Posted inLand use Trees

Giant Sequoia in NE Salem at risk from developer’s tree variance request

The City of Salem is unduly proud about being awarded a Tree City USA designation, given that more than 3,400 cities have that title, which doesn't require very much: Become a Tree City USA Community Maintaining a tree board or department. Having a community tree ordinance. Spending at least $2 per capita on urban forestry. Celebrating Arbor Day. Where Salem has fallen short historically is the folks at City Hall not doing enough to protect street trees from being cut down for no good reason and allowing developers to remove trees that should be preserved. The most egregious example of…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Land use

Bush Park baseball stadium expansion moves forward with Parks Board vote

The Salem Reporter is doing a great job keeping our community informed about plans for improving the Willamette University baseball field at Bush Park, which would host summer games for a new Salem for-profit team that would join the West Coast League. Yesterday a story was published about a Thursday meeting of the Parks Advisory Board where the baseball project moved forward. Here's an excerpt from "City parks board advances plans for Spec Keene Stadium." Members of Salem’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Board on Thursday voted in support of an updated agreement with Willamette University advancing plans to use a…
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Posted inCity Council Land use

Expanded baseball field in Bush Park draws opposition and support

"If you build it they will come." Most people think this was a famous line in the movie Field of Dreams, as regards a baseball field, but actually the line was "If you build it he will come." One person, not lots.  Here in Salem, there's both a lot of anxiety and a lot of excitement over a proposed expansion of the Willamette University baseball field into Bush Park (yeah, its official name is Bush's Pasture Park, but few use it). Opponents worry that if the stadium is built, they will indeed come, causing noise, parking, and other problems for…
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Posted inLand use

I love Oregon’s land use system. But it will survive some legislative tweaking.

On this Valentines Day it seems appropriate to express my love for Oregon's land use system. It dates from 1973, shortly after when I moved to Oregon in 1971 to attend graduate school at Portland State University. So yeah, I guess Senate Bill 100, which established the land use system, was intended in part to protect our state's farm and forest land from Californians like me. A Department of Land Conservation and Development web page summarizes the bill. Oregonians in the 1960s and '70s became concerned as they watched rapid population growth begin to take place around the state. Lawmakers…
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Posted inLand use

South Salem Office Depot kicks out farm stand and food trucks

Office Depot acted like a corporate jerk when it kicked out a farm stand and two food carts from their vast and mostly empty south Salem parking lot. A Statesman Journal story, "Where did the food carts at the South Salem Office Depot parking lot go?," describes the bullshit reason for this decidedly unneighborly act of corporate asshole'ness. The departure was fueled by an order from Office Depot's corporate office claiming the food trucks and stands were taking up too many parking spots, food cart owners said. This left staff of the South Salem location, who confirmed the move, to…
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Posted inCity Council Land use

Salem City Council reverses itself and approves Meyer Farm subdivision

Some Salem progressives are deeply irritated at fellow progressives on the City Council after Monday night's 4-3 approval of a revised Meyer Farm subdivision application , which followed a 5-2 denial of the application on February 28. The Friends of The Meyer Farm Facebook page has an image that sums up how opponents of the subdivision are feeling today. They're justified in feeling this way.  One reason is how City of Salem staff turned a subdivision denial into an approval by working with the applicant on a revised application, even though opponents figured that what staff should have been doing…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Land use

Meyer Farm subdivision rejected by City Council, but city staff are trying to keep it alive.

Ah, the games City of Salem staff like to play, even when they seem illegal, or at least, decidedly improper.  Last Monday night the City Council voted 5-2 to reject an application to build a 139 single-family lot subdivision on the beautiful property in south Salem known as the Meyer Farm. I wrote about this last October in "Thirty-acre Meyer Farm property in south Salem may be developed." Neighbors, along with others concerned about the proposed development, formed a Facebook group, Friends of The Meyer Farm. I've followed their persistent, thoughtful, energetic efforts, finding them impressive. Fighting a subdivision is…
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Posted inLand use

Take a few minutes to help save 30 beautiful acres in Salem

If you love trees and open space -- who doesn't? -- please consider taking a couple of minutes to help save the 30-acre Meyer Farm property near Trader Joe's in south Salem from being turned into a subdivision. Back in October 2021 I wrote a blog post about this, "Thirty-acre Meyer Farm property in south Salem may be developed." If you drive past Trader Joe's on Hilfiker Lane SE, on your left you'll see a surprising urban sight: thirty acres of beautiful undeveloped land.  Unfortunately, there's a decent chance that before too long this property will become thirty acres of…
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Posted inEnvironment Land use

Thirty-acre Meyer Farm property in south Salem may be developed

If you drive past Trader Joe's on Hilfiker Lane SE, on your left you'll see a surprising urban sight: thirty acres of beautiful undeveloped land.  Unfortunately, there's a decent chance that before too long this property will become thirty acres of much less beautiful developed land. But not if a group of people devoted to seeing the land remain as natural as possible succeed in their effort to stop the planned subdivision. Consider joining the Friends of The Meyer Farm Facebook group if you share their goal. The Statesman Journal has done some good reporting on plans for the Meyer…
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Posted inCity Council Land use

Costco approval was bad decision by Salem City Council

Today the Statesman Journal published an excellent opinion piece by Lora Meisner and Bill Dalton about the City Council's approval of Costco's relocation to a Kuebler Boulevard location adjacent to a residential neighborhood. As you can read below, Meisner and Dalton argue that City of Salem staff and city councilors, with the exception of Jackie Leung, failed to stand up for the broad public interest -- siding instead with PacTrust (owner of the property) and Costco (the main tenant on the property). Meisner and Dalton are very familiar with this issue, including the decision by LUBA (Land Use Board of…
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Posted inLand use Oregon politics

Oregon’s urban-rural divide explained by political scientist

So, why is there such a tension between people in rural Oregon and urban Oregon? We saw this divide in action earlier in 2019, when Republicans in the state Senate walked out in protest of a climate change bill, supported by loggers driving their trucks in circles around the Capitol building, horns blaring. Today a political scientist from Western Oregon University, Mark Henkels, offered up some explanations of what's going on here in the course of his presentation at a Salem City Club meeting, It's Complicated: The Politics of Oregon's Rural-Urban Divide. Mark Henkels Early on in his talk, Henkels…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Land use

Heritage School needs to be treated fairly by the City of Salem

I like David and Goliath stories. I always root for David, the little guy or gal. That's why I'm hoping Salem's small 35-student Heritage School gets treated fairly by City officials and the City Council regarding its concerns about what the large, rich, and powerful Mountain West Investment Corporation wants to build adjacent to the school. A Statesman Journal story mostly misses the point about why the Heritage School wants to see changes made to a Mountain West proposal to build a 180-unit apartment complex next to the school.  The story, "Salem's Fairview Training Center was intended as a green…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Land use

City may buy Hillcrest after Mark Wigg proposed this. West Salem Loop is another Wigg idea.

This is a great example of bottom-up creativity here in Salem. As far as I know, the City of Salem had no intention of buying the 45-acre property that formerly housed the Hillcrest Youth Correctional Facility until Salem activist Mark Wigg proposed this, and I shared Wigg's ideas in a September 2018 blog post that went to City officials: "Hillcrest is for sale. The City of Salem should buy it." Here's how my post started out. The State of Oregon has put the 45 acre Hillcrest property up for sale. According to Wikipedia, Hillcrest was a youth correctional facility that…
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Posted inLand use

Salem’s Heritage School seeks changes to Mountain West apartment complex plan

This is a classic -- and oh, so Salem -- development story with David and Goliath overtones.On one side we have a charming 35-student private school, the Heritage School, which set up shop on the old Fairview Training Center property in 2004, when the vision for the property's 275 acres hadn't yet been diluted.  So the folks who invested a lot of time, energy, and money into renovating a building on the Fairview property, anticipating that the surrounding acreage would be developed in accord with a Sustainable Fairview Master Plan, now are justifiably irked that Mountain West Investment Corporation plans…
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Posted inLand use

Neighbors appeal Costco shopping center

Good news. The headline of a Salem Reporter story says, "Neighborhood appeal puts Kuebler Gateway Shopping Center on Hold." Here's how the story starts out: Costco’s road to a new location in south Salem is not over after neighbors appealed the city’s recent decision to allow the Kuebler Gateway Shopping Center. The appeals trigger what could be months of more deliberation. The South Gateway Neighborhood Association, and three neighbors acting on their own through an attorney, cited a number of reasons why Salem planners should not have approved the nearly 200,000-square-foot project in late October. They contend the shopping center…
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Posted inCity of Salem Land use

Eight large white oaks to be killed for a new Costco store in Salem

What's the value of eight lives? Is it greater or less than the desire of Costco to build a new Salem store on the graves of the deceased? I'm talking about the lives of large white oaks, not humans. But those are important questions to tree-loving people like me, which includes many of the neighbors who live near the Kuebler Gateway Shopping Center where the Salem Costco is planned to be relocated. Here's a photo of a beautiful white oak in our yard. I wanted to show it before discussing the rather dry details of what Costco is proposing to…
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Posted inCity of Salem Land use Smart growth

Our local transportation planning organization is fiddling while carbon emissions burn us up

It's embarrassing that the SKATS (Salem-Keizer Area Transportation Study) body, which focuses on transportation planning in our area, has some global warming deniers on it who are mightily resisting connecting a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions with how people should get around via vehicles, mass transit, bicycles, and whatever.  Salem-Keizer Area Transportation Study (SKATS) is the designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Salem-Keizer area. A MPO is a federally mandated body for any urban area over 50,000 in population. The SKATS MPO is directed by a Policy Committee composed of elected representatives from the cities of Keizer, Salem and Turner, Marion…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce City Council Land use

Poetic goodbye to Old Lindbeck Orchard shows what’s wrong with Salem development

I'm sharing a moving opinion piece by Jane Wille in today's Statesman Journal because we need more poetic feeling and less financial greed here in Salem. As you'll read below, Wille is saddened by the loss of the Old Lindbeck Orchard property in West Salem, which she says is to become high-density retirement housing. Last year the Salem Breakfast on Bikes blogger reported that it looked like a fenced gated community apartment complex was planned for the property. This supposedly is progress. I'm not so sure. After Wille's piece, you can read the comment I left on the Statesman Journal…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Land use

Costco hopes to come to south Salem over neighborhood opposition

It's an all-too-familiar theme here in Salem: people feeling powerless about unwelcome development in their neighborhood that they feel is being pushed upon them by forces they can't control. Before sharing photos of what's planned for the new shopping center where Costco will be the dominant presence, I wanted to show the most surprising aspect of the meeting. Empty chairs. This reflects the failure of Costco Wholesale and PacTrust real estate representatives to have the guts to stand up in front of concerned neighbors and answer their questions about why it makes sense to plunk a gigantic big box store…
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Posted inCity of Salem Land use Trees

Clear-cut of 27 acre urban forest in south Salem makes neighbors angry

So how would you feel if you lived next to 27 acres of untouched forest land just outside the Salem city limits, and one day logging equipment rolls in to clear-cut all of the trees -- firs, white oaks, other species? And when you asked someone in charge why this was being done, they reportedly said, "I'm logging it for timber." Except, it turns out that this really isn't true, because a 46 acre, 212 lot subdivision is planned for the property that's north of Robins Lane SE and west of the I-5 freeway. To cap it off, you later…
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