Does my comment matter?

April 14, 2026 Dear Planning Committee, I am writing to object to the potential change to the zoning of the west end of the West Central neighborhood. My family and I have lived on Summit Boulevard in West Central for 24 years. My wife and I raised three kids here. I have been a longtime volunteer at the Native Project, at Holmes Elementary and as one of the founders of Spark Central. As a novelist, I have written here in West Central and set books in West Central, and before that, as a journalist, I wrote news stories about West Central. Increasing the density of this neighborhood will, in my opinion, reverse years of economic and social improvement that have made this an exceptionally successful example of the rarest thing: a mixed-income, mixed-ethnicity neighborhood that has somehow managed to retain its historic and cultural significance in this era of rampant gentrification. West Central was Spokane's first real working-class neighborhood and one of the more significant historical areas of the city. It's where Col. David P. Jenkins homesteaded, where Dutch Jake Gaetz lived, where Natatorium Park once thrilled kids, where Japanese Americans and Native Americans established a foothold, where one of the first prominent black architects in America, Julian Francis Abele, built a home for his sister. You can still see the streetcar tracks that once dropped off workers. For 140 years, West Central has managed to balance single family homes with small businesses, with apartments, with group homes, with townhouses. Losing the single family homes here would be a blow that will destroy that balance. As I'm sure I don't have to tell you, a neighborhood is a delicate thing and allowing high-density construction on the entire peninsula now will tip those scales and risk turning the neighborhood into row after row of uninspired apartment buildings, townhomes and duplexes. It will create high traffic on blocks that have no outlet because the river is on three sides, will adversely affect the Centennial trail, the health of the river and the incredible turn-of-the-century architecture of this neighborhood. Already, West Central has absorbed more than its share of higher-density housing, from the large number of group homes to the expensive apartments and townhouses in Kendall Yards to the Catholic Charities Haven apartments across the river. I appreciate that the city has relaxed zoning regulations to stimulate low- and moderate-income housing, but in the neighborhoods themselves, that effort seems to mostly be benefitting rich developers at the expense of what's left of Spokane's middle and lower-middle class. Recently, an historic house on a double lot went up for sale on West Maxwell. A developer swooped in, bought the house, cut down trees, squeezed in two uninspired townhouses, listed them each for the price of the original historic home and made a killing, selling three houses each for the price of the original, while doing nothing but creating more bland housing that middle-class homeowners will never afford. Living in West Central, a person quickly becomes aware that this neighborhood absorbs far more than its share of such civic compromises, especially compared to that other major historical neighborhood, the South Hill. Just look at the number of group homes, or compare the condition of Comstock or Cannon Hill Park to our own A.M. Cannon Park, where the garbage cans go unemptied and you used to have to bring a lawn mower to cut the grass growing through the ankle-breaking cracks in the tennis court if you wanted to play a game. My wife and I just returned from Seattle, where we visited my son on Capitol Hill and friends in the Central District. There, you see first hand the loss of classic architecture and the gentrification of what was once the city's prominent black neighborhood. Spokane has a chance to avoid that kind of disruption in one of its most distinctive and racially diverse neighborhoods. I hope you will continue to preserve the West Central that I have grown to love and have devoted much of my life to championing.