Lake Oswego Planning Commission Considers Major Rezoning on October 27, 2025

Good evening.

Like to call to order the planning commission meeting for today, October 27th, 2025.

Christina, would you please call the rule?

Chair Mitchell.

Here.

Here.

Commissioner Sly.

Here.

Commissioner Twin?

Commissioner Bruce?

Here.

And Commissioner Diana Modern is absent today.

Thank you, Christina.

Moving on to item 3.1 on tonight's agenda.

It's approval of the minutes from our meeting on September 8th, 2025.

Uh Commissioners, does anyone have any comments or or questions or revisions to those minutes?

Do we have a motion?

Motion to approve the minutes.

Second.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any unopposed?

Any abstentions?

Great.

Item 3.2 is approval of the minutes from our meeting from September 22nd, 2025.

And commissioners, same question?

Any comments, questions, or proposed revisions to those meetings?

Minutes.

Okay.

Do we have a motion?

Motion to approve.

Do we have a second?

Okay.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any of those?

Any abstentions?

Abstain.

One abstention.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

That moves us on to item number four on tonight's agenda.

It is the public comment section.

Uh Christina, do we have any community members that want to present information or raise an issue regarding items not on tonight's agenda?

Not tonight.

Thank you.

Item number five, Commission for Citizen Involvement.

General updates.

And I have one.

It is a from the Forest Highlands Neighborhood Association, the annual membership meeting.

It will be held Sunday, November 16th, 2025 from 3 to 5 p.m.

at the Red Fox Hills Community Clubhouse.

That's 3,000 Bonnie Bray Drive.

The meeting agenda, which is subject to change, will be review of old business, new business, and QA.

Again, that's the Forest Highlands Neighborhood Association annual meeting Sunday, November 16th from 3 to 5 p.m.

Okay.

That will bring us to item 6.1 on tonight's agenda.

It is LU 25-0029, the 400 fourth 4000 cruiseway place rezoning.

It is a public hearing and it involves a request to amend the comprehensive plan map and the zoning map to change designations for the three parcels from a comprehensive plan designation of OCR-3 to OCR-0.

And from a don zoning designation of OC to R0.

Staff coordinator is Ellen Davis.

Thank you, Chair Mitchell.

As I think most people are aware, I'm new to the city, so this process is new to me.

Please indulge my errors.

Applicable criteria and standards that are set forth in the staff report.

Testimony and evidence should be based directed on directed at and based on those criteria or other criteria in the city comprehensive plan, the land use regulations you believe apply to this application.

Again, the city's decision must be based on the applicable criteria in the city's comprehensive plan, land use regulations, and state law and nothing else.

Failure to raise an issue tonight.

If you have a concern about the application failed, you're to risk you to issue sorry, failure to raise an issue in sufficient detail to allow other people to respond, including the planning commission, uh prohibits an appeal to the city council or land use board of appeals on that issue.

In other words, raise it or waive it.

Also, with respect to the applicant, the failure of the applicant to raise any constitutional or other concerns about any conditions of approval again in sufficient detail to allow people an opportunity to respond, prohibits an action in circuit court on that issue.

Um the hearing tonight will proceed in the following order.

We'll first hear the staff report, then testimony from the applicant, presentation from the applicant, followed by any testimony in support of the application, then any uh testimony opposed to the application, any neutral testimony, and then we'll come back to the applicant for any final rebuttal.

Um any members of the planning commission have any bias, ex party communications or conflicts of interests you need to declare.

I have none.

Seeing none.

Does anyone in the audience wish to challenge the bias or raise any concerns about X party communication?

Seeing none, moving on.

Um, okay.

Then I uh we'll return this, Mr.

Chair, to you.

Um sorry, one other thing.

According to the city's process, the applicant has up to 20 minutes to for its presentation.

Members of the audience uh each are allowed to have five minutes for your uh any testimony you'd like to offer.

And then groups and neighborhood associations are allowed up to 10 minutes.

Um these time limits, by the way, don't include questions from plan commissions.

If your first the first sentence out of your mouth gets a whole lot of questions, you still have four minutes and 40 seconds left.

Um testimony uh uh the applicant's presentation may include testimony from the applicant and others of the applicant team, including attorneys, consultants, and others.

Those are all included within your 20 minutes.

Um staff will let's see, track the time and uh otherwise I'll turn this back to the chair.

Thank you, Mr.

Crane.

And I will turn it over to Ms.

Ellen Davis, uh senior planner.

Thank you.

Good evening, commissioners.

My name is Ellen Davis.

I'm a senior planner for the city.

And before I get started tonight, I want to mention that we have 10 public comments that were submitted after the staff report was published, but before today's noon deadline.

These are exhibits G503 through 511 and exhibit G100.

All of these comments were added to the public record of file on the city website and were provided to the commission directly.

So let's get into this uh quasi-judicial public hearing.

And let's start out with what does that mean, that word mean quasi-judicial, since that's uh you know, not in common parlance.

This means we're talking about a specific location.

I know that this body is usually looking at things that are legislative in nature that apply to the whole city often, but in this case, we are uh zooming in and just looking at one specific location for this uh request tonight.

This location is 4,000 Cruise Way Place.

It is located on Cruise Way on the uh south side, Daniel Way is on the west side, and Davis Lane is in the northeast.

Um, so it's in close proximity to Boones Ferry Road and Cruise Way.

Even though we're focused on a specific location tonight, this is not a development application.

And I will repeat that multiple times.

It's very important.

There is no construction, no tree removal, no specific plans with this application tonight.

If there is a future development application in the future, it would have to follow all of the applicable codes at that time that it's submitted.

So that's not what we're doing tonight.

We're literally just looking at whether changing the color on the zoning and comp plan map makes sense or not for this location.

No actual on-the-ground development.

So the application before us tonight is actually really just looking at the feasibility for this proposal to meet all of the comprehensive plan policies that we're going to be looking at.

And uh I'm also going to say it a few more times.

We're just looking at applicable policies and just changing, looking at changing the zoning and comprehensive plan map.

So let us get get moving along.

So the request tonight has two parts to it.

We have a comprehensive plan map amendment from OCR3 to OCR0, and a rezoning request from OC to R0.

OC is office campus.

R0 and R3 is high density residential.

The office campus zone does allow residential uses in addition to commercial uses.

It allows residential uses at a medium density, um, a minimum of R5 density or greater.

Um, so that's just the difference there between OC and the R designations.

So instead of reading through every single criteria in my 25-page staff report, I'm gonna group together some applicable criteria into three main categories, and I'll just finish up with a really brief touch on housing.

Um so please refer to the staff report for those full details.

So let's start out looking at compatibility with neighboring uses.

So our subject sites here outlined in blue with a star in the center.

On the west side, we have a commercial site.

Yakima is currently the tenant there.

To the southwest, we have a multi-tenant commercial space.

To the north and southeast, we have uh assisted living facilities, these are springs facilities.

Um to the direct east, we have an apartment complex, the Haven Apartments.

So when we're looking at the difference between an R0 and an R3 zone, the R0 and R3 zones both allow all of the same residential uses.

So their allowed uses are the same.

They also share the same maximum height and the same minimum setbacks from property lines, in addition to the same minimum amount of open space and landscaping.

So these are some of the standards that regulate where buildings are constructed on a site that really can lead to compatibility between neighboring sites.

So distances from property lines, height of building are really the things you see from the neighboring site.

In this case, it's gonna be the same between R0 and R3 for the north and the east sides, which are already R3.

The OCR3 also has a similar designation over to the west side.

So that is one way in which the uses and the dimensional standards would be compatible for an R0 designation at this location based on the development and what's allowed on the properties around it.

The applicant also explains in their narrative that the proposal aligns with the Woluga neighborhood plan, specifically because of the site's location, adjacent to existing high density multifamily development, commercial employment areas, arterial roadways, and that it's not within a established single family neighborhood.

So that meets the Waluga neighborhood plan policies that talk about locating higher density multifamily uses near arterial roadways, commercial businesses, existing multifamily, and not disrupting an established single family detached neighborhood with a higher density development that's not compatible.

So in this case, it is a location that is compatible, it does meet the neighborhood plan for this uh Woluga neighborhood association.

Adequate public facilities.

So let's start out with sewer and water.

The applicant provided a conceptual utility plan shown here and a technical memorandum analyzing the existing water and sewer systems and master plans for this area in exhibit F2.

It's a 26-page technical document that goes through the existing and potential future demands on these systems in great detail with capacity analysis, storage, net demand, looking at the current OC zoning and the proposed R0 zoning as the two different scenarios they were examining.

And under the R0 scenario they're looking at was worst case scenario, absolute worst case scenario.

I don't really believe that that could actually fit on the site.

But so they were really looking at the absolute most number of units that you could fit here, and is the public infrastructure adequate?

They found that yes, the public infrastructure is adequate.

The city's engineering department reviewed the applicant's submittal, and they concur that there is adequate capacity in our public infrastructure for the proposed comp plan amendment and rezone, even under the worst case scenario.

There are no issues for public utility infrastructure with this proposal.

Everything is more than adequate.

So this is another reason why this is a good location for higher density is because of the adequacy of the infrastructure in this area.

Let's look at roads and traffic next.

In exhibit F4, the applicant provides a technical memorandum from a registered traffic engineer comparing the uses allowed on the site under today's OC zoning and under the proposed R0 zoning.

Again, overshooting what's actually likely to possibly develop on the site, really looking at absolute worst-case scenario.

And what they found is that the current zoning, the OC zoning that allows a variety of commercial uses, has a great deal of square footage of kind of high traffic generating uses.

We've got medical offices, a little retail, general office, and that can especially generate high traffic volumes at peak rush hours.

Under the proposal, if the site is residential in nature, even if it's really maxed out, they've got as many units as they can possibly get on there, we'll actually be looking at decreasing the rush hour traffic to the site compared to what's allowed now under the OC zoning.

Because the peak hour treat trip generation would decrease, this proposed comp plan and zone change map amendments would not be expected to have a negative effect on the transportation system.

Our engineering staff have reviewed the applicant's traffic memo and accepted it.

ODOT also got to take a look at it.

They didn't see any issues.

So those are some traffic engineers outside of the applicant's team who have reviewed this memorandum and agree with it.

And I'm gonna also mention, so I was just focusing on single occupant vehicle trips, but there's actually TriMet bus stops in very close proximity to this site.

That is a great thing for a high density residential zone to have access to public transit, not be completely reliant on single occupant vehicle trips.

So having some existing uh bus and trimet infrastructure in the area is a is a plus.

I'm gonna go on a little bit of a tangent here.

So we received a number of comments about school overcrowding.

This is not a criteria for approval.

Uh Lake Oswego School District is a separate jurisdiction.

They're not part of the city, we're not part of them.

But we do work together.

We work together pretty closely on a lot of different projects.

And I can say that after nine years of working with the district, the district generally plans for extra capacity in all of their building, their plans, everything.

The school district wants more enrollment.

Enrollment is tied directly to funding.

So getting more enrollment is not a bad thing for the school district.

Our district is not currently bursting at the seams, it has plenty of capacity for more children.

So even though it's not a criteria, schools are adequate to handle increased residential zoning in the city.

If they need to move a line or two, then they need to move a line or two.

That's a common process.

So it's not a criteria for approval, but there is adequate capacity in schools, just since that was a comment that came up a number of times.

And so let's move on to a criteria that actually does apply.

The feasibility of preserving trees and uh protected natural areas.

So the applicant went through and responded to all of the applicable criteria in their narrative, but they also provided a conceptual site plan.

And this conceptual site plan is really important because it provides us with an idea for if it is feasible to protect trees on this site.

Again, this is not a development plan.

We're not looking at development plan for the site.

This is not necessarily what's going to happen on the site.

But they are meeting that bar, which is the bar that's for this application of showing that it is feasible to protect trees.

So these green areas they have shown here over on the west side of the site.

They have a targeted tree protection area.

This also corresponds with, especially over here with the Three Sisters Creek.

That's an RP district that's also protected.

So this area would protect both existing mature vegetation and trees and would also protect a creek or stream corridor.

So two birds, one stone.

There's also this area over here in the middle of the site that's been identified for tree protection to try to protect as a large number of Oregon white oaks on the site as possible.

So that's showing that there are ways to develop the site without removing uh trees, especially mature Oregon white oaks on the site.

But this is just a conceptual site plan.

There's no development, we don't have any tree removal proposed at this time.

That is not a question for this body.

So I just want to make that nice and clear.

And lastly, I'm gonna talk a little just a tiny tiny bit about housing.

So I know that this commission is already very familiar with housing.

Um, I know that uh you've worked pretty diligently through a number of uh like housing needs analysis, housing production strategy.

Um, so it might not be a surprise to this body, but the whole state of Oregon, the metro region, and even the city of Lake Oswego don't have enough housing for all of our projected community needs right now.

So the housing needs analysis documents that we need more housing.

We have a housing production strategy that we are just starting to move forward with.

We're just starting on it.

This application is not part of the city's overall housing production strategy, but it's going in the same direction that we're trying to go in.

And we have a land use policy D7 in our comprehensive plan, which requires us as a city to allow quasi-judicial comp plan map amendment requests to be submitted at any time.

So having this request come in at this time when we're starting to work on a broader overall city uh response to our housing production strategy, it's really no reason to penalize or look at this application differently.

So this is a quasi-judicial request for a rezone, which is allowed to be submitted now.

It is unrelated to the rest of the city's work, but still again, moving in that same direction of trying to create more residentially zoned land, especially high-density residential land, so that we can meet our housing needs for the community moving into the future.

Um, and so that was uh in response to a couple of comments we received in uh the public comments.

There were also a few public comments around whether this is actually a need.

Um the city's working on this broader strategy.

Um, the this proposal doesn't have any ties to specific affordable housing.

Again, we don't have any specific proposal right now.

So just gonna break that down a little bit.

That um this application right now does not look at future rental or sales and what those costs would be for anything that happens on the site in the future.

That's not under the purview of this commission or this application.

We're just looking at whether or not this is a good site for rezoning.

So I hope we haven't repeated that too many times to make that too boring.

Um in this case, staff finds that the application does meet all of the required criteria.

Again, that's just looking at applicable criteria.

We need more housing.

This site is a good location for high density zone because there's adequate public infrastructure, there's access to arterial roadways and bus lines, a high density zone would be compatible with the neighboring uses that are already existing, and it's feasible to protect existing trees on the site.

So looking at those applicable criteria and the applicant's submittal, staff find that the applicable criteria are met, and we recommend approval.

So this closes my presentation and I can take any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Davis.

Commissioners, you know, we're there's obviously the time applicant will have time to give their testimony, and uh those that have submitted and want to speak will give their time and then we will have deliberation.

So uh we certainly have time to consider and ask questions.

But if we have any questions for uh senior planner Davis right now, we can go ahead and ask those.

I have one question since we're addressing the uh tree and the white oak question at this time.

Can staff clarify whether a formal inventory of the existing white oak trees on the site has been conducted?

And if so, whether any of those trees are designated as significant or protected under the city's code.

Uh no, so there is no tree inventory at this time.

That's something that happens later on in the process.

So if a development moves on in the future, then the applicant will prepare a tree inventory, a survey for the whole site.

That would be a requirement for a development application moving forward.

Um so we do not have a tree inventory at this time.

So I can't say if anything would qualify as a significant tree.

Um that is something that we would look at with a future development application, uh, applying all of the uh codes in place at the time.

So that'd be chapter 55 uh 02080 is what would apply, but that would be for a development review commission application in the future.

Thank you.

So no formal inventory has been done yet.

Um, what standards or conditions will apply to ensure protection of the existing white oaks during site development and what types of mitigation are required if removal of any oaks is um proposed.

So again, that's going to be a future question, but that would be chapter 55.02.080 would apply to any proposed tree removal for a future development.

That does include protections of significant trees, it includes mitigation requirements.

Um mitigation for removal of a native tree requires mitigation with a native tree.

Um, if you are removing a significant tree, and that is defined clearly in our code, then you uh are replanting at a two to one ratio for removal of significant trees for development purposes.

Thank you.

And native replacement.

If a native tree is removed, it has to be native.

Thank you.

I I could just also add that um we have protected uh resources in the city um under goal five of statewide planning goals, natural resources.

This site does not contain any protected tree groves, but it does contain a uh stream corridor, I believe, along the west side of the site, which was identified on the plan.

That has been inventoried, but it isn't specific to the oaks.

It's specific to the stream corridor.

And um, as Ms.

Davis uh indicated, any future development application will be subject to the tree code that's in effect at the time that they um submit their development application.

Um, as you all know, we are in the midst of um uh making amendments to our tree code, which will take several more months.

So it's unclear whether this uh if this proposal moves forward with a development later on, whether it would be subject to the tree code that's existing or whether it would be subject to the tree code that uh will eventually be amended.

They'll be subject to whatever the standards are in effect at the time that they submit their development application.

But as Ms.

Davis pointed out, we do have uh criteria that would apply that encourages the retention and um of significant trees on the site, which could include those tree groves.

Um, but if there are no reasonable alternatives, it could allow removal of significant trees and mitigation is required.

Thank you.

So you mentioned that um residential use is already allowed under the existing zoning at the same height and standards uh as the change in zoning.

So, what would be the density difference between the R3 and the R0?

That's a little bit uh tricky to answer because there is no maximum zoning in the R0 zone.

There is a maximum zoning in the R3 zone.

Um getting to those maximum zones or densities is even trickier because uh the city of Lake Oswego has a variety of other standards beyond density that usually limit how many units you can actually build on a site.

So we have a 40% combined open space landscaping requirement that applies to an R0 or an R3 site.

So that you know, you can see, oh, I have unlimited density, but then you start taking away 40% of the site, you throw in a height limit, and suddenly unlimited is a lot more limited than it looked before.

So it's hard to say exactly what that difference would be.

Um two of the areas of difference between the two zones are floor area and lot coverage.

So those are things that um in the R0 zone, it's like for floor area in the R3 zone, it's a one to one ratio, and the R0 zone, it's a 1.2 to 1 ratio.

So it's a little bit more floor area that's allowed in the R0 zone.

Similarly, with lot coverage, it's a 50% lot coverage in the R3 zone, a 55% lot coverage allowed in the R0 zone.

So again, things do kind of get a little tricky just because you have 55% of the site that you could develop um that with lot coverage, you start getting into stormwater swales, and you've already got your open space and landscape and everything, that can really change what's developing on a site when you get down into it.

So would it be realistic to say that an R3 to R0 would be like 20% bump potentially in additional units?

Again, I mean, I know it's kind of a variable thing, but I I feel kind of um not at a great place to eyeball that.

Um the applicants team might have a better, more specific answer to that since they were running different development scenarios, so they might have a better grasp for their site and kind of their product and what they're looking at, what that difference might look like.

Right, thank you.

I would add though that that the comprehensive plan map zone right now is um office campus slash R3, but the zoning that is actually applicable on the site is office campus.

And although it does allow residential, it's at a significantly um less density.

Um I and can you tell me uh remind me what the FAR is of that?

I I think the problem, I forget if it was FAR or lot coverage, but um the lot cover, I think the lot coverage in the uh OC zone is at 25%.

So that's really the the deal breaker for residential development.

Let me confirm that.

Um I thought it was the FA, the floor area ratio, which is the total square footage, is pretty low for uh residential for that area, so it doesn't I guess for lack of better term or using a developer term doesn't pencil out for residential.

Um and then, but then the uh lot coverage is also um significantly less than even the R3 or R0 zone.

So I just wanted to clarify that if under the current zoning um residential uh at uh at high density is technically allowed, but at a significantly less density than um the R0 zoning.

Thank you.

Commissioners, any other initial questions?

Okay, if I'm correct on my procedure, I think now we get testimony by the applicant, um, which will be up to 20 minutes.

Christina, do we have a clock that's uh ticking, or are we thank you?

Give them a second to get in.

Is there a secret?

Oh, it's working.

All right.

Uh hello, I'm gonna be super quick.

Um, and then I'll pass it off to the team here.

But um my name's Jed Brush, I represent Shornsteen.

Um just a reminder of who Shorensteen is.

Most of you are probably familiar, but um we've uh owned in Lake Oswego since 2007.

I've been at Shornstein since 2006, so I've very much lived uh this investment that Chornstein's made.

Um we're an owner, an operator, and a developer.

That means we kind of do everything soup to nuts, we build it, but then we also manage it so we get constant feedback from tenants, whether that's residential tenants or office tenants for what they're looking for.

Um since we acquired in 2007, again, just as a reminder, we've developed an office building.

We refer to it as cruise oaks three, approximately 100,000 feet on Meadows Road.

And then we've also uh developed Willow, which is 158 unit residential building on Meadows Road.

Uh right now we own 14 buildings, 1.2 million square feet of office, again, 158 residential units.

So we're an experienced developer.

And we listen to what tenants want and need, and that's what we aim to deliver.

And so the last thing I would say uh sorry, moving too too far ahead there is why this site.

Um currently we've got office on the site.

Having gone through the pandemic, as you can all imagine demands for office changed drastically.

And so, what was the bread and butter of this site were small tenants?

Generally two to three thousand feet.

Um after going through the pandemic, much of those tenants have decided to work from home moving forward.

And so this site's not performing well as an office site.

Um that's primarily the reason that we're looking to rezone this to residential, but big picture, what we're seeing suburban nodes that are outperforming are mixed use in nature.

So they've got some combination of retail, office, and residential.

And so the adding of additional residential here kind of props up the whole area.

And as the city's mentioned.

You need more residential.

And so this site makes all the sense in the world to us.

Hopefully, it makes sense to you after uh we go through our presentation.

But um that's all I really had to say.

Uh, and I'll hand it off to uh to the rest of our team.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jed.

I'm Dana Krafchek, I'm a land use attorney at Stoll Reeves.

Uh Reed Stapleton from Dow is joining me, and we've got um Kittelson here in case you've got any traffic questions.

Um thank you very much for your staff report, Ellen.

You really took a lot of words out of my mouth.

I I was gonna start by emphasizing you know, this is planning, uh housing planning in Lake Oswego, not development, because as Ellen said, there is no development.

Um, so concept plans that you've seen are just that concept plans.

It's it's the changing of the color on the map.

Um, I understand that the folks sitting in the front of this room are probably experts in the bullet points on this slide because of all of the work that you've done on housing.

So indulge me a little bit in going through this list, just so that everybody in the room is on a level playing field.

Um in 2019, because of the statewide housing crisis, there was new legislation passed that required cities the size of Lake Oswego and others to do more to plan for housing.

So, step one was you had to analyze what's your supply and what's your need.

And so that was your housing capacity analysis that you adopted in October of 2023.

Umce you identified what your needs were, you needed to figure out what to do about that.

And that is the housing production strategy, HPS, um, that you adopted about a year ago.

Um, the HPS includes a lot of different strategies, and we'll talk about those.

Um, the the materials on the left are from your own website, and it talks about how you know you're focusing on implementing the HPS, including potential rezoning of commercial areas to support more housing.

Exactly what we're here to talk about tonight.

Um, the next step in this statewide required process is uh monitoring.

So you're required annually to report to the state on how you're doing, and every three years you need to file a full report.

So why does that matter?

Planning takes a long time.

If we were to get this site rezoned tonight, which it wouldn't be rezoned tonight because we have to go to city council, but you get my drift, it'd be at least three up to four years before the first person is moving in there between the land use entitlements, um, the the process to get it pulled together, to go through the robust public process, building permits construction.

So that's why it's really important to have a pipeline.

There's been testimony to say, well, why don't you wait?

Wait, wait, there's gonna be a process.

Well, the longer we wait, the longer until you're actually satisfying this extreme housing need that you have.

It's better to have something in the pipeline, prime that pump, um, so that you've got units coming online as you continue to plan for the future.

Um I think that some of those comments about oh, wait, wait, there's gonna be another process.

Yes, but this is a process also, and there's been notice mailed to people, there have been neighborhood meetings, there's this hearing, there will be a city council hearing.

And what we're doing is implementing plans that also went through a lot of process.

So, what these bullet points are showing you, um, I think it was over two years that the city spent time looking at this.

There was a task force, there were surveys, there were online um online surveys, there were interviews, there were work sessions, there were hearings.

So there has been a lot of process, and we are now moving forward into the implementation stage.

Uh, and that's what's you know before you this evening.

Um, so in the housing production strategy, and these are taken directly from your materials, these are some of the future needs that are most relevant to our proposal this evening.

Um, so overall 2,000 new housing units needed, but it also goes into the different housing types that are needed, um, with most of them being attached housing, with some being kind of uh middle housing, which are plexes or townhomes, or multifamily apartments.

Um, no development is proposed tonight.

But we what we do know from talking to potential development partners and analyzing the site ourselves, it does look like there's potential for town homes, it does look like there's potential for apartments.

There could be some kind of mix, um, but that gives us a high level of confidence that with this R0 zoning, you will be getting closer to meeting these uh housing demands.

So the strategies that you came up with, 13 different strategies.

Um they are not mutually exclusive.

You're going to be doing a lot of things at once.

Um, you can see that rezoning land is one of those.

And the first kind of tronche of rezoning land that you want to look at is non-residential property and rezoning that residential.

That's what's before you tonight with this application.

So we are exactly aligned with what your own strategies are.

Um, there was some public testimony about what about affordable housing.

Well, there are a number of separate strategies that you're also pursuing about affordable housing.

So this is a again taken exactly from your HPS on this rezoning strategy.

This is your own strategy to look at under utilized commercial land and see if it can be rezoned residential for higher density, higher density residential use.

Um, and you identified some appropriate locational factors that you ought to look at.

Proximity to other higher density uses, and I'm taking some of Reed's steam here because he's going to be showing you a map that shows you exactly you know these items.

Um, proximity to services like transit, schools, parks, etc.

Um, and also size and ownership.

If you've got a single parcel, it's a very efficient way to build housing.

Um, we're not here tonight to talk about hypothetically, theoretically, what could happen in foothills, for example.

That's been some testimony.

But even if we were, think about what Foothills is like versus what's at this site in terms of proximity to all of these great supportive services to help um uh support a high density residential use.

So that just I think lends additional weight to why, frankly, we feel like this site is a unicorn.

It is a great site, and it's well suited for uh multifamily under the R0 zoning.

Thank you, Dana.

So I'm going to keep my comments maybe a little briefer than I intended because Ellen did a fantastic job of really highlighting a lot of the things that I was just going to run through.

But uh when you look at the proximity, or when you look at the locational factors for rezoning that are identified in the housing production strategies, really there are three key locational criteria or locational factors that are in play.

One's proximity to residential, and you can see on this map that the site is immediately adjacent to the springs at Carmen Oaks, it's immediately adjacent to Haven at Lake Oswego, which is just the east, and then also to the springs at Lake Oswego just to the south.

And you've got Mercado Grove to the south, and then additional multifamily very close to the site.

So it is it is right in the middle of a residential and mixed use uh area of the city.

When you look at the the second locational factor, it's proximity to services, and it identifies the HPS document identifies what those services are.

They include transit, they include retail access, jobs, schools, and parks, and all of those features are in close proximity to the site.

You've got the retail along Boons Ferry, uh, Cruise Village to the west, Lake Grove Elementary School is about a half mile to the south, and Waluga Park East about the same.

So all of these features are present at the site.

And then this is just a quick screenshot of what those higher density residential areas are immediately surrounding the site.

So as Ellen mentioned, and it's been mentioned in this in this hearing and testimony.

There's no site specific proposal at the time, but I think there are factors, there are elements on the site that are pertinent, relevant.

One is the the three is the the uh sorry, three sisters creek drainage on the west side of the property that does have a riparian buffer.

There's been an enhancement of the the northern quarter of that, but we would expect that with future redevelopment, the remainder of that drainage would be enhanced consistent with the city's sensitive lands ordinance.

Um there are a couple of grows of trees and trees scattered throughout.

We've not done an Arborist study, but we would expect to have one done with site development, and that there would be a very close look at where tree preservation is feasible with that with that uh site development.

Um currently the frontage on Cruiseway Place is substandard.

There's no sidewalk or landscape strip, so we'd expect for that to be a part of the redevelopment proposal.

Um that the frontage would be built out, and you would have that pedestrian connection added to this area with redevelop, excuse me, with redevelopment.

Um you can see here also there's a uh a geo hazard identified in the north and east, and a geotechnical report would be submitted with site development that would look at any sort of uh avoidance or mitigation measures that would need to happen with with site construction in those areas.

Um but all of these really are kind of overshadowed by the fact that this is it's a large site, 12.6 acres, it's uh owned by a single property owner, and those are the factors that really lend it most uh you know most significant in terms of its ability to be redeveloped for residential.

So there was a question about the distinctions, and really as as Ellen and and Jessica mentioned, there are very few distinctions when it comes to the the scale and standards that would apply between R0 and R3.

Really, the primary distinction is the density allowance, where um where the R3 designation equates to roughly about 13 units per the acre if you apply the the city's formula.

With the R0, there's there's no maximum.

It's really, as Ellen mentioned, it's really hemmed in by the scale and the FAR and the various standards that that would apply to the site, and and also of course just the practical application of parking to the property.

And so we've we've looked at different densities on the site.

Um our traffic study looked at really sort of a maximum worst case scenario, and then compared that to what could be possible under under the OC zoning for traffic generation.

Um the site plan that we submitted was roughly around 450 multifamily units, and that was where we had landed on uh a most likely sort of practical number.

Um, but again, there's no defined maximum, it's really uh a reconciliation of a variety of different standards that the city has that gets you there.

So utilities and infrastructure, we we look at properties all the time for how viable are these properties for for development for residential.

And it's it's very unique to have a site like this that has traffic capacity and water and sewer access.

Um so I think that is a very unique characteristic of this site that that makes it exceptionally viable for for residential.

So the city's comprehensive plan does have a policy that speaks to uh to school capacity and um or rather really speaks to the fact that there's a there is a goal to actually attract families with children to enroll in the schools.

So there's um actually a policy to encourage enrollment in the schools.

Um we don't know what ultimately the family composition might be of a of a multifamily project.

I think suffice it to say there would be families within the property.

Um it would actually be consistent with the city's policy of of uh encouraging further enrollment in the schools.

So last, I'll just hit on a few of our key key factors and and key uh approval criteria here.

Um first and foremost, the the proposal provides an opportunity to immediately make gains towards the city's housing capacity needs.

The site and vicinity context are consistent with the locational factors that were identified in the housing production strategies with adjacency to high density residential, proximity to supportive services, and having that single ownership larger site with um with a cohesive ownership uh entity.

Um additional residents will help support nearby resident uh nearby retail services and and employment use and office offices nearby.

And then lastly, again, the adequacy of the infrastructure is key, and and the infrastructure is in place and capable of accommodating the residential development on the site.

Um so with that, we will conclude the presentation and we're happy to answer any questions you have.

We do have um our full team here.

Uh, we have our our traffic consultant, uh our legal team, land use team, ownership, etc.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you to the whole team for coming here and walking us through it.

Really appreciate that.

Uh commissioners, do we have questions?

I have a question.

It's not directly for the team, it may be for staff, and then maybe you could comment on it as well.

Um I understand that uh Lake Oswego School District is a separate jurisdiction, and that they were provided an opportunity to comment on the proposed uh change here.

Um at least one of the comments raised an issue about the impact on our schools, made a comment that there's currently a lottery system for kindergarten in place.

This was just something that came in one of the public comments uh that was submitted.

Can staff elaborate on whether there's been any coordination with the Lake Oswego school district regarding potential enrollment impacts from future residential development on this site?

And did the district provide any written comment or data about current or projected capacity?

Yes, um, I can address that.

Um so we did provide notice to the school district, they did not provide any written comments or testimony, but I will say that I I did actually call the school district today because I did see a number of comments bring up that uh that issue, which was the first time I had heard such an issue uh while I've been working here.

So I called up a contact at the school district and was like, do you suddenly have a capacity uh concern that I wasn't aware of?

And he said, absolutely not.

Um, that there are some schools that might have more students going to them than others at the moment, but that's really just an internal issue.

This is how he explained it to me.

I'm not a school district person, I don't actually understand how this works.

But he explained that they can just move lines around.

So it might be a matter of one elementary school has too many people, one elementary school doesn't have enough people, and has potentially been talked about closing due to lack of enrollment.

And so it's really more of a thing of moving the line around of where the students are going.

So it's not a lack of capacity in the overall system.

So that's my understanding from the school district as of today.

And if I could weigh in, um I'm a resident of Lake Oswego, have two students at Lake Australia High School.

Um, and so I I track these issues personally as well as professionally.

Um, and the school district does have an adopted public facilities plan, which is like you have your own water facilities plan, for example, and their adopted public facilities plan says just that that there is um adequate capacity, and while a school here or there may have um be busier that than other schools that is addressed by addressing those lines.

And I mean Uplands was closed how many every years ago because it wasn't full.

Um so that's an example of how they can flex um as needed.

Thank you.

Thank you for following up as well.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Any other questions from the commission?

Okay, thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

So I think the next step in the procedure will be we will have uh testimony by uh those in that had submitted requests to provide testimony.

I think that could be those in support of the application, those opposed to the application, and those uh neither uh for nor against it.

Uh could do we have a list, Christina, of that chair.

Um you start with those who are opposed, then it goes to those who are support.

Yes, I'm sorry.

Testimony in support, then opposed, then neutral.

I'm excuse me, I mixed it up in my head.

Sorry about that.

Okay, and so the question is for anyone in the audience, we go first with those in support of the application.

If you would like to give uh testimony now.

And I do not have anybody signed up in support um either in person or remote.

Okay, we have nobody sign up in support.

Next would be but testimony by the parties opposed to the application.

Uh Christina, do we have a few signed up?

We do, and the first person I have signed up is Carolyn Krebs.

Okay, thank you.

Good evening.

Thank you for coming down tonight and giving testimony.

Uh, just as a reminder, um five-minute time limit.

And if you could say your name just so we know.

Oh, are you representing a neighborhood association?

There we go.

Okay.

If you could introduce yourself and the neighborhood association, then we'll do.

Thank you.

Um, my name is Carolyn Krebs, and I'm presenting testimony for the Lake Forest Neighborhood Association as a board member.

Our testimony is in opposition to the applicant's request for a comprehensive plan map designation amendment from OCR3 to OCR0, and the zoning map designation amendment from OC to R0 for tax lots identified collectively in the application as 4,000 cruiseway place.

The applicant has not met its burden of proof with respect to the applicable city of Lake Oswego comprehensive plan policies identified in land use planning E1F E2B double IE, nor has the city faithfully followed established norms for a quasi-judicial hearing on this application with respect to restricting expartheid communication outside of the hearing for members of the planning commission and the Lake Oswego staff.

The land use planning policies are provided in our written testimony in summary to meet these policies.

The applicant is to demonstrate public need for the change and that the change will best meet the need versus other available alternatives.

The applicant's response to this is the quote: the proposed comprehensive plan amendment zone change and the requested R0 zoning designation is supported by the projected housing demand within the city's 2024 HBS housing production strategy, which identifies that the city will need approximately 2,000 new housing units by 2043, which will need to be produced across varying price points to meet the demands of varying income levels.

HPS further identifies that an estimated 61% of needed housing types will be attached housing, which includes 27% as middle housing, such as townhomes in Plexas, and 34% as multifamily housing, such as apartments.

The late Lake Oswego's HPS is provided by the applicant as an exhibit to support their position.

That's why we're talking about it.

However, in addition to the applicant's response, the report also says that more than one-third of new housing units over the next 20 years will need will be needed by low-income households, those earning at or below 80% of the median family income for Clackamas County.

The private market will not deliver housing that is needed by low-income households on its own.

Housing that is affordable to those earning below 80% MFI typically requires government subsidy and partnerships that with affordable housing providers.

That's a deficit of 86 total acres or 642 total units.

To address these issues, one strategy discussed, as you heard tonight, is to rezone land.

Under considerations part of that report, it says if non-residential land is considered for rezoning, it would be important to ensure there is still adequate land available for employment and commercial industrial needs in the city.

And that's quoted directly from the strategy.

On September 22nd of this year, the planning commission had a work session on the topic of rezoning for housing.

The city pursued and has since been awarded a housing planning assistance grant.

They asked for 210,000, but the amount of the award is unknown at present.

Jessica Numanglu, Lake Oswego community development director stated that 640 units is quote, not a lot, suggesting that staff is optimistic, especially if the foothills area is considered, which would be rezoned to allow additional housing.

Michael McNamy, Lake Oswego Associate Planner and Project Manager for the rezoning for housing project, said a public engagement process is expected with the project, which would allow property owners and the public to weigh in on potential zoning changes.

During the QA period of the work session, Jessica specifically brought up this land use action as an upcoming public hearing and an opportunity to address low-hanging fruit with respect to rezoning.

She stated that the property is currently zoned office commercial doubt was clarified tonight, and they want to rezone to high density residentials.

She further supported the rationale for the proposed zone change by saying that although the current zone actually allows residential, I guess I'll skip this part because we've already discussed floor area versus height and all of that.

But what the comment that was made was that it doesn't make it practicable.

That was the word that was used.

She said it's a very kind of suburban style density with surface parking and low buildings that just doesn't accommodate high density residential.

She suggested that this type of rezoning, meaning the rezoning project, would be looking at first, the first thing they'd be looking at is this type of rezoning.

Aside from the sense that the staff is advocating for this project outside the bulb of process designed to allow decision makers such as you to look at the project objectively, the statements are inaccurate.

The property is zoned off as campus, and the city identifies R3 as a high density residential zone.

It's just not the highest density.

Taking a closer look at the housing numbers from the percentages quoted in the HPS raises concerns regarding approving this application to meet a public need.

The applicant plans to develop the site for market rate housing with pricing similar to apartments like Mercado Grove, and that's from Exhibit F3, the neighborhood meeting minutes answer to question nine.

At the time of this neighborhood meeting, the applicant suggested that 340 apartments in 78 townhomes were intended for the site.

According to the housing production strategy, that would be 418 of the required 2,000 units, or approximately 21%.

If we break that down by type, that's 50% of the needed apartments and 14% of the needed townhomes.

This leaves 340 more apartments and 462 more townhomes or middle housing to meet Lake Oswego's housing need over the next 20 years.

That's quite a pipeline.

However, this doesn't factor in the low-income housing, which still needs to be at least one-third of the new housing units.

So if one third of new housing should be for low-income housing, that would amount to 226 apartments.

And if one third of the new townhomes should be low-income housing, that would amount to 180 town homes.

If we carry this argument further, this means that of the 340 additional housing units left after developing this site as suggested by the applicant, 226 of those need to be low-income.

That leaves only 114 more needed market rate housing apartments.

For townhomes or middle housing, that leaves 282 more for market rate housing.

As a reminder, this need is to meet the expected demand between now and 2043.

These hypothetical numbers are based on the applicant's submissions.

If the application is approved, there is no requirement for the future development of townhomes.

With R0 zoning, the entire lot could be developed with apartments.

In fact, the applicant suggested this possibility as a potential development scenario.

500 apartments, and that's documented in our written testimony.

Also, Jessica indicated that she was optimistic of meeting Lake Oswego's housing needs, especially considered considering foothills is planned for rezoning, also allowing high-density residential zoning.

The city plans to study city wide rezoning citywide to meet Lake Oswego's housing needs with a broad scope that will take foothills into account.

The housing production strategy specifies that if nonresidential land is considered for rezoning, it would be important to ensure there is still adequate land available for employment and commercial industrial needs in the city.

Since the housing production strategy is being used as justification for this application, so should an argument that takes into account the impacts of removing employment and our commercial land within the city.

These arguments are best made in the context of a citywide study to rezone non residential land.

This study is necessarily part of the project previously outlined for the planning commission on September 22nd.

Market office market outlook shows recent positive activity for cruise for Lake Oswego Cruiseway, which is evidenced by document that we attached in our written testimony.

So in conclusion, there is no reasonable argument for a public need for this scale of market rate apartments to meet Lake Oswego's housing production strategy.

In contrast, the city is planning a citywide study of rezoning for housing to start in January 2026.

That's two short months from now.

This constitutes an alternative and available methodology for best determining zone changes within Lake Oswego to address the housing needs stated by the applicant.

The city can best determine on a citywide basis the best alternative to research in Lake Oswego to accommodate all the housing needs of Lake Oswego, not just market rate housing exclusively addressed by the applicant.

So the applicant has not met its burden of proof under land use policies E1F and E2B double IE.

I think it's you know the other thing about a rezoning study is that it looks at factors other than just the designation.

It'll look at the you know the lot coverage, it'll look at open space requirements and those other factors.

So we can be incorporating all of those things when we look at citywide rezoning, not just a designation on a map.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Commissioners, do we have any questions?

No question.

Thank you.

Thank you again.

Up next, I have uh Cheryl Uchida.

Thank you for coming down this evening.

You're welcome.

Please introduce yourself and if you're here on behalf of a neighborhood association, then you have 10 minutes.

Otherwise, you'll have five minutes.

And I have not time myself, so I apologize for that, and I understand I will get cut off after 10 minutes, which is fine because you have a copy, a hard copy in the file.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Cheryl Uchida, and I am representing the Waluga Neighborhood Association, of which you often you probably know who we are in opposing the comprehensive plan amendment and zone change.

Requests by the applicants, Cruise Way, LLC, owner, and applicants Maple Multifamily Land TX, LP, John Frunken, and Dalles Matthew Robinson.

The application number is LU0029.

I will briefly give you my history with Waluga Neighborhood Association and with Lake Oswego, because I believe it will lend relevancy to my testimony.

First of all, I've lived at my present address for the past 47 years.

I've been a part of the creation of the of our neighborhood plan, that by the way is 23 years old, been a member of the Transportation Advisory Board, a member of the Lake Grove Village Center Plan Overlay, the Lake Grove Parking Management Study, as well as the Boone's Ferry Improvement Plan.

All of my involvements with Woluga Neighborhood and Lake Oswego took a lot of time while attending many meetings and above all included careful planning and discussion with a variety of stakeholders.

Because much of Lake Os because, excuse me, much of Lake Grove Village Center plan boundary includes properties in Woluga Neighborhood Association, it required consensus, compromise, and ultimately some zone changes.

These zone changes were not developer-driven, unlike the reasons we're here tonight.

The point is that zone change decisions of this magnitude should not be made with urgency in a vacuum, no matter who or what entity is making the proposal decision for comp plan amendment and zone change.

This should not be approved without the input of a community-wide effort, including neighborhood association representatives, much like the present Foothills District Plan project that is underway now.

The Woluga Neighborhood Association includes one-third business, commercial, and mixed use, one-third multifamily residential units, including apartments and condominiums, and one-third single-family homes.

In addition to this, Woluga Neighborhood has a senior senior facilities with independent living apartments.

The springs at Carmen Oaks, the Springs at Lake Oswego, and Oak Ridge Park low income senior apartments, totaling 295 rental apartments.

This is considered unique in any neighborhood association in Lake Oswego.

Woluga neighborhood currently has a total of five apartment complexes that equals 386 rental units.

They are Galewood Commons, The Haven, Renew Oak Ridge, Quarry Commons, and Mercado Grove.

Nearby is the newest apartment building in this area, the Willow, located on Meadows Road in the Lake Forest Neighborhood Association.

Further, the applicants have indicated that the rental rates they will be seeking will be comparable to Mercado Grove and the Willow.

However, both developments are currently offering three months' free rent and are not at rented capacity.

Over the three years, there have been many land use applications that have led to major changes in the demographics of Woluga neighborhood.

In addition, there are impending land use applications yet to be reviewed.

So you could describe Woluga neighborhood as a vibrant, active, and ever changing.

On the downside, our residents are remaining vigilant, cautious, and engaged because the character of our neighborhood is constantly changing.

The applicant states that their zone change requests to allow for the maximum number of rental units in an R0 zone and are touting this will be compatible with our neighborhood character as pointed out in our neighborhood plan that is clearly outdated.

23 years old.

Though I am not advocating that you ignore the content of our neighborhood plan, there are aspects contained in it, for instance, goal two, land use planning, and goal 10, housing.

These sections obviously have not been updated.

Neighborhood associations have been told by Lake Oswego staff to take a number and wait to even consider amending our neighborhood plan.

Lake Oswego Planning Commissioners.

Shouldn't you be looking at all of Lake Oswego thoroughly, exhaustively and inclusively before approving the comprehensive plan amendment and zone change request by a single developer for this property?

Michael McNamy, Lake Oswego Associate Planner, outlined in his PowerPoint report to you on September 22nd work session, which included helping to determine where the focus areas are for the possible zone changes to residential housing in all of Lake Oswego, and emphasized there will be input and significant community engagement during this process.

The city has now been approved for two grant requests from Metro and from DLCD that includes hiring contract consultants to lead the quest to eventually comply with the housing needs analysis 2023 and the housing production strategy 2024 by the year 2043.

You have your work plan laid out for you, beginning in 2026 and extending to the end of 2027.

This work is specifically, this work is specific to address and consider first the rezoning of mixed-use commercial and non-residential areas across Lake Oswego.

In reference to Mr.

McNamy's memo report submitted to you at a work session held on September 22nd, specifically shown on page two and three details public involvement strategies that we that will be drafted with help from the consultants.

He mentioned briefly that possible focus areas could be in the areas of Foothills, Merrillhurst, or Mary's Woods, Meadows Road, and near and within the subject area being discussed this evening.

I have a few additional information to add and question in a question.

Since the pre-application conference is that was held on June the 5th, the original applicant Colin Cooper with David Evan and Associates, as well as Tramel Crow are no longer affiliated with this application.

David Evans and associates ended their relationship with this application shortly before the required neighborhood meeting.

As per Eric Hansen, Schornstein's Vice President of Development Services, the original developments co-applicant, Trammel Crow, residential, has withdrawn from this project.

Schornstein, however, will be continuing with the current rezoning application process.

Further, I have a question about Dana Crosnak, attorney for the applicant.

She's requested a delayed effective date following the city's council possible ordinance adoption, be between June the 1st and September the 1st, 2026 in her letter.

What's become of this request?

Lake Oswego staff has not applined on this request that we are aware of.

To conclude, please do not allow one developer for a single property, steer future planning needs for additional high density housing and Woluga Neighborhood Association.

This decision needs to be handled comprehensively across all of Lake Oswego.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your testimony tonight and coming down here.

Okay.

Thank you again.

I believe we have two more.

Next, I have uh Christina Cruz.

Good evening.

Thank you so much for coming down.

Uh should be 10 minutes on there.

I represent Westlake Neighborhood Association and unofficially I'll be representing Pfeiffer Farms Association as well tonight.

Um I don't need 20 minutes, but 10 would be adequate.

Um thank you so much for listening to us tonight, and we appreciate your time.

So being new to the city um ways, and not fully as you know, I'm gonna have all my numbers in P's and Qs and all the articles needed to know which numbers related to everything, but I'm just gonna share with you what's happening with our neighborhoods as well as what my constituents have said.

I've sent out over 300 emails.

I had over 500 emails back.

So everyone is very much opposed to this, and we have quite a few reasons why.

So start off with the schools.

Now I've got children who were at Forest Hills during the pandemic.

We moved over to Oak Creek area.

We did not go to Oak Creek because they were completely overcrowded due to uplands, the whole debacle with uplands going um and closing down, it created this huge mess at Forest Hills, um, Lake Grove.

We just were able to like save Lake Grove, and here we are talking about trying to overcrowd it again.

So we're we're not even at the point of getting Lake Grove back up to where it needs to be before we're talking about overfilling.

Now, at the PTA meetings at um LOJ, we're talking to the principal, and we're already trying to figure out all the different classrooms and the brand new building that is not completed yet.

We are short one classroom.

So we are already going to have to be doubling up on classrooms for IEP meetings, for teacher council meetings, for PTA meetings, whatever it needs to be done, we're already short one classroom in a brand new building that hasn't even been built yet.

So let's just look at that piece of it there.

If we look at Oak Creek and we look at Forest Hills and we look at specifically, sorry, Lake Grove and Oak Creek, they are already overcrowded.

Now, I spoke to Dr.

Sheely and she said, yes, you're correct.

You know, if we did get more students in a low-income apartment complex, they don't have any at Mercado Grove because it's too expensive.

Um, but we do appreciate Ricardo Grove because it does keep our housing prices up versus the low-income brings down the homes in Westlake.

Um, we've been hearing a lot of people worried about their housing prices going down.

But looking at Oak Creek and um Lake Grove, they are already at huge capacity.

When we started kindergarten, they should be at 19 kids, a classroom, some of them are at 23 to 25, moving to 27.

Like that's a big number in a kindergarten, which again, there is a lottery for kindergarten.

As much as they want to say there's not, your kids are not guaranteed to get into a kindergarten class, and if it is, you're gonna be overcrowded.

Um, and so looking at where we're gonna be putting the kids at uplands as we're building Lake Grove out and Forest Hills out, it's even gonna be more overcrowded over the next eight years.

So if they're building something in the next three years, we're gonna have some serious overcrowding.

Um, when it comes to the um the building along Cruise Way, so I live in West Lake, and all of my friends are in Daniel, um, Daniel Way up along that um Pfeiffer Farms area.

We travel that road eight, nine, ten times a day.

If you're a mom, you're a kid's and you're a PTA and your lunch duty and your soccer and you're tutoring, you're up and down the road.

On an average day, on an average trip down that road, I see three cars between Daniel Way and Cruiseway Place.

You're gonna add in 430, 450 apartments.

That's not going to be the same thing.

I have people all the time that are coming out of the springs that don't see where they're walking, they have either dementia, they need an assistant.

They're half, I can't tell you how many times that someone's almost been hit right there between the two office buildings at 4,000 and 4,002 right across from the um Providence right there.

Um, in terms of the parking and those office buildings, they have really have a lot of people that live in the neighborhood that work there.

So they don't have to have a lot of parking spots because people walk or bike to work.

They don't even have to like fill up the parking lot because they are actually going to work there.

So you're gonna be taking away people's jobs that work in and live in this neighborhood that either live in Cruiseway Commons because they can't afford a house in our neighborhood, they live in the Westlake Meadows, they live in 4550 Carmen Drive, they live over at the all these different condos that are in the area.

So right now in Westlake, we have more apartments and condos than we do single family homes.

So if anything, we'd love to see more single family homes built versus condos, low-income housing and a high rise apartment buildings.

Um, in terms of Shorenstein, a lot of the questions that we had was what is gonna be the ultimate plan?

Are we gonna put one short and steen building up for sale, and then that developer is just gonna develop that one?

What about interior roads?

If we're talking about meadows, why are we gonna are we gonna be developing it all at one time?

Is Shoran seeing gonna sell every building?

Is JP Moore going to be willing to be kicked out of their building out there?

Like, there's gonna be a lot of questions of like, is it one building and then everybody's routed out of meadows, or are we gonna have interior roads so that it's actually a neighborhood field versus just plop in one developer, build a complex, take their 30 million dollar building, put in whatever apartments they want to do, and then move on to the next.

And so we're looking at having an actual plan, having a plan of what's it gonna look like when all these empty buildings that they say are empty, or some are empty, some are not, what are they ultimately gonna do with them?

And so this is the beginning.

So when the lawyer says, oh, this is just a concept plan, well, to the homeowners, this is our life.

This is our neighborhood, this is where our kids ride our bikes, this is where we walk to school, this is where I walk to the doctor's office at Providence, because I can because I live right there, and I'm able to walk to all my different offices between 4,000 and 4,002.

I don't have to even get in my car unless I'm going to the going to the junior high or the high school.

So when we look at a couple of different ways of doing this, we would really like to have the planning commission really look at foothills where you have much more open space, you do not have multi-million dollar homes surrounding it, you're not having to worry about having to mix in one developer.

Let's build a plan, let's do it right, let's create an entire community and make it what at the last safety meeting with the mayor, he called Foothills the new master plan that he can reimagine the next neighborhood of Lake Oswego.

So if the neighbor, if the mayor feels like Foothills could be the next great neighborhood of Lake Coswico, let's add on to that.

Let's take that, let's run with it.

Let's take what the neighborhoods are talking about and asking for and saying, keep our neighborhoods safe, keep them small.

I spoke with Yakima.

Yakima was worried about their parking lot being filled with people living in the apartments.

They're worried that they're gonna have to put up like the old spaghetti factory had to put up um monitors so that the people couldn't go there after they're down by the ice building.

They were worried about having to spend money to put up gates to protect their parking.

As it is right now, they have people coming off the bus, shopping and walking around their windows, and they're having to call the police, you know, at least once a quarter, maybe a little bit more, because they got vagrants in their parking lots trying to park their vehicles there, sleeping overnight.

So they definitely are interested in knowing more about what's going on here.

I've been in close contact with them as well, um, and they are gonna be watching this as well as the rest of us in the community.

Um that I would just say for my final thoughts is we want Lake Oswego to feel like a home and a neighborhood, and we want people to have the buy-in.

We want them to want to be here.

We want them to want to develop and grow their families and have the buy-in.

And I can tell you, Cruiseway Commons, that police department is busy at that at that apartment complex.

They are there at least twice a day.

They're there for break-ins.

I mean, I can't tell you how many times my car's been broken into in Westlake.

I mean, we are just getting inundated with people who are just coming in, do not have a tie to the community, just renting for a short period of time, and then out they go.

So, if we're gonna do anything at 4,000 Cruiseway Place, I would really love to see homes that are actually single family standalone homes that people, you know, are more in more inclined to purchase versus putting in it as rentals.

So and then the last thing I'll just say is you know, we are very concerned about the clear cutting of the trees between the Street of Dreams, between the cottage clusters down over by Fourth Street.

You know, once you figure out once those are built and finished, where are people gonna park?

Are they gonna be at the library park?

You know, where there's no street parking there.

Um and so looking at the plan that they proposed 430 apartments, 70 to 88 townhouses, and then you have 399 parking spots.

If you got two people in a family plus a teenager driving, you're not gonna have adequate parking.

They're gonna be up and down in Yakima, up down Daniel Way along Pfeiffer Farm.

So it's definitely gonna be a lot more traffic than what we are used to right now, and safely being able to bike along very treacherous Daniel Way.

Um, that alone, right there.

Um, I've been working with the city to try to get that a little bit wider so there's not so many accidents right there.

But that alone is just a concern for us when the kids are coming down those bikes to have that many more kids with cars coming in and out of Cruise Way Place.

So thank you for your time.

Thank you so much for your testimony tonight.

Commissioners, any questions?

Thank you again.

Thank you.

We have one more sign up.

Okay, I have uh Rio, Hibert, Zach.

Was it Rio?

Rio.

We don't have anyone on Zoom to test testify, right?

Nope.

Okay.

Okay.

Again, thank you to everyone in the audience for your uh your oral testimony today and your written testimony.

We really appreciate it.

Uh I think that if my process is correct, then the applicant has a five-minute rebuttal time, I believe.

Assuming there's no neutral testimony, I don't think there is.

Yeah, sorry.

Any neutral testimony?

There is none.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Again, Dana Krafchak on behalf of the applicant, and I've got Reed Stapleton up here in case I miss anything.

Um, sorry if this is not super organized.

I'm just sort of going in the order in which I I heard items.

Um, in terms of the need for this, um, your housing needs analysis is the source for that need, and it's adopted as part of your comprehensive plan.

So that is the need that's been adopted.

Um, in terms of a portion of that being affordable, um, I was following the math, and I think the math was even if this site is built out at its ultimate maximum as market rate, that's still less than your demand for for market rate in your housing needs analysis.

So I wasn't frankly quite following that point.

Um, in terms of uh addressing affordable housing, you have five other strategies towards affordable housing that the city will pursue.

So there is room for both, and there is the need for both.

They are not mutually exclusive.

Um, in terms of forest or excuse me, uh foothills as an alternative, you have an application before you tonight.

It is a quasi-judicial application.

You're acting as judges, you're obligated under state law to make a decision on the application before you tonight.

Um, future planning processes, it's speculative right now.

There is a plan to study that, but what about floodplain and forest hills?

What about environmental contamination?

There are so many unknowns with um Foothills that we can't bank or assume that that's going to satisfy your housing need.

Um, in terms of your need for commercial land, um, there is a process, and there is a plan.

It's called your economic opportunities analysis, your EOA, it's been adopted.

It's old, but it's it's in effect.

And it says that you have a surplus of commercial land, and that's um under goal nine, you have to satisfy goal nine, you have to satisfy goal ten.

If you move land from the commercial category to the residential category as requested in this application, you will be compliant with both goal nine and goal ten.

You are fine on your EOA needs.

Um, in terms of the questions about process and ex parte contacts, I will defer to your city attorney on that.

I just like to say that this body, the planning commission is a recommending body, not the final decision maker.

And I understand that the challenge was related to comments that were made to this board.

So to me, that doesn't seem like a procedural error, but I'll defer to your city attorney on that.

Um back to the issue of why are we rushing it, why are we moving forward now?

I mentioned that it's a quasi-judicial.

Um we talked in our initial testimony about the importance of the pipeline.

If your city study process is gonna take two plus years, it's just that much further down the road before you actually have housing produced, and what you're gonna be able to show this the state in your report on compliance.

Um the schools, that was a little hard to follow.

Also, this is not a there's no development, but what's been talked about is a market rate project.

And I think I heard that Mercado allegedly has no school children.

So I'm not sure why.

We're we're thinking that this development is going to be full of of kids.

Um, but you know, the the credibility of the evidence, staff talked to Lake Oswego school district, and they are not concerned about capacity, and more importantly, that's not one of your approval criteria.

Um in terms of issues with Jania Way and parking, when there is a development proposed, there will be a very robust public process.

There will be a traffic study.

Um, all of these issues that are people are speculating about right now will actually be considered when there's a concrete plan in front of you.

And when you know folks talked about how much they love their neighborhood because of the walkability, you can go here, you can go there.

That's what other people who are already in this community want too.

And that's why this is a great place for an apartment building, so that others can enjoy those services and that walkability.

Um the question about the delayed effective date, that's really something that that we think will we'll deal with at City Council.

Essentially, once this zone is changed, the existing office uses will become nonconforming.

Um, and so we're hoping to delay when that non-conforming status happens while we continue to evaluate development concepts if we get a development partner, and so just hold having that on hold uh the effective date until the development moves forward.

Um, but I can answer more questions about that if there are any.

Um I think the last thing I'll touch on is tree preservation, because Commissioner Bruce, you asked that question.

And I think staff did a great job talking about it, but it's premature at this point without a tree inventory, without a design, without knowing what kind of grading is required.

We just don't know what the alternatives are for saving the trees or not.

They are not designated as um sensitive lands.

Um, but you do have a true code.

And I think that anyone that knows anything about this community knows the importance of trees, and that's why you see the concept plan showed a way to try to build around those trees.

But in terms of if you can put a condition of approval on this zone change, you know, I'll defer to your staff and your city attorney, but I don't think you've got the legal basis to do it, and it's just not practical because it's it's too early in the process.

Did I miss anything?

No.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Commissioners, any questions?

Okay, thank you again.

Okay.

Again, if my procedure is correct, city attorney.

I think now commission's going to deliberate.

That's correct.

A continuance, well, yes, you can ask ask for additional time to put more information in the record.

I'm sorry, I uh are you requesting the record be held open?

Yes, Chair.

Um under state law and the code.

If somebody asks that the record be held open, you have two you have to grant the request, first of all.

Um you can do it one of two ways.

You can either just go into recess and continue the meeting until your next meeting or another date that you announced tonight, either your next meeting or the one after that, whatever your schedule allows, and then just pick up where you left off.

Um the other alternative is to go ahead and close the test number, the verbal testimony portion of the record and hold the record open for additional written information for a minimum of seven days.

Um you can then also hold it open for seven days after that first period to allow people to put in responsive evidence, so anything that might respond to something that came in that first day.

The applicant then uh under state law gets a final seven days to submit final written argument.

So if you wanted to just hold the record open and reconvene, um I'll defer to staff on your schedule.

But so the the most common example is to hold the record open for three consecutive seven-day periods for new information for response first, then second for responsive information, and then third for the applicant's final written argument.

Those are your options to either continue the hearing or hold it open for additional written evidence.

Thank you.

We get to collectively decide, correct?

That's correct.

Uh just the clarification.

The so we can we can sort of continue the hearing and come back at another date for oral to oral testimony to submit written evidence, or we can close the sort of the oral testimony portion of it and just leave it open for additional written testimony for a minimum of seven days.

I assume we decide you know, seven or or beyond, and that gives anyone to submit additional written testimony.

That's correct.

Um at least addition seven days for additional written testimony.

Keep in mind whatever else is true, the applicant uh gets a final seven days to submit final written argument.

No new evidence, but final written argument unless they wanted to waive that.

Um so the those are your alternatives.

And does the written not the applicant's um final seven days, but the additional written written testimony that the public gets to give?

Is it allowed to address completely new things or does it all have to tie into what was discussed today?

Until the records closed, people can submit evidence on whatever issue they have.

Okay.

And last question, we have to grant the continuance just to grant it.

Yes, you can either continue the hearing or just hold the record open for additional written evidence according to a schedule you decide.

Yeah.

Okay, commissioners.

Who wants to speak first?

I suggest we uh uh uh go with the second option.

I I agree.

And we can sort of talk about the timing if we all agree that we close the I'm using the word close.

I don't want to use a a word that has a lot of meaning, but we close it from oral testimony and we give additional, we keep it open for additional submission of written testimony.

And we have to do a minimum of seven days.

Mr.

Chair, I can talk to you about the timing if you want to discuss that and decide uh to help you decide if you want to do written or um continue uh for oral testimony too.

Uh it looks like the next date that we would want to uh have the hearing would be December 8th.

Is that correct, Ms.

Davis?

Yes.

Uh and that's because of the availability of staff.

The applicant has already agreed that December 8th would be acceptable to them.

So that would give you enough time if, for instance, you wanted to leave it open just for written testimony.

So seven days from today would be uh November 10th would be the due date for um new additional testimony.

The then seven days from that would be November 17th for rebuttal to that written testimony, and then final written argument due by the applicant no later than November 24th, and that would give us sufficient time then to uh address those and get the uh planning commission the packet in time for the December 8th meeting.

And is the December 8th meet let's just let's say we adopt that is the December 8th meeting.

Are we coming together to deliberate sort of the remaining submitted written testimony?

So we're not coming for findings, we would then make a recommendation for findings, which would then be presented at the at the next meeting.

That's correct.

Yes, you you'd be the record would be closed and you'd be meeting for purposes of deliberation.

Whether staff has fine to draft findings for you, I'll defer to Jessica.

Yes, we would then uh be prepared to do uh the findings at the next meeting, which would be December 22nd if it's if you make a decision on the eighth.

I I'm I'm in favor of that timeline, seven, seven, seven, and seven essentially.

And then we're here December 8th to deliberate.

Anyone have any objections to that?

No, but I would restate them for the record just so everybody's absolutely clear.

Uh so it doesn't it I apparently you don't need to make a motion for that, but I will restate it just for the public.

We'll also um post it on the project web page so that you all um are aware of the due dates.

So new uh written testimony is due by Monday November 3rd.

Business uh by 5 p.m.

Rebuttal and it's rebuttal only to that new written testimony.

Um no new testimony can be provided um after November 3rd, but rebuttal to the testimony that was submitted through November 3rd, that would be due at 5 p.m.

on November 10th, and then applicants written final written argument if they choose to do that would be due by 5 p.m.

on November 17th, and then we would continue the hearing for uh commission deliberations on the written testimony on December 8th, 6:30 p.m.

Uh counsel chamber.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

And again, thank you to to everyone that testified this evening.

I guess that brings us to our work session.

Section 7.1 on tonight's agenda is a work session on the SB 1537 mandatory adjustments.

Uh, this is work session number three, PP24-0004.

The commission will receive an update on Senate Bill 1537 implementation in Lake Oswego.

Is Joanna on Zoom?

Oh, Joanna's right there in front of me.

I'm still getting used to these reading glasses.

Is it okay if I sit here instead of over at the I can see everyone that way?

Just want to introduce myself.

My name is Johanna Hasty.

I am the current planning manager for the City of Lake Aswego.

I am here tonight to discuss Senate Bill 1537, just to give you a brief update on that bill and on the city's request for an exemption from the mandatory adjustments part of that program.

I want to clarify up front a couple of things.

One, I am going to be trying to refrain from too much detail.

I know you've already had a long night tonight, and it can kind of veer into very much in the weeds, so I'm going to try to keep that high level.

And the other part of that is to remember that there is no action required from you with regards to Senate Bill 1537 at this time.

So with this presentation tonight, I am going to give a brief overview of SB 1537 for context.

I'm going to focus my presentation, like I said, on the mandatory adjustments part of that Senate bill.

I'll explain our exemption status status and what some of the conditions of approval mean as far as requirements on us.

We'll go over three areas where the state found that we are not exempt from a mandatory adjustment program.

And finally, um I'll take questions from the planning commission that weren't addressed during my presentation.

So again, if you uh have any questions, feel free to interrupt and we can discuss them or you can hold them until the end.

So the purpose of SB 1537, this is Governor Cotex's one of her earlier bills to address the Oregon's severe houting uh housing shortage.

It was developed with the purpose of increasing the production of housing through various tools, including funding, infrastructure, land supply, and regulatory barriers to housing, and that's what we're going to be talking about today.

The mandatory adjustment program addresses those potential regulatory barriers.

And the state focused on certain design and dimensional standards and determined that those implement implementation of the design and dimensional standards, and they're pretty common across most jurisdictions, could create costs and delay with the production of housing.

So they put together the mandatory adjustment program that said for certain eligible product uh housing projects.

Um we have a program now where an applicant can request up to 10 mandatory adjustments to those specific list of standards.

Um within that mandatory adjustment process, though, they did allow cities to request an exemption.

And the exemption um application would have to show that primarily that the city had a local adjustment, and I'm gonna use the word adjustment in our parlance, it's uh variance, but that the city had a local adjustment process for all of the standards that the state determined, those design and dimensional standards that the state determined might cause a regulatory barrier.

So uh when this um project first came forward, Director Nomonalu took this to the council, um, and the council did direct her to have staff pursue that exemption process.

So we did over this last year, it was granted in uh July of this year.

It is um apparently going to sunset in 2032.

We will see what happens with that.

Um a number of other cities are also exempt.

Um I believe I just no, that was they resubmitted.

Um the only city that has requested an exemption, didn't get it approved so far is the city of Portland.

Kind of interesting.

I didn't read through their denial, so I'm not quite quite sure on the details.

So what does the exemption mean?

Basically, um that overall the city's local codes, um, meaning the standards that are in place, the design and dimensional standards that are in place and the variance pathways that we have are what apply.

Um the exemption that we got from the state uh basically came with conditions of approval and performance objectives.

The first conditions focus primarily on a very broad notification process.

Basically, we have to shine a spotlight on uh how all of the different ways that we uh provide applicants to adjust those design dimensional standards, especially especially as they apply to housing projects.

The state put together what they call the required notice to applicants, and it is a couple page document basically outlining these conditions of approval and performance objectives with lots of links to how to report or report on the city or request clarification from the city.

They wrote it.

We can't amend it.

It's a little dense, but it is what it is.

And that is attachment to in your staff report in the packet that you were given.

The next part of this performance objective, the shining spotlight, is a local adjustment handout.

Now we have a web page that is dedicated to the mandatory adjustments.

On that web page, we give a brief overview of what that means.

And then we have links to both that required notice and the local adjustment handout.

Now that one is really dense.

That's if you look through it, 20 pages, and it basically lists out all of those standards that the state determined were potential barriers.

It talks about all the different ways that you can adjust right now with our local process, so you can adjust those standards.

It also notes the three ways that we don't provide a local pathway and that are subject to the mandatory adjustments.

So that's kind of the spotlight aspect of that.

The way that it gets implemented is literally anyone who comes to the city and makes any sort of request for housing is sent to that web page and told about those documents.

That could be anything from somebody requesting a building permit for a single family home addition all the way up to someone coming in for a pre-application conference for a mixed use project in Lake Grove.

So again, these documents are just going out, and we are seeing a small uptick in questions from applicants, but we are managing that so far.

The other thing, and again, this is this does apply to the planning commission for your future efforts.

The other condition for SB, the exemption from the mandatory adjustments process or program, is all code amendments and new code that the city looks at adopting.

We have to ensure that we're not creating new regulatory boundaries or barriers.

And we also have to ensure that we're not making the process of these local adjustments more difficult, more onerous.

And so again, the housing accountability and production office is going to be keeping an eye on us and our upcoming code amendments.

And there's a variety of different ways that these are coming at you.

The final and last condition of approval, I think, could be the most impactful.

And when I talked to the council about this, I said this is the one we're going to need to keep an eye on and possibly come back and address, figure out what we want to do with it.

That last condition is the 90% rolling approval rate for all adjustments that we field in the current planning office.

So when I sent in the exemption request, I put together a table and basically said for the last five years, these are all of the land use cases associated with housing that got some sort of adjustment to some design or to some standard.

And at that point, we had 100% approval rating, so that was good.

What we have to do is maintain that at 90% over the next seven years, looking back five years each time.

So what I'll be doing is each year I'll be sending in an updated report saying, okay, from this date, looking back five years, we are maintaining at least a 90% approval rating.

Now, when I was talking to the council about this, the reason that this one I think may be impactful is we have a hundred percent approval rating of all the adjustments from you know the five years back that we sent in.

Because we work really, really closely with applicants and help them tailor their projects in a way that can meet one of those local variants or local adjustment pathways.

We help applicants get to yes, and we do that uh through the pre-application conference, through preliminary meetings, working really closely with applicants and their consultants.

We ensure that what you're seeing when you actually get to a land use application is something that staff can support.

And maybe it gets appealed, but again, our approval rating is 100% at this point.

When you start adding more variance requests to the bucket, the chances of a of a request not meeting the criteria and therefore not were not able to approve it, does get higher.

Of course, the more requests you see, the more you're rolling the dice on whether or not that request is supportable.

So again, it's just something to keep an eye on, something that I'll come back to the council with once we start seeing how this plays out over the next couple of years.

So finally, um, just to talk about the three different areas where we don't provide a local adjustment pathway, and this is where I am going to get even deeper into the weeds, so I apologize again, but let me know if you have questions.

And this is where I am going to get even deeper into the weeds.

So I apologize again, but let me know if you have questions.

But there are three areas.

There's special street setbacks, there is the charter height limit of 50 feet for residential zones, and then there is maximum density.

We don't have adjustment pathways for those in our local code.

So just starting with the first one, special street setbacks.

You're probably familiar with them, but again, really briefly, special street setbacks apply to known substandard streets where the street either needs to be widened and or improved with various forms of public infrastructure.

It could be lane widening, bike lanes, public sidewalks, stormwater facilities.

In any case, these are known substandard streets.

And the code includes a section called special street setbacks where we, for those properties, say, okay, we know that we're going to need to get extra land here.

As far as the impact on private property, this is what we call a no-go area.

This is not available for you for private development.

From that new line where the special street setback lands on the private property, that's when we impose the zone setbacks from there.

And you know, it's they're very different throughout the city based on each of these streets.

But I have an example here that we can kind of talk about a little bit more.

So going back to the mandatory adjustments, the state did determine that side and rear edge setbacks could be regulatory barriers, could add costs and delays to housing production.

They didn't seem to mind front yard setbacks, but streets and rear rear setbacks, they had a problem with.

And they said, okay, what's a reasonable adjustment to that is a 10% reduction.

So yes, we do apply all sorts of setbacks.

We have all sorts of pathways to adjust them.

The one setback that we don't have an adjustment process for is the special street setbacks.

And so the state said, sorry, our mandatory adjustment program supersedes your code.

And even though you specifically prohibit variances to this standard, you have to allow at least a 10% adjustment.

So let's move to the graphic.

Is this a oh perfect?

I'm just gonna pick on this corner lot here.

Um this is Sunset Drive and Reese Road.

You can see this site here is a corner lot, and it's R75.

It has a special street setback along the front.

Again, the state doesn't care about that, but it also has a special street setback along the street side yard, and the state does care about that.

So again, I don't know the numbers specifically for Reese Road, but let's assume that there is a 30-foot special street setback, and it's measured hypothetically speaking from the center line of the existing right-of-way.

And let's say that from that measurement point, 10 feet of special street setback lands on uh the property.

So from that new imaginary um right-of-way line, that's that's where you have to, you have to develop inside of that.

Um what the mandatory adjustment program says is okay, for that 30-foot special street setback, you have to reduce it by 10% by three feet.

So, what the consequence would be is that it would be a 27-foot um special street setback rather than a 30-foot special street setback, pretty straightforward.

The part that comes into play is the eligibility of the actual housing project.

So, let's say this property is developed with a single family home.

If somebody came in and wanted to develop with another single family home and didn't like the special street setback, they don't have a pathway to adjust it.

Mandatory adjustments are only for eligible housing projects, and that includes projects that increase the net housing supply on the site, one, and two, also meet a minimum density requirement of 17 units per acre.

So, again, for this site, they would have to in the R7.

Provide at least a triplex in order to take advantage of the mandatory adjustment program.

If they redevelop this with a triplex, then they could come in and request a mandatory adjustment to take that special street setback from 30 feet to 27 feet.

And we would we would process that as a land use application.

So looking at the impact of this, um, the city engineer, I discussed it with uh the city engineer, and she determined with her staff that a 10% reduction to a special street setback is not likely not going to impede the necessary public improvements.

Um it is an impact, but some minimal impact.

Looking at the number of lots that this might impact, again, remember it's only lots with a street side special street setback.

There are some of them throughout the city, but it's not the most prevalent situation where a special street setback is going to occur.

Most of the time, they're gonna be along frontages or your front setbacks that the state is not requiring a mandatory adjustment to.

And then finally, looking at the streetscape, not a huge impact or a change to go from 30 feet to 27 feet there.

Don't expect that to be a super negative impact on the streetscape or the visual impacts.

And so with that information, the council decided that they were not going to ask staff to pursue some sort of local, a code amendment to create some sort of local adjustment pathway to the special street setbacks.

We're going to maintain a prohibition for uh set uh for variances to the standard, and only if and when a project is eligible could they apply for, and we would approve a mandatory adjustment.

So looking at the next area, um we apply maximum height limits.

We have various projections and we allow variances to the height.

But in all residential zones, our city charter, and that is chapter 10 or X, Section 47, or excuse me, 46A, limits the overall height for all residential structures in those residential zones to 50 feet.

So the maximum height plus any variances can't go past 50 feet.

Well, this is one of the standards that the state determined could create a regulatory barrier.

They said it would alleviate those costs and delays if you would, if each city would allow an adjustment to maximum height limits of at least 20% or one story, whichever is greater.

Now they didn't define what a story is.

Our code talks about it being 12 feet.

So again, um, you have your maximum height, you could get a roof form height exception, and then on top of that, you could request a building height variance.

Per our local variance regulations, you would have to meet that criteria.

But if looking at that variance, you were bumping up against the charter height limit of 50 feet.

The state is now saying we cannot impose that charter height limit.

The mandatory adjustment program specifically supersedes our charter and our community development code.

So what does that mean?

Unclear at this point.

How would that play out with all of these residential zones?

It's really hard to predict that.

I have this image here, which is I don't know why I use that image.

I actually even stretched it vertically to kind of make it more imposing.

It's basically a quadplex or possibly a townhouse, which could be allowed in um one of our lower density zones where you typically see detached single family.

Um it could possibly mean that an applicant proposing some sort of middle housing where you're increasing the number of housing units on the site and you're meeting that minimum minimum density requirement, could possibly bump up against that charter height limit, and then we would have to give them a mandatory variance to get the full adjustment, either 20% or one story.

Um that's in our low density zones, in our higher density zones, they have a little bit more height there.

Um it's really hard to predict how this one would play out.

It could have an impact, but I think we're gonna have to wait and see on this one.

We don't have a way to adjust this in our code.

There's no variance pathway, like I said, in our community development code to this charter height limit.

We also can't change the charter because that would require a general election.

Any amendments to the charter requires um general election, and there's of course no way to guarantee the outcome of an election.

So we're stuck with this one.

And what I told the council and what was conveyed to us by Hapo and by our legal council is that we just have to accept this one and we have to deal with the ramifications of it on a case-by-case basis.

Again, we'd first be looking at a local adjustment before we started looking at the mandatory adjustment.

Um, but extra height is extra height, and that can have consequences.

Do I have a quick question?

Is that is the 20% or one-story increase on top of whatever that current height requirement is in that particular zone?

And then we have like a super gap of 50 feet.

Yeah.

Okay.

So it's not only the maximum height, if there are any height bonuses or height projections or anything like that that are outright permitted, you also add those on top of it.

So just really quickly, a scenario could be this is an R10 zone lot, it's steeply sloped.

An applicant is proposing a quadplex on it.

Um, and you could just outright allow by co get a 41 foot height on that.

Um, 35 foot for the slope lot, six foot roof form height exception.

Um, if they wanted to, they could say, well, I meet the minimum density requirements, I am increasing the net housing on there, I want to apply for a height variance.

Well, okay, if you meet our local criteria for whatever variance pathway you're looking at, we can look at that.

And if that height variance bumped up against the 50 foot height limit because they went for the one story, so 41 plus 12 is 53 feet, we would have to grant them that extra three feet.

Does that make sense?

Yes.

Is this apply to buildings of this nature or a one-family house or what?

So again, for the mandatory adjustment, depending on which zone you're in, you're gonna have to one add more housing and meet that minimum density requirement in the low density zones that could be a triplex and R75, a quadplex and R10, or a townhouse project in R 15 in the medium and high density zones.

Um you're gonna see more multifamily, um possibly mixed use.

Um so it applies across a variety of housing types just dependent on the zone and what's being proposed.

Does that answer your question?

Yes, it does in part, but what I'm concerned about here is what this move excuse me.

What what does it what is the severe housing crisis?

What is that?

How do you define that?

Well, the state has defined it.

Um and Jessica, maybe uh sorry, director Numonolou can maybe speak to that a little bit more.

I uh wish uh long-range planning manager uh Eric Olson was here tonight because he was directly involved in that as well.

But basically, um we don't have the necessary housing stock or housing types of housing uh prices to accommodate all the future demand that we know is coming.

And so the governor imposed this particular bill imposed this mandatory adjustment program in order to encourage the production of housing.

Now, how the state has defined severe housing shortage, um, again, I'm not the best person to speak to that, maybe Director in Monolouk.

Well, is this relating to cities and towns or in a particular area, or is this extend all the way all through Oregon?

It's the entire state.

So the governor has declared a housing emergency and has um come up with a goal to produce, I think 35,000 housing units per year across the state.

And so a lot of the legislation, including this, are designed at trying to increase housing production.

And we have a deficit of housing that came that's been happening for a number of years.

Um for instance, it it's uh a significant amount of deficit existed during the uh Great Recession when we stopped kind of building housing for a while when the housing market crashed.

Um that exacerbated it, plus we weren't we were just we just have a deficit every year.

So it's it's we have a major affordability crisis in the entire state of Oregon.

And it's not just Oregon, it's actually nationwide.

Is the is the signature aspect of this the cost of housing as opposed to any other factor?

Well, the cost of housing is directly related to supply.

So if we have uh uh if we have a deficient supply of housing, that is going to increase the the cost of housing, which it it most certainly has.

And in looking at our housing needs analysis, the um just in like Oswego, you know, the the um um uh the cost of housing has increased dramatically in the is that a does that apply to our issue tonight that we just had set before us tonight?

Right.

So one of the as part of our housing needs analysis, we identified a deficit of uh both buildable land in the city available for housing, as well as the number of housing units in the city.

We have a deficit over the next 20 years, and we were required to uh uh produce a housing production strategy to try to address that deficit.

And so one of the strategies is looking at rezoning because we have a deficit of about 86 acres of buildable land in the city, and one of the ways to address that deficit is through rezoning to increase the capacity or the ability of additional housing to be on existing land within the city.

Rather, you know, another way you could address that is expanding your urban growth boundary.

And that's mandatory, that's not one of these things that's discretionable.

Well, we had discretion in coming up with our housing production strategy, and um, but we did have to address this um deficit of land, and there's not again not a lot of options.

Um one of them is is increasing the uh available capacity on existing land within the city, another one is expanding your urban growth boundary, which is not one of our strategies.

So I want to clarify that tonight I'm only talking about Senate Bill 1537, which was a state mandated program, um, and we are primarily exempt from it.

So we're then, I just want to repeat that we are within our local process and codes for the most part, and we're discussing the various areas where we don't have a local process.

So yes, there is a mandatory program, a mandatory adjustment program.

We are not specifically subject to it except for these three areas.

So the last one I want to talk about is maximum density.

Maximum density, this gets a little esoteric, so bear with me.

Maximum density can apply to the number of lots that are created through a land division.

It can also apply to the number of units on a particular project.

The state did not concern themselves with this bill with a number of lots created.

It was simply focused on the number of units.

And it said by if you have a project where you have allowed other variances that potentially increase massing.

So you could do reduce setbacks, additional height, additional lot coverage.

You can't then say to an applicant, well, I'm sorry, even though you have more massing, you can't convert those to actual more units if there's a density cap in place.

You have to, if you allow increased massing, you have to also allow more units.

Now there's only a certain, there's only a few zones where we do have a specific denit uh maximum unit density cap.

Um I'll talk about the R3 zone.

Um in the R3 zone, uh multifamily is allowed.

Um it comes with a maximum density cap of 12 units per acre.

Excuse me.

So if you have a one-acre site, you can only build build 12 units on it.

So if an applicant goes through this whole process to get reduced setbacks, extra lot coverage, extra height, it didn't wouldn't matter because you still only get 12 units.

Well, the state said that's not really fair, and I kind of have to agree with that.

You get to put as many units on the site as you need as as there are available to you with these adjustment process local adjustments.

Unfortunately, the city does not allow any sort of variances to any sort of density cap.

And so uh the mandatory adjustment program does come into play.

So an applicant would have to be requesting other variances that increase massing.

Um in that situation, if there was a dense a unit density cap, we would have to waive it to allow for additional units through the mandatory adjustment process.

Uh again, with this one, um the council uh could direct staff to look for a code amendment to incorporate some sort of local adjustment pathway for maximum density.

They decided instead to just allow this mandatory adjustment to stay in place and see how that plays out.

So again, not only would you have to be asking for variances to increase it and go past your maximum density, um, you would also have to be eligible, meaning you it's a net increase of housing units on the site, and you're meeting that 17 units per acre.

Um so that is the end of my presentation.

Um, answered some questions as we went along.

Happy to answer any others that you have.

Thanks, Joanna.

Quick quick question.

When we say let it play out, is it sort of somebody's gonna come in with an application and then they're gonna come up against like the prohibition on a variance that they based on our code and then they're gonna then say, oh, state law allows me to go higher and we're gonna pass it?

Like I'm just wondering a little bit of like what played out means.

Yeah, sorry.

Um that does sound like code.

Um not that code.

Uh so if someone comes in for a building permit, they can just outright comply with the standards, they can get um the maximum height and any bonuses available to them.

If they want to do more than that, then they have to apply for a land use application and uh comply with whatever criteria are in place.

Let's say it's a rid review design variance, um, and they get some additional height from that.

Um, if that additional height that they're requesting bumps up against that 50 foot charter height limit, then as a part of that land use application to approve the initial part of that height variance, we would also incorporate a mandatory adjustment, basically saying, well, normally under previous circumstances, this would be limited to 50 feet in height, but we have a mandatory adjustment in place from the state, and we have to allow whatever number of feet is over and above that.

So that is how it plays out.

And again, because there's so many, I'm not sure if anyone took the time, and I wouldn't blame you if you didn't, um, if you looked at our exemption request, 60 pages of dense code for maximum building heights alone as they play out across the code or across the city.

It was a one and a half page table, basically talking about all the different ways that we apply maximum height.

And it's project specific, it's topography specific, it's um zone specific.

So it's really hard to predict what we're going to be seeing as it plays out, but on a case by case basis, we'll do that analysis and uh and that's sort of administratively easier to do on an individual basis than sort of an entire code adjustment.

Honestly, yes, until we start running up against variances that we can't approve.

That's gonna that's my concern as the current planning manager is that staff is gonna be fielding a request where someone is just wanting additional height and not meeting our criteria.

Um, and then we have to weigh the pros and cons of possibly not approving that variance and possibly jeopardizing our 90% approval rating that we have to maintain.

Got it.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Any other questions?

All right.

Well, I appreciate your patience.

Thank you so much.

No, thank you.

Item number eight, other business.

Item number nine, schedule review.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh coming up on your schedule, uh, your next meeting would uh normally be on November 10th, and we had uh reserved that time for a possible um findings adoption for the hearing you had uh tonight, but since that is being continued to December 8th, uh we no longer have an item for November 10th, so that meeting will be canceled.

So you will not meet on November 10th.

Uh your meeting next meeting after that is scheduled for November 24th, which unfortunately is the week of Thanksgiving.

However, we do have an item that is scheduled.

It's the hearing on the home occupation amendments, uh, which you've had uh a few study sessions on.

Um, I guess I would uh encourage you to let our admin staff know as soon as possible if you don't think you're gonna be available for that hearing uh um because uh if we don't have a quorum, then we're gonna have to need to do some rescheduling.

So I would just uh put in a plug for our admin staff to please let her know as soon as possible if you actually be it'd be great if you could confirm either way, confirm with her if you are available or you aren't available that day, uh, just because it's a week of Thanksgiving and we know a lot of people may have plans.

Uh and then after that, of course, on December 8th, you have the continued hearing for the um zone change application uh that you heard tonight.

You also will have uh, assuming the hearing on home occupations occurred on the 24th, the findings for the home occupation um hearing, and then we're also going to have a study session on the tree regulation amendment project.

So uh we have a study session with the council in mid-November, I think it's the 18th.

Um, so we'll see them first and then we'll come to the planning commission or planning commission and get your feedback on some code concepts that we're coming up with uh that we've come up with for some of the more significant items in our tree code amendment process.

I also just want to mention to let you know that um uh the planning commission made a recommendation for the uh comprehensive plan amendment for to adopt a fair housing policy.

That is going to hearing before the uh city council on November 4th.

Uh so we'll certainly keep you apprised of their decision.

You're welcome to watch it if you if you like, but just wanted to let you know that that's going to the city council on November 4th.

And I think that brings us through uh December.

Um so unless you have any other questions, I don't have any other updates on that.

Thank you.

Any other comments, questions?

Adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great, great questions.

Yeah, it was