Item 5 - PH on Laurel Hill Plan - Laserfiche WebLink

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Page 2, letter from LHVC re: RA 40-1 and Z 04-4 dated September 28, 2004 The arguments presented in the LHVC letter dated August 5, 2004 concerning EC 9.8424(1)(c) and Policy 5 of the Laurel Hill Plan still stand. In the above referenced letter, Mr. Terrell discusses possible public needs that might satisfy Policy 5. First he raises again the need of the applicant to be able to develop his land. Here it is important to distinguish between a public need and a private need. We grant that the applicants have a private need to maximize their gain on their land investments. There is no corresponding public need however. In fact the whole notion of community land use planning and neighborhood refinement plans arises from the realization that as each individual land owner tries to maximize the development potential of his or her land, the public good is often compromised. In the same vein, the existence of a potential buyer with a development plan not allowed by the current land use designation is not a public need, only a private interest. Next Mr. Terrell argues that development proposals in the East Laurel Hill area have been approved with a greater density than anticipated at the time the East Laurel Hill section was added to the neighborhood plan (1982). He references the East Ridge Village PUD, which is currently the only approved development. It is factually incorrect that the proposed density of this PUD is greater than the anticipated 10 units per acre. In the document Public Record for PD 99-4 & Z 99-12 (the public record for the LUBA appeal in that case), on page 1-542, we find Table 1. Density Calculations Son Blaze Village PUD. In that table RA (now called R-1) units per acre are given as 3.2, which is substantially lower than 10. Also, the Eugene City Council is currently considering a series of land use actions which would put 120 acres, owned by the McDougal family and part of East Laurel Hill, outside of the UGB - in conjunction with adding 120 acres and a City park in the Santa Clara area. By Mr. Terrell's reasoning we should be reducing the area of the commercial node rather than increasing it. The next point in Mr. Terrelrs letter is that there has been a debit of commercial land in the node because of street realignments. If this is indeed the case, it could be a factor in the calculation of how much commercial land needs to be removed from the commercial node to satisfy the "No additional..." language of Laurel Hill Plan Policy 5 to accommodate the current proposal. However, only a small tip of the proposed realignment of Glenwood Drive encroaches on the commercial node. And, as we see on the map of the East Laurel Hill Development Node included in the Laurel Hill Plan, Brackenfern Rd. (there called the Glenwood Collector) was clearly anticipated to bisect the node. If anything, the anticipated width of collector streets has decreased with the adoption the Eugene Arterial & Collector Street Plan in November of 1999. Thus, we see that in aggregate there has likely been an increase in the acreage IV-80