Northeast 179th Street between Delfel Road and Northeast 15th Avenue. The stretch of road is one of several projects totaling about $66 million that need to be funded before a designation of urban holding can be removed from nearby lands that will allow for development.
Clark County Manager Shawn Henessee feels the county council will likely approve about $66 million in road improvements in the area near the Interstate 5 and Northeast 179th Street interchange within the next month or two.
He said as much during the first of what will be monthly meetings between the head of executive government for the county and members of the local media hosted at the county Public Service Center March 21. The discussion focused on a number of topics ranging from the county budget, changeups in government makeup as well as talk of how the county can fund improvements needed for development near the interchange.
Currently, the Clark County Council is looking at ways to make up for a $19.1 million shortfall needed for the $66 million total for road improvements that will allow for the removal of an urban holding designation on land preventing development there until said improvements are “reasonably funded.”
The projects requiring county funding included improvements on 179th Street from Delfel Road to Northeast 15th Avenue, an extension of 15th Avenue from 179th Street to 10th Avenue and work at 179th Street’s intersections at Northeast 29th and Northeast 50th avenues. Another county-funded improvement would be on Northeast 10th Avenue from Northeast 149th Street to Northeast 154th Street.
Those projects are joined by one that would improve the I-5/179th Street interchange that will be funded by state dollars. Henessee mentioned that the county was trying to move up the roughly $50 million in state funding for the interchange from 2023, as currently scheduled, to 2021.
According to a staff report, there are 2,100 acres total under the urban holding designation in the area of the projects, including more than 830 identified as vacant buildable lands and about 230 zoned as commercial or industrial. The report estimates the area has the potential for more than 4,800 housing units and would generate $188 million in tax revenue in construction and $23 million annually for both the state and the county.
The council has already begun the process of removing the overlay, having done so on about 40 acres to the north of Northeast 179th Street at the Northeast 10th Avenue intersection.
The whole funding package consists of money from grants, a share paid by would-be developers as approved in agreements as well as whatever the makeup for the shortfall would look like. According to a staff report, there are seven scenarios being looked at, though Henessee noted that whatever would be approved could be a combination of any of them.
The scenarios ranged from no tax increases which would result in bonding out most of the money needed to be paid back by developers, to ones which would increase the general and/or road funds by as much as their banked capacity, which was a 4.23 percent increase for the road fund and a 3 percent one for the road fund. Impacts on property owners could be anywhere from nothing to $21.15 annually for a median-priced home.
As of the March 21 meeting with media, the council had not made a decision, though Henessee said the funding package was a “number-one priority” for the council. He explained that regardless of how the package looks, the council will need to come up with additional funding avenues in order to bring the projects to reality.
“We have to bond for the shortfall, there’s no doubt about that,” Henessee said. “The question is how much do we have to bond for and that’s dependent upon if the council uses banked capacity or otherwise.”
