Item 5 - PH on Laurel Hill Plan - Laserfiche WebLink

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Eugene Planning Commission September 21, 2004 Page 5 of 7 those locations. Those sites will not be available for development until public service facilities are in place and available to those parcels. In the meantime, residential development, occurring up hill from these sites, continues with no corresponding commercial development. The subject property is available for near-term development to satisfy this public need. Public testimony at the hearing and attached here at Exhibit H identifies a public need for commercial sites with unique characteristics suited for tourist oriented commercial developments, specifically, motels. Those characteristics include visibility from 1-5 and immediate proximity to an interchange. The subject property has those characteristics. As oral and written testimony at the public hearing explained, most of the similarly situated properties in the Eugene-Springfield Metro area are already developed. This is one of the few, if not the only, undeveloped site in the Metro area that meets this public need. EC 9.8424(2) EC 9.8424(2) requires that a refinement plan amendment address one or more enumerated reasons for the amendment. At the public hearing, applicants' representative provided evidence that the proposal is based on reason (c) "New or amended community policies." That material shows that the policy was one adopted in 1999 and is thus a valid basis for the proposed amendment. Here, applicants submit arguments that the proposed amendment satisfies reason (e) "A change of circumstances in a substantial manner that was not anticipated at the time the Refinement Plan was adopted." Described, in part, above are two changes that reflect changes in circumstances in a substantial manner that were not anticipated at the time the Laurel Hill Plan was adopted. The first substantial change was with the amendments to the Eugene Code which allows up to a 40 percent increase in R-1 densities in the Laurel Hill area. See Exhibit G. Nothing in the Laurel Hill Plan anticipates such increased densities in the residential portions of the refinement plan area. Furthermore, actual development proposals have reflected the allowable increase in density. This proposal represents a commercial balancing of those increased residential densities, unanticipated at the time the Laurel Hill Plan was adopted. The second substantial change was the extensive reconfiguration of the Moon Mountain Drive-Glenwood Boulevard-Glenwood Drive intersection in a manner not anticipated by the Laurel Hill Plan. The reconfiguration/realignment moved the intersection from areas within the existing ODOT right of way (as anticipated in the Laurel Hill Plan, East Laurel Hill Development Node Diagram) into areas designated for commercial development by that plan (see Exhibit C, Aerial Photograph Showing Glenwood Interchange). These unanticipated substantial changes in circumstances warrant a refinement plan amendment. IV-38