Taking a look at the fence in the floodway at The Banks apartments on Monday evening, April 14, 2025.
A surprising public notice by the City of Albany caught my eye last week. It notified people of a “floodplain development review” at The Banks, the apartment complex on the Willamette River.
The 120-unit development at 595 Geary St. N.E. opened two years ago, in April 2023. What new development could there be to need reviewing now?
The development needing review turns out to be not new. It’s a six-foot-tall black chain link fence between the lower parking lot and the extension of the Dave Clark Path above the riverbank.
The fence was installed when tenants found they and their cars in the lot needed protection from unsavory elements.
David Martineau, manager of the planning division at City Hall, told me the story in response to my question:
“The property owner of the Banks Apartments installed a fence following an urgent need to protect their residents from break-ins and assaults. We became aware of the fence and notified the property owner they must follow the Albany Development Code addressing floodplain standards. The property owner applied for a floodplain development permit including a memo from their engineer to ensure that the fence would collapse upon flooding to prevent the racking of debris and to not result in any increase in flood levels during the occurrence of the 100-year flood. To gain approval, the fence posts must have shallow embedment to ensure collapse in the event of a flood. Our third-party reviewer agreed that that option was acceptable. Additional engineering details and reconstruction of the fence posts will be a condition of approval.”
A section of the fence, though not all of it, is in the Willamette River’s designated floodway. That’s where you might expect water to flow during periods of flooding of the kind that might happen once in a hundred years. In other words, there’s a 1 percent chance of this kind of flood happening every winter or spring.
The planning division notified property owners within 300 feet of the application to review the fence “development” and gave them until April 24 to submit any comments.
I looked at the fence again on a bike ride Monday. The fence runs parallel to the river. And to the layman, such as me, it’s hard to see how it could have any noticeable effect one way or another in the event of a big flood.
But it looks like the developers of The Banks will have to rebuild at least some of the posts, just in case. (hh)
A bit off topic but I was wondering??? Have my eyes failed me but is the tangle of trees, limbs, etc that was hung up on the south railroad trestle pylon been removed by some agency or has old man river taken care of the problem?
Last time I looked it was still there.
If it’s the railroads bridge, it should be the railroad’s responsibility to protect their property.
As somebody who has owned property in the Willamette River flood plain since 1968, that fence won’t last 5 minutes if you buried the posts in concrete. The fence will go when the first log hits because the power of water produces the majority of our electricity and the fence will act as a dam.
Look at it another way-
If you took plywood and tried to construct a dam using the fence for support, how much “flooding” do you think it would handle before collapsing.
What’s to prevent the river from flooding on either end of the property? Bowman Park appears to be but a gentle slope downhill where water could encircle the Banks if it got that high, rendering the fence moot.