From West by Northwest.org Voices of Spencer Creek Norm's Notebook: Dogpatch and the Developers By Norm Maxwell Jul 8, 2005 Twenty miles beyond Eugene's Urban Growth Boundary and about a mile downstream on the Siuslaw River from the end of Fire Road near Lorane, is a dilapidated collection of wasted cabins once known as Fitch's Lumber Camp. Locally, here, we call it Dogpatch. Many of them have fallen down or been razed after having been used to cook meth--so I am told. Before, during and after the Second World War, Fitch's Camp was the bustling hub of a logging operation that cut the seemingly endless supply of old growth here abouts and loaded it on rail cars and shipped it to Cottage Grove where it was sawn into lumber and sold across the US and around the world. The old rail road line passes fifty yards behind my house, the tracks torn up, the ties and even the gravel salvaged. Loggers and their families lived in the little cabins. The buildings were originally Sears Roebuck kit houses, I have heard, and are in extreme disrepair. A few years ago some developers bought the 35 acres of F-2 land and removed something like 175 log truck loads of timber before turning their eyes to where the real money was--subdividing the Forestry 2 land into building sites. Before going further, I must explain that here in Lane County, our Land Management Division acts as an agent for developers. If you didn't know better, you might assume that the LMD existed to enforce Oregon land use laws and Lane land use policy. This is not the case. As the LMD budget is fee based, it does not take a genius to understand that there might be a conflict of interest here. The "consultants" of prominent developers are afforded special back door access to the LMD and get red carpet treatment not afforded to little people wanting to build a shop behind the house or some similar small time "clown" project. Dogpatch represents some serious marketing challenges in order to get top dollar from the endless stream of wealthy land buyers who all want to be the last Californian to move to Oregon. For one thing, the Siuslaw Access Road runs right through the middle of it. Log trucks using engine brakes fly through Dogpatch starting as early as three in the morning--six days a week. The developers' angle is going to be that they have the right to replace the wretched cabins existing an easy stone's throw from the Siuslaw River Road with modern McMansions. Of course, the new McMansions must be sited as far from the road as possible. Lane County's own policy on replacement dwellings on F-1 and F-2 land says that the original dwelling must be "lawfully established." It then cites Oregon Administrative Rule 660-06-025(3)(p) which states that: ..to be replaced, a lawfully established dwelling must comply with the following criteria: (a) has intact exterior walls and roof structure. (b) has indoor plumbing consisting of a kitchen sink, toilet and bathing facilities connected to a sanitary waste disposal system. (c) has interior wiring for interior lights. (d) has a heating system; and (e) in the case of replacement, is removed, demolished or converted into an allowable non residential use within three months of the completion of the replacement dwelling. As I walk or ride my motorcycle through Dogpatch on a sunny day, I see that somebody has been installing new outhouses behind some of the utterly wasted shacks. Undoubtedly, these are going to serve as the "indoor plumbing consisting of a kitchen sink, toilet and bathing facilities connected to a sanitary waste disposal system." The Board of County Commissioners will bless this gambit three to two. We can assume that no state land use law or county policy is going to keep the cut over land from being developed at the county level. While there are a few honest cops in our Land Management Division, the majority of LMD employees do the bidding of developers. Our current Board of five County Commissioners will vote 3 to 2 to bless any development scheme, no matter how bogus. The Land Management Division will run interference for the developers to the extent of supplying a Lane County staff lawyer at no charge to the developers should the attempted project be challenged by a local watch dog group (This happened to me). The Lane County hearings official is an employee of Lane County. Commissioner Anna Morrison informed me with heat that the Hearings Officer (HO) is a contracted employee. Apparently she sees some distinction that I do not. The HO receives a paycheck from the county and you and I are not invited to supply our own hearings official. Any land use scam not challenged in Lane County is therefore legal. The LMD is careful not to notify neighboring land owners as to what is going down. Should someone find out and wish to challenge it, then everything is "preliminary," and can't be challenged. Of course, the next step after preliminary is "final," and that can't be challenged either. If you have lots of time and money and manage to challenge the process at the county hearing level, the LMD, developers and the majority of our Board of CCs will circle the wagons and fight you, hoping to wear you out and run you out of money. One highly questionable (no land use maneuver is ever illegal in Lane County) gambit already played by the Dogpatch developers and LMD, was to use the Siuslaw Road easement to divide the property into two lots. One of our current three "referees" on Oregon's Land Use Board of Appeals was party to shutting down this nonsense in Lincoln County ten years ago. No wonder the LMD refuses to notify adjacent land owners of this sort of creativity. When the Dogpatch story gets to LUBA, the developers and LMD will insist that it is too late to challenge this move. More incredible than this, Lane County's own hearings official, Gary Darnielle, denied the Fire Road rezone of 2000 that attempted in part to invalidate the old road easement ploy, dividing one "legal" lot into two. He used the Lincoln County enforcement order from LCDC as the basis of his opinion. When our LMD challenged its own HO's decision, Mr. Darnielle obligingly "got his mind right" and reversed himself in favor of the LMD and developer. BUT, he never explained how his ruling on the road dividing one lot into two was suddenly no longer valid. I will be happy to supply a copy of his original Fire Road decision should anybody care to see it. If the LMD/developer complex wins, it makes millions of dollars. If you should somehow win challenging the highly questionable/creative land use game, you are out thousands of dollars in fees and lawyer bills. You have to pay thousands of dollars to Lane County in fees for the privilege to challenge land use decisions/actions/attempts that have no legal basis for seeing the light of day. Anything that isn't challenged is therefore legal. People rent some of the more intact cabins in Dogpatch. I don't know if the buildings come close to meeting any sort of code but I doubt it. The next time you are out riding your bicycle or motorcycle, take a spin out to Lorane and go about four miles down the Siuslaw Access Road. Take a look for yourself. What do you think? Should our Lane County employees and elected officials be circumventing state land use law and even county policy in order to allow the owners of the clear cut Dogpatch to make millions of dollars? Share your opinion with your Lane County Commissioner. (We hope to post a couple of great photos of Dogpatch soon but must change from a difficult format which takes our webmaster's skill. Sorry -Ed.) Copyright © 2005 by Norm Maxwell Norm Maxwell is a regular contributor to West By Northwest.org. Norm Maxwell received the 2004 Best of West By Northwest award for his article, The Fire of South Canyon: Remembering Storm King. Tens of thousands of readers have "voted" with their mouse by their selection of this story. Visit Norm Maxwell's other pieces about land use, firefighting and life in the country and more at West By Northwest.org. 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