A case of "greenmail" stuck it to Eastmoreland

Developer to neighbors: Drop the LUBA appeal,
or kiss those huge evergreens goodbye.

With Beaverton developer Wally Remmers chasing projects headlong throughout Portland—how long can all the foul balls stay up in the air?—he finally might have hit a wall in Eastmoreland, where a large-scale building proposal for 3058 S.E. Woodstock Blvd. is encountering the usual neighbor resistance, only this time it's in the blue-chip part of town. 

Watch some of the drama go down Thursday, April 10, at City Hall, 1221 S.W. Fourth Ave. [UPDATE: As of Wednesday afternoon, April 9, the hearing was postponed because neighbors had reached a proposed settlement with Remmers; as last reported on the Eastmoreland Neighborhood Association website, neighbors were offering up to $150,000 for Remmers to leave the Southeast Woodstock Boulevard property alone—presumably on top of the original purchase price?] 

This could be the start of a nice new business strategy for Remmers & Co.: Buy low, threaten big, and cash in high. If only Beaumont-Wilshire had similarly deep pockets; neighbors here have struggled for almost two years to defend ourselves from a Remmers project that shouldn't have been permitted as designed.

Regardless of the details of Eastmoreland's wide-ranging dispute, it did have some echoes of Remmers's building in Beaumont-Wilshire, namely preferential treatment for a developer, hazy code history, and radically different visions clashing over the future of a neighborhood. 

One wonders if the city of Portland has succeeded in chasing most of the quality developers away. How much longer can the city and its taxpayers afford to spend so much energy and resources on a guy who's gathering up the choice sites around town, then squandering them with "greedy," even noncompliant, buildings? We can do better, and do business with those who also care about Portland's neighborhoods. To quote the news ticker off the Eastmoreland Neighborhood Association website: 

"The neighbors working with Vic Remmers on the 'greenmail' issue have worked hard, but Remmers continues to want almost $200k to leave the Moreland Lane [the site that's subject of Thursday's City Hall hearing] property alone. The discussions have generally been courteous except for one somewhat ominous email that includes ... 'In regards to your current LUBA appeal, if you prevail and we end up having to tear up Moreland lane to add the sidewalk, we will have to tear down those 3 huge evergreen tree’s that are currently are being saved. I understand that you are trying to give us a hard time and make this difficult for us, but I really think you will be unhappy with the results if you were to prevail with that appeal. Those tree’s are magnificent and provide shade for your basketball court and your backyards.'"

Build it, and they will notice

Congrats to Wally Remmers for the mention in the current issue of Portland Monthly, which focuses on the city's neighborhoods. Remmers's Northeast Fremont project is called out as "a bloated 50-unit box" and a classic example of a "greedy building."

Designer-developer Kevin Cavenaugh, who works hard to put up interesting architecture that's an asset instead of a burden to the neighborhoods where he works, coined the term. In the story he elaborates: 

“Everybody knows a greedy building when they see it. The design follows a formula, no matter what neighborhood it’s for. They’re lazy. As a developer, everything you do to make a building better makes the numbers worse. So if you start from maximizing profits, you don’t give yourself an opportunity to do great or even good buildings."

The only thing to add in Beaumont-Wilshire's case is that the Northeast Fremont building's not just greedy, it still doesn't comply with code and shouldn't be occupied until it does.

A little googling turns up the irony

All's ducky down on Wally Remmers's farm, where you could park 31 of these things.

Fools' Day aside, here's something actually funny. About this same time last year that activists from all over Portland were packing City Hall and meeting rooms to argue for rules that require some parking in large apartment buildings—and while developer Wally Remmers was telling us it was a different world and no one owned cars anymore—he was simultaneously singing the opposite tune at his property on Sauvie Island.

A year ago Multnomah County was entertaining Remmers's (thru his attorney Michael Robinson) pleas to allow him to build a beauty of a parking lot—31 spaces, all paved—at his island acreage. For a "farm worker break room." Sweet! All of the Remmers/Sackhoff apartment dwellers and their neighbors tired of looking for parking around their homes, here it is! We just need a shuttle bus.

County staff questioned why such a fine parking facility was necessary for a farm, especially because no one was supposed to actually live on-site or, gosh forbid, hunt ducks thereabouts. That won't happen because Remmers signed a voluntary compliance agreement saying so, which is hilarious because we see from the record how well he does with mandatory compliance (for that, keep reading, and enjoy the fact that he sometimes forgets to obtain permits, say, for a sizable addition to the aforementioned break room).

Build first, protest later. Sound familiar? If all this doesn't quack you up (sorry), you should see the response Remmers and the city recently submitted to neighbors' second petition to the state Land Use Board of Appeals. In it, the developer and city describe the state body's first ruling in neighbors' favor as a mere "suggestion" for fixing the poorly designed project. So that's why they ignored it.

It should come as no surprise

Now collectible! I assume they will correct the date along with the name change.

Another sign of yore

This was in my pile of vacation e-mail or I would have posted it earlier—

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Fremont Corridor signage dedication scheduled

Forming a unique public-private partnership, the city of Portland and developer Wally Remmers have decided to enact a name change for the commercial corridor in a Northeast neighborhood. By summer all of the Beaumont Village signs along Northeast Fremont will be removed, then reinstalled with ones reading "Remmers Village."

"We think this is a change whose time has come," Phil Sharlow of Bureau of Development Services said. "It's all we could do to show how much we appreciate him as a customer." City planner Bill Benda, who along with other city staff works closely with the developer and his architecture and legal teams, said: "We've bent over forward and backward for Wally Remmers, and want to see more of his projects that stamp out neighborhood character. Beaumont-Wilshire can serve as a showcase for our vision of Portland's future."

The release finishes with details of the unveiling of the first Remmers Village street sign, appropriately sited at his signature project on Northeast Fremont between 44th and 45th avenues, at 6 pm today, yes April 1.

Teardowns take it away

Ready for the Dumpster: This house, pictured a few days before demolition,
is already gone, taking with it 65 years of neighborhood history.

This unique, well-designed house at 3419 NE 35th Place had the misfortune to be sited on a large lot in 1949 in a desirable neighborhood and then put up for sale last fall. Developers bought it, and the neighbors strived, with the neighborhood association's help, to delay the demolition. For a time, it worked. They won a 120-day stay of the demolition, but it didn't last because the city helped the developers work around it. 

Why would the city bother to grant such a stay only to negate it a few weeks later? What a waste of everyone's time and resources, except for the developers anxious to get wrecking.

As with Wally Remmers's oversize, noncompliant building on Fremont between 44th and 45th avenues, why is the city so actively working against neighbors' interests? Every elected official at City Hall, too, seems to have checked his or her conscience at the door while turning a blind eye to these devolving influences in the neighborhoods. Leadership like this probably would have defeated the jackhammering of a freeway and thwarted the creation of Waterfront Park in 1974, and given the nod to subdividing Wilshire Park in the 1940s.

Did leaded glass and unique brickwork give way to a load
of MDF and vinyl? We'll know soon.

The other day I was in the local coffee shop and overheard a visitor from Southern California rhapsodizing over the houses of Beaumont-Wilshire. He raved about their individual character, their collective presence, the charm, the design, the materials! I smiled, because that's what I love about this neighborhood, too. As the creator of the Vancouver Vanishes project notes, there's value in this "first-growth architecture," the stories they hold, and the quality of materials and craftsmanship. Otherwise we're destined to live in homogenous metropolises. For Portland, a city that prides itself on a "green" ethos, it's worth remembering, too, that the greenest house is the one left standing, not carted to the landfill.

To see what numerous other cities (Portland conspicuously missing) have done to protect their neighborhoods, check out this online compendium compiled by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Portland for sale: ¢heap to least compliant, lowest quality builders!

Too big to believe? Under recent hush-hush changes to code, there will be more.

While Portlanders were out tending their poetry posts, the city was busy changing code. City staff must have put in a lot of overtime recently, not only to rush into a secret meeting to approve rogue developer Wally Remmers's violation of the Stormwater Management Manual—the city's overarching rulebook to water management for builders—but over the new year they changed the manual itself, presumably to encourage Remmers and his illk even more. 

Where the manual used to say that drywells "must" be 10 feet away from foundations and 5 feet from property lines, now it's just "typically." That little shift opens the floodgates to more irresponsible development in the neighborhoods. This change—and I'm sure it's just one example—shows how far city staff will go to shove a noncompliant 41,000-square-foot object down our throats, giving the green light to another wave of oversize buildings. Too bad there's no handy acronym for Not in Anyone's Back Yard. 

Before launching into a chorus of "Here's to you Mr. Robinson" as an ode to the lawyer who takes his orders from Mr. Reamers and then in turns inflicts them on the city, and then us, it's worth wondering again about the integrity of city staff and the rules they're supposed to follow. That 10-foot, 5-foot guideline came from state code, and has as its basis recommendations from working groups of experts and others knowledgeable in the field of stormwater management. Maybe Remmers and Michael Robinson can stop the rain, too?

See how the power plays

Exhibit A in Beaumont-Wilshire: The making of a monster. As recently released city-developer documents show, neighbors have a stake but no say.

These cold nights are perfect for cozying up with the latest record of the permit decision under which developer Wally Remmers continues to throw up his oversize project on Northeast Fremont. All the observers who think this is a done deal and not worth the fight (or funding it)—that's exactly what Remmers wants you to think, and why he's plunged headlong into construction all this time even in the face of serious legal challenges. Perhaps there should be an ordinance against building anything that's subject of a Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) action, so that all parties have incentive to fix what's wrong and get a move on. We wouldn't be where we are, as late as we are, if Remmers/the city (now a hand-in-hand outfit—read on) had allowed our appeal to move forward unimpeded from the get-go.

I digress. In the record it's stunning to see a minion at Remmers's architecture firm basically telling the city what to do: In her e-mail she entreats that they needed to "get an appeal approved for this violation . . . . I know it sounds crazy but that is how the lawyer [for Remmers] wanted us to deal with it." That "us" is your city staff, working hard to help a brazen developer skirt a clear LUBA ruling requirement. That's how the hands behind the curtain directed city staff to generate a waiver for the developer's nonconforming drywell out of a secret meeting. It gives us pause.

The Bureau of Development Services ought to set up a satellite office in Salem so long as it uses the state judicial venue of LUBA as its quality assurance mechanism. Building in Portland is a choice opportunity; bending over backward for roughshod, out-of-town developers such as Remmers makes it clear he's as much in control as he is a customer. And you know what they say: The Customer Is Always Right. Right?

When I pay taxes, I feel like a customer, too. Except now it appears I pay them to an agent of Remmers's rather than an entity that's supposed to protect neighbors' interests (i.e., apply code) while overseeing Portland's growth spurt.

Milwaukie's Masonic Lodge, recent site of a film festival focused on "Place," including a forthcoming movie on the rash of controversial development across Portland's east side.

That's Density with a dollar sign.

Filmmaker Greg Baartz-Bowman talks with audience members before the screenings.

Filmmaker George Wolters oversees an extensive Q&A afterward.