Lake Creek Lodge plan heads to court

After nearly two years of meetings, decisions, challenges and legal wrangling, the outlook for Camp Sherman’s Lake Creek Lodge expansion plans is still clouded.

Owners Gordon and Jeff Jones have planned adding 23 new tourist rental cabins to the existing 16 units. Friends of the Metolius have petitioned against this on several points, the most salient of which are defining what a tourist rental cabin is and secondly what is measured as total buildable space.

In February 2005, for the second time, LUBA (Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals) remanded the Jefferson County decision regarding the proposed expansion at Lake Creek Lodge.

The county immediately decided to appeal that remand.

“The Board of Commissioners has directed me to proceed with filing an appeal with the Oregon Court of Appeals of the LUBA decision involving Lake Creek Lodge,” said Jacki Haggerty, Jefferson County Counsel.

Initially, the cabins were to be used for 180 days as rental cabins, with the owners having potential use for the remaining year’s time. After the first remand from LUBA, this was changed to 245 days as rental cabins with the owners having potential use of 120 days spread over four quarters of the year.

This was not acceptable to FOM and in theirargument before LUBA they state, “Petitioners (FOM) contend that these limits are still inconsistent with the status of the cabins as ‘tourist rental cabins’ and that the proposed cabins are therefore subject to the more stringent requirements for ‘single-family dwellings.’”

Under current Camp Sherman and Jefferson County zoning this would require five acres per single-family unit vs. two tourist rental cabins per acre, the latter with 2,800 square feet of total buildable space per acre.

It is not clear if there is presently a minimum number of days of owner use that would allow defining these as tourist rental cabins.

The second challenge comes from defining buildable space and what part of decking should be counted in that calculation.