Clarkston council OKs apartments report

Nov. 14—The Clarkston City Council approved a report from the city's Planning Commission on Monday night for a proposed apartment complex on Chestnut Street.

No action was taken at the meeting to allow the construction, only approving the report from the planning commission. The project is requesting a zone change from neighborhood commercial to planned development to build an apartment complex of 45 units on the 1200 block of Chestnut Street.

The report states that the project concept was reviewed and approved by the planning commission in June 2021 and a public hearing took place in April 2022. After the public hearing, the commission decided to delay the project until the plan addressed parking requirements, attempted to get an easement for a fire loop, accommodated a gravity sewer, provided a plan for open space and landscaping and completed a traffic impact analysis.

The representatives of the project then presented changes in October 2022 addressing those issues, including receiving an easement from the Clarkston School District from the proposed site at Chestnut Street to Sycamore Street.

With those changes, the planning commission recommended that the city council approve the final plan, according to the report.

The other action taken by the city council was to accept a $62,000 grant from the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office for the local parks maintenance program. The funds will be used to purchase needed equipment and overhead garage doors.

At the beginning of the meeting, papers were available to attendees explaining Martin v. Boise, a lawsuit against the city of Boise that determined cities couldn't enforce anti-camping ordinances if there wasn't adequate shelter available. But there no public comment on the issue of the homeless camps that were removed from Foster Park and Arnold Park the last few weeks in Clarkston because of maintenance work on the facilities.

City councilors David Vinton commended Clarkston Police Chief Joel Hastings and public works employees for their work on dealing with the homeless camp at Arnold Park "before a civil revolt took place." He said that one day it was there and the next day it was like it wasn't. City attorney Todd Richardson reminded Vinton that Parks and Recreation employees also helped with the homeless camps at the Clarkston parks.

City councilors Robin Albers highlighted the hard and efficient work of Avista in returning gas services to residents after a widespread outage last Wednesday.

"I know everybody's not back yet but everyones doing their very best," Albers said.

The meeting ended with an executive session regarding personnel that was informational with no action taken.

Brewster may be contacted at kbrewster@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2297.