Scott Swanson
The Oregon Appeals Court has upheld a decision by the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals regarding the development of a 108.59-acre property just north of Crawfordsville that has been the focus of a battle between neighbors and developers since 2019.
In a four-page ruling handed down March 8, the Appeals Court essentially affirmed a LUBA decision, issued last fall, which required Linn County to specify details in writing of how it will ensure that the conditions of approval for the development are complied with in the future.
The ongoing main issue has been how the applicants’ proposal to subdivide the property fits into county planning designations that set aside lands for agriculture, forestlands and natural resources, scenic and historic areas, and open space. A majority of the property has been designated as big game habitat by both the county and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The case has taken multiple twists and turns since it began in May of 2019, when applicants Ronald and Virginia Henthorne and developer Lynn Merrill applied to the county to rezone the parcel, located north of Crawfordsville Drive and the Calapooia River and northeast of Crawfordsville and the intersection of Brush Creek and Highway 228, from farm forest to non-resource five-acre minimum zoning.
Merrill told The New Era in 2020 that he planned to divide the property and build between 10 and 17 homes.
Neighbors argue that the fact that a majority of the property is designated as big game habitat disqualifies it for the type of development proposed.
After Linn County Commissioners John Lindsey and Will Tucker approved a change from farm forest to non-resource five-acre minimum zoning on Aug. 6, 2019, neighbors appealed the decision to LUBA three months later, with assistance from Thousand Friends of Oregon appealed the decision to LUBA. LUBA reversed the county’s decision.
The applicants then took the case to the state Court of Appeals, which reversed LUBA’s decision, determining that “LUBA erroneously failed to defer to the county’s plausible interpretation of its own comprehensive plan.” The court only pinpointed one aspect of LUBA’s decision, and the land use board issued another ruling in February 2022, ordering the county to evaluate how the developer’s plans would impact the mapped wildlife habitat on the property and present that analysis in its findings.
Neighbors have submitted written testimony to the county, saying they moved to the area expecting that the county’s planning standards would persist.
The Oregon State Court of Appeals then reversed LUBA’s decision, and it was returned to the county for a remand hearing, held Sept. 21, 2021. The commissioners reaffirmed their decision to approve the project, but the Crawfordsville Drive residents went back to LUBA with more concerns about the approval.
In the Sept. 26, 2022, decision – the one reviewed by the Appeals Court in the latest chapter of the saga, the three-member LUBA board, all attorneys, split 2-1, with the majority agreeing that, despite some missed deadlines and sloppiness by the petitioners in presenting the appeal, there were elements of the county’s decision that needed to be remanded.
In its March 8 opinion, the Appeals Court affirmed LUBA’s 2022 ruling, essentially agreeing that the county needed to adequately address the issues the LUBA majority was concerned about and that some procedural errors by the project’s neighbors’ representation in earlier back-and-forth were not sufficient to prevent LUBA from making its ruling.
For more details of the history in this case leading up to the LUBA decision last fall, visit http://www.sweethomenews.com and do a word search for “LUBA.”