Score one for the neighbors
Tired of infill that doesn't fit, residents are fighting back -- and winning
Thursday, September 27, 2007
By Erin Hoover Barnett
The Oregonian
The developer and the neighbors sat speechless, trying to grasp what the City Council had just done. The developer couldn't believe his project had been rejected. The neighbors couldn't believe they'd won.
With a Sept. 13 vote on a plan to build 19 rowhouses amid homes in the Foster-Powell neighborhood, the City Council confirmed that it's a new day for infill.
It's no longer enough to meet the regs. City leaders want neighbors and developers to collaborate, even if it hurts developers' bottom line. This developer -- Jeremy Osterholm -- met with neighbors. But he failed the earnestness test.
"The signal from the council is: Are both sides trying hard?" said Commissioner Randy Leonard, who oversees the bureau that shepherds development. "We give the benefit of the doubt to the side that tries."
It's a sign of maturation -- or complication -- in the history of Portland infill. Residents, once told to suck it up when it came to increased density, have City Hall's full attention. Developers, once largely viewed as the good guys fulfilling density goals, face a new layer of strategy -- and potential cost.
"It used to be much more hard-line of 'We've got the urban growth boundary, we need to be able to provide for new housing needs, and people need to accept it,' " said Rebecca Esau, whose Bureau of Development Services staff implements the zoning code.
"Now," she said, "it's a little bit of stepping back and going, 'Well, maybe we can do better -- for the developers and for the neighbors.' "
But how do developers step from the mapped world of city code to the treacherous terrain of neighborhood demands?
Developers of the Mississippi Lofts in North invited residents to help redraw plans after the Historic Landmarks Commission rejected their original minimalist design.
And developer Opus Northwest used the city's new "design advice request" to get neighborhood feedback on its six-story apartment building overlooking Couch Park -- before drawing final plans. Now Opus faces the city review process with Northwest neighborhood leaders on its side. (See sidebar, Page XX.)
But as Osterholm learned, it's a delicate and high-stakes process. His experience illustrates neighbors' newfound power and developers' peril.
Jan Mooyman stands in the driveway of his old farmhouse off Southeast Powell Boulevard at 74th Avenue, envisioning his past and his future.
He points to where his kids played on a 73,000-square-foot former nursery that runs like a wide river between backyards. He points to the garden where the family has a hot tub. Then he points to where a new road would shave his driveway as it sweeps into the veritable village Osterholm proposed for the old nursery.
Though the neighbors recognize that homes will -- and should -- be built there, the project exemplified what many think is wrong with Portland-style infill.
When the city rezoned neighborhoods in the 1990s to ramp up density, many say it did little to account for how condo towers and rowhouses would fit in. That's how the nursery was zoned for as many as 25 attached units, more than double the density of the blocks around it.
That hodgepodge effect -- and the cheap design that sometimes accompanies it -- angers neighbors, particularly on the outer east side where streets and storm-water drainage weren't built to shoulder the load.
"They just placed all this junk here," said Lisa Mooyman, Jan's wife, who grew up in the area.
Osterholm, however, was not proposing junk. He also grew up in outer Southeast and joined the development business -- Ostercraft -- that his father, Gary, started in 1974.
He got a representative to consult with neighbors late last fall. Neighbors say they raised concerns but that their message wasn't cohesive and they tried too hard to be polite. The report Osterholm heard: no major opposition. So he proceeded.
That's when the path grew twisted.
Margie Dilworth remembers her surprise when she received a city letter about the project last spring. She, like many others, had not been at the fall meeting. Now she wondered: How could so many homes be jammed behind their backyards? Neighbors circulated a petition and showed up en masse at a design-review hearing.
Osterholm remembers his surprise. Why hadn't all this opposition surfaced sooner?
Next, a hearings officer, who got an earful from neighbors, denied permission for the project in late June because its dead-end street lacked a turnaround for garbage and emergency vehicles.
Osterholm appealed to the City Council. At a hearing Aug. 16, the council was supposed to focus on the turnaround. Instead, commissioners quickly absorbed neighbors' fury.
Some neighbors argued tactfully. Joe Shapiro noted that adding a turnaround pushed several rowhouses closer to neighbors' backyards. Losing a few units would relieve that pressure.
Others used humor. Constance Crain, a former heavy-equipment operator, testified that she would communicate her opposition through interpretive dance. She didn't. But she got everyone's attention.
"Something that's bad for the neighborhood is not good for the city," she said.
Consultant Ken Sandblast, on Osterholm's behalf, argued the code. The developer didn't believe he needed a turnaround because the street would one day go through. But he nonetheless provided three solutions, all of which city staff had signed off on.
Density, argued Sandblast, was not at issue. The code allows 25 units. Osterholm was proposing only 19.
Leonard didn't buy it.
He told Sandblast he was prepared to vote right then on the turnaround issue -- hinting that it wouldn't go in the developer's favor. But he gave the developer a choice: We can vote now or wait while you meet with neighbors again and work out a solution.
Sandblast chose the latter. But despite Leonard's directive that they discuss not only the turnaround but concerns about density, Sandblast thought city code was on Osterholm's side. At the meeting with neighbors, Osterholm wouldn't budge on the number of units.
Standing outside the Mooymans' farmhouse a week later, neighbors wondered aloud what would happen.
Dave Dilworth, Margie's husband, furrowed his brow: "I wish they would recognize the magnitude of people opposed to this."
Margie Dilworth watched Osterholm and Sandblast enter the City Council chambers Sept. 13. She nodded. They didn't.
Sandblast reviewed for the council how they had met the requirement for the turnaround, but he held firm on 19 units. "We all acknowledge it all boils down to the mighty buck," he said.
Then it was Dilworth's turn. "Not even one shingle" came out of their plan, she told the council. "No compromise has been made, although the neighborhood is willing to compromise."
The vote among commissioners present was quick. Sam Adams, Leonard and Erik Sten upheld the hearings officer's denial.
Sten later said the developer lacked a compelling strategy for why the project should proceed despite neighbors' and the hearings officer's objections. And the developer wanted to separate the turnaround issue from density concerns -- even though the turnaround deepened those concerns by pushing units closer to homes.
Neighbors needed a minute to understand the council's decision. Slowly they stood and mingled, expressing relief.
Then Dilworth and her husband approached Sandblast and Osterholm. She explained that neighbors did want houses on the land. They just hoped the developer might come back with a better proposal.
"Unfortunately, we tried to do the right thing the first time," he said tersely.
Outside the chambers, Osterholm fumed. "It's pretty frustrating to run your business based on city code, and then when you meet that city code, you can't run your business."
The following Monday, Sept. 17, he and Sandblast met in Sandblast's Tigard office. Osterholm said he had never encountered such vociferous neighborhood opposition. Sandblast noted the wild card:
"Neighborhood associations are elementary democracies in action," he said. "There's a moving target to some degree. Different people show up at every meeting, and they vote at every meeting no matter who shows up."
But he reserved his most pointed remarks for the City Council.
"You have rules. If you don't like the rules, change the rules," he said. "You don't operate outside of them."
Osterholm looked worried: "Now I'm faced with, how do I try to make the best situation I can and not be that bad guy?"
An e-mail from Sandblast on Sept. 20 spread home to home on either side of the old Foster-Powell nursery.
"What think we?" Margie Dilworth e-mailed neighbors. "I'd say it looks like an answer to prayer."
Osterholm had revised his plans. Instead of 19 rowhouses, his project featured 12 single-family houses.
In an interview, he said the larger, detached homes would sell for more and make up for the smaller number of units. Pride rang in his voice.
"I have to look at the path of least resistance, and by no means do I want to sit in front of a board of politicians again," he said. "It could be a positive all the way around. . . . When the houses are going up in the neighborhood, maybe it will just be a perfect fit."
Jan and Lisa Mooyman learned the news when they returned to their farmhouse that night.
"It seems like democracy really works," Jan said. "If you stand up together, then you can achieve something. That is a good feeling that people can do something about it. We showed it."
Erin Hoover Barnett: 503-294-5011;
ehbarnett@news.oregonian.com
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/o...540.xml&coll=7
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