Sean C. Morgan
The Sweet Home Planning Commission will hear three major requests Monday night.
In the first, the commission will consider an application for a conditional use permit and a variance to site a Spring cell tower. The second is a request for a conditional use permit to site a skate park. The third is a request for a conditional use permit to allow retail sales out of the city’s Flex Building, which is sited in an industrial zone.
Sprint wants to site a tower at Sweet Home Police Department, zoned highway commercial. The variance request refers to the height requirement.
Sprint would like to site a 103-foot tower. Eighty feet is the normal maximum under a recent ordinance. Sweet Home’s emergency dispatch would collocate on the tower, adding another 20 feet, which is exempt from the height limitation.
The tower would be a “monopole,” 40 inches in diameter at the base and 16 inches at the top with four antennae on three sides.
Upon approval, Sprint would complete negotiations with the city to lease space for the tower.
The city will hold off negotiations on the lease until hearings are completed to avoid ex parte information, conflict of interest and bias, Community Development Director Carol Lewis said. Instead, the commission could require a condition that the lease be negotiated as a condition of the permit.
Normally, an applicant must have a lease or purchase worked out to receive a conditional use permit, Lewis said, to make sure an applicant is committed to a project.
Dan Desler, a partner in Development by Design and Western States Land Reliance Trust, opposed the request for the tower in a letter to the commission.
A nearby project “is designated recreational/commercial and promises to upgrade the entire downtown core with mixed use residential, commercial and recreational uses,” Desler said. “Not only are the towers themselves unsightly, the lease agreements are usually loosely written in favor of the tower company.? The Planning Commission only has to look at the tower west of town on the hill overlooking the Santiam River to appreciate the potential negative impact on tourists and homeowners who seek Sweet Home as their destination of choice.”
Sprint had apparently considered using a water tower, at a height of 141 feet on the old Santiam Mill site, and Desler asked Spring to provide a list of the results and criteria used in choosing the Police Department site instead.
Desler said the Trust ad Preserve at Salmon Run would oppose the request, location and conditional use permit in light of the city’s ordinance and lack of evidence concerning alternative site comparisons.
In the second request, the City of Sweet Home is requesting a conditional use permit to site a skate park. The skate park would be built in the vacant school property just east of School District 55’s Central Office.
The City of Sweet Home has set aside approximately $40,000 to be used with $10,000 raised by the Kiwanis Club to build the skate park in a highway commercial zone.
As a government project, the park requires a conditional use permit.
The park would use portable equipment and be open to skate boards, in-line skates and bikes.
The third request is by Clayton Stagmier and Tim Theadoroff of Resurrection, Inc., a new nonprofit corporation that will use the Flex Building as a warehouse for wholesale and retail sales to the public of housewares and reusable items from the demolition of homes.
The Flex Building was built through grant money to house and incubate new businesses. The city offered rent breaks as an incentive for creating new family wage jobs. The building was used by Cirtek Manufacturing until about three years ago when Cirtek outgrew the building and moved to Lebanon.
The applicants say the business will provide job skills, keep refuse out of landfills and create jobs.
Desler raised several concerns in a letter to the Planning Commission. Among the concerns were about potential outside storage, adequate parking, retail traffic in the residential area and the amount of property available for development because of site conditions, such as topography and wetlands.
Hearings begin at 7:30 p.m. on Monday. Persons may call 367-8113 for further information.