Hearing set for industrial land requests

County officials will hear two requests to add industrial land to the City of Sisters in a meeting at the Sisters Firehall at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, January 26.

The Deschutes County Board of Commissioners will hear a request to bring 35 acres of the proposed Barclay Meadows Business Park into the Urban Growth Boundary and rezone it from farm to light industrial use. The proposed business park lies along Camp Polk Road north of Sisters.

The commissioners will also hear a nearly identical request from the Sisters School District regarding approximately 30 acres known as the Lundgren Mill site at the north end of Pine Street.

Both applications were turned down in November by Deschutes County Hearings Officer Karen Green, due to traffic problems posed by development of the parcels and concerns about the compatibility of some industrial uses next to residential properties lying to the north.

Both the school district and the business park developers believe Green applied the wrong zoning ordinance in her decision. Since the land will be annexed to the city as soon as the applications are approved, the developers argue that the City of Sisters zoning ordinance should apply.

The city ordinance is more restrictive than the county urban area zoning ordinance referred to by Green. Some of the heavier uses cited by Green as incompatible are not allowed in Sisters or are allowed only as conditional uses.

Both Barclay Meadows Business Park and the school district have indicated that they are willing to "mitigate" traffic problems.