Leaders of the Greater Albany Public Schools have been planning for a bigger depot to park and maintain the district’s buses. Now the project is up for the city’s and the public’s review.
The neighbors may not like it, but the Albany Planning Commission on Monday approved the site plan for Hickory Hollow, a 48-unit apartment complex behind five single-family houses facing Hickory Street.
Building apartments in North Albany is tougher than the zoning makes it appear, as shown by an appeal against the first such project the city staff has approved.
This is at the corner of Somerset Drive and Timber Ridge in northeast Albany, and those wide open spaces won’t be quite that wide open for long.
A rezoning request to allow medium- and high-density housing near the North Albany Village commercial center is not exactly popular with at least some nearby residents, judging by the turnout at a public hearing before the Albany Planning Commission Monday night.
Gibson Hill in North Albany would take on a new look if plans by the Saint Anne’s congregation take form. The hill would be crowned by a domed church to house the Eastern Orthodox church that now worships in a former grange hall in Lewisburg.
Well, if there ever are problems with access to the highway from Albany’s new police headquarters, they can always try this as Plan B. Not really, but the issue caught the satirical eye of Darrell Pepper, the retired chief of police who dabbles as a cartoonist.
An overnight shelter for homeless youth has been talked about in Albany for years. Now it’s about to become a reality, which I discovered when I was perusing the online records of the city planning commission the other day.
Whatever happens with medical-marijuana dispensaries in Oregon, Albany won’t be in the forefront of trying to keep them out, at least for now. The city council Monday voted 4-2 to withdraw its application to change the city development code to prevent marijuana stores from getting started.
As for ‘livability,’ it doesn’t count
New Albany subdivisions have to meet six criteria in order to be approved. But there is no mention of preventing crowding, or congestion at rush hour, or saving wildlife, or anything else that comes under the admittedly vague concept of preserving livability.
Tags: Albany Planning Commission, development code criteria, North Albany congestion, North Albany subdivisions, Pheasant Run