An outdoor music venue planned for the community of Dee has been put on hold due to an appeal filed by a local land use watchdog group that says the county made missteps in its approval process.
The group, Hood River Valley Residents Committee, filed an appeal Monday with the county, challenging the Hood River County Planning Department’s decision to approve the DeeTour music amphitheater.
The venue, which is proposed for construction on the site of the old lumber mill at the corner of Lost Lake and Dee Highway, would feature a stage and pavilion, a grassy lawn for seating, a food truck commons area, and 437 parking spaces. Jason Taylor, a Hood River native who owns Lost Lake Resort and is the developer of the proposal, said in a past interview he would like to see the site be used for events such as weddings, corporate functions, family reunions, brewfests, outdoor movie showings, and concerts featuring local and regional talent.
Originally, Taylor planned DeeTour to feature big-name music acts and the venue was a significantly larger endeavor, consisting of an 8,500-square-foot stage and 3,095 parking spaces spread over both banks of the East Fork of the Hood River that runs directly west of the old mill site. However, news of the initial DeeTour application created a great deal of controversy and generated an outpouring of comment from our readers, whose opinions were split between welcoming the music venue and opposing it over concerns of safety, traffic backups, noise, and other potential issues.
Due to the response, Taylor submitted this spring the greatly reduced version of DeeTour that was approved by the county Sept. 9. The decision was subject to a 15-day appeal period and HRVRC submitted its appeal two days before the Sept. 24 deadline.
In its appeal, HRVRC argues that the county violated its own zoning ordinance when approving DeeTour because “the decision required the use of discretion and should have been processed as a land use decision under Article 72 with notice and the opportunity for public hearing.”
The appeal also states that the county erred because the “decision does not contain findings as required by ORS 215.416(9)” and the decision “impermissibly defers decisions of compliance with approval criteria to a later date without the opportunity for required notice and public hearing.”
HRVRC Director Heather Staten said her group is not going after the venue itself but rather how the county processed its application.
“HRVRC is not taking a position that the project should be denied, but rather that input from the public is an essential part of wise planning and Oregon’s land-use system,” she explained in an email.
During the first iteration of the DeeTour proposal that was evaluated by the county early this year, Principal Planner Eric Walker explained that since the Dee mill site is zoned industrial, that both commercial and industrial uses are “allowed outright” by law on industrial lands, and that “county ordinance doesn’t require public notification for an outright use.” The public wasn’t notified, but notice of the project was sent to affected agencies to gather comment.
Staten argues the scope of the project warrants that its application be processed as an administrative action, which requires more public input than a ministerial one.
“This project represents a very big change for the neighborhood with significant impacts on the surrounding area. It’s a big enough project and a big enough change that it deserves to be analyzed carefully and the public deserves to be included,” she said. “How would it negatively impact the surrounding area? Can those identified impacts be mitigated and how? Those are the sorts of questions that would be asked and addressed at a planning commission hearing.”
This is the second time this year HRVRC has taken issue with the way the county has processed a permit application for a pending development. Last month, HRVRC sent a letter regarding the park and ride proposed by Mt. Hood Meadows for the community of Mt. Hood, chiding the county for originally processing the application as a ministerial action.
Not long after it approved the park and ride, the county respected a request by Meadows to rescind the approval and re-process the application as an administrative action after the county notified Meadows of a “discrepancy” in the ordinance, as Walker explained in an earlier interview.
“In a nutshell, there is a section of the zoning ordinance (Section 72.15) that identifies ‘land use permits (residential, commercial, industrial)’ as an administrative action, which typically requires public notification, etc.,” he said. “However, in the section of the ordinance that is specific to commercial and industrial land use permits (Section 64.25), it does not require public notification and, in fact, only requires agency notification when deemed necessary by the planning director.”
The Hood River County Planning Commission will be holding a public hearing to address HRVRC’s appeal. An official hearing date hasn’t been set yet, but Walker said the county is looking to hold the hearing Wed., Dec. 10 at 7 p.m.
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