Land use can be a snoozer, I get that. But the decision made here is what will determine what type of bike facility we get, if any.
City of Portland staff recommended denial of the Land Use permit for the proposed 263-unit Raleigh Crest development on the Alpenrose site a week ago Friday, concluding that “all of the relevant standards and approval criteria have not been met.” Although the denial was based on several issues, the most complicated of them seemed to involve a wildlife corridor located on the southernmost edge of the property.
The pinch-point of the corridor is the area just north of the intersection of SW Shattuck Rd and Vermont St. Not only is this location tricky for wildlife, it’s also not a great place to be on a bicycle or walking—but wildlife has federal and state protection.
Here’s an excerpt from the decision that talks about the wildlife issue:
… the site is a critical connection point for the movement of wildlife between the upstream habitat areas along Vermont Creek up to Gabriel Park and the extensive downstream habitat areas starting at Bauman Woods and the confluence with Fanno Creek and beyond into the Fanno Creek habitat corridor. Thus, wildlife mobility is a key functional value of the site and the ability of wildlife to continue to move through this corridor should be preserved and carefully considered in any redesign of the SW Shattuck crossing. Any increased barriers to movement (e.g., proposed retaining wall, fall protection fencing, increased vehicular traffic, etc.) and reduction of wildlife mobility through this corridor must be mitigated, as they could have adverse long-term impacts on local wildlife species, particularly semi-aquatic mammals such as beaver, river otter, muskrat, and mink as well as the flightless ducklings of locally breeding waterfowl, such as mallard and wood duck. Beaver are of particular concern because of their status as a keystone species in wetland ecosystems and the important role they play in creating and maintaining the habitat used by a wide variety of other species in this wetland complex.
Recap
When BikePortland last checked in on the proposed development of the Alpenrose site, the city had just approved (in concept) the developer’s proposal to build a multi-use bicycle and pedestrian path (a multi-use path, or “MUP”) along the property’s SW Shattuck Road frontage. This was a big win for cyclists and pedestrians because it meant that the city was accepting the design’s bio-swales as adequate for treating stormwater run-off from the MUP.
Readers might have noticed that the MUP stopped short of Vermont Street. SW Shattuck Rd narrows as it passes through a wetland and over Vermont Creek, and loses the width needed for the MUP. In a configuration which is common in southwest Portland (which lacks stormwater pipes under the road), Shattuck runs through the wetland on a berm which has a pipe, or culvert, running perpendicular to the road to allow Vermont Creek to pass underneath it.
Maybe this is more than you want to know, but it is the size and shape of the culvert which is tripping up the Bureau of Environmental Services approval. The bureau wants Raleigh Crest to upgrade the culvert to allow safe passage for bigger animals, and BES is also concerned that a proposed retaining wall on the west side of Shattuck will block that passage.
What happens next
Denial of a permit is not the death knell for this project that one might think.
Permitting and Development staff prepare the report for, and make recommendations to, the Hearings Officer, and it is the Hearings Officer (HO) who makes the decision to approve the permit or not. The public hearing for the project will be this Wednesday, via zoom. The HO bases their decision on the staff report, the applicant response, and on comments from the public.
The public and the applicant are allowed to testify, and one thing I will be listening for is the developer’s stance toward the denial. The developer has a choice, they can comply with staff requests, or push back against them. The issue of proportionality might arise, in other words, “who should pay and how much?”
Proportionality
Proportionality falls under the Nollan-Dolan body of jurisprudence, a series of court cases which have limited the public works requirements jurisdictions can exact from developers. In this case, the city is arguing that, because of the harm to wildlife caused by the increased traffic Raleigh Crest will bring, the developer should bear responsibility for improving the Shattuck-Vermont intersection and the wetlands around it.
An obvious argument the developer can make is that the city has neglected this street for decades and that, therefore, the city should shoulder part of the cost of fixing it, that it shouldn’t be the developer’s responsibility to fix a subpar street.
What makes it a proportionality issue is the need to determine what portion of the cost each party should be responsible for. This can be settled through negotiation, or it can go to court. If any party disagrees with the HO’s decision, they can appeal it to the Portland City Council, to the state Land Use Board of Appeals, and to Oregon courts.
Why Land Use is important
Land use can be a snoozer, I get that. But the decision made here is what will determine what type of bike facility we get, if any.
Also, we are in the middle of a national housing crisis that is being partly attributed to permitting and zoning complexity (and to NIMBYism), so understanding the process a developer and city go through before a subdivision can be approved might shed light on the price of your rent.
Finally, land use and transportation, which should go hand and hand, have largely become decoupled in southwest Portland. This disconnect leads to gaps in the cycling network, and to the southwest having the least sidewalk coverage in the city. Development of the Alpenrose site will possibly let readers watch the birth of a gap in real time.
