For the third time in as many months, Cheney’s Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the proposed rezone of land at the corner of Cedar and North Eighth streets being considered for a student-housing-type apartment complex. The hearing is set for Monday, June 12, at 6 p.m. in the City Hall council chambers.
A previous, two-part hearing resulted in a 3-3 split among commissioners on whether or not to recommend the request by Eastmark Capital Group to the City Council. Eastmark, along with partner Greenstone Development, would like to change the current R-3 multifamily zoning to R-3H high-density multifamily.
The change would allow the developers to increase the size of the complex from the currently allowed 76 units to 115 units. Some residents living near the proposed complex have voiced opposition to the rezone, and the project itself, citing safety concerns from increased vehicular and pedestrian traffic as well as parking, which is already dense in the area.
After two, closed-door sessions, instead of denying or approving the request, the City Council passed a resolution remanding the issue back to the Planning Commission and city staff for further findings of fact and public input, with directions to hold another public hearing as well. In a May 19 interview, Mayor Tom Trulove said the council looked at all elements of the proposal and all of the comments, most of which dealt with impacts to safety and health from traffic.
Trulove said the council didn’t feel city staff had paid enough attention to traffic or parking in the area when they originally recommended approving the rezone. The council felt staff needed to look at other conditions, such as population growth, enrollment trends at Eastern Washington University, concentration of schools — the Cheney School District’s Betz Elementary and high school are nearby — infrastructure capacity and any need for more multifamily housing.
One of three directives in the resolution called for staff to evaluate the rezone “in consideration of the present and past uses that have not significantly changed in the last 51 years,” the latter a reference to a 1966 land use map that shows much of the area zoned multifamily.
“It just needs to be analyzed more,” Trulove said. “It may be it won’t change, and the streets have enough capacity (to handle traffic increases) even though the neighbors don’t like it a lot.”
Trulove added staff needed to be very careful in their analysis, and go back to the developers for more information.
On the latter, Eastmark and Greenstone have been active. Public Works Director Todd Ableman said the developers have undertaken their own traffic study, as opposed to the one they originally submitted that was conducted at similar developments near the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Ableman had not seen it at press time, but expected their traffic engineer to present it at the hearing.
The developers also held a public meeting of their own on May 30 at the Wren Pierson building, with Eastmark’s Sean Barnes and Greenstone’s Jim Frank speaking informally with 15-20 residents from the area. Frank admitted he had learned a lot more about the project’s location after driving around the neighborhood.
Residents at the meeting expressed their previous concerns about the impacts the proposal would have on safety and the general residential environment of the area. One woman, who lives in one of 16 duplexes currently on the site, admitted to Barnes she was dead set against the project no matter what, while another man said he was OK with the 76-unit development, but questioned the need for 115.
A comment by Barnes probably best encapsulated the rezone issue.
“It feels to me like we’re walking into an existing problem that you feel we’re going to exacerbate,” he said.
John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.
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