Moses Lake developers appeal comprehensive plan

UPDATE: March 3, 2022 at 10:46 a.m.: In an email to the Columbia Basin Herald early Thursday, Moses Lake City Manager Allison Williams said because the appeal is a legal matter, the city has no comment at this time.

MOSES LAKE — A group of property owners and real estate developers, led by ASPI Group, is asking a state board to reconsider revisions to the city’s comprehensive plan that include withdrawing hundreds of acres of land from the Moses Lake Urban Growth Area.

Kim Foster, an attorney in Gig Harbor who represents ASPI Group, said ASPI and Moses Lake attorney Robert Schiffner and Ephrata-based Stredwick Land LLC have appealed to the state’s Growth Management Hearings Board to send the comprehensive plan back to the city for reconsideration. The appellants say the city failed to follow the law as it prepared those revisions last year and pulled land out of the UGA that could be used to build new homes quickly should the need arise.

Cities covered under the state’s Growth Management Act are required to make and regularly update comprehensive development plans. During the course of last year’s hearings, developers and members of the city’s planning commission expressed concern that the plan revisions were too conservative in their estimate of population growth and too focused on development within the existing city limits.

Under the plan, Moses Lake assumes the city’s population will grow by roughly 7,000 over the next 20 years.

Foster said the plaintiffs had complaints about the city’s plan review process as well as the assumptions used in the revised plan. In the matter of process, he said the city of Moses Lake failed to inform property owners and the public of upcoming hearings adequately, failed to do adequate environmental studies he said were needed when hundreds of acres were pulled out of the UGA and submitted traffic plans that showed gridlock in the downtown core of Moses Lake in a few years.

“We’ve been engaged in Moses Lake for more than 30 years, and we are one of the top property owners,” Foster said. “The city’s own regulations require 14-day advance notice of comprehensive plan amendments, and we got only 12-day notice.”

Officials with the city did not respond to requests for comment prior to press time.

However, more substantially, Foster said the city also ignored the potential for growth from the new temple being built by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and work that businesses like ASPI, as well as the Port of Moses Lake and the Grant County Economic Development Council, are doing to attract a major industry to Moses Lake that could add 7,000 people to the city in much less than 20 years.

Sen. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake, has sponsored legislation during this year’s session that would provide targeted tax breaks to any company locating in Washington to build solar panels or components. The EDC and the port have been actively working on wooing a company here that would use REC Silicon’s product to make solar panels in the U.S.

In fact, Foster said, he has personally hosted executives from major companies looking seriously at Moses Lake, one of which examined ASPI’s holdings at the Grant County International Airport and would have employed 5,000 people, and another company that would have employed 1,500.

“That would have eaten up that cap in one fell swoop,” Foster said. “It’s a glaring, substantial hole.”

Even something smaller would have a tremendous effect, Foster said, noting that Boeing had difficulty finding housing in the area for the 700 employees working to maintain the roughly 200 737-MAX aircraft stored and being repaired at GCIA. Many of those aircraft are stored on land ASPI currently owns.

ASPI also owns roughly 4,000 acres along the western shore of Moses Lake, near the Links at Moses Pointe, that the company has set aside for future development, Foster said. Of those, 350 acres were withdrawn from the UGA last year in order to satisfy demands from the city to limit the size of the Moses Lake urban growth area.

That withdrawal, however, removes that land from residential development and unduly limits the ability of the city to provide a large amount of housing quickly, Foster said, noting that one executive visiting the city described Moses Lake as having “a spectacular industrial base” for a city its size, but very little new housing.

The Growth Management Hearings Board is set to hear the case on May 31 and rule on July 12, according to a schedule provided by the board on Feb. 4.

“All we want is to maintain our UGA designation so we can encourage development to be ready when one of these large projects comes through,” Foster said.

Appeal Basics:

A group of Moses Lake area landowners — ASPI Group, Stredwick Land LLC and attorney Robert Schiffner — is appealing Moses Lake’s recently revised comprehensive plan to the state’s Growth Management Hearings Board, alleging the city:

- Failed to inform property owners adequately that the plan was up for revision;

- Failed to properly consider the effects on growth and the need for housing of a major company locating here;

- Withdrew land easily and quickly developed for housing from the city’s urban growth area in the event a major company hiring thousands comes to Moses Lake.

The city did not return calls requesting comment by press time.

SOURCE: ASPI Group Inc.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.