Developers and Businesses Are Planning to Fight A Terminal 1 Homeless Shelter At the State Level

Terminal 1 Dirk VanderHart

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As a shelter at Terminal 1 plods forward, a handful of development and business entities are falling back on a standby for stymying new homeless facilities: Appealing to state land use officials.

Three groups and a Portland architect have announced [PDF] their intentions to fight Portland City Council's recent decision to force the Bureau of Environmental Services to rent Terminal 1 to another city bureau for use as a homeless shelter. The terms of a lease over the 14.5-acre industrial property, 2400 NW Front, are being worked up, and are expected at some point in October.

In the meantime, the Working Waterfront Coalition, development firms Project and Fore Property Company, and Portland architect and recent city council candidate Stuart Emmons are preparing to ask the state's Land Use Board of Appeals to invalidate the council vote.

The exact details of the legal argument aren't clear—a message has been left for the group's attorney—but Emmons tells the Mercury he worries Portland's going to "warehouse" the homeless in the large shelter, and thinks the city should be preserving Terminal 1 as a piece of industrial property.

"We have spent three years putting together a comprehensive plan—figuring out where industrial land goes and making sure we have enough of it," Emmons says, referring to the long-term growth plan the city just updated. "On industrial land, group living is not allowed. You have to get a zoning change for that."

That's true, but under the housing "state of emergency" city council passed last year (and may well extend very soon), such zoning designations can be suspended.

The emergency designation is a cornerstone of Portland's strategy to build a temporary shelter for up to 400 people at Terminal 1. Officials are also going to spend hundreds of thousands studying how suitable the site might be for an enormous campus for the homeless, featuring both housing and shelter space.

Emmons says his interest in appealing is primarily concern for the homeless. That's probably not the case for Project, which put in an $8.25 million bid for Terminal 1 in order to develop it into a headquarters for another company. Washington, DC-based Fore Property Company—which the Portland Business Journal calls a "big-deal" developer—has developed at least three apartment buildings in the immediate vicinity of Terminal 1. The Working Waterfront Coalition is a business group promoting jobs along the river.

As we noted above, the LUBA appeal has been a go-to strategy of late when busienss groups disapprove of homeless facilities being moved into their neighborhoods. For instance, the Central Eastside Industrial Council and other groups are currently trying to convince the board that Portland officials overstepped when voting to site homeless rest area Right 2 Dream Too at a city-owned plot near SE 3rd and Harrison.