Skydive landing zone requires permit

Skydivers in Sisters have been landing on a field on the west side of Camp Polk Road across from Sisters Eagle Airport this summer - an activity that requires a land-use permit that the City does not have in hand.

City Community Development Director Patrick Davenport sent a letter to the owner of the North Sisters Business Park (NSBP) property, Shane Lundgren, requesting that he either disallow parachute landings on the property or submit an application for a conditional-use permit for the activity. Alternatively, Skydive Awesome could apply for the permit.

Davenport sent the letter to Lundgren last Friday, noting that City code "allows Recreation Uses (outdoors) in the North Sisters Business Park only with an approved Conditional Use Permit."

Skydiving is an outright permitted use at the airport itself.

Davenport acknowledged that the City did not request a permit application when the skydiving operation launched in Sisters.

"We did not ask where they were going to land," he told The Nugget. "Assumed they were going to land at the airport where it is allowed. We should have asked them where, before approving the business license. But they should have asked us, too - where they can land."

Davenport stated in the letter that "continuing the use in the NSBP without appropriate land use approvals, or in the Sun Ranch Residential District under any circumstances, is a violation of the Development Code."

Such violations carry the possibility of "fines and other penalties."

However, the letter notes that "the City finds that most violations are the result of unfamiliarity with the requirements of property owners under the Development Code. In the vast majority of cases, property owners correct the situation without the need for formal code-enforcement action."