Post Falls residents weigh downtown, parks in 2045 city plan update

Post Falls residents are being asked to decide what their city will feel like block by block in 2045, and early feedback has pointed to downtown and parks as the clearest priorities. At a drop-in workshop at City Hall on Thursday, April 30, people used scorecards and short presentations to weigh future land-use options before those ideas harden into policy.

The city’s 20-year comprehensive plan is more than a planning exercise. City materials describe it as a long-range vision that guides growth, infrastructure, services and quality of life, and the Post Falls 2045 site says it is “by and for the community,” setting goals and policies for nearly everything the city does. The April 29 and 30 outreach included presentations at the Post Falls Chamber of Commerce, Q’emiln Trailhead Event Center and Hyatt Place Post Falls, with the City Hall workshop open from 3:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and short presentations in City Council Chambers. About 25 people attended the midday session at Q’emiln Trailhead Event Center.

The stakes are sharper than a typical land-use meeting. Urban3’s Heather Worthington said the city has about $26 million available to spend but needs about $62 million to maintain roadways and other utilities. That gap explains why planners are pushing residents to think not only about what can be built, but what kind of growth can help pay for itself over time. Worthington also emphasized the need for “missing middle” housing, the kind that falls between low-density single-family homes and high-density multifamily projects.

City leaders have been working toward this update for more than a year. On March 18, 2025, the City Council approved an agreement with SCJ Alliance to lead the 2025 Comprehensive Plan Update, which includes a Housing Needs Assessment and a Fiscal Impact Analysis. The update was formally launched at a joint workshop with the City Council and the Planning and Zoning Commission on June 17, 2025. The current comprehensive plan was adopted in July 2020, after an update process that began in 2017, and that plan added a Medium Density R2 designation to the Low-Density land-use category.

The population pressure behind the planning effort is already visible. The U.S. Census Bureau listed Post Falls at 38,485 people in the 2020 census and estimated the city at 45,800 on July 1, 2024, across just 15.1 square miles. That growth helps explain why residents at the workshop were focused on downtown investment, park access and the character of neighborhoods that could change if the city leans more heavily into infill and denser housing. The decisions made in this update will shape how Post Falls handles that growth long before 2045 arrives.