The city of Bonney Lake is moving ahead on Plan B for the Eastown lift station after owners of the original site failed to respond to the city by the June 14 deadline set by the mayor.

The change will allow the city to move forward on installation of a sewer line, which in turn will allow development to go forward along the stretch of state Route 410 between 214th and 234th avenues.

“We cannot continue to wait and wait for a private development to get things done,” Mayor Neil Johnson said in a phone interview. “The more we wait the more this thing is going to cost us.”

Originally planned for a site on the proposed Compass Pointe development, the lift station is now slated for placement on land owned by former city councilman David Bowen.

Several years ago Compass Pointe agreed to house the lift station, but the city was having trouble getting easements from the property owner. With the bidding climate tilting in the city’s favor, Johnson said it was a matter of timing and the city could no longer wait for private development to begin its work because it was holding up other projects.

Johnson said the city was first approached about changing the site in 2004.

“Over the past four, five, six years, nothing has happened,” Johnson said, adding that the city will no longer be “held hostage” by a single developer.

Under the alternate plan, the lift station moves from a spot just south of 96th street along the proposed new 225th Avenue to a site along a proposed frontage road located approximately halfway between SR410 and 96th Street, a few hundred feet west of the planned 226th Avenue.

Johnson said the city was looking at a decommissioned stormwater pond as a location, though the final site has not yet been selected.

Once the design work is done, the plan is for the city to create a Utility Local Improvement District in which the city would front the money for the sewer upgrades and users would pay their share as part of a latecomer agreement as their developments are approved.

According to Johnson and Public Works Director Dan Grigsby, the project could go out for bid by early next year with construction completed by the end of 2011.

That would open up Eastown fully for development.

“Theoretically we could have things being built next year,” Johnson said.

For more information on the Eastown subarea plan, visit http://citybonneylake.org/section_business/community_development/eastown_plan.shtml.