Thank you. And next we have Greg Figg. Good afternoon, all. Greg Figg, Washington State department of transportation.
[01:15:40]
We'd also sent in comments earlier today on that, which you should have, too, in your packet. One of our comments on this is what we're typically used to seeing is the EIS process kind of yield and produce a preferred alternative. When we reviewed the draft EIS, we had certainly some comments, and one area in particular was the purple area on the west plains out there, where we noticed the DEIS, the transportation analysis did not model that land use to the density that is being proposed in the maps. And that's a concern because the growth we've seen out there has been extensive. Highway 2, the primary east-west route, is reaching failure at the busier intersections, which was actually confirmed in the DEIS. It also services access to fairchild air force base, which based on our meeting a few weeks ago with them, we know they're very concerned about their one-hour response travel time to the base.
[01:16:56]
So our concern is to see this as out of alternative three to be presented as a preferred alternative when the comments, the DEIS, were that it needs to be looked at to ensure there can be adequate transportation to serve it. We know, for instance, one intersection, flint road highway 2, will reach failure, and without more analysis, what will the cost be to serve this area? What will the infrastructure improvements be? We know the City is looking at 18th and 21st, and 6th and 12th, but will they be adequate to provide for this growth? The concern we have is the DEIS did not, and that's detailed in our comments, did not analyze that to the extent it needed to, to come up with a list of improvements. That's just one of the areas that we know that we have some concerns, but typically, the EIS process itself will look at the impacts and then come up with a preferred alternative.
[01:18:03]
And in this case, while the DEIS is done, the comments that would yield a better analysis, which is typically with the final EIS, are not yet done. But at this point, we're picking the preferred alternative without full knowledge of what its impacts will have. So, thank you. Thank you. Next we have Karen Mobley. Hello, Plan Commission. I'm going to speak on behalf of Spokane urban nature. I am not going to repeat what brian and kirsten said. We've been kind of working collaboratively to look at all these documents. I have to say, as somebody who had bronchitis, reading the DEIS was possibly the best sedation I have ever received.
[01:19:04]
It's full of lots of information, but it is also missing some things that I think are very critical to the future of Spokane. One of those things is the thing christian talked about, which is our community wants more, not less, access to nature. The maps that are in these planning documents do not identify hardly any of the critical urban natural areas unless they're really, really big. And when I say really, really big, like the bluff on the south hill, it doesn't, in my view, adequately represent the places like thorpe, places that are parks or adjacent to parks, places like lincoln park. We have absolutely wonderful urban nature in this community, and it is different than pickleball and tennis and open space that's created in courtyards. We must map all of that very accuratelyand clearly and protect not only the habitat, but the transportation corridors for the non-car animals that live on the south hill.
[01:20:15]
We have moose almost every day walking north to south in our City. We have bears, and frankly, sometimes even cougars, working their way up and down the river and up and down Latah creek. And I don't think this adequately represents either the community's expectation or the material reality on the ground. Furthermore, I don't think the current planning staff is doing an appropriate job of enforcement and oversight of the destruction of natural areas that already are in the comp plan that is being revised. We have examples in Latah creek, in underhill, and other neighborhoods where things have been obliterated, trees have been taken down before fish and wildlife have had an opportunity to really look at them. The purpose of this hearing is not for me to b***h about whether or not plans were executed appropriately, but the plan that is created and the land use maps and the critical areas ordinance that follow onto this need to be very conscious of those factors.
[01:21:21]
Now, just call me a crazy old bird-watching lady, because I go to a City park every single day with the intent of looking at what's actually living there and what they're doing, and there are lots and lots more people just like me, who expect you as the planning commission to do a good job of planning this so we don't wreck what's already there, and to make sure that we have oversight of the people who are actually doing the planning and executing the building permits at the time that it happens. Anyway, I'm very enthusiastic about our work with Spokane urban nature. We have at least 55 people who are on our advocacy team. We're planning activities at lincoln park and other parks to do conservation and education about animals and plants- you're at time... Within the City, and we're doing weed plucks to remove noxious weeds in various urban areas that the parks department doesn't have time to reach. Thank you for your consideration.
[01:22:18]
Thank you. And finally, we have samantha mace. Thank you. My name is Sam Mace, and I live in east central. And I want to endorse what ms. Angell said, and what Karen Mobley said. I fully endorse what their perspective is. A couple things. One is, having east central lumped in with south hill doesn't really give east central justice. We have very different concerns, and it's just a different animal. We have one of the highest heat indexes in the City. We have one of the least amount of tree canopy. Northeast probably is giving us a run for the money on that.
[01:23:14]
We also have a wave of concrete barreling towards my home with the north south freeway, which is not going to be a net positive for our community. I-90 wasn't a net positive. This is not. And I just am here to advocate for protecting our natural areas and looking for those opportunities for those pocket habitats. That is what we have in east central beyond underhill park and liberty park. And also, to not further weaken our environmental reviews and laws. It's already hard enough. I live across from underhill park. My property is right next to the egregious development that the City let happen. 2.8 acres of natural forest, basalt cliffs, where there was a pathway to add it to underhill park, and we could not get the City to help us. And it's a project that has gone forward without being able to bulldoze and log, without abiding by department of ecology rules, by stormwater rules, all of that.
[01:24:15]
And so, if you want to see what that would look like for other neighborhoods, come down to my neighborhood and take a look. Park in underhill and look up. And I can already feel the increased heat index on my property. And we have to not have those opportunities missed, because we're not going to get it back. And I live in a low income, I want to say mixed income, diverse in income community. A lot of our kids, we have a lot of immigrant communities, they don't get taken to riverside park. They don't get taken to lincoln park. It's one-car families, maybe. Where they have to go is underhill or other pocket habitats. And we're getting a ton of infill. We're going to be one of the hotspots for infill. And I accept that, and we're a place that it should happen. But I'm not seeing a plan for where these kids and people are going to recreate or walk or have a dirt path or see flowers or see birds. That's not reflected in this comp plan and these preferred alternatives, and we need that desperately. So, I just urge a different look at that. And I also, too, want to say is like, where are we talking about where is the water going to come for all this increased density? That's the big elephant in the room as well. So, I urge a little more attention to our natural areas, to our lower income neighborhoods, and the birds, bees, and wildlife. Thank you.
[01:25:40]
Thank you. Okay. That is the end of our list for folks who have signed up. Is there anyone else in members of the public that would like to provide any comment? Going once, twice, three times. Okay. And with that- we have one person online. We have one person online. Dwight Hume, please go ahead. Okay. Thank you. I'm actually a tuning in, a, to say that I like your alternative two. I'm here today on behalf of rockwood retirement south in the lincoln heights. As you will find out from spencer and kevin, rockwood has been working and begging for better zoning tools to make their site implementable.
[01:26:36]
Because it isn't readily usable zoning-wise, we have over 850 people in line waiting to move into this. There are only three continuous care retirement communities in the area. And rockwood has been around up there in that location for 40 years. You're currently designating it, it appears to be low density residential or moderate density. I'm sorry. We need, at the end of your planning process, a density, probably high density, to enable us to continue to build out our project.
[01:27:28]
We've added property to it south of 25th between southeast boulevard and ray. And all of that ownership enabled us to essentially spread out the original 1986 approval. There's going to be, believe it or not, only an additional 21 units at full build-out from what was approved in 1986. So don't worry about high density residential exploding residential development in this area. This is just for the retirement community that they own from ray to southeast. And so we would urge you to support and give spencer and tirrell the ability to modify the plan. I can propose a map as to what we need, but in essence, we're looking for the ability to build upwards of 12-story towers.
[01:28:35]
Not many, just one or two at the most, in the vicinity north of 25th. So, if you will, I will submit a map showing what we would suggest and work with your staff to get the zoning tools that allow us to move forward without further interruption. Thank you. Okay. Do we have anyone else online or in the room that would like to provide public testimony? Not seeing any hands pop up there. No one in the room. Okay. And with that, we will go ahead and close public testimony, and we'll entertain a motion. I move that we recommend the preferred alternative as presented today by City Staff to the City Council for adoption.
[01:29:31]
Do we have a second? I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. So who would like to begin? I'll begin. Jill, please. It's real easy to get stuck in the weeds with this. And I think I've put tons of hours into this. I've read so many public comments. And one public comment that I have not seen is, "I just wish I could get stuck in traffic more." I want to emphasize that this is an intensity map. It's a broad sketch to help guide our community resources over time. It does not trigger any zoning changes. The rules, what can be built, where, and how, those will come later and with lots of public input, and I'm really excited to hear that because I've heard a lot of concern about the rules, and that's not what we're talking about here.
[01:30:39]
We're high level still. What I am hearing from the community and all the engagement that we've done over this last year is, how do we balance growth with good stewardship? And how do we preserve our sense of place? We don't want to be just anywhere, and we have so much pride, and that's what I'm hearing with being good stewards of the environment, that access to nature and preserving that. Our ability to move around our City in many different ways that feel best for us, that feel safe for us. And how do we have complete neighborhoods that have access to amenities and that preserve their heritage while welcome people into them?
[01:31:37]
So I think that this is a really good start to that process. It still needs refinement, and it's still open to refinement. We've talked about centers and corridors a lot, and I do want to put a plug that if you have a corridor and you have a coffee shop on one end of it, and a mile down the road is your grocery store, it's not really a walkable, complete neighborhood. I do really want to make sure we're focusing more on nodes versus corridors, and I think that this mapkeeps that open for those nodes. And I just really want to say, based on all of this input and based on all of the reading and the comments, that this is a good start. I'd like to put a finding. I don't know if this is the way to suggest it or not, but in our notes, in our recommendation, that any subsequent zoning and code updates take into account this community context and neighborhood input.
[01:32:51]
Can I clarify something? Because the language you just suggested talked about zoning and code updates. The next step on our line towards adoption is land use map changes. And so it may be worth also identifying that as a point for significant public engagement. So I would just- thank you so much... Offer that as an addition. Yes, please add that. Thank you so much for your guidance. Anyone else? Ryan, battle for it. Yep, you go first. I appreciate the efforts for this map and that this EIS is, this is a significant change. It's been 26 years since we've really put this much effort into looking at the City comprehensively and where we want that growth to happen.
[01:33:46]
And I think a lot of things have changed in the City in the last 25, 27 years since we came up with our last plan. And I think this plan is going toward reflecting that, understanding that we do want more complete neighborhoods, that we want to have opportunities for people to stay in their neighborhoods as their housing needs change, as they age or as their children grow up. And a lot of the suggested intensity recommendations in this map do allow more for that than we had in previous plans. I also really appreciate that this map does have fuzzy boundaries. We're not identifying specific boundaries, just the general direction. So there will be a lot more specific change happening when we get to the actual land use policy. And it can also be really hard to see how much work we've already done in the last three to five years on the middle housing.
[01:34:47]
So much of that, that we did in advance of being required to by the State because we recognized that we need more flexibility in the type of housing, the sizes of lots, and the style of building throughout the entire City. And this map doesn't show it because we've already done it. It's hard to tell because it's so new that not a lot of it has been built out yet in Spokane, but it is starting to happen. And layered with the more intense types of housing along transit corridors, along business routes, I say routes, but not, where the businesses are located, will really provide a much more flexible type of housing and growth strategy for the City. So I do support the proposed alternative map, the preferred alternative. There's so many p words that go into staring at public testimony.
[01:35:48]
That's not helping. And also really look forward to the work that's coming on land use policy that will really help us get down into that land use, which will help designate the types of housing, the, oh my gosh, public lands. Well, there's a specific word for that I can't think of. But the natural areas, the business areas, and the housing that all go into our City. Thank you. Kyle. I've got a couple of questions, but first, I think there was a lot of interest and concern, I think, on the SEPA exemption expansion. And I would just like for, I think, my benefit and hopefully the public benefit, to ask the question to maybe spencer and or tirrell to explain, or can you elaborate the justification for the proposed expansion of SEPA exemptions? And as a part of that, how will the City ensure that wildlife habitat, tree cover, traffic congestion, other environmental concerns are adequately addressed or protected in instances where we would no longer be going through the SEPA process?
[01:37:04]
So we have slides that we haven't prepared today, but we have talked in other fora about the proposed SEPA exemptions. As we've studied them, and we have studied them as part of this environmental impact statement, but we are not proposing to implement them through this environmental impact statement. So the adoption, the actual adoption of those exemptions would be a separate step that we take. And to the extent that there's further study needed, we would do that further study there. So we are absolutely considering all those topics in the environmental impact statement. As we look at those SEPA exemptions, if there are specific areas or specific topics that we don't feel are adequately addressed in the environmental impact statement, we can address those in the process of adopting. And as we've looked at those exemptions, we've actually separated them into what we...
[01:37:59]
I can't remember the term we had, but essentially two phases. Mm-hmm. The first phase is focused more on central City and already established inner neighborhoods where there's less concern about some of the impacts related to new development. And then a second phase that would cover the remaining portions of the City, some of which aren't as developed and where those impacts may be more significant. Sowe have anticipated further study of those things. At this time, of course, that's not proposed and on the table for consideration. But yes, it is something that we have kept an eye on through this environmental impact statement process. Can I ask another question? Or I guess a topic of discussion, and this was brought up in a lot of the public comment.
[01:38:56]
There is, I think, compelling evidence that restricting greenfield development in Spokane to encourage infill and transit-oriented development actually results or has actually resulted in higher housing costs, economic loss to the region, shifting growth to kootenai County, et cetera, as we heard earlier, and which the net effect may actually act to the detriment of the City of Spokane, the Spokane region, our ecosystems. So I guess the question, I don't think it's necessarily going to be answered in this exact moment, is how, through planning, through the EIS, through the comprehensive plan, do we help to ensure that, I guess, the reality of the past 20 years, where we've shifted growth to kootenai County, where sprawl has just been exported, how does the current draft EIS mitigate that reality?
[01:39:55]
And again, it might be a bigger topic than we can respond to in one to two minutes. Well, I guess the quick answer is that it's the County who controls the process of assigning urban growth areas. So it is not a part of our consideration as to where we might expand if we did want to add area for development. So that's, I guess, more of a topic for another venue. I think our approach to accommodating the growth that we know is coming and to avoiding some of the impacts that you're talking about is really recognizing that at least in the City of Spokane, infill development and making that infill development as easy as possible and as streamlined as possible is the best way that we can tilt the playing field in favor of development here in the City of Spokane. That's not to say that there's absolutely no consideration of developing new areas or things like that, but ultimately, like I said, the County kind of controls that process, and we're participants, but it's not really our decision-making that drives that.
[01:41:02]
And I guess I would jump in on that, too. I think we have to deal with the cards that we've dealt, and as spencer's pointed out, that's not really within our purview to really even answer some of those questions as much as some stakeholders in the community would like us to be able. But I think we also need to acknowledge the fact that some of these outlying areas are currently, today, in my opinion, making mistakes that are going to come back to bite them in 20 and 30 years, and they're going to be dealing with a lot of these same issues that we're wrestling with now today in 20 or 30 years. So while they are potentially reaping the benefit of that now, they are doing so without taking advantage of the upfront knowledge that they could have had going into that to not get themselves into some of those same things by continuing the continued outward sprawl and et cetera, and all of the negative impacts of that, both on the environment as well as on municipal finances, which is the thing that keeps me up at night.
[01:42:04]
And so I think, spencer, to your point, we have done the best we can, and I really want to commend the City for taking a serious look at how difficult it is to develop or how easy it is to develop and where the friction is there because that really is what gets projects done or not done and what makes developers run or not run and what ultimately gets the products delivered that we want. So it's a great question, for sure, but we can only do what we can do and make the best decisions we can make. Others? Others? Tim, please. I'm generally very supportive of the preferred alternative as presented. We're going to have growth. We need to accommodate that. I think it represents a reasonable plan, and particularly the emphasis along transit corridors. And one note is our job is to say what can be developed in different areas, not necessarily what will be developed.
[01:43:04]
And I'd like to second ryan's column about some of the work we've already done through the Plan Commission, the City Council, to enable more work with small lots and accessory dwelling units. That hasn't come to full fruition, but the process has been started there. I'd also note that one of the difficulties is we can all drive around Spokane and see lots that you kind of go, "why isn't that being developed?" or, "why is that building vacant?" so that's kind of a frustration that we probably share on the commission, but we can't drive the private sector. But there is a lot of land that is underutilized in Spokane. Our job is to try and make sure that there's land available as the development community moves forward. We'd certainly like to see more housing downtown. I think we're all in support of that, but there's some struggles there with the private sector not making bold moves forward in the downtown area.
[01:44:01]
I appreciate the comments about our natural areas in the City and the pocket areas. I think in maybe future parts of our planning process, not so much what we're doing today, we can make sure that's more clearly addressed in the comprehensive plan. I think that is very essential and very unique and very special to Spokane. I take a lot of hikes around these various parks that were mentioned. I also had just one question. If we have further revelations in the coming couple months and we want to make changes to the preferred alternative that we may adopt today, what would-does the process allow for us to make modifications to what we may potentially adopt today? I guess it depends on the nature of the change. So I think we kind of laid this out in the presentation, but the preferred alternative is one stop on the process. I think the next major decision point where I think we'll have a significant amount of public interest and planning commission involvement is the selection of the future land use map, or what's currently called the land use plan map.
[01:45:10]
And that's where we identify the appropriate types of development in specific locations. So the preferred alternative map is by nature, somewhat general. We're not identifying specific parcels on there. We did general buffers off of arterial streets, but we haven't identified exactly how many parcels off or how many feet off of an arterial we might look at for zoning changes or for land use changes. So to answer your question, if the change that you're looking for is a significant increase in intensity in a place where we haven't really identified it here, I don't have a good answer. There may be a way for us. It's probably possible for us to amend the preferred alternative or to rethink that in some way, but it would be more challenging if the change is to simply not adjust the land use designation in a place where we don't think it really makes sense to increase the intensity.
[01:46:12]
That's entirely within the bounds of this alternative and that is an assumed part of the process. I don't anticipate that every square inch of map that's identified here is actually going to be changed significantly through the land use map or the zoning map. This is really just kind of directing our efforts on the subsequent work of the land use map and the zoning map. Does that answer your question? Yes. Okay. Okay. Other comments? Jill, please. Just a quick comment. I did read a lot of requests for neighborhood mixed use or neighborhood commercial. I'm thinking about made with love bakery or the scoop, and how beloved those corner mixed-use spaces are, and we are working on that zoning. That is coming down the pipeline, and I want people to know that.
[01:47:09]
Others? Tyler. A lot of work was put into this. Appreciate all the planning staff for everything they've done, 614 pages of the draft EIS, if I'm not mistaken. So definitely a lot to skim through, especially me having to play catch up with quite a bit of it. So, I'm a bit torn on this, but, I understand the preferred alternative, why it's there. And that's based off of a lot of what the community has said that participated in the community engagement. When I'm looking at this, this is by no means to insult anyone. This is where I'm from. I'm from san fernando valley, california, and this looks exactly like where I'm from, where all the density's kind of focused in these areas along the arterials, corridors, and all that. So it's good.
[01:48:05]
It won't stop traffic. It doesn't. I'm from there, and they've closed off lanes. They've made more density on these arterials, but there's still a ton of cars on the road. So I hope that this can help in some way, shape, or form, alleviate some of that. But, I just don't think with all the growth that's coming here that people aren't going to be bringing their vehicles along with them. I was stationed in hawaii for some time, and hawaii would tell military people to not bring your cars to the island because there are just far too many there, and they can't get them off of there. So I'm just kind of thinking about this, and like I said, I'm really torn on it. But, I think I'll shine more when it comes to the policy portion of it. Policy needs to align with the plan. If it doesn't, then it's really not going to work.
[01:49:01]
So that's all I got. Thank you. Thank you. Ryan. I just wanted to also add that a lot of our conversation about coming up with this kind of mix of alternative two and alternative three to create the preferred alternative, we had discussions about distributing growth throughout the City. And, although we do allow for a large, like with the middle housing, is throughout the entire City, we had a lot of discussions about making sure that this map represented corridors and distribution throughout the City. Because this really just represents opportunity and possibility. We don't know where the actual development's going to happen. It's not going to happen on every single one of these streets, on every single one of the corridors. But we need to provide that opportunity throughout the City so that we can end up with a more distributed and mixed balance amount of growth throughout the City.
[01:50:05]
So it looks so intense when you look at the whole thing, and it looks like it's so much of the City. But, as was pointed out in the staff presentation, even the highlighted areas in this map are still only 15% of the City. And that's just 15% possibly being developed in a higher intensity. So I think this is a good way for us to meet our growth objectives. We can't control how many people move into the City. We can just accommodate the growth that happens, and try and do it in a responsible manner. Thank you. I'll just take a moment here. I don't want to repeat everything that everyone else has said. I think there's been an extraordinary amount of insightful comments from my fellow commissioners, so thank you all for being as engaged as you are and putting as much thought and as much work as I know we all did into this, not only in developing the map, but in reading through the public comments and digesting them, and not just looking at them, but really thinking about what was said.
[01:51:15]
I specifically want to touch on a point that you made, ryan. I think it's hard to look at this map and really understand what it's saying and what it's trying to get to without really being in the weeds and understanding the stuff at a really fine grain level. And I think the thing to take home from this is not all of those places develop immediately. They may develop over time, they may not develop over time. All of the places that are not highlighted on the map may change, and they may stay the same. What this does is allows a policy document and a robust policy document that touches every piece of the City's operations to align itself and focus around a general theme and a general framework. We heard a lot about sort of rehashed centers and corridors, and while, again, this map may look like that, there's a reason that it looks like that, and there's a reason that we orient around these corridors, and we orient around these nodes, and it's sort of a natural organizing feature. And a lot of some of the challenge with that came further down the line with some of the implementation and the zoning and some of that, and that is, as we've talked about extensively up here, subsequent steps down the process. So I, again, would love to commend staff for all their work, commend my fellow commissioners for all of their work on this, and being able to live in the squishy and the theoretical. This is really hard work. None of this is concrete.
[01:52:42]
There's nothing to grab a hold of that's solid and guaranteed, and that's a hard space for a lot of people to inhabit, and so everyone who has worked on this really deserves a lot of credit. I do have one question. I don't want to belabor the point here, but a quick question for staff. There were some points brought up by Mr. Fig with WSDOT, and I would just love to ask staff if there's any comment in response to any of those questions. Yeah, I can respond to that. Please. We have had several meetings with WSDOT. Our consultant is in contact with them. We've been sharing information. I think to the extent there are still concerns, they can be addressed as we finalize the preferred alternative and continue the environmental impact statement process with a preferred alternative. Okay. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that was addressed.
[01:53:35]
Obviously, those are hinting at gaps analysis, and we've all talked here about the importance of capturing this opportunity and making sure that we're not leaving any stones unturned, and so just wanted to make sure that was addressed. Any subsequent comments from anyone? Tyler, please. Just to kind of address what someone had mentioned earlier about where's the water coming from when all these people move here. I think that might be a problem with the private development. That's going to raise the costs for general facilities, permitting. Those costs are going to probably go up because it costs a lot to tap into the City water. So, that's where it'll come from. It'll just be expensive, and we just hope that the private sector is willing to do it. Even along the centers and corridors, the property prices may increase as well, so that's something else that could potentially happen, and that could stall growth, or at least the housing portion of it, the building. So, it's possible. So that's just a couple of comments I had.
[01:54:43]
I have I think my last comment. But I'd just like to express, I think, gratitude for the, I think, very active public engagement that we've had from very diverse groups of people. I think it really highlighted just the amount of love that we all have for the place that we live, and how we all care about it and want it to be successful, and to be a place that we can continue to enjoy, and a place that improves. I think that we've heard comments about preserving the character of neighborhoods, about preserving and expanding wildlife corridors and nature. I live in an old house in a neighborhood that is kind of landlocked by arterials and doesn't have a park, doesn't have nature without crossing arterials, and it's sometimes annoying.
[01:55:40]
And so it's something that I think a lot about. And I think that this draft EIS, if we recommend it to Council, and if Council chooses to adopt it, that it's a starting point, and from there, we have this opportunity over the course of the rest of this year to really focus on what is the policy that is going to ensure that we are protecting the things that we love and enhancing the things that we love about Spokane. How are we making sure that growth is happening in a sustainable way? How are we protecting water resources? How are we addressing all of these different aspects and making it so that Spokane is more accessible and equitable for us and whoever comes after us? And so I think that we are all striving to balance and align all of those goals through this draft EIS process, and we're definitely at the 30,000-foot elevation, and we're going to be in the weeds throughout the rest of this year as we seek to value all these different things.
[01:56:49]
I had one kind of housekeeping item. So I wanted to come back to commissioner yotz's desire for a finding. I think I have what I need as we're helping to draft the findings that would ultimately be signed. Is there a desire to have some kind of formal action, or do you feel like we have what we need for that to be included? I would put that back to jill. Do you think that you are on the record sufficiently with the intent of your comment? Yeah, I think we dug into it pretty well. Okay. Yeah. Well, and I guess, is there a desire for the whole commission to speak by an informal vote or something? Or a nod of head? I don't know. I think we can include it in the findings. I have what I need- thumbs up... For the language. I just know in the past, when we've had a desire to make sure something's in the findings, sometimes we've had a vote of some kind.
[01:57:43]
But- yeah. I think that's something that we could do, I think, given the nature of the subsequent steps and the subsequent touch points with the community that necessarily entail a lot of what was discussed. From my perspective, a simple finding is sufficient- okay... Unless other commissioners feel differently. Agree. Yeah. Okay. That gives me what I need. Thanks. Perfect. Okay. Are there any final comments for the record before we proceed to a vote? All right. With that, emily, please poll the commission. President bank? Aye. President bank? Aye. Vice president patterson? Aye. Commissioner lenhart is absent. Commissioner Madsen? Aye. Commissioner Tamoush? No. Commissioner williams? Aye. Commissioner yotz? Aye.
[01:58:35]
And the motion passes, six to one. Very good. Well, thank you again to everyone, to the members of the community, to staff, to my fellow commissioners, for doing all of the work on this. I want to echo what commissioner Madsen said. We can't do this work without an engaged community, and you all have shown up in a huge way, and that cannot be overstated. So thank you all to everyone, and we look forward to the next steps. And we're adjourned.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NsICwomUts
Automatic captions, reformatted for reading: sentence case, paragraph breaks, and
timestamps at their original cue positions. Word order is unchanged. Caption
mishearings are left as recorded.
[00:01:29]
Okay. Welcome everyone to today's special hearing of the Spokane Plan Commission for April 14, 2026. Before we get started, emily, will you please take roll? President bank? Here. Vice president patterson? Here. Commissioner lenhart? Absent. Commissioner Madsen? Here. Commissioner Tamoush? Here. Commissioner williams? Here. Commissioner yotz? Here. We have a quorum. And then community assembly liaison Linda Carroll? Present. Perfect. Good to go. Okay, very good. So what I like to do at these hearings, especially given the fantastic turnout today, is I just want to go through some hearing procedures to be sure that everyone has an agreed upon level set.
[00:02:22]
So the following rules of decorum by the public will be observed and adhered to during planning commission proceedings. Please silence your cell phones when entering the Council chambers. No clapping, cheering, or booing. No public outbursts. There will be a time limit of three minutes per public comment, and out of respect to the number of public comments we have signed up to speak today, we're going to strictly enforce that limit. All persons and our commission members shall wait to be recognized by the president before speaking. Persons testifying are asked to avoid repetition and limit comments to specific project or code compliance. Each speaker shall follow all instructions from the president so that his or her remarks may be heard, understood, and recorded. All comments to the Plan Commission shall be directed to the secretary to be appropriately entered into the public record. This includes oral, written, and email comments. No modes of expression not provided by these rules, including but limited to demonstrations, banners, applause, profanity, vulgar language, or personal insults will be permitted.
[00:03:21]
In the event such disorders persist, the president may require the removal of the instigators, recess, or adjourn the meeting. And with that, we will call up City Staff to begin presentation. Spencer? Okay. I'll run through the first few slides, and then we'll hand it off to tirrell and kaycee down there. Do I have the clicker, emily, or do I just need to... I can just say next slide or something. Okay. So, I'd like to welcome everybody to the hearing, and we're going to kind of run through our process. Go to the next slide. I'll just give you a sense of the flow of our presentation. So we'll talk a little bit about the process, growth allocations, and capacity. We'll talk about the draft environmental impact statement and the growth alternatives, talk about community feedback, then we'll focus on the preferred alternative, which is the topic for today, and then start to look forward towards the land use plan and the adoption of policies and code.
[00:04:34]
And then we'll open for public comment, of course, and move to deliberations. Next slide. So first, kind of the process that we are following throughout this periodic update. You can go to the next slide. We like to explain or start with an explanation of what plan Spokane 2046 is. So there's been a lot of discussion with the community about this. Hopefully, everybody's aware. Plan Spokane is our comprehensive plan update that requires us to look out over the next 20 years and plan for and accommodate the growth that we expect over that timeframe. The comprehensive plan update is mandated by the State, and they include specific topics or analyses that have to be done as a part of that comprehensive plan update.
[00:05:32]
In this particular case, we have also decided to do an environmental impact statement, and I'll talk about that more in a couple of slides, but that's ultimately the topic of this hearing today. Next slide. We had three specific goals for plan Spokane 2046. As I mentioned, the comprehensive plan update is mandated by the State, and so one of our goals was to meet all of our State legislative requirements. The legislature in recent years has significantly increased requirements on communities who are required to do comprehensive plans. And so there's been a lot of work for us to make sure that we are compliant with the requirements that the State imposes. The second is we wanted to make the plan usable and kind of streamline the information in the plan, make the policies easier for people to understand, and also make them work better for getting the kind of development that we want to see.
[00:06:33]
And the third, of course, is meeting the community's vision. And we'll talk more about the public engagement that has occurred, but that was a primary goal of the plan, is to make sure that we were capturing the vision that we were hearing from the community. Next slide. A couple of key dates. The first, and this is related to the environmental impact statement, we issued a SEPA determination of significance and a scoping notice in February. We took comments between February 5th and April 7th. That's the mandated comment period. As we have received a lot of comments in the run-up to this hearing, we are still taking public feedback on all aspects of the plan, but as part of the environmental impact statement process, there is a specific time period, and so that's what that time period refers to. The draft EIS was made available in December, and we took comments on the draft EIS from December to March.
[00:07:32]
And again, that's a mandated timeline, but we are of course, still accepting comments on the plan. So please continue to send us your comments. We appreciate your involvement today as well. The final EIS is anticipated to be released in quarter three of this year. So we're at an important milestone of the process, but by no means are we at the end of the process. As far as engagement, we've held visioning workshops in all parts of the City. We've held growth and guiding policies workshops in all parts of the City. We held listening hours at libraries around the City where we advertised for people to come in and engage with planners in more of a one-on-one setting. We've had open houses. As I mentioned, there's more information about that. If you look at our staff report, we have information we can share if anybody wants to see all of the touchpoints with the community. That has been an important aspect of our planning process.
[00:08:34]
And with that, I think I'll turn it over to terril. Thank you very much. I'm terril black. I also work for City of Spokane planning and have been spending a lot of the last year and a half of my working life, actually the last two years, preparing for this project. So thank you so much for all the attendance today and all the public comments. We very much appreciate that. Part of getting ready to do this periodic update work, it's called the periodic update, as spencer mentioned. It's a state-mandated look ahead. We do it every 10 years now. We have a 20-year planning horizon, so the goal is to adopt in 2026 and plan through the 2046 planning horizon.
[00:09:29]
We are doing this here at the City of Spokane, but all of Spokane County, all the cities and the County itself are also engaged in periodic updates of their comprehensive plan. To prepare for that, the board of County commissioners, in early '24, I believe, adopted our population forecast. So we receive an estimate from ofm, office of financial management, a State agency. We chose the median or sort of the middle forecast. So there's a high, medium, and low. We chose the median regionally, and then allocations were made through regional planning process and through the steering committee of elected officials and adopted by board of County commissioners, which is what bocc refers to on this slide. So the board of County commissioners gave us our population allocation, which is 23,357 people that we are planning for in the next 20 years.
[00:10:37]
We also have engaged regionally in establishing our housing targets. So this is a new change to State law. So this is the first time we've gone through this as a region, and it's being kind of implemented through the State. So we plan not only for our population number, but we receive a housing allocation, and then we divide that housing allocation up by income bands. I have a slide that shows a little more detail. But our current trajectories or our alternative one that was analyzed in the EIS shows a deficit in our capacity, our zone capacity for the lower income bands, and I'll talk about that a little bit more. We have made a lot of changes, as most people are aware, in the City of Spokane. We have been actively working on housing availability and affordability.
[00:11:41]
We adopted a housing action plan in 2021. We have made all the middle housing code changes kind of ahead of some of the State requirements even. So those were called building opportunity and choices for all, which was an interim ordinance, and building opportunity for housing, we adopted finally middle housing changes. So those remain in effect, and those were analyzed in our alternative one. Some other communities are just catching up now and adopting those at the same time, their middle housing code. The fair housing plan is worked by our chhs department, and then hb1220 is the house bill that we are to look at housing by income bands.
[00:12:38]
As I mentioned, we have already done our middle housing code changes, but still more to do is following commerce's guidance to look for more high-density residential. So we do feel we have a deficit in that. We have the opportunity to add more housing. These are showing the actual housing units over 20 years that we are projected to need. It is close to our population number, but the State is intentionally having it be a little higher so we can make up for underproduction, which has been occurring for some time, not just in the City of Spokane, but that's really a national problem. So especially below 80% AMI, we see a strong need, or we're forecasting a strong need. This is in the staff report and also shown in more detail in the EIS and the EIS summary that's also included in the packet as one of the appendix to the staff report. But this illustrates again that we're not meeting the 0 to 80% target following alternative one, which is stay the course, which is where we are now. We looked at alternative two and three, which are distributed and balanced, and alternative three, we named center City and regional hubs.
[00:14:07]
We have done extensive workshops with the planning commission on this topic in particular, so we're going to be high level, but on the different alternatives, because we are today at the preferred alternative, so that's where we're going to spend more time. But there is a lot of information on our website, which I should have mentioned earlier. It's plansspokane. Org. So we have a lot of our work on housing available there. So this is from Washington State commerce. It's guidance on what type of zone categories should be adopted for different housing types.
[00:15:01]
So, I believe there's some public comment directly related to this kind of consideration, but this is the guidance that we're given from commerce that apartments, condominiums, especially low-rise multifamily. So they're typically called walk-up apartments, two to three stories, walk-up referring to not needing an elevator in these structures. So those are what are more typically serving low-income population, and psh stands for permanent supportive housing. So these are some illustrations of low density. It's what we typically think of for single-family home. Low density also can be middle housing, so I believe that's a six-plex in the illustration there.
[00:16:02]
What the analysis shows is that we need more zoned capacity for moderate density and high density. That doesn't mean ultimately that some townhomes or other types would be not permitted in higher density, but it just shows we need to increase our zone capacity to allow for those types of units to be constructed. With that, I'm going to hand it off to my colleague, kaycee Downey, who's going to do the next few slides, and then I'll come back in a bit. Thank you. Good afternoon, Plan Commission. So in addition to housing, another significant framework for this periodic update is climate planning, which is a new element required for the comprehensive plan. Funded by the Washington climate commitment act, the City has conducted extensive planning related to climate and resiliency.
[00:17:00]
In February, the climate resilience and sustainability board made a recommendation of a package of policies for Plan Commission to consider. Those policies are currently being integrated into draft comprehensive plan chapters, and will be presented for further review and consideration. So I mentioned the draft chapters, but in addition to updating the actual comprehensive plan, again, we are also developing an environmental impact statement. But first, what is an environmental impact statement? We've gone over this a little bit, but an environmental impact statement, also known as an EIS, is an informational document that provides the City, tribes, agencies, and members of the public with information related to the environmental impacts that should be considered during a decision-making process. It is a technical document, but it's also a great tool to understand potential impacts that ideas can have on the City.
[00:17:57]
There are a number of steps in developing an eisas we've gone over, but I'll just keep reminding folks, that we've done a lot of work. So at the beginning of 2025, we did scoping and visioning with the community. Once we had an understanding of what the community wanted, we then developed different ways to meet that community vision and ultimately studied that in the draft environmental impact statement. Again, we've gone over the draft EIS extensively with Plan Commission, but we did provide a summary of the impacts and mitigation in the agenda packet for this hearing. The full document can be found on planspokane. Org. We are currently in the preferred alternative stage of the EIS process. Once a preferred alternative is selected, we will then develop the final EIS. Three different growth alternatives were studied in the draft EIS.
[00:18:52]
Again, growth alternatives are different ways how we can meet that community vision that was developed during the visioning process. So alternative one, stay the course, that is our status quo, our current land uses, our current policies. It is a requirement of the EIS process that we have this alternative one really to compare and contrast the other growth alternatives. Alternative two, distributed and balanced. This one focused on interconnecting the higher intensities throughout the City, focusing on transit and major roadways. And then alternative three, center City and regional hubs. This focused on downtown and the larger center City area, as well as employment hubs near hillyard and out by the airport. We've gone over this chart already, but just wanted to highlight some of the analysis that occurred in the draft EIS. For instance, all of them were reviewed under the allocated housing units. Both provide a mix of housing with single unit homes being the majority of housing units being provided. However, alternative two and alternative three do have a slightly lower percentage. This is reflecting the housing needs that we have by affordability types, and also really just reflecting the general development we're seeing in the region and in the State. The main point of this chart, however, is again, alternative one, our status quo, does not meet the affordability requirements of our lowest income brackets. This means we have to look at alternative two and three in order to meet State affordability requirements.
[00:20:27]
So on one hand, we have the technical analysis of the draft EIS. On the other, we have the experience of community members from the feedback that they provided us, and both of those help develop the draft preferred alternative. I cannot promise this will be the last time you see this graphic, but next time it might be updated with 2026 numbers. But as you know, 2025 was a busy year for community engagement. We had over 3,400 total community responses with workshops, surveys, and focus groups. We held a lot of City boards and commission workshops, and we popped up at various events. The goal was really to ensure the community knew about plan Spokane 2046, as well as how to provide feedback for the process. A summary of the 2025 engagement can be found on the about page of planspokane. Org. It was also in the agenda packet for today's hearing. But how did the engagement actually shape the preferred alternative?
[00:21:26]
So as we stated, we started with community visioning, and during the community visioning workshops, the City received feedback, among other topics, on the types of commercial uses individuals want to see throughout the community, as well as different intensities of mixed use. This information helped develop the draft growth alternatives that were viewed in the draft EIS. Community visioning also helped develop the draft vision statement for the comprehensive plan. This vision statement also helped inform the development of the growth alternatives. Then in the fall of 2025, we held a workshop series on future growth and guiding policies, and with over 100 attendees, we were able to get feedback on the actual growth alternatives to help refine and start shaping the preferred alternative. For first reactions, we asked community members to vote on which growth alternative that they preferred.
[00:22:24]
As you can see, alternative two received the most votes. Now, these are not a lot of votes. This is more of a snapshot of reactions. Most community members opted to provide comments instead of actually voting with a sticky dot. But of those comments, we did get direction of where to put growth. There were comments about directing growth along corridors, transit, where opportunities for growth currently exist, and where infrastructure currently exists. We also heard a desire of community hubs near higher intensity housing, and we heard a desire for more housing in downtown. Mapping exercises helped identify potential areas for mixed-use of different intensities, and again, that helped us really refine the preferred alternative that is being proposed today. There we go. So overall, community members really showed preference for alternative two, alternative three, or a combination of alternative two and three, though there were some highlights of alternative one. In general, community members really liked the interconnectedness of alternative two but did see importance in having that center City focus and ensuring downtown gets attention.
[00:23:47]
Now, in addition to engagement with the community, we also wanted to highlight that we have been working internally with City Staff in order to ensure we are sharing information, identifying any infrastructure concerns, or any other topics that may impact the preferred alternative. These photos are from our kickoff meeting with internal staff that was in December of 2024. Supporting community involvement was also important as we were preparing for this hearing. So we did try to make sure as many folks as possible knew that today was happening. So on the left, you can see the notifications that we did to share about the hearing. We used multiple City newsletters, webpages, blog posts, social media. We also directly emailed any parties of interest, so individuals who have submitted comments or submitted to be on record for parties of interest for Plan Commission. We also directly emailed neighborhood councils. We also put a notice in the spokesman-review, which isn't required, but we wanted to do a little extra to get the word out.
[00:24:46]
We also tried to help explain the draft preferred alternative as much as possible with direction from you all. We updated the story map to include a transition video with some narration, some slider maps, so you can compare where the growth intensity is being proposed. And we also had zoomed in maps of northwest, northeast, and south Spokane so individuals could see how the proposal is maybe impacting or making recommendations in their area. So it takes a lot of people, a lot of voices, to help inform the development of the preferred alternative. So we just want to thank everyone who has been involved in the process and want to thank everyone who has attended today as well. I want to ensure everyone that any comments that were submitted during the draft environmental impact statement comment period, as well as any comments submitted for today's hearing, have been submitted to you all for review prior to this meeting. A few printed versions have been passed out while you're here, so we want to make sure everyone knows comments have been received and have been handed off.
[00:25:49]
So with that, I will hand it back over to terril to talk about the actual draft preferred alternative. Thank you. I wanted to say a little bit more about the process too, for people who might be dipping into this whole plan Spokane work. So the preferred alternative is a map that is before the Plan Commission today. This will give staff direction to work on a land use plan map. This step in the process gives us some formal direction from the Plan Commission, and we will also be sending this recommendation to City Council and asking City Council by resolution to direct staff to work on the final land use plan map.
[00:26:44]
So that's the big goal here is to get some clear understanding of what's in, what's out, so we can go back and finish the work. Because it will take quite a bit of staff time to get us to the land use plan map or future land use plan map. So, preferred alternative is a common step in an environmental impact statement in eastern Washington for planning, where you don't routinely do environmental impact statements. In fact, for the City of Spokane, our last one was adopted in 2001 with our growth management act first compliance comprehensive plan. The planning horizon for that EIS was 2000 to 2020. So it was time for the City to undertake a second environmental impact statement and look at current conditions and do a better job studying for the future.
[00:27:51]
Preferred alternative is a term of art. So we've looked at alternative one, stay the course. We know that's not completely an option. We need to make some changes. We had alternative two and alternative three. So the preferred alternative is a combination of those. We could be calling it alternative four if we chose to, but we're sticking with a preferred alternative. This is still a draft, as I mentioned, so that's what we're... We have gotten some written comments, and I'm sure we'll have more testimony specifically on the preferred alternative. So this is a mix and match of two and three, maybe a little bit more two than three, but it's definitely a mix and match. So it does meet our SEPA objectives, and when we get through City Council giving us a direction of the preferred alternative, that will also give us information to develop the final environmental impact statement.
[00:28:59]
So we will be rerunning the transportation models, things like that at that time, when we have a clearer understanding of where growth would be placed. This is a plug for our webpage. As kaycee mentioned, we have interactive story maps, so doesn't run very well here in this format, but can be very effective on your own computer. So you can go and look at the existing map and then where the preferred alternative is looking at increasing both high-density residential and mixed use primarily. Am I pointing at the wrong place?
[00:29:56]
There it is. Do I get two now? Okay. So this is a... The draft preferred alternative. So, planning commission has had several workshops where we've been making some slight alterations to this map, but this is what we are proposing today. It focuses on both downtown and also corridors, especially around planned transit areas. That's predominantly where we're focusing. We incorporated sub-area plans, so just to keep it exciting, we did not stop some of our sub-area planning at the same time. So we have completed a plan recently for the hillyard sub-area plan. We also have staff that have been working with the east central community, so we have some changes embedded from that, and we've also been actively working with sta and Spokane County on division tod planning.
[00:31:05]
So that work also is incorporated into this preferred alternative. And as kaycee mentioned, we have gotten a lot of strong support in our community outreach over especially a transit-focused plan. We've also tried to buffer off that, so these, if you look closer, they're kind of a red hatched, closer than you can look in this powerpoint if you've been looking through our materials. So these are really establishing as areas where we would go in and look when we're developing the land use plan map, which we would have later this year, with changes to land use plan map that would eventually lead to potentially zoning changes in these areas. We've done sort of a standard buffer. We're not saying that we would do that size changing in the end, but that's where we want to look.
[00:32:11]
So again, establishing where we're going to look, where we're not going to look is very helpful, I think, to the community and especially to us, to get this project complete. Our State mandate is to complete this work by December 31st of 2026. So again, we believe this recognizes investments in transit and transportation that we've heard very strongly from the community, we should support with putting people and retail around, and it does meet our housing capacity at all affordability levels. So, early back of the envelope, we should have 200 to 400 acres of developable units, or developable area. That's just using very crude back of the envelope math. And as I mentioned, planning commission looked at this in their February 25th and March 11th planning commission meetings and helped develop some changes to this map.
[00:33:17]
This is a bit in the weeds, but it's really important to understanding this process. So this is back alt one, two, and three are referring to the environmental impact statement and where a growth was placed. So there's still, in all these scenarios, a pretty significant amount of growth that's allocated to south Spokane. So we did get quite a bit of comment about the Latah area. You're not seeing that in the hatched area for consideration to change the existing zoning pattern, but we do have a significant amount of platting in that area. So we have, in all of the scenarios, identified significant growth in that area. So that's an existing condition that's not changed by this action. So similarly, downtown Spokane, we could anticipate quite a bit of growth in that area. We have a lot of zoning in place.
[00:34:27]
And we have also interim ordinance in place that takes away height limitations in most of downtown. So that is also in the preferred alternative map that the removal of height limitations in most of downtown would stay in place. So it may not be as prominent, but those areas are still holding a lot of capacity in this analysis, but not shown to change significantly, just not shown in the preferred alternative. So just wanted to mention that. I know planning commission's well aware, but again, if you're just coming into the process. We have divided the City into kind of quadrants at the planning commission's suggestion.
[00:35:23]
So I'm going to kind of go through these a little bit. We have them lined up so we can return to them for public comment if that is helpful. So, northwest Spokane, the sort of darker circles are where we're interested in looking at more mixed use areas and the kind of yellow sort of highlighter look, yellow highlighter I think of as more high density residential. So this is kind of showing a mix of what's existing, and that's what we tried to show with the intensities of gray as well. So we're not starting new. The City's already here. Zoning's already here. So we're adding and changing on top of the base that we haveso we heard a lot of interest in northwest boulevard through our community outreach, so we've really added that into this.
[00:36:23]
You did get some comment about the indian trail node there. That is referring to vacant property that is along indian trail. So I anticipate we may get additional comment about that one. It is undeveloped property, so felt it should continue on the map as an opportunity for more capacity. Those are a few of the highlights, but you can read the rest as well there. So again, this is trying to show the red there, buffered a little bit more clearly about where we would look in the northwest. Similarly, for northeast Spokane, we're focusing a lot on both. I should go back here because northwest and northeast Spokane are pretty entwined, so you can also see wellesley is predominant in northwest and northeast Spokane also as areas to be explored for more high-density residential and potentially some new nodes of mixed use.
[00:37:50]
Also around market, there's existing pockets of zoning now that's cc4 or higher density, so that could be more uniformly high-density residential under this scenario. So south Spokane also shows increase, particularly on the 4 line. And that goes through a lot of existing centers. So the idea is we could add some more mixed-use capacity potentially around those, as well as more high-density residential opportunity around the 4 line. With the exception of the 4 line is also on grand towards, I believe, about 38th, 39th. So trying to capture a vacant site in there that's already also in center zoning, which we could add around there.
[00:38:56]
I think what's not showing up very well here is the only sort of lata area is the inland empire way. There are some existing nodes, so that's sort of the vinegar flats is commonly known, that area. There are some existing old neighborhood retail zoned parcels that were in that, used to be, I believe, a State route. So there's interest from property owners in that area in having more mixed use there without encroaching on the residential agriculture is what we're hearing. Okay. She's back. Still outside. Still outside? Sorry, we're getting some extra sound. So that's the high-level flyover for the south Spokane section of the preferred alternative. We're trying to show a little bit. We had some planning commission questions like, are we doing enough?
[00:39:59]
So the little dot there would be we need to make about 1% change to the total area to meet that very minimal 500 acres that the consultant thinks we need to increase. We've heard also, though, that we need to really make sure this is spread citywide. That's been a really strong goal of the planning commission and also Council in a lot of our changes to housing. So we're looking at roughly, very roughly, these are really super crude estimates, grabbing the gross areas of the City, so not taking out streets and things like that. But we've got about 16% of the City that we've got in these little red hatches that we would be looking at. So that leaves most of the City where we're not looking at significant changes.
[00:40:53]
That is, of course, leaving intact the middle housing work that we've already done. Other things that we are doing, kaycee mentioned all the work we're doing on the chapters. So we have as many of the comprehensive plan chapters or also known as elements in GMA language. Those are posted on our webpage, but we're actively working on some of the last ones, including the land use one. So we hope to have a draft of that up by the end of may is our goal for those. So please continue to look for our actual chapter work as we're working on this preferred alternative. The land use plan map ultimately lives in the land use element, which I believe we are going to rename to our growth strategy just to keep it fresh.
[00:41:52]
We're also, of course, continuing to focus on infill and transit-oriented development. We believe this preferred alternative also still supports downtown and meets State requirements. We also, as part of the whole periodic update requirements in State law, not only do we need to adjust our comprehensive plan, we also need to amend our development regulations. One component of that is our critical areas ordinance. We are working on a draft form, but we have not yetbeen working on that with the planning commission, so we don't have a public draft yet, but we are looking to work on that. There have been a lot of public comments and a lot of interest in our work in critical areas. We plan to stay in conformance with State law. There's a very prescriptive State law in critical areas ordinance, but we do definitely need to update those.
[00:42:53]
We did in our analysis, in the EIS, we looked at looking at our SEPA thresholds and infill exemption. So we are still working on that. That is not part of the preferred alternative today, but that will be part of our development code package. Our development code, we are naming build Spokane. So this is plan Spokane for the comp plan. When we get to the development code, we're going to call it build Spokane. That's where we'll actually be working on development standards for buildings, so things like heights and setbacks and also what zoning districts we actually adopt. So, a lot more work ahead. We're looking at some things too that we don't have, like outdoor lighting standards in that project. So as I mentioned earlier, this planning commission today, if you close your hearing, will make a recommendation to City Council.
[00:43:59]
So staff will prepare findings that will be forward to City Council with your recommendations. So of course, planning commission could today, following testimony, in deliberations, make further amendments to the map. We will ask City Council to do a resolution selecting the preferred alternative. We do not yet have a date before City Council, but it is likely to be in may of this year. With the preferred alternative information and direction, we can finalize the environmental impact statement. And as I mentioned, we will be working on the future land use plan map, which is part of the comprehensive plan as a result of the preferred alternative decision. And then the zoning map is actually considered part of the development code, so that will be part of build Spokane.
[00:45:00]
We anticipate this work being done, as far as the date specific, I'm just going to say fall. But again, our goal is December 31st, 2026. City Council typically does not meet the last couple weeks in December, so November at Council would be excellent news for us. And so that would put us here in probably September or October with planning commission again for a hearing on the entire document. This is again trying to illustrate some of the steps. So we're here at the preferred alternative. It's going to assist us with the final environmental impact statement, and will also help us finalize some of the land use plan map and other chapters. Again, the implementation part is when we adopt the new zoning categories, potentially, and the zoning map.
[00:46:01]
It's also important to note that we have other initiatives that support development, such as our MFTE program, other incentives we might wish to place in certain areas. So it's important for us to align those after we get all this work done, to make sure they are in fact implementing the plan. We also have State law has added a five-year check-in that will occur at the City of Spokane, Spokane County, other cities also checking our housing numbers. So, we will get information from commerce about our housing by income bands. We'll also be looking at, there's some acronyms there, so greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled are also now part of the comprehensive plan, studied in detail in the EIS.
[00:46:57]
We don't have time to go into that today. But we also have extensive information on our website about that, and that was a big part of our climate planning work as well. So here's, if you're wanting to use the qr code or if you could have possibly forgotten, it's planspokane. Org for all our documents. We've also really, kaycee's been doing a great job of getting a newsletter out. We really encourage people to sign up for the newsletter at planspokane@spokanecity. Org. We can get you on the newsletter distribution, and we will continue to use that distribution list for the build Spokane. So even if you're like, "I'm not so interested in this part, I'm interested in the other," it would be worth getting onto our email list.
[00:47:54]
We also try to use all the City channels as well, but we do get into more detail about what planning department is doing in our newsletter. So with that, I'm going to take a breather, hand it back over to Jesse Bank to call on people for testimony. It is very helpful to us if you have specific, since this is a map, we have gotten some nice illustrations from people in the written comments. And as I mentioned, there's still, if you aren't ready today or you need to think about it, City Council will also be taking comments. But since this is a map, if you can be as specific to streets and intersections and areas, that is very helpful to us at this point. So thank you very much. And I just wanted to add, I want to thank tirrell and kaycee and kevin Freibott, who are all here and have done a lot of work on this, the lion's share.
[00:48:55]
So I want to thank them. It can feel like a football scrum sometimes, and it's important to get your head up above the crowd and see where we're headed here. So this is a great opportunity for us to start looking forward to the subsequent changes on the land use map and in the zoning, which are following from this. Well, thank you all. You took the words right out of my mouth. I definitely want to extend huge thank you to staff. This has been an absolutely enormous lift, and I know how hard everyone has worked on this. We have certainly not made your jobs any easier, and so we appreciate you putting up with us with all of our changes and semantics and all of that. And I think special note to the updates to the story map online. I think that was really effective, so thank you for taking care of that. Before we move on to public testimony, I just want to make a couple of notes on the public testimony that we've received.
[00:49:51]
There was a series of themes that, as you can imagine, that emerged from those comments. First and foremost, I want to ensure everyone that's in the room and online that we do receive the comments and we do read them. And we take them seriously. This is a really, really important part of the process. I noticed that come up in a number of submitted comments, ideas that we were not taking any of that seriously, and that is a really, really serious opportunity for you to engage with us and for opportunity to engage with Council, and we would encourage you to continue to do that. As we move into the public testimony, given the volume of folks that we have, I know we just discussed this a lot, but just for avoidance of doubt, I want us to all focus on what we're here to discuss today, which is a growth framework to guide upcoming decisions. It is general. It is not fine-grained. It's instructive. It's not about final decisions. What we're not talking about today are zoning changes, code changes, specific policies related to things like environment and habitat and tree cover.
[00:50:53]
We will have all of those discussions, and those discussions will be coming down the line. So please stay engaged, please participate, and please watch out for opportunities to participate in some of those conversations. So with that, we will open the public comment, and we will start with folks online. First, we have, and please apologize in advance for butchering your name. Kirsten Angell, please. And a reminder, you have three minutes. I'm actually present. And you are actually present. Outstanding, then please approach. Sorry, I thought I said I would be present, but it's all good. Good afternoon. I'm here representing myself, Kirsten Angell, as well as Spokane urban nature. Our concern is that there's been a lot of public input favoring natural systems protections, and we're not sure this is being adequately represented in the comp plan revision process. Natural lands and overall natural infrastructure, such as critical areas and open space, need to be identified in the preferred alternatives land use map so that future development will not erase them.
[00:52:06]
We support the idea of infill housing where appropriate, but not at the expense of our remaining natural systems that can enable our community, including the other than human residents, to adapt to the climate disruption we're already experiencing and according to best available science, will continue to intensify. Spokane's natural infrastructure makes us more resilient as the climate continues to change. We have record low snowpack levels this year, which will likely bring more intense drought and fire. Some of you may think that our urban areas are too disturbed to worry about it, but if you take into account the natural environment chapter of the comp plan and you listen to the feedback that came out of the plan Spokane public outreach and Spokane parks master planning process, this community cares deeply about these sometimes small but important natural assets. Our community wants to have a greater voice in the revision of our City's land use map and development and zoning codes. The process should include business and development interests and representatives from the neighborhoods who will shoulder the impacts and consequences of infill development.
[00:53:14]
For example, from the community assemblies, land use subcommittee, or from Spokane urban nature. We need to include critical areas, habitat corridors, and open spaces in the land use mapping process. The community expects the revised zoning and development code to clearly and forcefully protect, restore, and enhance this critical resource in harmony with accommodating new growth and facilitating adequate housing for all. We will be watching closely to make sure that our community's love of nature is being reflected as this process moves forward. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on next to Daniel LeRoy. Yes. Hello. My name is Daniel LeRoy. I am the director of government affairs with habitat for humanity Spokane. Today, I just want to make sure that as the preferred alternative is discussed, we include permanently affordable home ownership as a critical connective housing element to keep in consideration as we plan for future growth.
[00:54:17]
We are seeing a rapidly widening gap between the cost of rental housing and traditional home ownership housing. That is why, as the City plans to grow, it is imperative that housing typologies that come out of this process are ownership ready. Whether this is middle housing, condos, special care, thought, and attention need to go into this planning process to make sure that the resulting units are just as usable for ownership as they are for rental. Over the past 40 years, habitat Spokane has built affordable home ownership opportunities for the Spokane area residents making under 80% of the area median income. More recently, we have introduced the use of land trusts and shared equity models to our program, making sure that all the units that we build are permanently affordable for generations to come. This sort of affordable homeownership program serves to fill a gap between renting and market rate homeownership.
[00:55:12]
And this is a gap that is increasingly out of reach for working Spokane families, and serves as one of the only stepping stones between these two market segments. We realize that in order to serve as many Spokane residents as possible, we need to advocate for the use of diverse housing typologies to maximize the efficiency on very expensive land. This moment matters because this is where the policy direction is being set. The decisions made in this plan will shape what is possible for future code updates. If affordable homeownership is not clearly embedded here, it becomes significantly harder to achieve later. There's also a real opportunity here. Middle housing types like townhomes, cottage housing, and stacked flats are not just about density, they are also one of the most effective ways to deliver ownership at a price point that is attainable, especially when paired with land trust and shared equity models.
[00:56:05]
But that only happens if the policy framework is intentional about supporting them as ownership opportunities. If the City gets this right, we can create a system where more families move from renting into stable, affordable homeownership. And this really mitigates displacement and other affordability concerns moving into the future. So as staff and the commission build out the preferred alternative, we ask that you ensure that future land use code updates enable forms that are feasible for shared equity and land trust ownership, and that the commission recognizes the role of nonprofit developers in delivering permanently affordable homeownership at scale. This is an opportunity to build a more complete housing system, one that increases supply, but also creates real attainable pathways into homeownership for households who need it the most. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Next we have Kevin Campbell. Also in the room. Welcome, kevin.
[00:57:07]
Good afternoon, commission. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Kevin Campbell. I'm here on behalf of the downtown Spokane partnership, and I'm here to express the dsp's support for the City center and regional hubs option as the preferred growth alternative. Downtown Spokane serves as the region's primary hub for employment, culture, education, healthcare, and tourism. Concentrating growth within key centers rather than dispersing it reinforces downtown's role as the economic core while supporting a more efficient and sustainable development pattern. It also encourages higher density housing near jobs and services, supports walkable mixed-use districts, and reduces infrastructure costs and environmental impacts associated with sprawl. This approach aligns with Spokane's long-standing centers and corridors strategy. A key priority within the strategy must be expanding market-rate housing in the downtown core. Today, there's an imbalance between employment activity and residential population, and lack of market-rate housing.
[00:58:02]
In 2025, the dsp initiated a downtown housing study, which identified a need for 3,200 net new market rate units in the central business district over the next 10 years. Right now, I will say currently under construction, we only have 160 units, and so that gap highlights the need to make downtown development more attractive and feasible for developers through thoughtful policy and incentives. Increasing residential density is essential to activate streets and public spaces, support local businesses, improve safety through activity and presence, and strengthen the downtown tax base. Growth must also be supported by strategic public investment. This includes transportation connections to regional employment hubs, utility and infrastructure capacity, and streetscape improvements that make downtown more livable and walkable. Investments in parks, public safety, and public services will also be critical to supporting a growing residential population and enabling private development.
[00:58:57]
By focusing growth downtown, Spokane can build a more vibrant, sustainable, and economically competitive City. Infill development and development housing are not only economic priorities, but essential components of a strong long-term growth strategy. So thank you for your time and consideration. If there are any questions about the downtown housing study or anything downtown related, please feel encouraged to reach out to our organization. Thank you. Next we have brian, and I apologize, muegge, and I know that you highlighted the pronunciation in your public commentary and I've missed it here. So thank you. Please go. That's okay. It happens almost every day- sure it does... For my life, so I'm used to it. Thank you, and thank you to the planning commission and planning staff. My name's Brian Muegge. Echoing just all the herculean effort that folks have done to get this together for our community. Thank you. I'm a local resident naturalist. I also served as a member of the Spokane County comprehensive plans natural and rural lands technical advisory committee, so I just wanted to share my input on that.
[00:59:59]
I'm commenting to strongly urge that the City adopt a preferred alternative that prioritizes conservation connectivity and low impact land use in hangman creek, thorpe, and the greater Latah valley corridor, which, from a name perspective, is likely closest to alternative three. Given that the landscape represents one of the more intact and connected habitat corridors remaining in the Spokane region, just wanted to flag that on our committee, on our comprehensive plan committee, we've been looking at the whca, wa-caps, the Washington habitat connectivity analysis project, and that has identified this area as priority for maintaining regional and ecological connectivity between the channel scablands and hangman creek in the upland areas. Also, this growth strategy is built around directing density towards the centers and corridors, which I definitely support. However, the hangman and thorpe-latah corridor really doesn't function as a transit corridor. It's constrained by steep topography, limited access to 195, and a lack of transit services, and increasing density here, as it's shown in alternative two, I think would be questionable and irresponsible.
[01:01:11]
I also wanted to just briefly address the comment earlier about how there's already existing plats and therefore the zoning won't change. And while that may be in the short term, the preferred alternative still signals where the City intends to fund and grow. And that signal has real long-term consequences. So even though those platted developmentsthey don't guarantee full build-outs with maximum intensity, and they shouldn't, especially in areas like the hangman creek area corridor that has environmental constraints. And so it's really critical that the City not further incentivize or reinforce these higher intensity developments in this plan. Additionally, in this corridor, there's already examples of sites identified for potential intensity increases that can shift away from longstanding and locally serving businesses. So, in preferred alternative to that red line in the hangman valley, there was actually a longstanding local business that was there, that had a plan to sell their business to another local Spokane business. And given some issues with the sale, that transfer was deemed infeasible and now that property is considered for higher intensity development.
[01:02:31]
And so I think just from a concern about displacement of community serving uses, and reduced opportunities for small business owners in this corridor should be considered from an ethical perspective. Clearly the rest of this corridor- and you're at time, brian, so if you can wrap up your comment. Okay. All that is to say, I don't think there is enough content within any of the preferred alternatives to really shore up the connectivity and habitat conservation of this corridor, and would appreciate that in future iterations of the preferred alternative. Thank you. And finally, on this list, we have Eric Lowe. Good afternoon.
[01:03:25]
My name is Eric Lowe. I'm founder and co-executive director of Spokane reimagined. We are a nonpartisan grassroots organization dedicated to remaking Spokane's transportation system. We advocate for safe streets, public transportation investment, and land use that supports those uses. Overall, I think the plan is great. I think trying to focus as much new housing development in the downtown area as possible is a wonderful idea. That's where our most active transit lines are. That's where our businesses are. That's where our jobs are. But I want to be clear that the preferred alternative, while it does have a transit focus, could have more of a transit focus. There are definitely some areas, if you overlay Spokane transit authority's map over the preferred alternative map, there are multiple transit lines that are not included.
[01:04:30]
To me, it looks like those transit lines tend to be in wealthier areas. Not saying that was a decisive factor, but I think it's important that we recognize that while the division BRT is important and all these other transit lines are important, it's going to be difficult to get people to want to live along division, regardless of when the division BRT comes online. And so we should try to include denser development in other parts of the City along other transit lines. And lastly, I just want to say that I think it's critically important that as the preferred alternative moves through the process, that we include an emphasis on active transportation like walking, bicycling, and busing as much as possible.
[01:05:48]
So yeah. I will just leave it at that. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. Next we have Candy Galvin. Hi there. My name's candy. I'm just a concerned citizen, and a citizen concerned with the preservation of our beautiful neighborhoods. I see that the preferred alternative seems to focus around transit areas, which relieves me. But I think since we are going to do that, I'm hoping and I'm begging that we reconsider what's happening to our residential neighborhoods and the infilling, and want to encourage the preservation of residential neighborhoods so that multifamily housing is much more well thought out, not crammed into residential single family housing spaces.
[01:07:00]
We have a beautiful gift in Spokane, in that it escaped urban removal of the past, the '50s and '60s, I think it was. And I think it's very important that no matter what we do in our future planning, that we preserve our neighborhoods. And I see grand avenue on the south plan. I think, if I understand it correctly, it's hard to see on my phone, but it looks like there's big plans for grand avenue, and that concerns me also. That's a very historic area, and I just-anyway, I just want to express my concern and hope that, and even as we are doing development, and we'll get more involved in this, I guess, in the building process, that we are cautious and sympathetic to what we already have. Thank you.
[01:07:57]
Thank you. Next, we have Mr. Frank. Good afternoon. Jim Frank. Since I've kind of retired actively from greenstone, I've been spending a lot of time on housing advocacy issues and spending a lot of time with assisting nonprofit housing providers and small infill developers. I've learned in this process the difficulties, the challenges that affordable housing providers have and small infill developers have. I've made extensive comments on the draft EIS, so I'm assuming you've all read them. I don't want to repeat them all now, except to say that I think that the focus of all these alternatives is a kind of a centers and corridors-focused, high-intensity development focus, and that's a result of a narrative that's developed, I think, partially from department of commerce, partially in a misunderstanding of the narrative from the department of commerce, and a narrative that's just been adopted kind of in general by the planning community, that the only way we can meet the housing needs of low-income families and middle-income families is to build apartments.
[01:09:29]
That is a fundamentally flawed strategy, and it's a fundamentally flawed narrative. And I think it results a lot from that's all that we've ever done. Housing families that make less than 60% of median income takes a subsidy, and all the subsidy dollars essentially come from the low income housing tax credit. It comes from federal money, and that program is an apartment building program. It doesn't consider the building of affordable housing with other strategies. We've done a lot of work with habitat on building what I call small homes on small lots, doing small homes, doing townhouses, doing various kinds of infill development, and we can produce small homes at far less subsidy requirement than you need for building apartments. The commerce-funded subsidized apartments are costing ballpark $500,000 each, and that requires 100% subsidy of the $500,000 because the nonprofit that owns it cannot afford to have a mortgage.
[01:10:44]
Yet we're building 1,000 square foot, three-bedroom houses for habitat in a project in airway heights for $200,000, and the subsidy required for that is far less. So there needs to be a land use plan and a strategy that enables more middle housing and not everything focused on building apartments, which is what your plan does. So unfortunately, there was no alternative that looked at broad-scale, mixed-use development at a neighborhood scale. And mixed-use, a low-intensity, neighborhood-scale mixed use that would allow middle housing and small level retail develop in a broader range of our neighborhoods and not just along arterial corridors and extend to a larger area, and the issue there is the density- and that is time, jim.
[01:11:47]
Thank you. You can achieve moderate level densities of 15 units an acre by using middle housing, and so I think really that's very unfortunate that option wasn't looked at. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Darin Watkins. I hope he took notes because I think he's the smartest person in the room when it comes to developing in Spokane. I'm here to present to you data and information from the Spokane realtors. My name is Darin Watkins. First off, I want to tell you just kind of a benchmark of where we are market-wise in the City of Spokane. First off, you need to know where we're at. Commerce has been underrepresenting the percentage of growth in this town for 30 years, and we can show you that in this study. You were sent this earlier today. Land availability, we're very concerned about how it was done. If you look at the lots that are supposedly available for development, you've got things like parking lots of churches, camp mokogawa.
[01:12:47]
Those are not billable properties. This analysis outlines your actual property loads. To put it in market context, in 2017, we had 1,000 lots for sale per month for building properties. Median price, about $79,000. Today, in 2026, we have three properties for sale, and the median price is about $200,000. If you look at some other studies done by commerce themselves, they will tell you that we're underbuilt by about 20% just in the City of Spokane. There are better alternatives for determining housing need, better formulas, and commerce does allow for you to use other formulas in making those determinations. You'll see that in this study. Finally, the housing preference study that we did. We did a study asking people what they wanted. For 30 years, they have wanted the exact same thing. 68%, as flat a line as you can get, want single-family housing, three bedroom, two bath, small lot. That's what they want.
[01:13:47]
If they're not finding it here at an affordable price, where are they going? If you drive on interstate 90, you will see the additional 90,000 cars a day on that freeway that have developed in the last six years, that are going over to where there is a housing boom that is going on. And price-wise, just announced in post falls, one to 400 units are going to go installed of affordable housing at $300,000 a home, because lots there are still about $85,000. It is supply and it is demand. And a couple of things just as I look at the commentary of what was made here. The types that were planted up, those are recommendations from commerce. Those are not recommendations, those are options. You're the one who can decide what those alternatives should be. Multifamily, as jim said, far more expensive. The latest project in snohomish was $586,000 per apartment unit.
[01:14:42]
We can certainly build single-family density in this town that's affordable well under 60% AMI that people can afford. And then finally, I would just say, what happens when we don't build? We anticipated there would be 1,000 residential units available this year. Instead, there were only 156 residential permits that were issued. That difference, if you just built that out, what that number represents, $60 million in lost surplus revenue just for the City of Spokane, $8.5 million per year in ongoing taxes, 2,500 jobs. As I said to my daughter when she left and she was a teenager, "please make good choices." thank you. Thank you. And next we have Greg Figg. Good afternoon, all. Greg Figg, Washington State department of transportation.
[01:15:40]
We'd also sent in comments earlier today on that, which you should have, too, in your packet. One of our comments on this is what we're typically used to seeing is the EIS process kind of yield and produce a preferred alternative. When we reviewed the draft EIS, we had certainly some comments, and one area in particular was the purple area on the west plains out there, where we noticed the DEIS, the transportation analysis did not model that land use to the density that is being proposed in the maps. And that's a concern because the growth we've seen out there has been extensive. Highway 2, the primary east-west route, is reaching failure at the busier intersections, which was actually confirmed in the DEIS. It also services access to fairchild air force base, which based on our meeting a few weeks ago with them, we know they're very concerned about their one-hour response travel time to the base.
[01:16:56]
So our concern is to see this as out of alternative three to be presented as a preferred alternative when the comments, the DEIS, were that it needs to be looked at to ensure there can be adequate transportation to serve it. We know, for instance, one intersection, flint road highway 2, will reach failure, and without more analysis, what will the cost be to serve this area? What will the infrastructure improvements be? We know the City is looking at 18th and 21st, and 6th and 12th, but will they be adequate to provide for this growth? The concern we have is the DEIS did not, and that's detailed in our comments, did not analyze that to the extent it needed to, to come up with a list of improvements. That's just one of the areas that we know that we have some concerns, but typically, the EIS process itself will look at the impacts and then come up with a preferred alternative.
[01:18:03]
And in this case, while the DEIS is done, the comments that would yield a better analysis, which is typically with the final EIS, are not yet done. But at this point, we're picking the preferred alternative without full knowledge of what its impacts will have. So, thank you. Thank you. Next we have Karen Mobley. Hello, Plan Commission. I'm going to speak on behalf of Spokane urban nature. I am not going to repeat what brian and kirsten said. We've been kind of working collaboratively to look at all these documents. I have to say, as somebody who had bronchitis, reading the DEIS was possibly the best sedation I have ever received.
[01:19:04]
It's full of lots of information, but it is also missing some things that I think are very critical to the future of Spokane. One of those things is the thing christian talked about, which is our community wants more, not less, access to nature. The maps that are in these planning documents do not identify hardly any of the critical urban natural areas unless they're really, really big. And when I say really, really big, like the bluff on the south hill, it doesn't, in my view, adequately represent the places like thorpe, places that are parks or adjacent to parks, places like lincoln park. We have absolutely wonderful urban nature in this community, and it is different than pickleball and tennis and open space that's created in courtyards. We must map all of that very accuratelyand clearly and protect not only the habitat, but the transportation corridors for the non-car animals that live on the south hill.
[01:20:15]
We have moose almost every day walking north to south in our City. We have bears, and frankly, sometimes even cougars, working their way up and down the river and up and down Latah creek. And I don't think this adequately represents either the community's expectation or the material reality on the ground. Furthermore, I don't think the current planning staff is doing an appropriate job of enforcement and oversight of the destruction of natural areas that already are in the comp plan that is being revised. We have examples in Latah creek, in underhill, and other neighborhoods where things have been obliterated, trees have been taken down before fish and wildlife have had an opportunity to really look at them. The purpose of this hearing is not for me to b***h about whether or not plans were executed appropriately, but the plan that is created and the land use maps and the critical areas ordinance that follow onto this need to be very conscious of those factors.
[01:21:21]
Now, just call me a crazy old bird-watching lady, because I go to a City park every single day with the intent of looking at what's actually living there and what they're doing, and there are lots and lots more people just like me, who expect you as the planning commission to do a good job of planning this so we don't wreck what's already there, and to make sure that we have oversight of the people who are actually doing the planning and executing the building permits at the time that it happens. Anyway, I'm very enthusiastic about our work with Spokane urban nature. We have at least 55 people who are on our advocacy team. We're planning activities at lincoln park and other parks to do conservation and education about animals and plants- you're at time... Within the City, and we're doing weed plucks to remove noxious weeds in various urban areas that the parks department doesn't have time to reach. Thank you for your consideration.
[01:22:18]
Thank you. And finally, we have samantha mace. Thank you. My name is Sam Mace, and I live in east central. And I want to endorse what ms. Angell said, and what Karen Mobley said. I fully endorse what their perspective is. A couple things. One is, having east central lumped in with south hill doesn't really give east central justice. We have very different concerns, and it's just a different animal. We have one of the highest heat indexes in the City. We have one of the least amount of tree canopy. Northeast probably is giving us a run for the money on that.
[01:23:14]
We also have a wave of concrete barreling towards my home with the north south freeway, which is not going to be a net positive for our community. I-90 wasn't a net positive. This is not. And I just am here to advocate for protecting our natural areas and looking for those opportunities for those pocket habitats. That is what we have in east central beyond underhill park and liberty park. And also, to not further weaken our environmental reviews and laws. It's already hard enough. I live across from underhill park. My property is right next to the egregious development that the City let happen. 2.8 acres of natural forest, basalt cliffs, where there was a pathway to add it to underhill park, and we could not get the City to help us. And it's a project that has gone forward without being able to bulldoze and log, without abiding by department of ecology rules, by stormwater rules, all of that.
[01:24:15]
And so, if you want to see what that would look like for other neighborhoods, come down to my neighborhood and take a look. Park in underhill and look up. And I can already feel the increased heat index on my property. And we have to not have those opportunities missed, because we're not going to get it back. And I live in a low income, I want to say mixed income, diverse in income community. A lot of our kids, we have a lot of immigrant communities, they don't get taken to riverside park. They don't get taken to lincoln park. It's one-car families, maybe. Where they have to go is underhill or other pocket habitats. And we're getting a ton of infill. We're going to be one of the hotspots for infill. And I accept that, and we're a place that it should happen. But I'm not seeing a plan for where these kids and people are going to recreate or walk or have a dirt path or see flowers or see birds. That's not reflected in this comp plan and these preferred alternatives, and we need that desperately. So, I just urge a different look at that. And I also, too, want to say is like, where are we talking about where is the water going to come for all this increased density? That's the big elephant in the room as well. So, I urge a little more attention to our natural areas, to our lower income neighborhoods, and the birds, bees, and wildlife. Thank you.
[01:25:40]
Thank you. Okay. That is the end of our list for folks who have signed up. Is there anyone else in members of the public that would like to provide any comment? Going once, twice, three times. Okay. And with that- we have one person online. We have one person online. Dwight Hume, please go ahead. Okay. Thank you. I'm actually a tuning in, a, to say that I like your alternative two. I'm here today on behalf of rockwood retirement south in the lincoln heights. As you will find out from spencer and kevin, rockwood has been working and begging for better zoning tools to make their site implementable.
[01:26:36]
Because it isn't readily usable zoning-wise, we have over 850 people in line waiting to move into this. There are only three continuous care retirement communities in the area. And rockwood has been around up there in that location for 40 years. You're currently designating it, it appears to be low density residential or moderate density. I'm sorry. We need, at the end of your planning process, a density, probably high density, to enable us to continue to build out our project.
[01:27:28]
We've added property to it south of 25th between southeast boulevard and ray. And all of that ownership enabled us to essentially spread out the original 1986 approval. There's going to be, believe it or not, only an additional 21 units at full build-out from what was approved in 1986. So don't worry about high density residential exploding residential development in this area. This is just for the retirement community that they own from ray to southeast. And so we would urge you to support and give spencer and tirrell the ability to modify the plan. I can propose a map as to what we need, but in essence, we're looking for the ability to build upwards of 12-story towers.
[01:28:35]
Not many, just one or two at the most, in the vicinity north of 25th. So, if you will, I will submit a map showing what we would suggest and work with your staff to get the zoning tools that allow us to move forward without further interruption. Thank you. Okay. Do we have anyone else online or in the room that would like to provide public testimony? Not seeing any hands pop up there. No one in the room. Okay. And with that, we will go ahead and close public testimony, and we'll entertain a motion. I move that we recommend the preferred alternative as presented today by City Staff to the City Council for adoption.
[01:29:31]
Do we have a second? I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. So who would like to begin? I'll begin. Jill, please. It's real easy to get stuck in the weeds with this. And I think I've put tons of hours into this. I've read so many public comments. And one public comment that I have not seen is, "I just wish I could get stuck in traffic more." I want to emphasize that this is an intensity map. It's a broad sketch to help guide our community resources over time. It does not trigger any zoning changes. The rules, what can be built, where, and how, those will come later and with lots of public input, and I'm really excited to hear that because I've heard a lot of concern about the rules, and that's not what we're talking about here.
[01:30:39]
We're high level still. What I am hearing from the community and all the engagement that we've done over this last year is, how do we balance growth with good stewardship? And how do we preserve our sense of place? We don't want to be just anywhere, and we have so much pride, and that's what I'm hearing with being good stewards of the environment, that access to nature and preserving that. Our ability to move around our City in many different ways that feel best for us, that feel safe for us. And how do we have complete neighborhoods that have access to amenities and that preserve their heritage while welcome people into them?
[01:31:37]
So I think that this is a really good start to that process. It still needs refinement, and it's still open to refinement. We've talked about centers and corridors a lot, and I do want to put a plug that if you have a corridor and you have a coffee shop on one end of it, and a mile down the road is your grocery store, it's not really a walkable, complete neighborhood. I do really want to make sure we're focusing more on nodes versus corridors, and I think that this mapkeeps that open for those nodes. And I just really want to say, based on all of this input and based on all of the reading and the comments, that this is a good start. I'd like to put a finding. I don't know if this is the way to suggest it or not, but in our notes, in our recommendation, that any subsequent zoning and code updates take into account this community context and neighborhood input.
[01:32:51]
Can I clarify something? Because the language you just suggested talked about zoning and code updates. The next step on our line towards adoption is land use map changes. And so it may be worth also identifying that as a point for significant public engagement. So I would just- thank you so much... Offer that as an addition. Yes, please add that. Thank you so much for your guidance. Anyone else? Ryan, battle for it. Yep, you go first. I appreciate the efforts for this map and that this EIS is, this is a significant change. It's been 26 years since we've really put this much effort into looking at the City comprehensively and where we want that growth to happen.
[01:33:46]
And I think a lot of things have changed in the City in the last 25, 27 years since we came up with our last plan. And I think this plan is going toward reflecting that, understanding that we do want more complete neighborhoods, that we want to have opportunities for people to stay in their neighborhoods as their housing needs change, as they age or as their children grow up. And a lot of the suggested intensity recommendations in this map do allow more for that than we had in previous plans. I also really appreciate that this map does have fuzzy boundaries. We're not identifying specific boundaries, just the general direction. So there will be a lot more specific change happening when we get to the actual land use policy. And it can also be really hard to see how much work we've already done in the last three to five years on the middle housing.
[01:34:47]
So much of that, that we did in advance of being required to by the State because we recognized that we need more flexibility in the type of housing, the sizes of lots, and the style of building throughout the entire City. And this map doesn't show it because we've already done it. It's hard to tell because it's so new that not a lot of it has been built out yet in Spokane, but it is starting to happen. And layered with the more intense types of housing along transit corridors, along business routes, I say routes, but not, where the businesses are located, will really provide a much more flexible type of housing and growth strategy for the City. So I do support the proposed alternative map, the preferred alternative. There's so many p words that go into staring at public testimony.
[01:35:48]
That's not helping. And also really look forward to the work that's coming on land use policy that will really help us get down into that land use, which will help designate the types of housing, the, oh my gosh, public lands. Well, there's a specific word for that I can't think of. But the natural areas, the business areas, and the housing that all go into our City. Thank you. Kyle. I've got a couple of questions, but first, I think there was a lot of interest and concern, I think, on the SEPA exemption expansion. And I would just like for, I think, my benefit and hopefully the public benefit, to ask the question to maybe spencer and or tirrell to explain, or can you elaborate the justification for the proposed expansion of SEPA exemptions? And as a part of that, how will the City ensure that wildlife habitat, tree cover, traffic congestion, other environmental concerns are adequately addressed or protected in instances where we would no longer be going through the SEPA process?
[01:37:04]
So we have slides that we haven't prepared today, but we have talked in other fora about the proposed SEPA exemptions. As we've studied them, and we have studied them as part of this environmental impact statement, but we are not proposing to implement them through this environmental impact statement. So the adoption, the actual adoption of those exemptions would be a separate step that we take. And to the extent that there's further study needed, we would do that further study there. So we are absolutely considering all those topics in the environmental impact statement. As we look at those SEPA exemptions, if there are specific areas or specific topics that we don't feel are adequately addressed in the environmental impact statement, we can address those in the process of adopting. And as we've looked at those exemptions, we've actually separated them into what we...
[01:37:59]
I can't remember the term we had, but essentially two phases. Mm-hmm. The first phase is focused more on central City and already established inner neighborhoods where there's less concern about some of the impacts related to new development. And then a second phase that would cover the remaining portions of the City, some of which aren't as developed and where those impacts may be more significant. Sowe have anticipated further study of those things. At this time, of course, that's not proposed and on the table for consideration. But yes, it is something that we have kept an eye on through this environmental impact statement process. Can I ask another question? Or I guess a topic of discussion, and this was brought up in a lot of the public comment.
[01:38:56]
There is, I think, compelling evidence that restricting greenfield development in Spokane to encourage infill and transit-oriented development actually results or has actually resulted in higher housing costs, economic loss to the region, shifting growth to kootenai County, et cetera, as we heard earlier, and which the net effect may actually act to the detriment of the City of Spokane, the Spokane region, our ecosystems. So I guess the question, I don't think it's necessarily going to be answered in this exact moment, is how, through planning, through the EIS, through the comprehensive plan, do we help to ensure that, I guess, the reality of the past 20 years, where we've shifted growth to kootenai County, where sprawl has just been exported, how does the current draft EIS mitigate that reality?
[01:39:55]
And again, it might be a bigger topic than we can respond to in one to two minutes. Well, I guess the quick answer is that it's the County who controls the process of assigning urban growth areas. So it is not a part of our consideration as to where we might expand if we did want to add area for development. So that's, I guess, more of a topic for another venue. I think our approach to accommodating the growth that we know is coming and to avoiding some of the impacts that you're talking about is really recognizing that at least in the City of Spokane, infill development and making that infill development as easy as possible and as streamlined as possible is the best way that we can tilt the playing field in favor of development here in the City of Spokane. That's not to say that there's absolutely no consideration of developing new areas or things like that, but ultimately, like I said, the County kind of controls that process, and we're participants, but it's not really our decision-making that drives that.
[01:41:02]
And I guess I would jump in on that, too. I think we have to deal with the cards that we've dealt, and as spencer's pointed out, that's not really within our purview to really even answer some of those questions as much as some stakeholders in the community would like us to be able. But I think we also need to acknowledge the fact that some of these outlying areas are currently, today, in my opinion, making mistakes that are going to come back to bite them in 20 and 30 years, and they're going to be dealing with a lot of these same issues that we're wrestling with now today in 20 or 30 years. So while they are potentially reaping the benefit of that now, they are doing so without taking advantage of the upfront knowledge that they could have had going into that to not get themselves into some of those same things by continuing the continued outward sprawl and et cetera, and all of the negative impacts of that, both on the environment as well as on municipal finances, which is the thing that keeps me up at night.
[01:42:04]
And so I think, spencer, to your point, we have done the best we can, and I really want to commend the City for taking a serious look at how difficult it is to develop or how easy it is to develop and where the friction is there because that really is what gets projects done or not done and what makes developers run or not run and what ultimately gets the products delivered that we want. So it's a great question, for sure, but we can only do what we can do and make the best decisions we can make. Others? Others? Tim, please. I'm generally very supportive of the preferred alternative as presented. We're going to have growth. We need to accommodate that. I think it represents a reasonable plan, and particularly the emphasis along transit corridors. And one note is our job is to say what can be developed in different areas, not necessarily what will be developed.
[01:43:04]
And I'd like to second ryan's column about some of the work we've already done through the Plan Commission, the City Council, to enable more work with small lots and accessory dwelling units. That hasn't come to full fruition, but the process has been started there. I'd also note that one of the difficulties is we can all drive around Spokane and see lots that you kind of go, "why isn't that being developed?" or, "why is that building vacant?" so that's kind of a frustration that we probably share on the commission, but we can't drive the private sector. But there is a lot of land that is underutilized in Spokane. Our job is to try and make sure that there's land available as the development community moves forward. We'd certainly like to see more housing downtown. I think we're all in support of that, but there's some struggles there with the private sector not making bold moves forward in the downtown area.
[01:44:01]
I appreciate the comments about our natural areas in the City and the pocket areas. I think in maybe future parts of our planning process, not so much what we're doing today, we can make sure that's more clearly addressed in the comprehensive plan. I think that is very essential and very unique and very special to Spokane. I take a lot of hikes around these various parks that were mentioned. I also had just one question. If we have further revelations in the coming couple months and we want to make changes to the preferred alternative that we may adopt today, what would-does the process allow for us to make modifications to what we may potentially adopt today? I guess it depends on the nature of the change. So I think we kind of laid this out in the presentation, but the preferred alternative is one stop on the process. I think the next major decision point where I think we'll have a significant amount of public interest and planning commission involvement is the selection of the future land use map, or what's currently called the land use plan map.
[01:45:10]
And that's where we identify the appropriate types of development in specific locations. So the preferred alternative map is by nature, somewhat general. We're not identifying specific parcels on there. We did general buffers off of arterial streets, but we haven't identified exactly how many parcels off or how many feet off of an arterial we might look at for zoning changes or for land use changes. So to answer your question, if the change that you're looking for is a significant increase in intensity in a place where we haven't really identified it here, I don't have a good answer. There may be a way for us. It's probably possible for us to amend the preferred alternative or to rethink that in some way, but it would be more challenging if the change is to simply not adjust the land use designation in a place where we don't think it really makes sense to increase the intensity.
[01:46:12]
That's entirely within the bounds of this alternative and that is an assumed part of the process. I don't anticipate that every square inch of map that's identified here is actually going to be changed significantly through the land use map or the zoning map. This is really just kind of directing our efforts on the subsequent work of the land use map and the zoning map. Does that answer your question? Yes. Okay. Okay. Other comments? Jill, please. Just a quick comment. I did read a lot of requests for neighborhood mixed use or neighborhood commercial. I'm thinking about made with love bakery or the scoop, and how beloved those corner mixed-use spaces are, and we are working on that zoning. That is coming down the pipeline, and I want people to know that.
[01:47:09]
Others? Tyler. A lot of work was put into this. Appreciate all the planning staff for everything they've done, 614 pages of the draft EIS, if I'm not mistaken. So definitely a lot to skim through, especially me having to play catch up with quite a bit of it. So, I'm a bit torn on this, but, I understand the preferred alternative, why it's there. And that's based off of a lot of what the community has said that participated in the community engagement. When I'm looking at this, this is by no means to insult anyone. This is where I'm from. I'm from san fernando valley, california, and this looks exactly like where I'm from, where all the density's kind of focused in these areas along the arterials, corridors, and all that. So it's good.
[01:48:05]
It won't stop traffic. It doesn't. I'm from there, and they've closed off lanes. They've made more density on these arterials, but there's still a ton of cars on the road. So I hope that this can help in some way, shape, or form, alleviate some of that. But, I just don't think with all the growth that's coming here that people aren't going to be bringing their vehicles along with them. I was stationed in hawaii for some time, and hawaii would tell military people to not bring your cars to the island because there are just far too many there, and they can't get them off of there. So I'm just kind of thinking about this, and like I said, I'm really torn on it. But, I think I'll shine more when it comes to the policy portion of it. Policy needs to align with the plan. If it doesn't, then it's really not going to work.
[01:49:01]
So that's all I got. Thank you. Thank you. Ryan. I just wanted to also add that a lot of our conversation about coming up with this kind of mix of alternative two and alternative three to create the preferred alternative, we had discussions about distributing growth throughout the City. And, although we do allow for a large, like with the middle housing, is throughout the entire City, we had a lot of discussions about making sure that this map represented corridors and distribution throughout the City. Because this really just represents opportunity and possibility. We don't know where the actual development's going to happen. It's not going to happen on every single one of these streets, on every single one of the corridors. But we need to provide that opportunity throughout the City so that we can end up with a more distributed and mixed balance amount of growth throughout the City.
[01:50:05]
So it looks so intense when you look at the whole thing, and it looks like it's so much of the City. But, as was pointed out in the staff presentation, even the highlighted areas in this map are still only 15% of the City. And that's just 15% possibly being developed in a higher intensity. So I think this is a good way for us to meet our growth objectives. We can't control how many people move into the City. We can just accommodate the growth that happens, and try and do it in a responsible manner. Thank you. I'll just take a moment here. I don't want to repeat everything that everyone else has said. I think there's been an extraordinary amount of insightful comments from my fellow commissioners, so thank you all for being as engaged as you are and putting as much thought and as much work as I know we all did into this, not only in developing the map, but in reading through the public comments and digesting them, and not just looking at them, but really thinking about what was said.
[01:51:15]
I specifically want to touch on a point that you made, ryan. I think it's hard to look at this map and really understand what it's saying and what it's trying to get to without really being in the weeds and understanding the stuff at a really fine grain level. And I think the thing to take home from this is not all of those places develop immediately. They may develop over time, they may not develop over time. All of the places that are not highlighted on the map may change, and they may stay the same. What this does is allows a policy document and a robust policy document that touches every piece of the City's operations to align itself and focus around a general theme and a general framework. We heard a lot about sort of rehashed centers and corridors, and while, again, this map may look like that, there's a reason that it looks like that, and there's a reason that we orient around these corridors, and we orient around these nodes, and it's sort of a natural organizing feature. And a lot of some of the challenge with that came further down the line with some of the implementation and the zoning and some of that, and that is, as we've talked about extensively up here, subsequent steps down the process. So I, again, would love to commend staff for all their work, commend my fellow commissioners for all of their work on this, and being able to live in the squishy and the theoretical. This is really hard work. None of this is concrete.
[01:52:42]
There's nothing to grab a hold of that's solid and guaranteed, and that's a hard space for a lot of people to inhabit, and so everyone who has worked on this really deserves a lot of credit. I do have one question. I don't want to belabor the point here, but a quick question for staff. There were some points brought up by Mr. Fig with WSDOT, and I would just love to ask staff if there's any comment in response to any of those questions. Yeah, I can respond to that. Please. We have had several meetings with WSDOT. Our consultant is in contact with them. We've been sharing information. I think to the extent there are still concerns, they can be addressed as we finalize the preferred alternative and continue the environmental impact statement process with a preferred alternative. Okay. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that was addressed.
[01:53:35]
Obviously, those are hinting at gaps analysis, and we've all talked here about the importance of capturing this opportunity and making sure that we're not leaving any stones unturned, and so just wanted to make sure that was addressed. Any subsequent comments from anyone? Tyler, please. Just to kind of address what someone had mentioned earlier about where's the water coming from when all these people move here. I think that might be a problem with the private development. That's going to raise the costs for general facilities, permitting. Those costs are going to probably go up because it costs a lot to tap into the City water. So, that's where it'll come from. It'll just be expensive, and we just hope that the private sector is willing to do it. Even along the centers and corridors, the property prices may increase as well, so that's something else that could potentially happen, and that could stall growth, or at least the housing portion of it, the building. So, it's possible. So that's just a couple of comments I had.
[01:54:43]
I have I think my last comment. But I'd just like to express, I think, gratitude for the, I think, very active public engagement that we've had from very diverse groups of people. I think it really highlighted just the amount of love that we all have for the place that we live, and how we all care about it and want it to be successful, and to be a place that we can continue to enjoy, and a place that improves. I think that we've heard comments about preserving the character of neighborhoods, about preserving and expanding wildlife corridors and nature. I live in an old house in a neighborhood that is kind of landlocked by arterials and doesn't have a park, doesn't have nature without crossing arterials, and it's sometimes annoying.
[01:55:40]
And so it's something that I think a lot about. And I think that this draft EIS, if we recommend it to Council, and if Council chooses to adopt it, that it's a starting point, and from there, we have this opportunity over the course of the rest of this year to really focus on what is the policy that is going to ensure that we are protecting the things that we love and enhancing the things that we love about Spokane. How are we making sure that growth is happening in a sustainable way? How are we protecting water resources? How are we addressing all of these different aspects and making it so that Spokane is more accessible and equitable for us and whoever comes after us? And so I think that we are all striving to balance and align all of those goals through this draft EIS process, and we're definitely at the 30,000-foot elevation, and we're going to be in the weeds throughout the rest of this year as we seek to value all these different things.
[01:56:49]
I had one kind of housekeeping item. So I wanted to come back to commissioner yotz's desire for a finding. I think I have what I need as we're helping to draft the findings that would ultimately be signed. Is there a desire to have some kind of formal action, or do you feel like we have what we need for that to be included? I would put that back to jill. Do you think that you are on the record sufficiently with the intent of your comment? Yeah, I think we dug into it pretty well. Okay. Yeah. Well, and I guess, is there a desire for the whole commission to speak by an informal vote or something? Or a nod of head? I don't know. I think we can include it in the findings. I have what I need- thumbs up... For the language. I just know in the past, when we've had a desire to make sure something's in the findings, sometimes we've had a vote of some kind.
[01:57:43]
But- yeah. I think that's something that we could do, I think, given the nature of the subsequent steps and the subsequent touch points with the community that necessarily entail a lot of what was discussed. From my perspective, a simple finding is sufficient- okay... Unless other commissioners feel differently. Agree. Yeah. Okay. That gives me what I need. Thanks. Perfect. Okay. Are there any final comments for the record before we proceed to a vote? All right. With that, emily, please poll the commission. President bank? Aye. President bank? Aye. Vice president patterson? Aye. Commissioner lenhart is absent. Commissioner Madsen? Aye. Commissioner Tamoush? No. Commissioner williams? Aye. Commissioner yotz? Aye.
[01:58:35]
And the motion passes, six to one. Very good. Well, thank you again to everyone, to the members of the community, to staff, to my fellow commissioners, for doing all of the work on this. I want to echo what commissioner Madsen said. We can't do this work without an engaged community, and you all have shown up in a huge way, and that cannot be overstated. So thank you all to everyone, and we look forward to the next steps. And we're adjourned.