There is no bus from downtown Spokane to the Latah Valley. The only way to the homes nestled in sun-bleached grass just southwest of downtown is by car, funneled along the arterial US 195.
The roads to the area are winding, then lattice out into developments like Eagle Ridge and the neighborhoods of Latah/Hangman and Grandview/Thorpe, the latter of which sits on the bluff above the valley. There is no school, so the children must be bused to Cheney or the South Hill.
And yet, developers have eyed the area for years, unveiling new housing projects for more than a thousand new homes. On average, a single-family home in the neighborhood is valued at almost $560,000, almost 38% more than the city as a whole, according to Zillow.
Last Tuesday, the Washington State Board of Natural Resources approved a priority list of six land
parcels that they will recommend for $30 million in total legislative funding — the highest amount
allowed by state law — that would fully fund five of them, with partial funding for the sixth. The
Thorpe property slotted in at fifth place — putting it on track for the state’s Trust Land Transfer
Program, which allows the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to protect valuable public land
while also improving the trust land portfolio’s financial performance
Transferring the property to the city would preserve rare plant ecosystems and provide park services
in the neighborhood, where residents have long criticized the lack of infrastructure. But Latah
Valley’s community advocates say that the area’s core infrastructure issues remain unsolved.
Just over a year ago, the valley’s Thorpe Natural Area, home to ponderosa pines and mule deer,
seemed destined for the hands of Redmond-based Blue Fern Development.
The morning after the Trust Land Transfer announcement, community members and officials gathered to
celebrate a major step toward preserving the parcel. Residents who have spent years pushing back
against more development in the valley say this is only a start for resolving the valley’s deeper
problems.
“The opportunity to do something positive, to contribute to the rebuilding of this city at a time when other parks and open spaces have been burned and damaged, to bring a positive vision to the city at this moment in time, I think, is more important than ever,” Washington state Public Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove said Wednesday to a crowd of a couple dozen people.
The state-funded Trust Land Transfer Program allows the DNR to protect valuable public land while
also improving the trust land portfolio’s financial performance. Although the DNR normally manages
trust lands to earn revenue for public beneficiaries through activities like timber harvest,
agriculture or leasing, the program can transfer a parcel with limited earning potential to another
public agency.
If the legislature votes to fund the proposal in 2027, the parcel would benefit the Common School
Trust, a DNR-managed public land trust that funds public school construction.
“There’s no done-deal. So just as a reminder, this will be put forward for consideration, and the
legislature is the trustee,” state Sen. Marcus Riccelli (D-Spokane) said.
Though the state faces a budget deficit of almost $500 million in the upcoming biennium, this
program is funded by the capital budget — and not the operating
or transportation budgets most impacted by the shortfall.
The real question is how far down the list the state legislature would fund, according to Riccelli.
“The only caveat there is with huge budget holes — if they occur, there have been times in the past
where capital budget dollars have gotten swept to help fund operating,” Riccelli told RANGE. “So
there needs to be advocacy at the community level.”
Tom Uniack, executive director for conservation organization Washington Wild,
said DNR’s decision puts the Thorpe parcel back on the path advocates have long pushed for: allowing
the state legislature to fund a trust land transfer rather than pursuing a separate exchange with a
private developer.
This comes after years of local advocates calling for — and getting — a pause in development in the
Latah Valley, citing infrastructure concerns and the fire risks associated with building into the
wildland urban interface (WUI).
These concerns are not without merit. Molly Marshall, the cofounder of Citizen Action for Latah
Valley, said her neighborhood had their first evacuation order during the Russell Road fire in
August 2023.
In the chaos, she recalled a kid riding his skateboard around, telling people to leave. But even as
evacuees were told to go south, there was no way out in that direction for her neighborhood, she
said.
According to Marshall, this is an example of the egress issues that residents continue to wrestle
with. Since then, the city has hosted two evacuation drills in Latah Valley — for the
Grandview/Thorpe area in May 2025 and in the Latah/Hangman and Eagle Ridge areas in April.
A report published after the April drill identified five main egress routes. The route from East
Meadowlane Road to US 195, both northbound and southbound, experienced “consistent” congestion, with
queue lengths of up to 50 vehicles at peak times throughout the exercise.
“These findings demonstrate that while multiple egress routes exist, evacuation performance is
heavily influenced by a small number of critical corridors,” the report reads.
In part to curb these concerns, the Washington State Department of
Transportation has requested development moratoriums for Latah Valley in the past. In response, the
city approved a six-month stint in September 2022 and a one-year pause in May 2024. The city pledged
to come up with solutions to these problems in the meantime.
However, more than 1,500 homes have been approved since the
first moratorium.
Construction for The Marshall Creek estates, with 425 homes, was approved in October 2024 as its
application had been submitted before the first moratorium.
In November 2025, after the second moratorium expired, 142 homes were approved for the Latah Glen development.
The nearby 997-lot Victory Heights project, backed by Blue Fern Development, was also already in the development pipeline.
The first three phases of the Victory Heights plat are approved for construction, according to city
spokesperson Erin Hut. These phases include the installation of infrastructure like utilities,
streets, sidewalks and shared pathways. Those components must be in place — or the developer must
post a bond guaranteeing they will be — before any final approval of lots and homes, she wrote.
The development became intertwined with the fate of the Thorpe parcel when the DNR, under former
Washington state Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz, tried to simultaneously pursue a land
exchange that would have transferred the property to Blue Fern Development in exchange for a
commercial parcel with a grocery store and parking lot in Bellingham.
At the time, Blue Fern did not own the property, according to the DNR’s
proposed exchange document.
“There’s one way to deal with this underproducing asset, which is trust land transfer, and then
there’s another option, which is mutually exclusive… is to do a transfer like in this case with the
developer,” Uniack said.
Blue Fern wanted the Thorpe parcel to “significantly expand” their plot, City Council Member Paul
Dillon told RANGE.
In July 2025, the exchange was canceled,
keeping the Victory Heights project at its already-approved size.
“I would hope that this land being preserved does, in fact, again send a message,” Dillon said of
the recent recommendation. He credited local advocates like Friends of the Bluff’s president Jeff
Lambert and volunteers for claiming the region as a conservation area.
Uniack slammed the previous DNR administration for pursuing both tracks, which he said was “strange”
and “unheard of.” The Thorpe parcel had already gone through the Trust Land Transfer process when
the agency began moving toward the exchange, he said.
On Wednesday morning, local conservationist group Lambert questioned why that exchange was
considered at all, describing the situation as a “freight train let loose.”
“This is an opportunity for us to really take a look at the way our planning department works with
developers and make sure that we can limit this kind of thing from happening in the future,” Lambert
said.
But the Latah Valley’s infrastructural issues are far from over, according to Marshall. Even just
concentrating on Thorpe Road, Marshall said, “band-aid solutions” allow development to progress
while failing to address longstanding concerns.
“That’s what’s very disheartening for so many — just keep building, adding more people — but we’re
looking at it just through the lens of that development, not as development as a whole in the area,”
Marshall said. “That’s where you see the safety issue.”
These concerns span both emergency response and traffic infrastructure alike, from a fire station
operating out of a converted house to century-old railroad tunnels too narrow for two-lane emergency
traffic.
For example, Marshall said the city and WSDOT have decided to put a three-legged roundabout on
Thorpe Road, which she criticized for its potential to block traffic flow in the event of an
emergency.
In a written statement to RANGE, Hut said that the approved roundabout design review included
“consideration for the ability to redirect traffic westward if operational conditions at the tunnels
reach unacceptable levels in the future.”
Dillon pointed to the highway as another infrastructural concern — one out of the city’s purview.
“The missing part of this conversation is how 195 is very dangerous,” Dillon told RANGE. “We need a
real vision with the growth that is going to continue happening in so many parts of Latah.”
Though there’s been some improvements such as J-turns designed to reduce risky left-hand crossings
from Thorpe Road onto the highway, those are only stopgaps, he said.
Dillon said he hopes that WSDOT will lower the speed limit to 40 miles an hour. However, he said
that there’s been a lack of interest from the department, as it would slow freight traffic along the
US 195 corridor.
He also wants more “placemaking” that will make the area feel more like a neighborhood, especially
considering the amount of development that will be coming in.
According to Parks and Recreation department director Garrett Jones, an analysis of the city park
system identified the Grandview/Thorpe neighborhood as having one of the worst accesses to public
parks. Jones said they found that 44% of residents in the area lacked access to a park or open space
within a 10-minute walk.
The area needs a real fire station too. The current fire station is actually a repurposed
single-family house, Dillon said.
Though the city already owns a property off of Cheney-Spokane Road, a lack of funding stands in the
way of providing the area a suitable fire response center, according to Dillon. He estimated that it
would cost about $8 million — of which Riccelli has already acquired $500,000 from the
state.
Fire impact fees on new developments could help fund that gap, Dillon said, and he wishes such fees
had been in place before the Spokane Complex Fires, since that funding could have also helped
address emergency equipment needs.
In 2023, the city approved an ordinance to charge developers more for new water and wastewater
hookups — with steeper fees for properties at higher elevations, like those in the Latah Valley
area.
Additionally, the Thorpe Road tunnels remain an issue for concerned residents. Converted from
railroad tunnels, the two century-old passageways into the area are too narrow to support emergency
traffic flow, as they would not be able to support two-lane traffic if a fire truck needed to pass
through, Marshall explained.
Those tunnels are the main ways in and out of the Thorpe neighborhood, she said.
WSDOT has highlighted these tunnels as a concern since
the 1990s.
According to Hut, retrofitting the Thorpe tunnels to modern safety standards would cost an estimated
$55 million to $60 million.
Spokane Audubon Society member Brian Muegge said that scaled-backed development could also change
the scope and cost of fixing the Thorpe tunnels. Rather than engineering for thousands of additional
residents, reduced growth could end up being cheaper for retrofitting, he proposed.
Overall, the conversation surrounding the Thorpe parcel is the “ground zero” of the kind of
conversations that communities building into wooded areas need to have, he said.
To him, the key question remains: “Should we continue to incentivize development in these WUI areas,
or should we work to preserve open space?”