Cooperation helps save Lincoln Street trees
Neighborhood, city work together to acquire curb extensions
Two years after the Manito-Cannon Hill neighborhood and Spokane City Hall battled it out over Bernard Street trees, the two groups are working together to develop an innovative way to preserve trees, slow traffic and filter stormwater on Lincoln Street.
“I think we’ve changed the culture of City Hall,” said John Covert, who chairs the Lincoln Street subcommittee of the Manito-Cannon Hill Neighborhood Council.
All three goals will be accomplished by installing a series of curb extensions, pushing a section of planting strip 7 feet into the street.
“We had so much of an issue with trees on Bernard we went into this with the attitude: ‘Let’s try to preserve as many trees as we can,’ ” said Eldon Brown, the city’s acting director of Engineering Services.
Adding the curb extensions will enable property owners to continue to plant larger trees in the existing parking strip, something that wouldn’t be possible with the current planting strip alone.
“Over time, we’ll keep the legacy of big trees on the South Hill intact,” Covert said.
Neighbors also hope the curb extensions will slow traffic by narrowing the street a bit.
About 77 curb extensions are proposed between 17th and 29th avenues, said Gary Nelson with the city’s Engineering Services Department. They vary in size and could take the place of one or more parking spaces along the street, though parking would be maintained between the extensions.
They would be installed only where adjacent property owners approve. Neighborhood representatives have been distributing letters to those property owners to explain the curb extensions and seek approval. “I think the neighborhood is responding positively,” Covert said. About 80 percent of those who’ve responded to the letters have been in favor of the curb extensions, he said.
The pilot project is made possible by participation of the city’s wastewater department, Brown said.
The street bond will pay for the $1.2 million to repave the street but can’t cover the curb extensions, Brown said.
But since the extensions will act to filter storm water and slow its flow into the combined sewer-storm water system, they will protect water quality. Because of that, the wastewater department is kicking in an additional $1.2 million to build the curb extensions.
The only other option would have been for the neighborhood to come up with the money, which was not likely. “We spent quite a bit of time working on this project,” Brown said. “It looks like it could be a win-win for all of us.”