Commission nixes HOA's plan for gates on Bellerive Lane

COEUR d’ALENE — The city of Coeur d’Alene’s planning commission on Tuesday denied a riverfront homeowners association’s request to gate its streets to prevent nonresidential traffic from clogging the neighborhood in the summer.

Stephen Nemec, the president of the Bellerive Lane HOA, asked the city to allow the association to put up two gates west and east of Le Peep Restaurant because summer traffic on the private street, adjacent to the Spokane River downstream of U.S. 95, creates issues for property owners. The traffic limits property owners’ access and parking, and many motorists use the road to party late into the night, property owners said.

“We’re attracting a lot of late-night visitors,” Nemec said.

Homeowners routinely in summer pick up syringes, condoms and beer bottles and cans at an unlighted riverfront culdesac on the east end of the street, he said.

“This is especially egregious,” he said. “We have to pick those things up.”

But the neighborhood, when it was designed more than a decade ago, required a through street to Northwest Boulevard at LaCrosse Avenue to be developed, according to city planners, and gates could potentially affect completing the throughway. In addition, one of the property owners whose lots are accessed by an easement on Bellerive Lane said his agreement prohibits gates on the road.

Developer Lanzce Douglass, who owns the lots, said his easement doesn’t allow for anything that blocks the road.

“It specifically precludes them from doing exactly what they are asking today,” Douglass said.

Several Coeur d’Alene residents asked the commission to strike down the proposal because it would limit public access to the boardwalk and open space along the Centennial Trail, they said.

Longtime Coeur d’Alene resident Susie Snedeker said she understood the traffic problem because similar issues have recurred all over the city.

“It is a problem, it is a dilemma, it is annoying,” Snedeker said.

But denying people, or at least giving the impression of denying public access by putting up a gate, was not the way to alleviate the problem, she said.

Attorney John Magnuson, who spoke for the HOA, said the gate will only limit motor vehicle access, while pedestrians and bicycles can access the green space and waterfront at almost a dozen points along Bellerive.

“It’s precluding people from parking in no-parking areas,” Magnuson said. “It’s not impeding public access, those 11 (access) points remain unfettered.”

The commission unanimously denied the request without prejudice, calling it premature because much of the congestion is construction traffic, commissioners said.