The city of White Salmon’s first cottage in-fill residential project received City Council permission last Wednesday to proceed with the 10-lot development.
The Eagle Ridge Subdivision will be built on 1.25 acres of land that sit below Skyline Hospital property. Jim Kacena, of White Salmon, is the developer.
City Councilors Tao Berman, Kimberly Hoppus, and Alan Wolf voted to accept the Planning Com-mission’s “do pass” recommendation. (Councilors Jason Sabourin, work, and Donna Heimke, vacation, were granted excused ab-sences by their colleagues.)
The Eagle Ridge project wasn’t a slam dunk for the Planning Com-mission. The project required a conditional use permit that allows for development of single-family residences in an R-3, multi-family residential zone.
Under the city’s cottage in-fill provisions, the maximum cottage density in the R-3 zone is one cottage per 3,000 sq. ft. The maximum number of units in the R-3 zone is 12. Lot sizes shown on the council-approved preliminary plat range from 3,800 sq. ft. to 6,451 sq. ft.
The housing project will be served by a private on-site street built to city private road standards and accessed via Skyline and Rhine Village drives and a recorded road/utility easement across Skyline Hospital property. The street design will include a hammerhead turnaround for emergency vehicles.
Moreover, each dwelling unit will have two off-street parking spots, in addition to guest parking. Another attribute of the project is a walking path that will provide off-street pedestrian access to the corner of Jewett and Skyline Drive.
Kacena told The Enterprise recently he is undertaking the project to help the area meet an unmet demand for build-able housing lots.
“The project will obviously add a little to the White Salmon housing supply, but since the houses will probably mostly be custom homes it is hard to say what the effect on the local market will be,” Kacena said last week. “There seem to be a lot of potential buyers. Some local employers have already expressed interest in the future housing.”
Kacena said he decided to develop Eagle Ridge under the cottage in-fill provisions “because the shape of the site makes it difficult to develop normal single-family lots, and the topography is somewhat challenging.”
Because cottage in-fill zoning allows for smaller houses on smaller lots, “the prices for them will be lower than normal single-family view properties,” Kacena noted.
“To me it is the situation in-fill development was made for, i.e., make it possible to use a smaller parcel of land to get maximum development of houses,” he said, and added. “I got the idea for it just by studying the White Salmon Municipal Code.”
The goal is to begin site work on the subdivision as soon as the weather allows in May.
Kacena said he is developing the lots for buyers to purchase and have their own houses built, “so we don’t plan to spec-build 10 houses.”
That said, the developer plans to have the first house built “with a contractor with whom we have a relationship that will then be the model for the community.”
According to the cottage in-fill ordinance, “A cottage housing development is provided for as an alternative type of detached housing comprised of small residences suited to accommodate a typical household of one or two individuals. Cottage housing is provided as part of the city's overall housing strategy which intends to encourage affordability, innovation and variety in housing design and site development while ensuring compatibility with existing neighborhoods, and to promote a variety of housing choices to meet the needs of a population diverse in age, income, household composition and individual needs.”
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