I was under the impression that there was a moratorium on development within three miles of the Salmon Creek Interstate 5 interchange. But I received a notice today of a new high-density development (the Noble Meadows Planned Unit Development) in that area. Could you clarify?
— Joseph Dvorak, Salmon Creek
Actually, Joseph, the development moratorium around what we always enjoy calling the Salmon Creek traffic hairball ended in September 2007.
We coined that name because of the bewildering number of roadways that get tangled up together in that single spot. There’s I-5 and I-205 and their entrances and exits. There’s Northeast 134th Street cutting east-west and 20th Avenue heading north. There’s Highway 99 coming up from the south and splitting in two just below the intersection.
It’s quite the traffic knot, and the recent stop-and-start history of growth in the area makes confusion about a moratorium perfectly understandable. Three development moratoriums have been imposed on the area in recent memory: one from February 1997 to January 1998, a second from December 2001 to April 2003 and a third from September 2005 to September 2007.
What’s a development moratorium? A ban on accepting any new building plans or projects. In each case, the reason for the moratorium was the lack of adequate roadways to handle the additional traffic these developments would generate. Even without the addition of still more cars, Salmon Creek roadways were already considered “failing” (slowing traffic down to a congested crawl) by local traffic planners.
Jeff Mize, the county’s public works spokesman, said some small-to-medium tweaks and fixes have helped — the realignment and splitting of Highway 99 and the widening of some roads by Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center, for example — but the latest moratorium was lifted because of a “huge” plan to divert traffic and add capacity: a new 139th Street interchange.
“It’s going to be one of the biggest projects in Clark County in the past 15 years,” Mize said. Total projected cost: $140 million, to be shared by the state, Clark County, and other funding sources.
The project will extend 139th Street behind the Fred Meyer store and add an overpass across I-5, move the existing park-and-ride lot west (away from the center of the hairball) and make a handful of other changes. Groundbreaking should happen late this year, and the whole project should finish up in 2014.
The additional road capacity isn’t there yet, but it’s planned, Mize said, and that’s what freed up the county to end the moratorium and start taking development proposals again.
— Scott Hewitt
Got a question about your neighborhood? We’ll get it answered. Send “What’s up with that?” questions to neighbors@columbian.com.
