Development projects and changes to roadways in the north Salmon Creek area have neighbors worrying about the quickening pace of their quiet neighborhood.
Construction for a Fred Meyer gas station was recently completed, with a soft opening this past weekend and a grand opening scheduled for later this month. The off-site gas station is part of a small retail complex across the street from the Salmon Creek store at 800 N.E. Tenney Road. The site will also be home to a credit union and a coffee house with a drive-through.
“I think (the gas station) is definitely going to have a negative impact on traffic flow,” said Ann Foster, vice president of the North Salmon Creek Neighborhood Association. “People are going to be lining up on Third Court getting in and out of there.”
With the possibility for an influx of cars in the area on the immediate horizon, other traffic changes are expected down the road. Just east of the Fred Meyer gas station, at the northeast corner of Northeast 139th Street and 10th Avenue, a commercial development project is in the works.
MAJ Development, which specializes in retail projects and is the same developer that planned the retail area that includes the Fred Meyer gas station, has recently ironed out some of the wrinkles in their plan to develop a 20.8-acre project.
Five parcels of land, the most visible of which is home to a crane yard for DeWitt Construction, were all approved to be rezoned from light industrial and apartments to general commercial in 2008. At that time, however, rezoning included conditions that would cap the number of cars allowed to travel through the area during rush hour, or 5 to 6 p.m.
Randy Printz, representing MAJ Development, spoke at a Jan. 15 Clark County Planning Commission hearing to work out a way to remove that cap. “There wasn’t a great amount of analysis originally done on transportation,” Printz told the planning commission.
MAJ Development representatives said that it’s too early to comment on the project and what businesses would occupy the space. Another rezoning restriction that was not altered, however, requires that the space not become a “big box” store, defined to be any one retailer occupying more than 100,000 square feet.
“The users that are currently very interested in that site would create about 200,000 square feet of commercial space and about 376 jobs and about 128 million dollars in sales tax,” Printz said at the hearing. “There’s a lot of benefit for this area to develop; the question is: Can you do it without crashing the transportation system in this area?”
He proposed the answer, the result of a traffic impact analysis done by engineers at Mackenzie: a handful of traffic features that he said would mitigate congestion during those periods of high-volume traffic. These features, which would be paid for by the developer, include adding a turn lane to both 139th Street and 10th Avenue and adding a traffic control device — either a signal or a roundabout — at Northeast 10th Avenue and Northeast 141st Street.
The planning commission voted to recommend the plan to county councilors, paving the way for MAJ to proceed with the development process. A public hearing on the matter is scheduled for the Board of County Councilors on Feb. 24.
“I think it’s fair to say that most of the public in Salmon Creek would not be particularly happy with a retail development on Northeast 139th and Northeast 10th of that size and its impact on traffic in that intersection,” Foster said.
But Foster said her problems with the changes to traffic in her area go beyond work near that intersection. The 139th Street overpass was completed in August of last year, and further changes to 10th Avenue are included in the county’s six-year transportation improvement program, with plans to add a bridge over Whipple Creek to connect the roadway to the north.
Foster recognizes that the problem is akin to the chicken-and-egg conundrum: traffic changes mean that there’s more access and more appeal for developers, while at the same time the more developers interested in the area means that there is a greater need to accommodate more traffic.
Either way, Foster said: “The flood gates are now open. … I think the amount of development is going to continue to increase.”
Foster said that development projects get rolling long before the surrounding community is given a chance to have a say — she wishes neighbors were involved earlier in the process.
“This is nothing new, but the overarching issue always is the impact development like this has on the neighborhoods that immediately surround it,” she said.
“How can we help with this? How can we provide input on the kind of development that we’d like to see?” she asked. “We have absolutely no control over how things get developed for the better of our community or not.”
She worries about her neighborhood getting businesses that don’t benefit the community. She also worries about losing the farmland in the area.
“I think that’s the frustration is that it’s great for development, great for developers, great for taxes, great for low-wage jobs … but what’s never a part of the conversation is the loss of quality of life and the impact of the neighborhood,” Foster said. “That’s always sort of the hurtful part.”
