Kevin Freibott, Senior Planner, 509.625.6500
Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 2:30 p.m.
As we explored in a recent Land Capacity and Growth blog, the City of Spokane can expect to grow by more than 23,000 people between 2023 and 2046. That’s about 1,000 people per year who will be born here or will move here and accounts for deaths and people who move away. Of course, housing units are needed for the increase in population.
To determine if the city is large enough to accommodate population growth, state law directs the City to conduct a study called a “Land Capacity Analysis.” Cities and counties use the same overall method for conducting Land Capacity Analysis studies, with some changes to account for different policies and regulations in each jurisdiction.
For the past year and a half, we in the Planning & Economic Development department have undertaken a full review of nearly every parcel in the city, placing each one into one of the categories below:
To classify available land in the city like this, planning staff have reviewed more than 81,000 properties! Additionally, we have undertaken a review of all the Planned Unit Developments in the city, which give a little more certainty for how many housing units might be built in those areas. This assessment resulted in the following data:
The city currently contains approximately 3,500 acres of vacant land, another 2,200 acres of partially used land, and 900 acres of underutilized land. Each of these categories provides at least some capacity for development of housing. However, not all these parcels are able to accommodate more growth.
To make sure the estimate is as accurate as possible, several factors are applied that reduce the overall development capacity of these lands. Factors that reduce the overall capacity include:
In addition to the reductions above, the City also reduces the overall capacity by 30 percent to account for things we cannot know. Not all property owners want to sell or develop their land. Others might be waiting for the right economic conditions to develop their property, or they are holding onto land for their children or family. This 30-percent “market factor” is taken off the top to account for these situations.
Once the City has determined what land can provide additional development capacity, the next step is to apply some common-sense assumptions that will indicate how many housing units these land categories might accommodate in the next 20 years.
To do that, we will explore recent and historical development and provide some insight into how many dwelling units we can expect in different parts of the city.
We look forward to sharing more information about Land Capacity and Growth!
