Council to explore housing plan

The City of Sisters is taking a look at possibilities for development of the nine-acre parcel between Larch and Locust, just south of the post office.

At the Thursday, June 28 city council meeting John Gilbert of Pacific Crest Affordable Housing addressed the council to request an expedited workshop to help develop a risk/cost estimate for the acquisition and development of the property where the Black Butte Crossing development was scheduled. That development failed to launch.

Gilbert and his partner Rob Roy, along with Sisters Habitat for Humanity, are working with the bank to try and secure this property. Habitat is interested in consolidating their retail, ReStore and business offices on the property. Pacific Crest is interested in developing affordable housing on at least one parcel of the property.

"We are coming up against a couple of things that are creating some risk and creating some difficulties in being able to move forward with this project," said Gilbert. "What we would like to do is to partition this land into the four natural city blocks that it will ultimately be.

"There is off-site infrastructure that will be required that will include running Black Butte Avenue east-west through the property, and Cedar, north-south," said Gilbert. "It would also require bringing water and sewer to the property. We would like to partition the property but hold off on off-site infrastructure until we are looking at building permits. We are not seeking to get out of cost of off-site infrastructure costs - just holding off until we are ready to build."

A second concern is the possibility of the increased traffic flow as a result of the development triggering a required dollar contribution to the mitigation of the failing intersection at Locust Street and Cascade Avenue. Without having that dollar risk defined, or at least bracketed, the undefined costs are posing too much risk for the project to move forward, according to Gilbert.

The City workshop will be to discuss the possibilities of postponing the infrastructure, and to try and get a handle on the cost risk of required improvements at the Locust and Cascade intersection.