Traffic impact lesser of two evils

By RALPH BARTHOLDT

Staff Writer

COEUR d’ALENE — More than 11,000 cars a day could be coming and going from a private development along Seltice Way if the developer opts to plop a big box store on about 26 acres west of Riverstone.

A road use study contracted by the owner of the River’s Edge development, which adjoins the city-owned Atlas waterfront, shows the number of vehicles heading into and out of a big retailer at the site could exceed 11,400 a day if the property were developed within the next couple years as a shopping center with a convenience store and gas station.

Developer Lanzce Douglass has told the city, however, that despite zoning which allows him to build a retail complex on his property between Mill River and the former Atlas Mill site, he has plans to incrementally build an 850-unit apartment complex at the site if he is approved for a zone change.

A hearing on the measure, which was set for this month, has been moved to Nov. 13, according to the city.

Current commercial and residential zoning allows Douglass to build between 17 units per acre on the parcel, or around 200 residential units — along with a commercial development such as a shopping center, convenience store and gas station. That’s what the traffic study uses as an example to calculate traffic during peak hours.

If Douglass is granted a zone change allowing as many as 34 units per acre in 6-story apartment buildings up to 75-feet high, however, the traffic generated would be about half.

“Development under the proposed rezone … is primarily residential and is anticipated to generate … 6,386 (average daily trips),” according to the study by Whipple Consulting Engineers of Spokane Valley.

“We believe that the proposed project will ultimately have a significantly less impact on the transportation system.”

The city has also contracted its own $88,000 traffic study paid by ignitecda — the city’s development company — and the city. That study should be completed in draft form by next month.

The city’s study focuses on traffic generated over the next several years by potential development along the entire river corridor, and how it could affect Seltice Way, Northwest Boulevard and Riverstone.

Douglass told the city at an earlier meeting that building out his development will take many years.

“When you are talking this many units, you don’t do them all at once,” Douglass said. “You do them as the market warrants.”