Changes coming to Mattawa development application process

MATTAWA — With residential and commercial building activity coming to Mattawa, city officials are working on ways to streamline the development application process.  

Rachelle Bradley of SCJ Alliance, the city’s planners, told Mattawa City Council members that a checklist is being prepared to give people thinking about development some basic guidelines. 

“We have a list of what materials need to be included with (an application) to be considered counter complete, so that it can be forwarded to us for actual review,” she said. “That way we can really make sure that what we get is counter complete, so that applicants aren’t feeling like we’ve been sitting on things for a really long time. Because often we can’t start our review unless we have all the application materials up front.” 

Planning officials also have developed a list to help possible applicants know what should be included in the application, and what isn’t needed. 

“(The list) has detailed information about all the things (potential developers) need to consider, like whether the zoning allows it, what the setbacks are, how much parking they need, those sorts of things,” Bradley said. “It really encourages folks to meet with us so we can give them advice upfront.” 

Bradley said the lists aren’t available yet on the city website, but they will be once they’re translated into Spanish. 

Mattawa has a lot of building activity going on, Bradley said, including three business projects. Work is continuing on a housing development off Priest Rapids Drive. 

“We’ve had potentially an annexation (request) from Catholic Charities. It’s likely they’ll have to a comprehensive plan amendment, which is a pretty onerous process,” Bradley said.  

Talking with applicants early in the development process makes everything run more smoothly, Bradley said, and she cited the example of a recent meeting with Port of Mattawa officials. The port has a possible development project in the planning stages. 

“We’ve been meeting with them to talk about potential development regulations that apply to that property, and options to make sure that early on in the process there can be a lot of transparency about what they can and can’t do, what the parking requirements might be for that property so that we can get ahead of that,” Bradley said.  

With new development underway and the potential for more, city officials started work last year on rebuilding a new well, both the well and the pumphouse, which is located in Hund Memorial Park.  

Available water connections in Mattawa are limited, but work on the well will allow the city to increase the number of connections. Work on building a new pumphouse has been ongoing throughout the winter.  

“The next step is doors, window and the floor,” said Public Works Director Juan Ledezma. A report from Gray and Osborne, the city’s engineers, estimated the project will be completed in August.