Decision pushed back on DeeTour hotel appeal

The dispute has risen over a hotel and 437-car parking lot at the old Dee mill site (at Lost Lake Road and Dee Highway), planned by Jason Taylor of Apollo Land Holdings LLC, a local development company. It would supplement a riverside amphitheater for which Taylor received land use approval in 2014.

The event venue proposal consists of a 2,250-square-foot stage and pavilion, parking lot, food cart common area, and a lawn at the site of the old lumber mill near the Hood River East Fork.

County planning staff okayed Taylor’s hotel addition in February.

The next month, land use watchdog group Hood River Valley Residents Committee launched an appeal seeking to overturn the planners’ decision. That appeal bounced up to the appointed Planning Commission on Wednesday.

HRVRC squared off with the project’s backers, and local residents weighed in on the hotel dispute. About 15 people signed up to speak, including attorneys and representatives for each side, and 10 county residents, all of whom opposed the hotel development.

Taylor defended the project, saying it harkens back to Dee’s heyday and would put the vacant property to good use. Taylor has family ties to the historic hardboard mill and the “Company Hotel” that used to stand nearby, built in the early 1900s.

“To me, replacing a concrete slab with a unique hotel that’s permitted outright … makes a lot of sense,” Taylor said.

Upper valley residents disagreed. They argued the hotel stacked on more traffic and congestion issues to the original amphitheater plan.

Steve Hunt, a Dee Flat resident and orchardist, argued the influx of tourists bound for DeeTour would block fruit trucks headed from Dee to packing houses in Odell.

“We have very large, important growers in Dee Flat … we don’t need every load (of fruit) delayed every 15 minutes,” Hunt said.

A new round of debate broke out over the zoning uses allowed on the old Dee mill property.

According to county staff reports, the parcel is zoned Industrial, which allows commercial operations like the hotel as an “outright permitted use.”

However, attorney Courtney Johnson of Crag Law Center, representing HRVRC, hand-delivered a new packet of arguments to the Planning Commission, which characterized the hotel as a “destination resort,” and an urban use in an area surrounded by farms and forest.

Bill Summerfield, attorney with Apollo, called the objection “arbitrary” and reaffirmed planning staff’s decision to approve the site based on its zoning designation. He further argued the hotel would “ameliorate” impacts of the amphitheater, like traffic, instead of exacerbating them.

Johnson’s total argument was about 70 pages, according to planning staff. Its summary was eight pages.

Instead of making a decision approving or denying the hotel project, Planning Commission decided to give Apollo and HRVRC time to absorb written comments and respond.

After a three-week window for written comments, the commission will take up the DeeTour hotel appeal again at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 15 at the County Business Administration Building, 601 State St.