261 construction about brand recognition, local effort

The most eye-catching area for commercial development in Ritzville is nestled around Exit 221 of Interstate 90.

Plenty of businesses with brand-name recognition have already sprouted, from a Love’s Travel Stop to McDonald’s, and a Maverik station is near completion.

“The Maverik is part of a large annexation that occurred, I think it’s been three years ago now,” said Julie Flyck, who is the Ritzville planner as well as the city clerk and treasurer.

Looking very enticing beyond the Maverik station is the planned but not yet detailed Grainery District, a 280-acre sprawl of undeveloped land that promises to ease some of Ritzville’s housing shortage woes...eventually.

“The Maverik station is the start to the Grainery District,” Flynn said.

She mentioned Derek and Susan Schafer are pushing the project forward, but in a most discreet and understated manner.

“They are working on a subdivision plot right now, and that keeps getting modified as they have opportunities that are coming up, because as they see the Maverick built, they’re getting contacted from other commercial entities who want to be part of the district,” Flyck said.

That interest doesn’t come as a surprise given the real estate mantra of location, location, location of the project.

Flyck said the Schafers have not yet made a development proposal to the city, but the conversation goes it will be a “family tradition neighborhood” where “everything just slows down. The porches are on the front, the garages are in the back,” with an alley “where you will have all your services.”

“It will be a walkable community,” Flyck said. “There will be a variety of housing, apartment buildings, cottages, townhouses and single family. So there will be a lot of different opportunities for people to have the housing that they need.”

But we don’t yet know how many housing units will appear. There are no architect renderings to look at.

“We operate a family farm,” said Derek Schafer, “like many of the long-time families in the Ritzville area, so this opportunity came to us. So we’re learning as we go, but able to work with our friends in the city to make the project good for Ritzville. That’s really out primary goal.”

Schaefer said his family sold the land to Maverik where they’re building the station. He said that construction allowed a wholesale upgrading of utilities to enable the eventual construction of the Grainery District.

“I’m thinking it was 2012 or 2013 the city had the good foresight to plan that when Love’s was built in 2013, there could be further development on the south side of the freeway and on the east side of Highway 261... Without that, I don’t think our project would be feasible,” Schafer said.

And how about the number of proposed housing units mentioned by Flyckt?

“She doesn’t have an answer because we don’t have an answer yet,” Schafer said. “We’re still in the planning process and really working to find the right users or builders or businesses to come to Ritzville, and that is a very large task. We’re farmers, so we’re not going to be the ones building everything up there, But Susan and I see ourselves as middlemen or the matchmaker... and we’re using the city’s comprehensive plan as a recently updated guideline for our project. We really just want to follow that and honor and enhance the history of Ritzville and make it good for the people. A city that doesn’t grow is going to have challenges to meet its budget.”

Although there are no finalized plans, Schafer said, “it’s a pretty ambitious project. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about design... what is called traditional neighborhood development... like a lot of the older craftsman style homes in town that have front porches closer to the sidewalk, walk ability, green space, which Ritzville already has. We’ve spent a lot of time looking at the historic parts of Ritzville and trying to match and be consistent with some of that in a new or modernized way, but ‘traditional,’ I think would be the right word to use.”

“Ritzville is a great place and has wonderful people to work with and the city has been amazing to work with,” Schafer said. “They’ve been fabulous. The city is full of great people. We consider them friends and we’re just honored to be able to take on this project and try to make something happen for Ritzville.”