A square mile would open to more houses and traffic, if county approves
By Michael Andersen
Published: February 28, 2010, 12:00am
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After two years in limbo with the county planning department, a hunk of the Pleasant Valley area is almost ready to be opened for urban development.
If approved, the transition will allow a stretch of land southeast of Washington State University Vancouver to gradually develop from mostly lots of 1 to 5 acres each to mostly lots of about 6,000 to 7,500 square feet.
It’ll also allow possible commercial projects on the northwest corner of 119th Street and 72nd Avenue and the southeast corner of 139th Street and 50th Avenue.
“It’s a big deal,” Clark County planner Mike Mabrey said Friday. “It’s a square mile.”
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To help manage the new traffic, the corner of 119th and 50th would be widened in the next few years, and a stoplight or roundabout added.
With the residential construction market almost as slow as ever and property from previous urban expansions still sitting unsold, the addition of a new square mile of developable land would be a test of the local land market’s faith in a promised economic rebound.
“I haven’t heard from developers that are anxious,” Mabrey said.
The county’s Planning Commission will meet March 18 to discuss lifting the county’s “urban hold” on the area. It would then go to county commissioners for approval.
The affected square mile lies between 119th Street on the south; 139th Street on the north; 50th Avenue on the west; and 72nd Avenue on the east. Also included are 21 acres along 50th Avenue, just north of 139th Street.
According to the growth plan approved by commissioners in 2007, much of the west side of 72nd Avenue would be allowed to develop at a higher density, with up to 30 units per acre. The agricultural land on the east side of 72nd is zoned to eventually become business parks.
Whatever will happen to the area, residents know they’re unlikely to hear what one, Jack Nugent, called the “ridiculous offers” some people were tossing around during the last boom.
“We had developers knocking on our door four years ago,” said Nugent, who owns 8 acres of mostly forested land that he was told would be worth $160,000 each.
“One guy mentioned $200,000, but he wouldn’t put that in writing,” said Nugent, 74.
Some, like Nugent, hope to sell and move on as soon as they can get a decent price. Others, like Chris Philbrook, said she’d like to carve off the least profitable 50 acres of her family’s berry farm and keep cultivating the rest.
“It’s just a really nice area to live in, and I can’t imagine being anyplace else,” said Philbrook, whose parents moved to their 128-acre farm in 1952 and planted the first raspberries in the early 70s. “With the way the economy is, I can’t imagine that it would be right away.”
Today, her nephew Kevin supports himself by tending the farm that she and her brother John own.
“Farming, it’s up and down,” Philbrook said. “One year you do okay, and another year you don’t do so well. And it’s always nice to have a little nest egg to pay taxes that keep going up, and insurance.”
