Vancouver Avenue Extended Demolition Appeal Approved

PORTLAND, Ore. – An extended demolition delay has been approved for a house in the Eliot neighborhood of North Portland that is proposed to be demolished and replaced with a five-story, 54-unit apartment building on North Vancouver Avenue.

The house, located at 2405 N. Vancouver Ave. and built in 1889, is located on a 10,000-square-foot lot. The house itself totals 1,255 square feet in size.

Last August, the property sold from Nan B. Curtis to Private Equity Group LLC for $551,000. Private Equity Group LLC is registered to Lane Lowry as well as Optimal Productivity Systems. Lowry has a registered address in Clackamas, while Optimal Productivity Systems does not appear to be registered in Oregon.

On April 10 the Bureau of Development Services received an application for new construction on a five-story, 54-unit apartment building on the site of the 1889 house. The applicant on the permit is Erik Petersen of Myhre Group Architects and the contractor is Hoff Construction Group LLC, registered to Kevin T. Hoffman at the same Beaverton address as Dennis Sackhoff‘s SK Hoff Construction LLC and Urban Development Group LLC, as well as Vic Remmers‘ Everett Custom Homes and VWR Development LLC.

Two months later, the city received an application for demolition of the house, with Faster Permits as the applicant and Bob Odrlin Excavating Inc. as the contractor.

The demolition was subject to the 35-day demolition delay which expired July 27. The demolition permit was appealed for a 60-day additional delay extension for a maximum of 95 total days of delay, a process that has been covered by the Portland Chronicle in the past few months, and a hearing was held Aug. 19.

No representative from Private Equity Group LLC, Myhre Group Architects, Hoff Construction Group LLC or anyone else associated with the development plan showed up to the hearing.

Judge Finklea testified on behalf of the Eliot Neighborhood Association, as well as what he described as 75 nearby neighbors surrounding the property, regarding the demolition delay appeal.

Prior to hearing information about the house, Hearings Officer Greg Frank gave some information about how the delay appeal process works.

“Our goal is to try to take laws and rules, and apply objective information to those as best we can and arrive at a decision,” Frank said, adding that the provisions to consider a demolition delay appeal are “quite narrow.”

Frank explained that the job of the hearings officer is to determine whether four requirements in the case of demolition delay appeals have been met: whether the appellant contacted the developer appropriately (with registered mail); whether the structure in question is significant to the neighborhood; whether there is a plan in place to save the house; and finally, whether that plan is “somewhat realistic.”

“Realistic,” in that context, Frank said, means that a pro forma budget is in place and that there is cash on hand to satisfy that budget or a plan to obtain necessary funds.

Frank addressed some of the information Finklea had submitted about the proposed demolition that Frank said would not be relevant to a decision on extending the demolition delay, namely information about trees, accessory structures and wider city policy.

“I’m not here to save trees, we’re here to save (a) structure,” Frank said, adding that the decision would apply only to the residential structure as garages and other secondary buildings are not covered by the code in question.

As far as city policy, Frank stated that those issues are not something the hearings officer can deal with.

“City Council has given me authority to determine whether I either ‘yea,’ grant the delay because you’ve met those four requirements that I talked about or I deny it,” he said. “Policy issues, what you want your neighborhood to look like, what you should do, are all very worthy topics at city hall (but) they don’t particularly help me in making a decision in these kinds of cases.”

Finklea then made his case for why he was seeking to preserve the house on North Vancouver Avenue.

“I’m interested in saving the history of Portland, specifically houses that were built in 1889, before most of the wars we know about existed, and when there were no cars going down the street,” he said. “This house is older than anyone on earth, any person. I don’t think anyone has the right to come along so easily with a bunch of money and knock it down, for the purposes only of making more money.”

“This is also a person, the developer I’m talking about, who has no interest in our community,” Finklea continued. “He’s coming in and he’s gonna leave once he’s got his money, and I don’t appreciate that.”

He described the house as “not in bad shape” and indicated it is a livable structure.

“The houses that are there are some of the oldest in Portland. It was the center of the Albina township when it was built,” Finklea said. “I think that the people who built these houses with their hands would be disgusted with what’s going on in Portland.”

Frank ran down the four criteria he had previously laid out, checking off the first two points because Finklea had provided proof of sending a registered letter to the developer and because Finklea had made a case for the building’s architectural significance and meaning to the community.

Frank explained that in the five or six cases he has dealt with on demolition delay extensions, the decision has all come down to whether the plan for saving the building can be executed.

To address that criteria, Finklea presented two budgets, one for relocation of the building and one for direct purchase. Should the house be moved, he said, two organizations have expressed interest in taking ownership, and a piece of property in Oregon City is available for the building’s relocation.

“This plan is ready to go,” he said. “It’s not my preference, I don’t want to see that house moved, I would rather purchase the property, but this is a viable option.”

Frank described the submitted pro forma budgets as the “most detailed” he had seen in any of the cases he has considered, so he considered that point to have been met as well, and moved on to the final criteria of whether the plan was realistic.

Determining how viable the plan was essentially comes down to whether the funds are available to actualize the project. Finklea had not brought personal financial statements for the two primary investors he had mentioned, but stated that, to his knowledge, they have “more than enough money to make these things happen.”

The decision on the fourth point finally came down to Frank asking, “Did they say they could do it,” to which Finklea replied that the investors had.

“Just leave it at that,” Frank said.

Frank granted the demolition delay request, meaning the permit cannot be issued prior to Sept. 25.

At the end of the hearing, Frank stated that in the testimony submitted by the developer on the North Vancouver Avenue property, the developer stated he would not sell the property in any scenario. Frank explained that with this in mind, he sees nothing in the code that requires the developer to acquiesce to any deal. While the delay has been extended, he said, that does not ensure the building will be saved.

“If you carry away from this hearing that the hearings officer said, ‘You have to agree with either of those two plans,’ … that’s an unfair interpretation of what I have authority to do and what I’m telling you I can do,” Frank said. “Really, the burden now shifts back to your shoulders but you’ve been granted until Sept. 25 to try to get that done.”