Business park rezoning gets green light

After failing three times since January to get a planning commission recommendation for approval, an amended proposal for the rezoning of a major portion of North Sisters Business Park to single-family residential sailed through the city council with no comments or discussion offered by either the public or council members.

The plan approved by the council will allow for the construction of a little more than 100 homes on the property and the adjacent and already-approved residential lots to the north of the park.

The revised plan, reviewed by the planning commission on June 19, included an approximately 350-foot buffer between the city's light-industrial businesses and the residential home lots. That buffer will remain zoned as a business park.

Previous versions of the zoning request added a 150-foot sight-and-sound buffer between the light-industrial business and the residential lots. The recommendation at the time was that a mini-storage facility be built in the buffer zone. In one version there was a requirement that the mini-storage facility be built out before any homes were built. There is no requirement in the approved plan that the business park lots be built out before construction starts on the homes.

The planning commission voiced two primary objections during the various hearings and workshops on the evolving zoning proposals: The commission was concerned about putting residential homes within 15 feet of the current businesses, which the existing zoning would have allowed. These businesses include a rock-crushing facility, a log-home building facility (chainsaw noise), and a variety of heavy-equipment shops.

The commission's second concern was going against a detailed master zoning plan for the city that had been developed by a number of local volunteers and city staff over a year. That master plan had residential development expanding north and east of the city with a business park buffer between light-industrial and residential communities.

Business park zoning criteria has evolved to be very similar to the downtown commercial zoning, according to Community Development Director Pauline Hardie's presentation.

In each of the hearings before the commission, planning commissioner Doug Roberts challenged the city staff's method of analysis in computing local inventory numbers and consumption rates. In staff reports to the commission and to the council, the staff report numbers remained basically the same. The city staff report included their analysis that there was an 11- or 12-year inventory of residential lots available in Sisters, and a 100-plus-year inventory of business park land available.

Roberts pointed out on each occasion that the staff report selected a specific building permit consumption rate window (September 2013 to June 2014) that included the previously recession-suppressed build-out of Hayden Homes. The business park lot consumption rate was based on recession consumption numbers that saw only one lot sold during that period.

No one else on the commission or the council challenged the staff numbers.

Developer Peter Hall does not intend to build out the residential community himself. He will work with established home-builders to build and market the development. Hall is in the process of marketing this development to a builder.

Once a buyer/co-developer is secured, the planning approval process will begin. This will include city staff, planning commission and city council review and approval of the master development plan proposed by the builder. There will be a number of opportunities for public hearings on the development as it progresses through the approval cycle.

In other council news, the council accepted the planning commission's recommendation to charter an Urban Forestry Board (UFB) separate from the planning commission. The UFB will make recommendations to the commission. The UFB is to be staffed by local folks with expertise in forestry, and by those with a strong interest in the Sisters urban forest.

In approving the formation of an independent UFB, the council also accepted the commission's recommendation that the current interpretation of "significant trees" is not exclusive to ponderosa pines but covers all trees. They also accepted the commission's recommendation that there be a moratorium on the cutting of any "significant trees" on new projects until the UFB has a chance to make their recommendations on a "significant tree" definition and policy.

In another action, the council selected Cort Horner and Darren Layne to serve on the planning commission. This is a renewal for Layne and a first-time appointment for Horner.