A long-planned city of Spokane project to extend Riverside Avenue east from Division Street through the southern portion of the University District, scheduled to begin next year, could be moved to a new route.


City officials are considering the possibility of shifting the proposed extension, for which $11 million has been found to pay for most of the work, one block to the north, to Main Avenue.


Brian Jennings, a city project manager for the U-District, says eight design consultants came to Spokane in January to study future development plans for the district. They met with Washington State University, the primary landowner there; Sirti, which has buildings there; Greater Spokane Incorporated; and city officials, he says. The final draft of their report is expected to be released by the end of the month.


What that group discovered, according to early indications, could trigger a change in thinking about how a street extension would affect the U-District, says Dave Mandyke, Spokanes director of public works and utilities.


The consultants preliminary findings suggest that moving the proposed extension to Main could provide the campus with a friendlier environment for pedestrians, Mandyke says. An earlier goal of the proposed Riverside extension was to move traffic more quickly to and from downtown Spokane, he says.


Mandyke says the street width of a Main extension likely would be narrower than that of a Riverside extension, and would provide for an atmosphere more conducive to denser development of the campus area.


Were moving along as planned with Riverside until a conscious decision to not pursue Riverside is made, he says, adding that the decision will come pretty soon from Mayor Dennis Hession and the City Council.


Katherine Miller, a senior engineer in the citys capital programs department, says the route for the Main Avenue alternative is only in the conceptual stages, but its likely it would link with the planned Riverside route at some point to the east and terminate at the same place as that planned route, at Trent Avenue near Perry Street.


She says plans to extend Riverside east from Division were included in the citys six-year street plan as early as 1993.


Mandyke says the provision to provide right of way space for possible light-rail development in the future, included in the Riverside extension plan, would not be part of the Main Avenue plan.


Changing to a Main extension also would delay construction, says Mandyke. If the city decides to change the route, it would have to ask the agencies that have approved money for the planned Riverside extension if they would approve funding for a Main extension instead.


Also, hearings are to be held on how a Riverside extension would affect a building thats eligible to be placed on the historical register, and I dont want to go through the public hearing process for environmental concerns, then change the project, Mandyke says.


He says a route change now would cost the city at least $100,000 in design costs it couldnt recapture, but adds, The bottom line is you want to build the best project possible.


WSU spokeswoman Barb Chamberlain says the cost to WSU of changing the route wouldnt be as high as some might think. She says the university updated its master plan for the Riverpoint Higher Education Park in 2000, and addressed the Riverside extension then. WSU soon will begin work on another campus master plan update and could include a Main Avenue extension in that effort, she says.


She says that under a current arrangement for the Riverside extension, the city wouldnt pay WSU for putting the extension on its campus, and no land would be exchanged.


In return for allowing the city to run Riverside through its property, the university would gain better access to the south side of its campus, and Spokane Falls Boulevard, the main thoroughfare through campus currently, would be downgraded from an arterial to a collector street, easing traffic.


Contact Rocky Wilson at (509) 344-1264 or via e-mail at rockyw@spokanejournal.com.