The city of Spokane has secured $3 million in construction funding for a planned extension of Riverside Avenue from Division Street east along the southern boundary of the Riverpoint Higher Education Park. Phase one of the project could start next year.


The money was included in the legislation signed into law by President Bush last month, says Susan Ashe, director of legislative affairs at the city.


Design and engineering work for the first phase of the project and 15 percent of the second phase already is under way, she says. The city is paying for that work with about $500,000 it raised from selling some city-owned land, and from other federal funding, says Ashe.


The $3 million it received from the federal legislation is earmarked for construction only, and not for right-of-way purchases. About six acres of right of way are needed for the first phase of the project. All of that land is owned by Washington State University, which operates a Spokane branch campus here.


Spokane city engineering staff member Dick Raymond says the city has been in talks with WSU on the six acres of land for the past year, but neither he nor Ashe would discuss the particulars of the negotiations. Ashe did say, however, that the right of way could possibly be secured at no cost to the city.


As far as the right of way goes, we dont expect a problem, Raymond says.


He says the city expects to receive the federal construction money next spring. Ashe says work on the project could start late next year or in early 2005.


Phase one of the envisioned project would include extending Riverside east from Division along the north side of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail lines for about a half a mile, nearly to where Sherman Street would run, if extended.


Riverside then would bend to the north to connect with Trent Avenue near the eastern edge of the higher education park.


The extension would have one lane of traffic in each direction, with a center median, says Raymond.


Phase two of the project would create an intersection at the point where the Riverside extension would bend north toward Trent, and would extend a new leg of the roadway another three-quarters of a mile further east along the southern edge of the Spokane River, beneath the Keefe Bridge, and connect it with another point on Trent at about Perry Street.


Requests for funding for that phase of the project are being sent to state and federal sources now, says Raymond.


A third phase would be funded by the city and would connect from a point on the phase-two extension just east of the Keefe Bridge south to Sprague Avenue. The connection would follow Erie Street south and would pass beneath the rail lines before breaking into two legs that would connect with the westbound and eastbound legs of Sprague at different points.


The overall proposed project has been seen as a way to boost development of the Riverpoint campus and the envisioned U-District, which economic-development boosters have said will help Spokane create research-and-development and technology jobs in the future. The Riverside extension would pass right by the new technology center being built by the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Center, which also owns additional land there for a second possible building.