Ponderay readies for 'new phase of buzz'

(This is the first article in a two-part series on the how highway projects such as the Sand Creek Byway and further plans for U.S. Highway 95 improvements through Ponderay could reshape the business dynamic in Bonner County.)

PONDERAY — Even as Sandpoint ponders the coming impact of having the highway routed around the downtown core, its neighbor to the north is preparing for a possible windfall when the completed byway project drops all of that traffic into the lap of its business district.

The actual number of projected vehicles has varied since the Environmental Impact Statement for the Sand Creek Byway was drafted several years back.  As the project draws closer to opening day, however, those projections have climbed — dramatically so.

Late last year, Richard Gray, building engineer for the Bonner Mall, quoted Idaho Transportation Department estimates that listed expected traffic patterns at the mall’s Highway 95 entrance, as well as its eastside gateway on state Highway 200. 

Those figures, dating back to before the byway’s groundbreaking on Oct. 30, 2008, put Highway 95 traffic at about 10,000 vehicles per day, with Highway 200 running a close second at 8,000 vehicles daily.

“I think the byway is going to be an important part of our future,” said Gray. “We need to position ourselves for that, because the dynamic is changing.”

Driving Growth

In the less than 16 months since the first shovel turned along Sand Creek, the projections for post-byway traffic only serve to amplify the scope of those changes.  The most recent figures are more than 30 percent higher for the number of vehicles spilling off the overpass and onto Highway 95 at Ponderay’s front door.  Along Highway 200, meanwhile, the projections have climbed by almost 25 percent.

“We’re projecting 14,500-a-day on U.S. 95 from the junction to the entrance of the Bonner Mall and 10,500-a-day from the junction to McGhee Road along Highway 200,” said Mike Porcelli, district traffic engineer at the ITD office in Coeur d’Alene. “There’s not someone actually out there counting cars, but these projections are pretty good estimates of traffic patterns.”

Those same estimates have put Ponderay City Planner Erik Brubaker on high alert, because all of those vehicles skirting Sandpoint along Sand Creek are destined to be funneled his way. How many of the vehicles will drive by and how many will stop and spend? That’s a question that’s still up for grabs.

“What I think is that, of the people who are hungry, thirsty, need a place to stay or have some other needs, we’re going to see increased traffic,” Brubaker said. “All of retail is based on the number of vehicle trips per day.”

It’s a scenario that has played out elsewhere, the planner noted, and it gives — if not a roadmap — at least some directional sense of what could come next.

“We don’t have to wait for it to happen,” Brubaker said. “In every city that’s done a beltway project, the interchange becomes the hot spot.”

Planning Ahead

The junction of highways 95 and 200, along with its soon-to-be active interchange, sits like one corner of a triangle that borders Ponderay’s existing business district. The other points are made up of the intersections where the Kootenai Cutoff Road meets the two highways roughly a mile or so to the north and east.

If, as Brubaker contends, retail growth tags along with traffic counts, the city could be entering what he calls “a new phase of buzz” that would rival or eclipse the one that resulted in its first, prolonged period of growth that began more than 25 years ago.

But the interest and influences that changed Ponderay from a smattering of stores and houses to a retail powerhouse beginning in the mid-1980s create an entirely different kind of pressure today. Left unmonitored or unplanned for, a new phase of retail growth could simply mirror what already has taken place so many other rural areas across the country.

The story goes like this: A small town, intent on keeping a healthy mix of retail shopping and professional office space in its downtown area, begins to experience parking problems and increased traffic congestion. Population growth spurs interest from national retailers, who seek and find open land outside that small town’s city limits. Eventually, new transportation corridors are created to deal with congestion and accommodate the growth in these open spaces. More traffic breeds more interest and retailers look farther down the new, improved highway corridor for their next location. Some stores survive, others close as retailers continue the mad dash for wide-open spaces.

Sound far-fetched? Can’t happen here? One has only to look at what is happening in Sandpoint — and what could happen in Ponderay — to see this fable playing out.

The Sprawl Scenario

A new breed of planners like Brubaker has come to see these rural stories as cautionary tales. If you’ve already read the unhappy ending, they reason, why would you want to follow the story chapter and verse in your own hometown?  Better to rewrite it, according to the Ponderay planner.

In western Washington, where he grew up, the landscape went so quickly from bucolic to bulldozed that it made a person wonder if the greenfields and farms had only been a dream. Strip malls and retail power centers leapfrogged one another and gobbled up open highway frontage so quickly that it seemed as if they — and the traffic snarls that surrounded them — had been there all along. 

“That may be for some people, but I can guarantee you that, for 80 percent of the people who live around here, it’s not for them,” Brubaker said, describing unchecked sprawl as “like being nibbled to death by ducks” for the cities it affects.

Once the Sand Creek Byway is finished, the ITD hopes to begin construction on a second phase of the project, allowing for the larger number of vehicles expected to flow on and off the interchange. Pending the availability of funding, construction on that new phase will focus on the stretch of road that runs through Ponderay, ramping up traffic counts and interest from retailers even higher.

“The handwriting is on the wall,” Brubaker said. “The trajectory takes us to a ‘North Coeur d’Alene Model’ and to the level of land use and the kind of development that happened there.

“I think we can do better,” he added. “That’s why we’re trying to anticipate that pressure and make it work for us in a positive way.”

Opportunity Knocks

Ponderay is working to put what the planner called “a strong, solid plan” in place to steer growth in directions that could not only benefit, but might well redefine the community.

In past decades, city leaders from both Sandpoint and Ponderay — and to a lesser extent, Kootenai and Ponderay — butted heads, content to confound and frustrate any attempts at addressing growth collectively. These days, the game moves too fast for this brand of civil shenanigans and too much is at stake for local politics as usual. In large part, the advent of a major highway project that connects their fates has forced the cities to work together.

“Which is a real testament to the importance of transportation,” Brubaker said. “The old guard has been fading fast and there’s a rejuvenation of the spirit of cooperation between those entities.”

In Ponderay, the planner believes the opportunity to ride a new growth spurt offers a chance to add muscle to the business district while, at the same time, positioning the city as a model for recreational access and enhanced livability by connecting what is already there with what could be there in the future. Doing so would require new ways of thinking from virtually everyone involved, from the ITD to railroad companies to potential new businesses.

Even the city’s own residents might have to get used to the idea of seeing themselves in a new light.

“Right now, people think of Ponderay ‘the place where Wal-Mart is located,’” Brubaker said. “But I think we have a chance to redefine how people think of this city.”

(In next week's Daily Bee: How using “in-fill” to create a matrix of connected, pedestrian-friendly retail areas could help avoid sprawl and how lake access, combined with a regional network of bike and walking paths, could reshape the futures of both Ponderay and Sandpoint.)