Grandview Residents Want Neighborhood Park

For five years now, Annie Pierce and her neighbors have been pushing for a new neighborhood park in the Grandview area of southwest Spokane.

Their efforts continue to be thwarted because the city Parks Department doesn’t have money to build one.

Development of a 5.6-acre park site at 17th Avenue and D Street appears to be at least a couple of years away, parks officials said.

A housing developer has agreed to contribute $50,000 over the next two years as one of the conditions for building 260 homes on nearby land recently annexed to the city.

Currently the nearest park is Finch Arboretum on Sunset Hill, but that doesn’t have a play area or other neighborhood park amenities.

In Pierce’s neighborhood, children play ball in the streets, she said.

What the neighbors want is simple: a play field, picnic shelter, children’s play equipment, restroom and pathways. A bus shelter along the street also is being sought.

“That’s not asking for a lot,” Pierce said.

Parks officials said they are considering the possibility of building the park as money becomes available.

Some residents of the area have offered to do the work themselves.

Taylor Bressler, parks maintenance manager, said the city may take them up on the offer so they can get something built for less cost.

Normally a five-acre neighborhood park could cost $400,000 or more to build, parks officials said.

Already, the Parks Department has spent money on the project. In 1993 the department purchased the site from the city’s guarantee trust fund for $115,000.

The area also is known as Albion Heights.

Dennis Beringer, city real estate manager, said the city has held 24 acres of vacant land there for about 30 years.

Two years ago, the city sold about seven lots of the land to Seattle developer Barry Margolese so he could realign the intersection of Grandview and 17th Avenue.

The city required the street realignment as a condition in Margolese’s annexation known as the Westridge development.

Another condition calls on Margolese to contribute $50,000 to the park.

Pierce said she worries that the city will not collect the money from the developer, leaving the neighborhood without the start-up money needed for park construction.

“I will be real pleased if he comes through,” she said.

The city has been unable to develop new parks in recent years because of tight budgets.

In Historic Cannon’s Addition, the neighborhood used more than $130,000 in community development money to help build a new park at the west end of 14th Street. Cannon’s Addition has the first new neighborhood park in Spokane in four years.

But the Grandview neighborhood is not eligible for community development money, which is targeted to neighborhoods with lower incomes.

The move to build the park has drawn the eye of scholars.

Two professors at Eastern Washington University, Robert Quinn and Michael Folsom, studied the park site for the city and found it a good example of the native ecology of the region.

A basalt plateau runs across the southern part of the property and holds drought-hardy native plants. The lower portion next to 17th Avenue has a healthy pine forest with thick underbrush and a good collection of wild plants, they said.

Some of the plants include mock orange, chokecherry, wild rose, serviceberry, sticky geranium, yarrow, balsam root and wild strawberry.

Because the site is rich in native flora, the neighborhood and the city want to preserve as much of the natural cover as possible and use pathways among the vegetation to allow people to enjoy it, Bressler said.

, DataTimes