Battle over subdivision has happy ending.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

COTTAGE GROVE - While some disliked the process by which developer Todd Alberts won approval for the city's largest-ever subdivision, all sides seemed satisfied with the results ordered last week by a Lane County Circuit Court judge.

Back in September, Alberts filed a writ of mandamus petition to take decision-making power away from the City Council on his proposed 250-acre Sunrise Ridge subdivision on the slopes of Mount David.

Alberts cited the city's failure to act on his development application within a 120-day limit set by state law. He asked the court instead to compel city approval of his proposal without the usual public hearing before the council.

The court filing, publicly announced the night of a scheduled City Council public hearing on Alberts' proposal, angered city residents who'd packed City Hall to testify about his hillside development plans.

Six months later, however, the project has been approved in a stipulated agreement among the developer, city officials and citizen intervenors. The pact features most of the 29 conditions that had been recommended by the Cottage Grove Planning Commission and calls for even more public park land at the site than that panel had endorsed.

`I still think it was horrible that (Alberts) took it out of the public process, but we ended up getting pretty much everything we wanted,' said attorney Jan Wilson, who represented Friends of Mount David, a group of residents who formally intervened in the case.

Howard Schesser, the city's community development director, was also satisfied with the outcome.

"We're very supportive," he said. "It carried through a lot of what the planning commission wanted, and in some places clarified things a little further. The only one who really got left out of the process was the council, because they desired the opportunity for public input. But I think the end result would have been similar."

Alberts' attorney, Bill Kloos, disagreed that Cottage Grove residents were cut out of the process.

"It's important to realize that when a developer opts to go to public court under mandamus, it's still a public process, just a different location," he said. "Anybody in the public who wanted to participate was invited to show up in Circuit Court instead of City Council, and four of them (the intervenors) did."

Friends of Mount David successfully pressed for a 3-acre public park in Sunrise Ridge, rather than the 1.5 acres proposed by Alberts and endorsed by the planning commission, Wilson said.

That is in addition to another 2.67 acres of public open space - essentially an existing drainage basin - that will contain a pedestrian path through the subdivision to the city's ridgeline trail system.

"If they'd gone ahead with the public hearing and the City Council had just rubber-stamped the planning commission recommendations that night, we wouldn't have had the extra park land," Wilson said. "Some council members said we got more than they could have in the political process."

Cathy Bellavita, who helped organize Friends of Mount David, agreed that the settlement ended well. She noted, however, that the group had to spend more than $2,500 in attorney fees to have its voice heard.

"Our citizen involvement made the development better, but we would have much preferred that the decision had been left in the hands of the City Council, for our city and community to decide together," she said.

"Our only recourse was to join the court case. We had two garage sales to raise the money. This was a home-grown operation."

Besides guaranteeing additional open space, the agreement limits initial Sunrise Ridge construction to a 67-lot first phase.

Three subsequent phases can go in only after additional storm sewer capacity and other infrastructure is completed.

"The original proposal was for the entire subdivision to go in with our current infrastructure," Bellavita said.

Wilson said heavy January rains may have helped convince the developer that the existing Silk Creek stormwater basin would be inadequate to handle the entire project's run-off.

"Back in August, they had pictures showing only about two inches of water in the creek bed," she said. "During this winter's floods, the water was halfway up a chain-link fence beside the creek."

Another condition for phases two through four include the developer and the city identifying additional connector streets to the subdivision. M Street currently provides the only access.

City officials said in September that they missed the 120-day deadline due to miscalculations as to when the clock started ticking and unexpected delays when "great public interest" in the project slowed the planning commission public hearing process.