Cheney City Council has extended by several weeks a moratorium on new development in the area of the more than 1,000-unit Terra Vista apartment and multiplex development, citing a need for more time to review transportation and public safety impacts and to enact ordinances related to those impacts.

The moratorium was enacted in December to give the city time to figure out how to deal with Terra Vista’s impact on surrounding roads, especially as it relates to emergency services and nearby railroads. 

The extended moratorium blocks new development approvals, including licenses and permits, from being issued for the Terra Vista development area. It now ends July 31.

The Terra Vista development is located on the southern edge of Cheney. Former professional football player Steve Emtman is the developer.

The moratorium originally was set to end June 10, says Todd Ableman, Cheney’s public works director.

As the city’s planning commission worked through its recommendations for coping with the anticipated increase in traffic from the development, however, it became clear that the city needed more time to hammer out solutions regarding the cost of altering roads in the Terra Vista area, Ableman asserts.

“The planning commission went through the process all the way up until April,” Ableman says. “We came up with a recommendation on traffic impacts, and there were four transportation projects identified from the impact study.”

The recommended transportation projects include improvements at the intersections of state Route 904 and Cheney Spangle Road and at Route 904 and Cheney Plaza Road, improvements on Front Street, and road widening and sidewalk upgrades on Cheney Plaza Road.

The estimated value of those improvements is about $4.2 million, Ableman says.