Benny Westcott
The Sweet Home Planning Commission on Thursday, Nov. 17, approved 6-1 a conditional use permit to allow an existing office building on the former Willamette Industries mill site near the corner of 22nd Avenue and Tamarack Street to be converted into a residence for a watchman.
Property owner Josh Victor, who purchased the former mill site in February, applied for the permit so he could move his family onto the property to watch over its buildings, which he plans to upgrade for future uses.
Commissioners Jeffrey Parker, Jamie Melcher, Eva Jurney, Greg Stephens, David Lowman and Henry Wolthuis voted in favor of the permit. Laura Wood voted against it, voicing concerns about toxins in the soil left over from the property’s years as a mill site.
The part of the property where the office building sits has a conditional Oregon Department of Environmental Quality no-further-action order specifying that no additional cleanup is needed. However, it applies only to commercial and industrial uses, not residential.
Sweet Home Community and Economic Development Director Blair Larsen said that the site’s contamination consists of petrochemicals like oil, gasoline and dioxin.
DEQ representative Nancy Sawka submitted a letter to Victor regarding the property’s proposed residential use.
“I think it’s probably OK since I don’t think you’re planning on living there for the long term and you are not really setting up a permanent residence,” she wrote. “To be on the conservative side, I suggest you don’t touch or dig in the soils around that area near the shops and don’t track soils on your shoes indoors.”
As conditions of approval for the application, city staff recommended that Victor use the structure only for a night watch person
and not rent it out as a residential dwelling. In addition, residential activity will be limited to the existing building’s interior, with no garden, landscaping, children’s play structures or other items. Victor will have to remove existing RVs from the property, which he cannot use for open storage. He must also comply with all building code standards before the proposed structure can be occupied.
Still, these conditions were not enough to sway Wood.
“Mr. Victor knows about those dangers and is deciding he would like to move his family there, but my concern is that he moves out and then decides to make it a residence where other people may rent,” she said. “Or he may employ somebody who he allows to work there, but they are not sufficiently educated about that, and they have their family there.
“It really is our job as the city to make sure that we’re not putting residential zones in places where we could cause health hazards because of known heavy chemicals,” she continued. “I feel like it’s our responsibility as the planning commission to take those things seriously and into account, and not let a property owner’s convenience dictate what we allow.
“A lot of the security [Victor’s] planning on having is security that’s possible without turning this building into a residential building.
Putting in cameras and security to monitor the property and let him know if anyone’s on it, those things are all possible without this being a residential building.”
Wolthuis, on the other hand, said, “I think the staff has already put considerable recommended restrictions on the approval of this, and that gives a fair amount of safety to whatever decision we make.”
“My thought is that having Josh down there, if there were activity on the site, instead of calling the police as the first response, Josh could say ‘Hey, get off my property, or I will call the police,’” Melcher said. “In that case, the trespassers would likely go, because they wouldn’t want the police to come down. I think that would actually minimize calls.”
“The bottom line is it’s Mr. Victor’s property,” Stephens said, “and he wants to do everything he can to keep trespassers out. And if there’s a presence there, that’s going to help. It looks to me like a perfectly legitimate thing to do.”
Victor explained his reasons for wanting to move his family into the building.
“The main reason I’ve been trying to do this is because I’ve had people trying to burn their fires down there,” he said. “And the last thing I need is for a whole bunch more buildings to get burnt down and have to do the cleanup associated with all that, and deal with the total loss.”
He expressed dissatisfaction with his current watchmen, explaining that the Sweet Home Fire & Ambulance District extinguished a fire on the property, which he’d assigned personnel to monitor. Victor himself found another fire on the property later that day, “right up next to” a building.
“Obviously the watchmen weren’t doing the job as needed,” he said. “That’s why I want to be moving down so I can take care of it myself, and make sure that I don’t have any of that riff-raff or whatever going around and basically starting everything on fire. … As it’s getting colder, it’s becoming more of an issue. So I just want to make sure that I’m covered on that.”
He didn’t foresee the old office building becoming his permanent residence.
“This is something for the next few years, until I can get enough business going and get those buildings up to code where I can rent them out or do something with them,” he said. “That way I can have traffic in there so that people are actually watching it all the time.”
According to Victor, the building already has two bathrooms with showers and a kitchen. It’s connected to the city sewer system, and electricians have checked the structure.
“There’s not anything structurally that I really need to do,” he said. “It’s just basically getting permission so I can start using it.”
He did note that he will need to connect to city water.
Sweet Home Fire Chief Nick Tyler commented on the matter in writing.
“I would support the idea of someone on-site of this property 24/7,” he wrote. “From a fire viewpoint, there is potential to have a large human-caused fire on this property. Having a ‘watchman’ would provide a level of risk reduction.”