Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis, center, listens to people talk about a planned subdivision of 80 townhouses off Gibson Hill Road.
The Albany Planning Division is preparing paperwork on a proposed subdivision of 80 townhouses off Gibson Hill Road in North Albany. Some people are upset about the project, but state law allows it and there’s not much they can do to prevent it.
North Albany residents organized a meeting Monday night to talk about issues related to the project with state Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis, R-Albany.
The main topic was state legislation pushed by then House Speaker and now Gov. Tina Kotek, D-Portland, in the 2019 and 2021 legislative sessions. Her goal was to increase housing production and density in Oregon in order to lower the cost.
The changes were intended to promote so-called “middle housing” by overriding or changing prior local zoning regulations.
A Salem developer, Serge Serdsev of Pacific National Development, purchased 7.4 acres at 3118 Gibson Hill Road last year. The city had previously approved 22 single-family home lots on the acreage, and the new owner applied for a “middle housing land division” to create 80 townhouse lots instead.
At City Hall, planning Manager David Martineau said Monday he was working on a staff report on the application and expects to have it done well before May 29, the end of the 63-day period allowed by law for reviewing the request.
The next likely step is that the community development director will approve the application. The law says middle housing subdivisions can’t be appealed in the normal way; appeals must go to a referee instead. The point is to prevent the delays customary in Oregon’s land use process.
Twenty-one people attended the Monday meeting with Boshart Davis at the North Albany fire station. One of their themes was the loss of local control over what happens in Oregon towns.
The Albany legislator, part of the minority party at the Capitol, said land use and housing are only two of the areas where the majority wants more state control. (hh)
Too bad many of us did not know about this, or we would have been there as well! This 80 unit mess must be stopped, or we need a recall of the city council members that approved it!
Hello Richard,
We were able to get a small room at the fire dept for a meeting. The main purpose was to get support from our Representative Shelly Boshart Davis. I just hear from her and she is working to get a meeting set up with the City. I’m glad for her clout. We are also in the process of setting up a separate Facebook group for focused discussion.
Don’t worry, be happy. You don’t have the power to pick your poison – local or state.
Both involve coercively imposed rules by a centralized power that limits voluntary exchange of, and freedom to use, PRIVATE property.
Neither state or local government is motivated to make a rational economic calculation in regards to PRIVATE property transactions.
Governments are motivated by other things.
Any idea when construction of this project will begin and when it’s supposed to be completed? Those of us who live in North Albany aren’t looking forward to the increased traffic on Gibson Hill. School days have the potential to be disastrous.
How much State money does the City rely on for Public/City Services? Does the State use their extortionary tactics, like they did during covid, when it comes to cities and counties pushing back, by threatening to reduce funding?
We get the kind of regulations from those we elect and keep electing. Look at your voters pamphlet, see who is running and if an incumbent find out how they voted on this travesty then vote for someone else.
Our representative (Shelly Davis Boshart) voted against the new law that passed in 2019 that allows for the dense development, without regard for current infrastructure. On the other hand, our state senator from Corvallis voted in favor of allowing this law to pass. It was sponsored by “then” speaker of the house Tina Kotek and passed both houses by a vote of 60 to 25. It was her #1 priority for the session – to allow developers to cram up to 4-plexes on any existing lot.
I am not sure why people are so upset when a lot of these people are also the same ones who don’t like seeing homeless people on the streets. We need to build more housing and being a NIMBY person isn’t going to help anyone. They need to build more housing and that might mean it will be in your area. We are in a housing crisis and I think creating more housing for people is only a good thing.
How many homeless people were in Albany before they built thousands of housing units in the Knox Butte area and how many homeless now occupy just one of those units? When you can answer that question you can revise your comment.
You must really be out of touch with reality if you think a homeless person will be able to afford one of these townhouses.
This isn’t about homeless people. They can’t afford anything, and that is a crisis. This is about another one of our crises….lack of affordable housing and a finite amount of land to build on. We need to eat, you know, so we have land for farming, and the old earth and its inhabitants need trees and plants, too, so we can’t build on every piece of land.
This North Albany thing is mostly about North Albanyites not wanting any multiple-family housing in North Albany, period. The little bastion of Republicans on their side of the river do not want people who can’t afford a single-family, larger, expensive home. That is the truth of the matter.
So imagine when they build 4-plexes in the Monteith Historic Distict, without the City being able to stop it. But more important is the issue of infrastructure. N. Albany Road will need to be widened to 4 lanes. Have you seen the bottlenecks near the school and near Hickory? And we will be dumping 100s of more trips onto Hwy 20 just from this one development. And the 80 townhouse development will be expanded onto adjacent land, in the future. It might take 15 minutes to get through downtown. I just heard this morning, that development is planned on North Albany Road near Jones Ave. Years ago, before annexation, there was discussion of the need for a new way out of N. Albany.
“Historic” designations have worked well to effectively segregate higher density housing to outlying neighborhoods (and conveniently, the lower socioeconomic residents that typically occupy it). The Bowman Park neighborhood just absorbed a new 120-unit apartment complex with zero traffic alterations. Barely a peep was made (or heard) about it.
If not North Albany, or the large “historic” area engulfing downtown, then which neighborhoods should be expected to absorb density increases? All this “missing middle” housing construction are rentals (and most “starter” single family homes bought the past few years). So, no new owner-occupants investing in upkeep to gain equity and wealth. Just landlords who keep up housing enough to avoid hassles with the City. That’s a formula for blight. No neighborhood deserves to take the brunt of that.
And no, “if you don’t build it, they won’t come” is not dealing with reality. It is magical thinking.
There was plenty of “peep” from the Bowman Park neighbors. The mayor replaced two planning commission members to get an expansion of the complex approved.
i thought the plan was the homeless will all become home owners, in small communities that forbid alcohol and drugs.
Where did you hear this?
it was mentioned here on one of hasso’s posts. a person typed in the homeless will become homeowners of tiny houses. no drugs or alcohol allowed in the tiny houses. and all of albanys homeless issues will be solved. sounded like a fantastic idea to me. the homeless will all hang out at there tiny homes where they cant drink or do drugs.
Someone might want to check the facts on where this mandate originated. It is Federal and has been around a long time. Look it up before the State is blamed.
If you’re interested, you can read the bill that allowed for triplexes, quadplexes, townhouses and cottage clusters found here on the OLIS website: You can find that bill, including testimony given at the OLIS website: https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2019R1/Measures/Overview/HB2001
They always use the excuse of needing to increase housing density to make it affordable. But it is never affordable when all said and done. It just makes overcrowding of people, the schools, medical care, the traffic, infrastructure and on and on.
Maybe it’s unproductive, but I wonder how differently this would have gone, had Ray Kopczynski’s nomination of former mayor Konopa to the Albany Planning Commission been approved?
As a practical matter, it’s likely to be, as they say, “All over, but the shouting.”
The State of Oregon overrode the wishes of Albany. From reading the testimony from 2019, I will state that Mayor Konopa wrote very forcefully against the bill (HB2001). But Speaker Kotek rammed this through the legislature.
Remember this when you vote.
Its one thing to want to build to bring more housing but its another to end up building way more than originally intended without first making sure the surrounding area’s infrastructure can handle what it will bring.
Yes, I completely agree. For 20+ years now, N. Albany has undergone significant development, the majority of it is hundreds of single family homes all approved by the planning department. Yet when it’s come to developing infrastructure to assist in the approved development’s growth, the planning department has been absent. For 20+ years the city’s planning department has ignored the growing infrastructure needs which brings us to the current situation. In a perfect world those 88 townhomes would be moved to a better suited location within the city such as near supporting infrastructure and highways. But, this world is far from perfect and the city needs much more than single family housing now. But let’s be clear, the lack of supporting infrastructure in N. Albany isn’t new. It has existed for a decade if not longer thanks to the local planning department’s decisions not the state or federal government’s.
City only notified neighbors within 100 ft of 1955 Water St. 4x townhouses plan. That means less than a dozen people could submit their reasons for not changing zoning to medium density in single family homes zone and problems this could cause.
The change to 80, more like 120 townhomes, had already been completed before the neighbor comments/concerns were reviewed. Why didn’t the city notify all of North Albany? This development affects us all! Was it because of the property tax? I mean 24 single family residents homes property tax is definetly lower than 120 townhomes! Right? Just wondering. Plus, I suspect there will be more townhomes in the future in that area! Drive over there and check out what the signs say at the end of the roads, “NOTICE
THIS STREET TO BE
EXTENDED WITH
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
FOR INFO CALL
PUBLIC WORKS
541-917-7676.”
I’m already seeing the “For Sale” signs going up in the neighborhood near this (latest) fiasco. Thank you Planning Commissioner. You’re doing a GREAT job! NOT! It REALLY is time to vote out our existing city (and state) government! Get people with backbones.
Nobody moved to Albany to live in South Portland!
The city always finds a way to control what is constructed or repair what they want. These laws just made bigger and easier loopholes when they work for them. The city bends over backwards to allow these projects and many others fail due to their use of local laws to quell the projects that they don’t sanction. They don’t have a full time attorney for nothing. The city manager and attorney control what happens in Albany and the council follows their lead. Citizens get blamed for voting in government officials that misrepresent themselves and their agendas. Lying is not a crime and not punishable in the government. These sleight of hand deals are hard to nail down and present as being out of their control. Power is usually for people who want to control their surroundings for their benefit, not make other people successful. Without enforceable restraints government citizens need to make their sure their needs are met through actively monitoring what their government is doing with the power we give them. EVERYONE that I know that is a disadvantaged (elderly, disabled and/or low income) citizen in Albany say they are screwed and at the mercy of the local government that we voted into office. While wealth trickles down, abuse works its way up so no one is safe for long. The progression of this abuse of power into north Albany is not surprising, nor is the city blaming someone else.
I read the information in the piece referred to by Brad (https://olix.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2019R1Measures/overview/HB2001 and found under HB 2001-A FISCAL IMPACT, 3rd Paragraph ANALYSIS 2nd paragraph……”and sets time lines for cities to update their land use regulations.”
Is this same wording used in the bill that was signed by the Governor?
I am no attorney but it would seem to me that common sense says that what was the regulation at the time this development started is prevailing and until the city has been given time to change the laws should prevail.
In my opinion the developer violated the permit that was issued…..
Albany amended its development code in line with the relevant legislation. As far as I can see, nobody violated anything here.
If the citizens of Albany in 1890 had the attitude displayed in many of these comments, you wouldn’t be here today.
“Disclaimer”: I was a Planning Commissioner in another city, several years ago, which is the basis for my question:
Why isn’t the city taking into account the obvious impact on traffic and the school system? Those carried just about the same weight as the so-called need for density, and were valid grounds to stop or amend approvals. I smell a great big stinking rat here, rooted in City Hall! They are throwing the existing residents “under the bus” for the sake of tax dollars and not having to make a decision against a developer! It is time to throw all of the rascals in city government out…they are not representing the citizens!
If any more meetings are held, please let everybody here know, at least. I will be at a meeting, if I don’t get run over by the 124 mph drivers on NA Road…another problem ignored by the city and our absent police department.
And lastly, contacting Boshart is a waste of time…two attempts both got zero reply.
Well said Richard. I couldn’t agree more. See you at the meeting.
If residents aren’t happy with the decision on Albany city council. Maybe every resident of North Albany should get together and make North Albany a city by itself. Which then would require there own council to make the changes that they want. Not saying that having there own council would be different. They would also be able to have more funds from state and federal for there area and wouldn’t have to depend on the current council’s bad decisions. Because waiting for a change in the council would be after voting season and hopefully there is personal change
The 80 unit project was approved today. See the City’s website.https://albanyoregon.gov/cd/projectreview
Scroll down to the April 2 entries. You can also see approvals to cut all the trees on a lot at the corner of N. Albany Road and Jones avenue. Cluster housing is planned for that lot. More traffic.