A plan intended to ensure development in the area along 179th Street to the north and east of the Clark County Fairgrounds has adequate road infrastructure could be put in place in July as the county council revisits the topic this year.
During a March 29 work session, the Clark County Council heard from county public works staff on the 179th Street Access Management and Circulation Plan. If approved, the plan would lay out road construction and improvements from and near the road from Northwest 11th Avenue to Northeast 50th Avenue as development occurs.
The plan develops interim and long-range plans for the corridor to guide future circulation and access decisions, Clark County Public Works Director Ken Lader said.
The goal of the workshop was to update the council on the plan. Three of the five current members of the council were not present the last time the plan was discussed.
The plan involves widening the street in the corridor, the addition of roundabouts, and in some cases, the addition of new roads. Lader noted the plan won’t force development to occur.
“The planned roads will be built by development, as development occurs. If a property owner chooses to never … subdivide their property, a road will never be built on it,” Lader said.
The plan serves as a guideline for a connected street network if developments included in the plan occur, Lader said. The plan doesn’t approve or require development, nor does it start the county’s process to acquire privately-owned land or the review of proposed developments, Lader said. He also said the plan won’t provide any special treatment for developers.
Plan history
In 2007, Vancouver’s Urban Growth Area was expanded to include the 179th Street corridor. In 2015, the Washington State Legislature first included funding for improvements on the street’s interchange with Interstate 5.
The council voted in 2019 to lift an “urban holding” overlay on about 2,200 acres of land in the 179th Street corridor. With it lifted, development can now occur.
The lift included four separate development agreements on projects in the area, Lader said. Two of those developments are currently building infrastructure, one is in the pre-application phase and a fourth includes the approval of the final construction plan, he said.
In 2021, the access management plan began. Following a virtual open house in January 2022, the Clark County Planning Commission voted that February to recommend the approval of the draft access management plan, Lader said.
In May, the council directed staff to offer more opportunities for public input, which led to an August hybrid in-person and virtual open house.
During that meeting, residents along the corridor raised concerns over the lack of left-turn lanes, the size of proposed roundabouts and whether the concerns of those in nearby neighborhoods was heard.
Councilor Sue Marshall said the current outreach isn’t as much of an issue with residents as is the initial decision that lifted the urban holding designation.
“People thought that they were living in a rural area and it has abruptly changed,” Marshall said.
Lader said he’s heard people’s frustration, too. He noted the urban holding designation did imply the area would be developed at an urban level at some point.
Why have a plan?
Having the access management and circulation plan would help avoid problems the county experienced in instances where there was no overarching vision. Lader gave an example of Northwest 139th Street near I-5, which did not have a plan like what is being proposed. The area saw rapid development around 2000 without planned infrastructure, leading to “severe congestion” at the I-5 interchange.
As a side effect of the congestion, $133 million was spent to alleviate the problem with the Salmon Creek Interchange Project over the interstate.
“That did move a lot of the traffic north and provided some distribution, but overall it really doesn’t fix the problem that we still have — unsafe access from local streets to a major arterial,” Lader said.
“These are the kinds of things that we’re trying to avoid with this plan,” Lader added.
Having a greater scope addresses environmental impacts better than if it were done in a piecemeal fashion as separate projects are developed, Lader said.
“Development is continuing in the area, whether we have an adopted circulation and access management plan or not,” Lader said.
He gave the example of a subdivision that is going in at Northwest 11th Avenue and Northwest 179th Street, which does not take into account wildlife corridors and conditions for a proposed roundabout at the intersection.
“Without a plan, (development) will be piecemeal and not really provide a cohesive way to connect the road networks, or really to prevent some of the more coherent impacts to the environment,” Lader said.
Marshall brought up that the 11th Avenue and 179th Street development incurred fines from the Washington State Department of Ecology. The construction company working on the development eventually settled for $101,000 over water quality violations.
“So that’s a concern as we move forward with all this construction,” Marshall said.
Next steps
The workshop isn’t the last time the council will discuss the plan before it comes up for a public hearing July 18. The council directed staff to come back during a work session to provide more information on the development agreements in the plan area and updated financial considerations about how the county’s share of projects will be funded.
The county currently has ongoing preliminary designs for a handful of projects in the corridor, Lader said, mostly dealing with roundabouts and related connections along 179th Street. Those designs are only for publicly-funded work and not what would come from private development, he added.
In 2019, the county identified the need for $66.5 million for half of a dozen projects in the corridor requiring public funding. As of December, that number increased to $83.2 million.
Even with the increase, Lader said there is “no budget shortfall” for the projects included in that total. He said the projects will mostly be funded from the county’s road fund, real estate excise tax, traffic impact fees and grants. He said the financial estimate is current as of December.
