Education Corridor takes another progressive step
The Coeur d’Alene City Council approved a zoning change that will allow NIC to construct the new buildings for the Education Corridor.
The quasi-judicial public hearing ZC-4-11 was held during the regular city council meeting on Feb. 7 in community room of the Coeur d’Alene public library.
The zone was changed to C-17, which allows the land to have commercial, residential and civic uses, as well as light manufacturing.
The approximately seven acres of land were previously zoned as only light manufacturing and Commercial-17 Light.
The Planned Unit Development (PUD) puts regulations on the otherwise very loosely restricted C-17 zone.
Dave Yadon, the planning department director, likened C-17 to a “big block of clay.”
“It [PUD] takes that block of clay and starts chipping away at it,” Yadon said. “It confines their [NIC’s] development into a very specific plan.”
According to John Mueller, the landscape architect representing NIC, the zone change allows NIC to get the unlimited height value of C-17, but the PUD limits it and creates the parameters “by which we might develop a parking garage down the road, 40, 50 years.”
City Council members Steve Adams and Dan Gookin voted against the measure.
Gookin, who lives in the Fort Grounds neighborhood, expressed concerns about shoreline regulations. He also objected to the effect the planned parking garage might have on the view of the lake from the houses in the neighborhood on Military Drive.
Mueller said that of the approximately 15 homes that might be affected, NIC owns six or seven of them.
Adams said he opposed the request because he felt he was denied his constitutional right to approve the funding of the Education Corridor project through voting.
City Attorney Michael Gridley said there has been no violation of the Idaho Constitution, and that the project does not have to be voter-approved. He called Adams’ statement “inaccurate and misleading.”
Now that the zoning change has been approved, NIC has a year to finalize their plans for the Planned Unit Development.
