Prominent Spokane developer Harlan Douglass longtime plan to build a big residential project in Spokanes Indian Trail neighborhood has been approved by the citys hearing examiner.


Called Windhaven, the project would include 298 single-family homes and 212 apartment units, according to plans submitted to the city.


The development would be located on about 60 acres north of Barnes Road and west of Indian Trail Road, just north of the Sundance Plaza Shopping Center. It would include a one-acre neighborhood park and a swimming pool in the apartment complex, materials submitted by the city to the hearing examiner show.


Douglass and his agent, Cliff Cameron, asked the hearing examiner for approval of the project as a planned-unit development.


Neither Douglass nor Cameron could be reached for comment on the project.


Douglass plans for Windhaven date back at least a decade. In the mid-1990s, however, the project ran into obstacles, including neighborhood opposition and a city-imposed building moratorium in the Indian Trail area.


The developer resubmitted plans for Windhaven in 1997, city planner Steve Haynes says.


Since then, It was just back and forth, the city wanted this and that, but there would be extensive periods between when they would come back with revised plans, Haynes says. Its been going on for an awfully long time.


Recent materials submitted by the city to the hearing examiner say lots for the single-family homes in Windhaven would average about 5,500 square feet, and that the apartments would be located in 12 buildings.


The PUD would not be a gated community, which will lend it to improving circulation through the neighborhood for pedestrians and bicycles, a city-generated staff report on the project says.


City Hearing Examiner Greg Smith wrote in his decision approving the project that Douglass will be required to improve Barnes Road along the length of the project site, including installing curbs, planting strips, drains, and sidewalks.


Haynes says Douglass has 15 days from when the project was approved by the hearing examiner to appeal the conditions placed on the project, then has five years to file a final plat on the project.