At it’s regular meeting Monday night, May 11, the Cheney Planning Commission approved a draft of the city’s public participation plan for the upcoming, 18-month-long comprehensive plan update process.
According to the plan, public participation will be encouraged through a dedicated page on the city’s website, ongoing notifications to interested parties, public commission work sessions and one or more public hearings before the commission. A 9 – 11 member focus group will also be created consisting of one member each from Eastern Washington University, Cheney School District, residential, commercial and multifamily developers, 2-3 at-large community members and 2-3 planning commissioners.
The focus group will meet once a month for approximately a year, beginning March 2016. A proposed timeline shows the process beginning in January 2016, and concluding with adoption consideration and action by the City Council in July or August 2017.
Commissioners had some discussion, and finally agreement, about rotating members on and off the focus group. The rotation would keep people fresh in the process and allow members to possibly engage in areas of interest brought before the focus group.
As part of the comprehensive plan discussion, the commission received a land use analysis of the city by Planning Department planning/GIS intern Brian Mangis. Mangis assembled information not only on current land uses in the city, but historical information on how the city grew, with information dating back to the 1860s.
Mangis broke down the information into the various land use zones in the city, including residential, commercial, industrial and institutional. Of particular interest was a slide that showed the total overall percentages of nine use areas.
Of the almost 2,067 acres making up the city, 1,263.73 acres – over 61 percent – is zoned for residential or institutional usage. Of the total acreage, 241.51 acres is used for natural resources purposes and 385.44 acres have no activity at all.
“There is a big portion of land that could be developed in Cheney,” Mangis told the commission.
Public Works Director Todd Ableman said the information sums up a lot about what most people know about Cheney, that there’s a lot of land taken up by residential and institutional – EWU and the school district – uses.
The presentation also showed that virtually all of Cheney’s commercial land activities take place in the downtown core – where it is mixed with residential – and to the north along First Street/State Route 904. Some of this, particularly downtown, is an indication of how the city developed over time, while commercial development to the north is a result of activity.
“That area has the most daily vehicle trips,” planner Brett Lucas said.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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