A zone-change request now before the Spokane County hearing examiner could make it easier for a local partnership called Jolt Development to develop an industrial park and commercial sites on the western end of a West Plains property that Spokane-based Inland Power & Light Co. once hoped to develop as a business park.


Jolt Development has applied for the zone change on nearly 280 acres of land located between Hayford and Thomas Mallen roads, north of Interstate 90 and south of Electric Avenue. The land currently is zoned for regional business, industrial parks, heavy industry, and light industry. Regional business zoning is requested on about 54 acres at the western end of the parcel, and light industrial zoning is sought on the remaining 224 acres, which could be developed as Jolt Industrial Park.


Pete Thompson, a sales associate at Hawkins Edwards Inc., a Spokane commercial real estate company, and a member of Jolt Development, declined to release the names of local investors who make up Jolt or the names of the owners of the land.


Although the rezoning would alter the industrial zoning and increase the size of the regional business zone there, Tammy Jones, an associate planner at Spokane County, says the main reason Jolt sought the changed zoning was to try to eliminate strict conditions imposed by the hearing examiner when the current zoning was approved in 1986. At that time, the hearing examiner approved conditions regarding landscaping and building orientation that might have made development more difficult, Jones says.


The countys comprehensive land-use plan envisions an aesthetic corridor of 1,500 feet on either side of I-90 on the West Plains where the interstate approaches Spokane, Jones says. Although the view corridor is described in the countys comprehensive plan, the zoning codes dont set out regulations for it, and instead leave standards up to the hearing examiners office, she says.


Jones report on Jolts rezone request suggests that officials consider putting extra conditions on the appearance of industrial and commercial buildings in that corridor. She says the standards should come from discussions between the applicant and examiner at a public hearing, which was scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 9.


Jones says Jolt Development would be required to put in a traffic light before the end of the year 2000 at the intersection of Hayford Road and Jolt Drive, a proposed road that would serve the property from the west.


The property is located about 1,000 feet east of the westbound I-90 off-ramp at Medical Lake. Jones says a traffic study suggested another off-ramp or a redesign of the current ramp might be necessary if Jolts project proceeds. She says a second traffic study would be done to explore whether Jolt would have to add traffic lights at state Route 902s intersections with Hallett Road and the eastbound and westbound off-ramps from I-90. That study would have to be completed before the county issued any building permits to Jolt Development, officials say.


The lengthy first traffic study slowed the processing of the rezone application, which has been pending since 1996, Jones says. Plans to develop some sort of industrial or business park in the area are much older, though.


Inland Power bought about 400 acres of land there on the West Plains during the 1980s with the idea of developing a business and industrial park. The cooperative was unable to find tenants for the park, however, and sold the land in the mid-1990s.


Hawkins Edwards Inc. and a silent partner had options and earnest money on about 270 acres of that land in 1996.


Alpha Group Inc., of Freeland, Wash., bought the eastern 136 acres of Inlands proposed park in late 1994, and sold that parcel to West Terrace Business Park LLC, in 1996, which plans to build several speculative office-warehouse structures.