Getting There: Pines and Mission intersection improvements moving ahead swimmingly

First came the tulips, then came the orange traffic cones.

It’s road construction season in the greater Spokane area, which usually means headaches for the businesses and property owners in the immediate vicinity.

But not always.

Spokane Valley resident Jamie Wolff has been so impressed with how the city has handled the ongoing work at the intersection of Pines Road and Mission Avenue in front of his properties in the Valley that he called The Spokesman-Review to sing their praises.

“Everybody likes to complain about the government messing with things, doing things wrong, screwing up,” Wolff said. “This project is going exceedingly well.”

N.A. Degerstrom Inc., the Spokane Valley-based contractor tasked with the project, broke ground on April 15, and construction is scheduled to wrap up in early August. Once completed, southbound Pines Road will have a dedicated right-turn lane, eastbound Mission Avenue will have two dedicated left-turn lanes, and a dedicated left-turn lane will be added to the westbound side of Mission.

The area will be repaved and restriped to cap off the road work, said Glenn Ritter, a senior engineer with the city’s public works department.

The planned improvements will be extended to the ground below the construction zone – and the sky above. Catch basins will be installed to stop pollutants from entering the dry wells in the area, and signal operations will be modified to improve traffic flow.

“I know our traffic engineering department has been concerned with this intersection for a while, mostly with the congestion,” Ritter said. “If you’ve ever driven through in the peak hours of the afternoon, you may have to sit through a couple of cycles of the signal to get through it.”

Wolff owns 3.5 acres just off Interstate 90 at the Pines Road offramp, and on that land sits an Applebee’s, a strip mall and a multistory building. The strip mall and building host a wide array of businesses, including an ophthalmologist’s office, a dental clinic and a cabinetry shop. One of the motivating factors that led Wolff to pick up the phone was the minimal impact to those businesses, his tenants.

“I think the city deserves accolades rather than always whining and complaining,” Wolff said.

The parking lot for drivers remains accessible thanks to an opening at the east end of the construction zone, which Wolff said has been instrumental in ensuring his tenants can carry on operations and weather the length of the project without a significant impact to their businesses.

Applebee’s general manager Jon Jordan said there has been a slight decrease in sales, but it has not been as severe as he had worried. He feels for his staff who are missing out on tips during lunch service hours, when the impact has been most severe.

Jordan said he looks forward to the road construction’s completion and thinks it will help build on the increase in traffic he expects to see when the restaurant finishes a remodel of the front of house in July.

“That’ll put us right back in the saddle,” Jordan said.

Wolff credits the city of Spokane Valley’s extensive efforts to communicate information about the project for the minimal impact. It allowed local businesses to prepare accordingly and strategize ways to keep customers and patients rolling in, like the dollar margarita night the chain location held at the project’s start.

Outreach is a significant part of any construction project the city takes on, Ritter said. Months before the project got underway, Ritter’s department worked with communications manager Jill Smith to send out more than 150 postcards to residents and business owners within the vicinity of the intersection. They also hosted an informational open house and met with affected parties individually.

Sometimes those meetings lead to real relationships for Ritter, who had lunch at Applebee’s Wednesday to wish farewell to a waitress he befriended on one of her last days before she retires.

Ritter said he met several times with Wolff, not only to inform him of the project, but to work with him to ensure the city could acquire staging space in the parking lot for the construction crews. When Wolff raised concerns on what a reduction in parking could mean for visitors to the clinics and businesses, the city found a way to move the staging area closer to the off-ramp for Interstate 90 with assistance from the Washington State Department of Transportation.

“I think that the main strategy is not trying to be Big Brother coming in and taking something,” Ritter said of his outreach efforts. “You’re there to explain the benefit to the public, which is government’s function. And we try to work with them, like we did with Jamie.”

Because Pines Road is also Washington Route 27, the city has had to contend with WSDOT-specific requirements and paperwork, Ritter said. One of those requirements was to have the first phase of construction occur at night to minimize travel impacts, which Wolff said has been to the benefit of local drivers and his tenants, alike.

Crews switched over to day operations last week, and will return to an overnight schedule after June 12, Ritter said.

Over 90% of the project’s $2.4 million cost is covered by a federal grant and developer fees, serving as the proverbial cherry on top for what Wolff described as a “home run” of a road work project. The Spokane Valley City Council allocated about $193,000 last year to cover the remaining portion.

The contractor is a week ahead of schedule already but could finish up to a month early, Ritter said. The city may close Mission in both directions to help speed up the construction timeline.

Jordan said he’d support an early finish, as would Wolff. Business operations may have been minimally impacted, but both look forward to putting the construction period behind them.

“Once we started construction, we knew that was going to be a little bit of an impact,” Ritter said. “But it’ll all be worth it. How do you say it? Short-term pain for long-term gain – something like that.”