Move Over, Move Out Valley Couplet Will Displace Six Blocks Of First Avenue
As Edgecliff residents have watched their neighbors move out over the past year, many realized they could be next.
County engineers were working on a plan to build a road designed to ease traffic congestion along Sprague Avenue in the Spokane Valley. Sketches showed the road would cut down their street and through their homes.
Last week, county commissioners approved the $16 million plan to build the 2 1/2-mile Valley Couplet. The eastbound leg of the couplet will begin at Thierman Road and displace houses along the south side of the six-block stretch of First Avenue. The eastbound route continues through three mobile home parks and an apartment building before stopping at University Road.
Now, for occupants of about two dozen homes along First Avenue between Bradley and Park roads, their turn to move will come by next summer. Overall, building the Valley Couplet’s eastbound leg will displace as many as 255 residents in more than 100 houses, mobile homes, and apartments, and could impact property values and the supply of affordable houses along that stretch.
The westbound leg of the couplet will follow Sprague Avenue, already a major thoroughfare lined with businesses. Sprague will not have to be widened to accommodate the couplet’s traffic flow.
Engineers are hopeful construction of the eastbound leg will begin in 1999. Building the couplet will take two construction seasons, said Jim Haines, Valley Couplet project engineer.
Right-of-way acquisitions are estimated to cost $8 million and expected to be completed by 1999 when construction could begin, Haines said.
Most of the right-of-way acquisition is yet to be done, but the county has slowly begun buying property. Eight lots along First Avenue have already been purchased by the county from owners of rental homes whose tenants have moved out.
“They don’t say much but you see (houses) get torn down as soon as they’re vacant, so you assume they’re buying them up,” said Doug Livingstone, who has been renting at house at First Avenue and Dora Road for the past year.
Haines said right-of-way acquisition will begin in earnest this fall or early next year. Owners will be offered “just compensation” for their homes, he said.
“We’ll do everything we can to work with the folks,” Haines said.
While most of Livingstone’s neighbors aren’t looking forward to finding new homes, many say a solution to ease traffic congestion that now clutters Sprague Avenue is overdue. Motorists trying to avoid long waits at stoplights already use Edgecliff neighborhood streets to speed around the lines of cars on Sprague Avenue, residents said.
“It’s a good thing, really. They’re going to need it,” said Mike Bell, who lives in a trailer, along First Avenue, that must be moved.
Engineers received a similar response during the past year at a half-dozen or so public meetings and hearings. The couplet has been the most popular of six proposed south Valley traffic solutions, and has been endorsed by the South Valley Business Association and Valley Fire District, both vocal critics of the South Valley Arterial option.
Even most residents who have to move appear to be supportive.
“I’d rather stay right here,” said Tony Polione, who has lived in a single-story home along First Avenue for 40 years. But, he added, “They need to do something. Sprague Avenue is awful. It really is bad.”
However, the project is not without critics. Some residents that live in neighborhoods that will border the new road are worried the couplet will bring fast-moving traffic past their homes. Others are concerned about the loss of dozens of homes for low-income and fixed-income families.
Joyce Kelley, who lives along Sargent Road, fears people who miss their turns will use the residential streets to turn around.
“It will be worse than a freeway,” Kelley wrote in a letter she and neighbors Ron Crosby and Mike Penick submitted as comments on the project’s environmental impact study.
Others just don’t want to move.
“I don’t want to talk about it. That’s a sore subject,” said one woman who lives in a house in the road’s path.
A weathered mailbox and two tall pine trees are all that’s left of her former next-door neighbor’s house. On the other side of that lot, a rusty mailbox and brown rectangle in the brush are reminders of a trailer home that once stood there.
Two other vacant lots tell similar stories.
“They’ve been taking them out right and left,” said Steve Cunningham, one of Bell’s roommates.
Relocating residents of the mobile home park will be the county’s biggest challenge, Haines said. Like the houses along First Avenue, 30 homes at Rose Haven Mobile Home Park, 24 at Woodland Park mobile home area, and 10 in the middle of the Vista Mobile Home Park will have to be moved. A seven-unit apartment building near Dishman Road also will be leveled.
Rose Haven resident Donald Dixon said he and his neighbors are anxious to see exactly where the road will cut through the mobile home park. Engineers anticipate the road will wipe out the northern third.
“What can they do? They have to put a road somewhere,” said Dixon, who has lived on the park’s south side for three years.
Additional right of way could be required to build roads, sidewalks, curbs, and gutters in several other places along the eastbound leg and north-south streets that connect the couplet. Engineers are uncertain how much land they will need until road plans are finished, but they do not anticipate displacing additional homeowners or businesses.
Engineers are sympathetic to the displaced homeowners, but say the benefits of building a road that will move 50,000 cars a day more efficiently warrant the inconvenience. By the year 2010, traffic volume along Sprague between Theirman and University will increase as much as 55 percent.
According to the project’s environmental study, the Valley’s supply of affordable housing will not be significantly impacted.
“I think we’ve come up with a fairly good compromise,” Haines said.
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