The Lewis County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday, May 20, gave final approval for a housing subdivision on the south end of the Chehalis urban growth area.
The new development, called Evergreen Grove, subdivides the approximately 22-acre parcel of land into 69 lots with 65 homes.
Spaces not used for homes will be used for a park, open recreation areas as well as wetland and stormwater management.
The land sits behind an already constructed housing development off of Rush Road, wedged between Interstate 5 to the west and the Newaukum Valley Golf Course to the east.
Roads for the subdivision are already built. The 65 houses will be built on all sides of Prairie Way, Evergreen Way and Wind River Drive.
The approved plat also lists a number of utility and sewer easements to the city. According to Chehalis Community Development Director Celeste Wilder, houses in the new development will benefit from city sewer and water.
The approval of the subdivision has been a long time coming.
The original land owner first submitted the proposed subdivision in 2020. The land has since changed hands.
A company called Homestreet Development LLC first applied for approval of the plat in the summer of 2021, according to City of Chehalis documents. Century Communities of Washington LLC, which despite its name is based in Denver, Colorado, now owns the property after buying it from Homestreet in 2023.
When the plat was first submitted and given initial approval, the area was zoned as residential urban growth area, which, according to Wilder, requires plots to be a minimum of 5,000 square feet. That area is now zoned as R1, which means low-density, single-family residential development and requires a larger lot size of at least 7,500 square feet.
However, the subdivision benefits from its earlier approval and has been grandfathered into the lesser of the minimum requirements, meaning the smallest lots will be exactly 5,000 square feet while the largest available lots will be more than 7,000 square feet.
A model home has already been constructed in the property to provide an example of what the new houses and lots will look like once built.
