County denies expansion proposals

Deschutes County Hearings Officer Karen Green shot down two separate applications that would bring more than 60 acres of new industrial land into the Sisters Urban Growth Boundary.

Last week, Green denied Barclay Meadows Business Park's request to add 35 acres along the west side of Camp Polk Road near the airport and rezone it from farm to industrial use.

She also turned down a virtually identical request from the Sisters School District on approximately 30 acres at the end of North Pine Street.

According to Green, both applications failed to show that Sisters' streets could handle the extra traffic the developments would generate. She also raised concerns about the compatibility of permitted industrial uses with the adjacent residential area.

Both decisions will automatically go to the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners for a second hearing.

"We are hopeful that the county commissioners will approve our request," school board chairman Bill Reed told The Nugget.

Reed noted that Oregon Department of Transportation planner Peter Russell accepted the school district's proposal to pay their share to install a signal at Cascade Avenue and Locust Street and to widen the intersection.

"The proposed mitigation satisfied ODOT," Reed said. "I guess I'm hoping ODOT can convince the county commissioners."

The school district's own traffic study, however, indicated that signals at Locust Street and Cascade Avenue or at Pine Street and Cascade Avenue "would not function" because they would back up Highway 20 and block other intersections.

In her decision on Barclay Meadows Business park, Green took particular issue with the applicant's traffic study.

Saying the study addressed "less than half the subject property and assumes only approximately one-quarter acreage available for development actually will be developed, the hearings officer finds the ...conclusions are neither reliable nor credible..."

Jack Rinn, representing the owners of Barclay Meadows Business Park, said Green's conclusions were the result of a "misunderstanding."

His study referred only to actual building footage, plus a seven-acre park under the airport overfly zone, Rinn said, not the entire 35 acres.

Like Bill Reed, Rinn hopes the board of county commissioners will put more weight on ODOT's acceptance of a traffic signal at Cascade and Locust than on Green's concerns that the intersection has already "failed."

Rinn also believes that Green used the wrong ordinances in determining what could be developed on the land.

Since the land was going to be brought into the urban growth boundary, he felt she should have used the city ordinance, not the county ordinance.

The city ordinance is more restrictive, and the potential impact on neighbors less severe, Rinn indicated.