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E-G Neighborhood Plan Presentation (Tonight, Jun 12)

E-G Neighborhood Plan Presentation (Tonight, Jun 12)

This is a short day-of reminder that the Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Planning Group will present its final neighborhood plan tonight (June 12) starting at 6:30 at Knox Presbyterian (806 W Knox).

The plan has been developed over the better part of two years by a group of dedicated volunteer stakeholders with the assistance of AHBL and the City Planning department. It lays the groundwork for the future of Emerson-Garfield — things like pedestrian safety, business viability, beautification, neighborhood vitality, transportation and more.

March_EGNP_Draft_coverWho is this presentation for? Everyone in E-G. The issues and solutions it lays out will positively affect homeowners, renters, businesses, landlords, churches, charities, schools, realtors, developers and anyone else who has or will have a stake in our neighborhood. If that’s you, then make it a point to attend.

Business Outreach Event Recap

Business Outreach Event Recap

The Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Planning group hosted a Business Outreach Event on April 17 at CSL Plasma (2126 N Monroe).

This post (and the video below) offers just a brief recap of some of the highlights; to download the full minutes, please click here.

There were 31 attendees in total. Among those speaking at the presentation were Craig Anderson, a Landscape Architect with AHBL; Inga Note, Senior Traffic Planning Engineer within the Streets Department; Jo Anne Wright, the liaison for the City of Spokane Planning Department; Candace Mumm, City Councilwoman for District 3; Jack Strong, with Strong Solutions and the past President of the Spokane Business Association; and Mark Camp, landlord of The Shop (among other businesses and buildings) in the South Perry district.

Some of the neighborhood businesses that were represented included: the Aiki Institute of Spokane, Waffles Plus, Ross’s Memories on Monroe, Azar’s Restaurant, Chairs Coffee, Tossed and Found; Zip’s and Petunia’s Marketplace.

After a brief introduction by Nicole Loncon, Assistant Manager at CSL Plasma, Jo Anne gave an overview of the neighborhood planning process and the relation between the city and the neighborhood committees since 2008.

Megan Kennedy, Vice Chair of the Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council, continued the overview of the planning process. On the basis of regular stakeholder meetings and two workshops with the residents, six priorities emerged. All of those points had N. Monroe in common, therefore this corridor was given its own section in the Neighborhood Plan. These priorities are:

  1. Pedestrian safety
  2. Neighborhood beautification
  3. Business diversity and occupancy
  4. Community resources
  5. Alternative and public transportation
  6. Connectivity and events

E.J. Iannelli, Chair of the Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council, introduced the possibility of different funding sources, such as the STA, the West Quadrant Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district, and Community Development funds. Ideally, a revitalization effort would be able to draw from those pots, in addition to any funding from projects which the City of Spokane might have.

Candace Mumm explained the Citizen’s Transportation Advisory Board (CTAB) money, which funds street improvements, sidewalk improvements, and pedestrian improvements. The CTAB board is the Spokane City Council; the Transportation Benefit District (TBD) committee advises the City Council board, who then makes the final decision on where to focus those funds. She mentioned that having a revitalized business association would strongly contribute towards qualifying as a targeted-area investment.

Inga Note addressed the possibility of converting N. Monroe from a five-lane street into a three-lane alternative. She had previously been with Spokane Valley for eight years, and has experience with performing a “road diet.” Along with the increased space for each lane, more space would be available for street parking, swales, and sidewalks.

Jack Strong continued the three-lane topic by giving an explanation of a similar change to East Sprague and the clear benefits. Mark Kent then spoke about the process that he has been involved with since 1999, to establish a neighborhood business network and go through the procedures for revitalizing his neighborhood.

Craig Anderson walked through the results of the business survey which represented the opinions of business owners on Monroe north of Indiana and south of the Garland District. In general, pedestrian safety was a top priority. Two-thirds of the businesses surveyed expressed an interest in involvement with a business association or being involved in other neighborhood development processes that may affect their business.

Jack explained the importance of setting up a Business Improvement District (BID), and agreeing on a small tax for having a third party take responsibility for the upkeep of the landscaping, rather than relying on every individual business to maintain their allocated section. He also invited the business owners to observe the activities of their Neighborhood Business Center (NBC), which meets at the Kendall Yards Community Room on the first Thursday of every month at 7:30am.

The invitees asked questions on topics such as angled parking and bus stops, which were discussed in further detail.

Andrew Worlock on N. Monroe Revitalization

Andrew Worlock on N. Monroe Revitalization

Andrew Worlock, an Associate Planner in the City of Spokane’s Planning and Development Services Department who also heads the West Quadrant Tax Increment Finance District and the WQTIF Neighborhood Project Advisory Committee, was invited to speak at this month’s neighborhood council meeting and give an update on the revitalization of North Monroe — which, after several years of ambitious talk, has well and truly fizzled.

Andrew will be ultimately unable to make the meeting and no representative is able (or, one assumes, willing) to take his place, so he sent an e-mail summarizing the reasons behind the downgraded status of the initiative. Below are the relevant extracts:

[T]he City and WQTIF committee decided to terminate the process to hire a consultant for the North Monroe Corridor revitalization project as we had originally intended back in 2011. The reasons are numerous and include: (1) lack of support from funding partners, (2) lack of strong involvement and organizational capacity of the North Monroe business association and neighborhood council needed to successfully support this effort, (3) that it was premature in light other ongoing and concurrent projects such as the Comp Plan Transportation Chapter Update and STA’s High Performance Corridor planning; and (4) the realization that such an effort, while appealing in many ways, would likely prove difficult to implement on such a long and varied corridor given current and likely future funding constraints. The committee could not justify expenditure of District revenue on the corridor planning study in this light.

At the same time, it is generally recognized that business supporting infrastructure investment is still needed along this corridor and the WQTIF committee is still committed to directing funding towards the North Monroe Corridor. We have budgeted up to $60K for 2013 for this purpose and are interested in hearing what the community’s priorities are in regard to streetscape improvements along Monroe. Pedestrian safety/intersection improvements at the north end of the corridor near Alice or Dalton come to mind as an example of the type of project the committee would be interested in supporting. Landscape and streetscape improvements at the 5 corner intersection may be another. Projects with strong community and private business sector support leading to a high return on investment and opportunity for leveraging the TIF funds are likely to receive the highest priority.

Basically, this means that the idea of a comprehensive multimillion-dollar revitalization of the N. Monroe corridor has been abandoned in favor of smaller potential improvements, for which a grand total of $60k is available in 2013 over a 2-mile stretch of road. To put that amount in perspective: by rough estimates, that won’t even pay for a quarter of a traffic light.

If you were looking to gripe, you’d find plenty of material in those two paragraphs. About how downtown Spokane (the “funding partners”) assumes that it exists in isolation and doesn’t realize that thriving corridors will lead to a thriving city center. About how a city administration that’s ostensibly about small businesses doesn’t see the benefit in improving crumbling corridor infrastructure. About how so few people in our neighborhood — residents and business owners alike (see point (2)) — seem to realize why any of this matters.

But there you have it. And that last blockquoted sentence is key. If we really want it, there’s still $60k available for improvements. It’s not much, but a single pedestrian crossing or a couple of street trees is better than nothing.

So if you want to bring more customers to your neighborhood small business, if you’ve had enough of taking your life in your hands when crossing this arterial, if you’re tired of baking in the summer sun while walking on N. Monroe because there’s absolutely no shade cover except for some cherry trees by Fred’s Appliances, come to the next neighborhood council meeting and help us find ways to utilize that money and improve Emerson-Garfield.

Status of N. Monroe Revitalization

Status of N. Monroe Revitalization

About two weeks ago, we made a request to have a written status update on North Monroe Revitalization, which, according to previous reports, was scheduled to break ground shortly.

On September 7, we received (via our appointed city rep, Tirrell Black) the following statement from Andrew Worlock, who is helping to oversee the N. Monroe revitalization project at the city level:

We are working on finalizing the contract with Studio Cascade. We have re-scoped the consultant’s work plan to provide a greater emphasis on economic development and identifying the public actions (infrastructure, etc) that are needed to stimulate private investment within and along the corridor. The approach uses a more refined focus given to three nodes along the corridor: a northern node, a “mid” node and a southern or “Northbank” node. We think this will mesh well with the neighborhood planning efforts of the EG Neighborhood as well as the other planning efforts (Kendall Yards, Spokane County) ongoing along the corridor. We hope to have the consultant under contract early this fall.

We’ll present this statement and discuss its impact at the neighborhood council meeting this week, which takes place on Wednesday, 7pm at the Corbin Senior Center.

What’s a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District?

What’s a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District?

Emerson-Garfield is part of Spokane’s West Quadrant Tax Increment Financing – or TIF – District. What exactly is a TIF district? And what does it have to do with our neighborhood?

Simply put, a TIF district is a pledge from Spokane city government that it will pay for projects that will upgrade neighborhoods using future property taxes. The idea is that such improvements will increase overall property values, especially properties located within the district, and thus increase Spokane’s overall property tax revenue.

Please note that simply being located within a TIF district does not automatically increase someone’s property taxes. Each property located within a TIF district continues to be assessed individually.

Spokane created the West Quadrant TIF District in 2007. It is one of three TIF districts created by city officials. The West Quadrant TIF District includes all of the Kendall Yards development being built on the bluff overlooking the Spokane River, part of the Riverside Neighborhood next to the river, much of the West Central Neighborhood, and Monroe St. within the West Central and Emerson-Garfield Neighborhoods.

In 2007, the West Quadrant TIF district had an assessed value of $198 million, which became the district’s base valuation.

The amount of property tax that has been collected within the district each year above the 2007 property tax collected is called a tax increment. Three-quarters of each year’s West Quadrant tax increment that isn’t specifically for schools and state government will be used as seed money for approved projects within the District.

One of those approved projects is the planned revitalization of the North Monroe business district from the bridge north to Cora St., which is the north boundary of the Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood.

Other approved TIF projects are the installation of streets, sewer lines and other infrastructure within the Kendall Yards development, the extension of the Centennial Trail west from Monroe St., continuing streetscape improvements along West Broadway Ave., and improvements to the Spokane County courthouse campus.

No one expects that there will be enough tax increment collected to be able to fully pay for any of these projects. Think of the increment rather as being seed money that will attract additional money from private and public funding sources for continuing improvements within TIF neighborhoods, including Emerson-Garfield.

The West Quadrant TIF district tax increment will be collected for 25 years, after which the district will be dissolved. The hope and expectation is that by the time the district goes away somewhere in the neighborhood of $4.5 million will have been collected and that will have gone a long way toward revitalizing our part of Spokane.

(This article was written by Emerson-Garfield resident John Vlahovich, who is chair of the West Quadrant TIF District Neighborhood Project Advisory Committee.)