At the Hearings Officer: A Bed and Breakfast on Chemeketa, May's Landing

1811 Chemeketa St. NE
1905 Birdseye Map of Salem
via Library of Congress

While this item has some neighborhood significance, it has no real significance for transportation or anything else, and this is just a note about a favorite house and intersection in Salem. But it is funny how much anxiety is occasioned by the matter of parking on the public space we call a street.

The Daniel S. Yoder house of 1891 is insanely cute. It is a gable-front with a little tiny wing and sits in an elbow of Mill Creek at the corner of 18th and Chemeketa. There are two bridges by it. It's almost Kinkadian. (But for real!)

Kitty-corner is the Samuel Hughes house of 1908.

The intersection jogs and is clearly a seam between two plats. It has charm and character and energy. If your walks and rides don't take you by it at all, when the trees are in bloom you should arrange a spring walk through the Court-Chemeketa Historic District and check it out.

Some new owners wish to turn it into a Bed and Breakfast, and so next week the Hearings Officer will decide on a Conditional Use Permit to go from residential to the B&B. Interestingly, the lot is zoned Residential Duplex.

The Staff Report recommends approval with conditions.

Most of them are about micro-managing parking!

May's Landing is Back

More substantive and directly relevant is the return of the May's Landing project.

Just south of Mission on 23rd

The City just posted a Hearing notice for a proposed 96-unit apartment complex at this site on 23rd Street south of Mission Street.

It will be interesting to see how the proposal has changed from previous iterations and how walkable it may or may not be. You can see from the aerial how much surface parking and industry there is here. Mission Street is wide and fast and inhospitable here also. It's probably a cookie-cutter autoist thing, but you never know - and we can always hope.