Five Mile Prairie council chair says infrastructure not keeping pace with housing boom

Raining cats and dogs? Up on the prairie, it’s raining houses. “The population has exploded,” said Five Mile Prairie Council Chair Craig Busch. “Right now, there are probably a hundred houses in the works up here.”

According to NextDoor, the current population in the Five Mile Prairie neighborhood is 5,597 compared to 3,750 in the 2010 U.S. Census, a 48 percent increase. Over the same period, Spokane’s population has increased 4 percent.

“I don’t blame people for wanting to move up here,” Busch said. “Geographically it’s unique, and it’s conveniently located. You got the big sky, you got the sunsets and sunrises. It’s gorgeous.”

“We just want to see it done right,” he said. “In other states, they put the infrastructure in first: They build better roads, put in water, sewer and gas, and then they start selling lots.”

It takes the city website 315 words to describe Five Mile Prairie’s zigzag perimeter. The roughly drawn boundaries are Five Mile Bluff to the south and the city limits east, north and west. Lincoln, Strong and Five Mile roads trace most of the western and northern borders, while Cedar Street defines most of the eastern edge.

“Five Mile Prairie started out as a dry land farming community,” said 50-year resident Kathy Miotke, an original member of the Five Mile Neighborhood Council. “We still have quite a few farms.”

Before the housing explosion, most of the prairie was farmland, with farmland infrastructure. Busch said most of the roads were laid out in the 1920s. Five Mile Road was recently widened and repaved, but Strong Road is so bumpy and uneven that cars struggle to maintain the 30-mph speed limit.

To prevent gridlock from the exploding population, better roads are a must. But roads cost money.

“Developers are frothing at the bit to get people up here, because people want to live up here. But they don’t charge any impact fees, so there’s no money going into a coffer to pay for the road improvements. What I’d heard in the past was, ‘That’ll cost the homeowner too much money if they charge them that impact fee,’ ” Busch said.

“But it’s pay now or pay later,” Busch said. “Pay the $5,000 up front, to help with the impact fees, or drive on a (washboard) road and be bumper to bumper.”

Some roadwork is getting done through grants, including a roundabout at the intersection of Five Mile and Strong. Increased traffic flow was making the old two-way stop dangerously inadequate.

“People move in here and don’t realize it’s a two-way stop,” Busch said. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost been t-boned by people pulling out in front of me, thinking I’m going to stop.”

The council is pushing for a crosswalk with flashing lights across Five Mile, to help with visibility in the frequent inversion layers that trap clouds on the prairie floor. “The clouds are just pea soup fog,” said Busch. “You can’t see people walking. If you don’t have lights, nobody is going to have a chance.”

Sky Prairie Park, established in 2001, was inspired by the need to protect some of the open space before it was all gone.

“People wanted to preserve some of the prairie,” Busch said. “This unique geographic feature didn’t have anything except an explosion of housing.”

The park wasn’t much more than a 26-acre blank slate before a failed development jumpstarted its development. Greenstone founder Jim Frank, before scrapping his cottage housing plan, worked closely with the neighborhood on park connections and improvements.

“He gave us his landscape architect for a year, who came in and worked with us on our vision for the park,” Miotke said.

The collaboration among council, architect and Eastern Washington University resulted in a master plan approved by the city in 2016. Planned improvements include benches, a splash pad, covered patios, a basketball court, a grass volleyball court, an amphitheater, a soccer field and restriping on the tennis courts for pickle ball.

That sounds like a lot, but the council isn’t planning to convert the park into a mini-Disneyland. “Most of the park is in its natural state,” Miotke said. “We don’t want to give up the native plants that are already in the park.”

The plan will take some time to complete because of limited funding. “We want to put together a stakeholder group, called the Friends of Sky Prairie Park, so we can apply for grants,” Miotke said.

The only current funding available came out of the failed Greenstone development, when Frank agreed to a $500 per lot impact fee that was grandfathered in when he later sold the property.

Before the neighborhood council program, the Five Mile Prairie Association was a mix of city and county residents. The groups still work together, though they have no official standing as a group.

“We have combined meetings,” Miotke said. “On issues that affect all of us, all of us vote.”

“They can’t just split us up; we are all part of Five Mile Prairie,” she said.

Miotke said there were only three homes on Lincoln Road when she moved to Five Mile Prairie 50 years ago. “I know … times have changed,” she said. “But I still miss that darkness.”

With few close neighbors, decades before the internet, Miotke and her daughter made their own recreation.

“We’d go out into the tall grasses at night; we’d lie down, and the nighthawks would circle above us. They would come so close that you could feel the wind of their wings,” Miotke said.

“It was really a grieving process for me when everything started to be built up here,” Miotke said. “But I’ve met a lot of amazing people.”

“And we’re all trying to help each other,” she said.