City Council, February 14th - Fairview Plans

Also at Council on Monday is a package of proposed code amendments for the redevelopment at Fairview.

Staff had broken it out from the omnibus package earlier this year, as it seemed to require more attention, and the potential of an appeal meant it needed to be isolated so other code wouldn't be invalidated, and it's now at Council as a standalone.

Problems after an Appeal to LUBA

Turns out, there were problems

Back in 2019 when The Woods was going through the approvals process, it did seem strange. There were some real gyrations in argument to make it work.

A setback at Fairview

The approval was appealed to LUBA, and the appeal asked a little about some of the gyrations. LUBA reversed the City's the approval and sent it back.

The set of code amendments at Council is largely, though not wholly, a response. The set also responds to other difficulties or complications identified in planning processes. The amendments are framed as a set of technical fixes. 

But aren't we really dealing with questions about the heart and spirit of the Fairview Master Plan and the extent to which we are or are not adequately meeting them? There is a deeper question of values here. Unfortunately, the way the amendments are framed shies away from this and leads to muddle rather than clarity.

We Already Broke the Master Plan

Fairview hasn't met many of the core principles (2004)

From here, the code amendments are difficult to parse out. Both sides seem to be talking around the core issues and heart of the matter. 

That heart is that we've already strayed pretty far from the original vision of the Master Plan and have broken it open.

What we really need is a new Master Plan, but there is probably not time or budget for that. 

So what we have are code amendments understood as refinements, improvements, and clarifications. Minor technical details.

The first five principles of the Master Plan

But consider the first five principles of the Master Plan on "Sustainable Land Use":

1. Build in Economic and Social Diversity
2. Create a Center
3. Re-use, retrofit
4. Create Local Employment
5. Build Innovative Green Buildings
   

Only the fifth, for "Innovative Green Buildings" has been met in spirit.

On the first, while there is some diversity between the three-story walk-ups and the large single detached houses, the principle calls for more than a binary, a much larger range, for

homes for all types of people: efficiency units appropriate for elderly and singles; rental suites available to low wage working families; spacious homes for people of means; clustered homes for communities of interest.

That full range is not yet met. It may be that we have too many single detached homes at Fairview. So far any middle housing rounds to zero. The current developments look a lot like business as usual: Large single detached houses and pods of three story walk-ups set on large parking lots. Nothing in the middle. No townhouses, cottage clusters, or smallplexes.

The spirit of the "Center" is still missing. The three-story walk-ups don't meet that. There is no park yet, and no commercial hub yet.

The "re-use, retrofit" principle has almost entirely been abandoned.

Very few of the buildings remain

Of the buildings identified for "short term renovation," "full renovation within 5 years," and "full renovation within 10 years," very few remain. Most have been demolished, and even those remaining now are likely candidates for demolition.

You can say tortuously that some buildings are being reused to meet the principle, but in totality the spirit of the principle has been abandoned.

And aside from the construction jobs, there is no commercial center or reused buildings for "business and light industrial uses." 

As I read it, only the fifth land use principle for "Green Building" has been met in any plausible, genuine way.

About the next cluster of principles, for "Sustainable Ecological Systems," I am not sure. 

On the final cluster, for "Sustainable Transportation," it's hard to comment because the whole is not yet built out and so there is not the critical mass of potential customers for transit service inside the developments. Walking and biking inside seem pleasant enough, though there are already complaints about speeding on the New Strong Road. And immediately outside the developments, Reed Road and Battlecreek/Pringle remain too speedy for comfortable walking and biking. Those principles aren't broken yet, but we also haven't been able to meet them either.

The Master Plan, then, does not seem to be functioning very well for what is already built, and there are good questions about whether it can really guide development going forward. A new Master Plan might be best. But "best" might not be possible at this moment.

What do to?

So the code amendments respond in part to the brokenness of the Master Plan, but cannot say that the Master Plan is broken. Everything has to be framed as refining or improving compliance and clarity on a Plan that is still functioning well and has force. There's a bit of a charade here.

Eric Olsen, whose project for "The Woods" was halted in the LUBA decision, has a letter. He is a thoughtful developer and it is worth citing:

As someone who has written two Refinement Plans and built the most single family homes in Fairview, I highly recommend that City Council move expeditiously to approve the changes to the zoning ordinance. Without these changes, the properties within the master planned area which are not currently approved with a refinement plan or ones that may need amending in the future, will likely become even more uncertain as to the development potential. I firmly believe, that looking back at all of the refinement plans to date, likely none would have withstood the rigid interpretation handed down by LUBA.

On the other side, a lawyer for the appellant at LUBA says another appeal could be forthcoming, and writes:

The proposed amendments limit criteria for refinement plan amendments. Instead of requiring consistency, the amendments proposed “substantial conformance,” a far lesser standard. The only rationale for doing this is to weaken the City’s criteria, which does a disservice to the original vision of the Fairview master plan and the Council’s constituency. The amendments relegate the master plan vision for development to a mere superfluity....The proposed amendments are inconsistent with the requirements in SRC 530.030 that refinement plans further refine and implement the Fairview plan. If what is contained in the Fairview plan is simply conceptual, then amendments to refinement plans would not actually be implementing or refining the Fairview masterplan.

I don't exactly understand what the appellant wants to do. I understand the criticism, and a lot of it is on target. But there isn't really an integrity for the original vision that can be restored. We are past that. What is a plausible next step the appellant seeks to enforce on the City and for the developers to build out? I am not sure there is one. Functionally, the appeals might just be procedural delay and roadblock.

It's nice to think, and in important ways is true, that the City and developers have interpreted the vision too loosely, and that we need to follow the vision more exactly.

But development was really stalled for a long time, and only the reversion to forms more like "business as usual" got things started. Opposition to these amendments is likely an instance of the perfect being the enemy of the good.

We need a review of all the Fairview Projects

This debate over the code amendments is yet more evidence that we need a kind of forensic review or audit at Fairview to determine more exactly why it has only been a very partial success. If we want to carry elements of "sustainability" forward into Our Salem and into planning more generally, we should have a better understanding, fully explicit for the public, of what has worked and what hasn't, and what changes we might need to make in the future.

Maybe there's a way to improve the remaining development at Fairview, and maybe these code amendments are insufficient if we think we can make those improvments. But without an explicit analysis of ways the Master Plan has not been successful so far, it's hard to see a future path to substantial improvement.