It may not be readily obvious to residents, but the city of Cheney has a good bit of vacant land on its hands.
That is according to information from the Spokane County Assessor’s Office, and presented to the Cheney Planning Commission at its Dec. 12 meeting as part of its look at the city’s comprehensive plan. The assessor puts Cheney’s vacant land at 33 percent, but it comes with a caveat, senior planner Brett Lucas told the commission.
“That doesn’t mean that land is developable,” Lucas said, noting that assessment takes in wetlands within the city limits as well as the urban growth area.
Most of these vacant lands are east of the city centered on the Cheney-Spangle Road, which is also where the highest percentage of the city’s UGA is located. According to city land use maps, there is a small quadrant of UGA located northeast of the city bordered by Betz Road in the south, but this also contains a large wetland in an area zoned commercial.
The next largest land use in the city is single-family residential at 21 percent, with education at 19 percent and government at 8 percent.
However, when the last two categories are coupled with the 4 percent of land designated for parks, it means another third of the city is unavailable for new residential, commercial or industrial construction.
During the question and answer period on the land use chapter, Commission Chair Vince Barthels said he would like to see more references to downtown Cheney in the chapter, particularly defines the downtown area. He noted that a “Downtown Plan” was one of three plans — the others on Betz Road and the State Route 904 corridor — deleted from the new chapter.
Public Works Director Todd Ableman said that could be worked into the chapter’s final draft. He said the city deleted those plans in order to align itself more closely with the Spokane Regional Transportation Council’s regional long-range plans, something that would give the city greater ability to identify more outside funding sources for projects.
The commission also wrapped up its review work of the comprehensive plan’s transportation chapter. Lucas said the city doesn’t have a lot of control of what goes in to this portion of the plan since the state’s Growth Management Act dictates a lot of the practices required. Key among those is “concurrency and consistency,” meaning the city is required by GMA to make sure adequate public facilities exist to “serve new development as it occurs, or within a specified time period.”
Cities are also required to have a financial plan in place to “complete improvements or strategies within six years.”
Cheney’s transportation chapter noted the city is one of only three in Washington — the others being Seattle and Spokane — that have two mainline railroads running side by side through the city limits. Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Union Pacific both have tracks running through the city, and the rail traffic also includes the regional Eastern Washington Gateway line, part of the state-owned, privately operated Palouse River Coulee City Railroad.
Barthels noted traffic on these lines has been increasing, causing long-duration disruptions to vehicular travel at several major crossings in the city. He asked if there were any programs the city could use to remedy the traffic problems.
“Is there some place we can go to for impact money from the railroads?” Barthels asked.
“The railroad was really here first, Cheney came after,” Ableman said. “I’m not sure what measures we can take.”
Ableman added that there are ways to work with the railroads to separate rail cars on trains blocking the crossings in order to allow emergency vehicles to pass if needed.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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