Parking As Residential Incentive: Where?

Most recently, at the Dec. 19 meeting of the DDA’s operations committee, the discussion focused on location: For which of the six public parking structures would monthly permits be sold? The developer of the 624 Church St. project would prefer that the project be allowed to buy permits in the Forest parking structure.

The Forest facility, a joint venture of the DDA and the University of Michigan, is the structure closest to the proposed residential development. According to the developer’s Nov. 28 submittal to the city, the 13-story project would include more than 80,000 square feet of new floor area with the following configuration of apartments: 11 one-bedroom; 21 two-bedroom; 33 three-bedroom; and 11 four-bedroom units. That’s a total of 76 apartments, with 196 bedrooms.

The developer, Opus Development Corp., has already won approval from the DDA’s board to satisfy the project’s parking requirement without providing onsite spaces – by instead using the contribution in lieu (CIL) program. The CIL provides an option to purchase monthly permits, but the cost is at a rate 20% higher than standard pricing.

Discussion by the DDA operations committee on Dec. 19 centered around the issue of fairness: Would allowing the purchase of permits in the Forest structure give the developer of the 624 Church St. project an unfair competitive advantage in the South University area rental market? Raising the fairness issue was DDA board member Roger Hewitt, who owns Revive + Replenish, which is a tenant in the ground floor of the Zaragon Place on East University. Zaragon is a nine-story apartment building with almost 250 bedrooms, catering to the student rental market.

Other board members did not perceive the issue to be problematic, from the perspective of fairness to already-existing projects. And Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, pointed out that the decision to allow a project to purchase monthly parking permits is a tool that’s available to the DDA to help make a private development possible that otherwise would not be. In the case of 624 Church St., building parking spaces on that site isn’t feasible. Hewitt was concerned that the strategy – if the DDA allowed permits to be purchased at a structure very near to projects – might result in an incentive for developers in the future not to build any onsite parking.

The committee’s discussion was inconclusive, but committee members indicated they wanted to develop a formal policy on which parking structures would be chosen for monthly permits sold under the CIL program. The 624 Church St. project is due to come before the city planning commission on Jan. 15, so the developer would prefer to have the issue settled by then. But given the DDA’s desire first to establish a policy that would guide this and future decisions, it’s unlikely it will be finalized as early as mid-January.

Based on the committee’s discussion, capacity in the parking system does not appear currently to be a limiting factor on selling CIL permits. The committee also reviewed the latest monthly parking data, which shows continued increased usage of the new underground garage, Library Lane.

Revenues per space in the Library Lane structure are now beginning to approach those of on-street parking spaces, but are still the lowest of any facility in the system. That’s due in part to a discounted rate offered to induce holders of permits in other structures to move to Library Lane.

Also of interest at the operations committee meeting was a draft policy for holding events on top of the Library Lane structure, including the closure of the mid-block cut-through, Library Lane itself.

Roger Hewitt raised two issues of concern to him – fairness and the unintended consequence of giving an incentive to developers not to provide onsite parking spaces. He also felt there could potentially be a legal liability for the DDA.

On the fairness question, Susan Pollay – executive director of the DDA – indicated that the kind of judgments involved were already being made in the context of the DDA’s regular monthly parking permits program. She wondered what the legal liability could be. Hewitt responded by saying that if a developer spends millions of extra dollars to add parking spaces to a project, and a different developer in the future simply asks the DDA to purchase monthly permits, the project that’s been granted the right to satisfy parking requirements by purchasing permits could become a more profitable project.

Hewitt feared the DDA would be incentivizing developers not to build onsite parking spaces. So he floated the idea that if N spaces were required, then only some percentage of N would be provided in a structure located close to the project. For example, he said, if the project needs 40 spaces, then perhaps 10% – or four spaces – would be provided in a location close to the project, with the rest provided elsewhere in the system.

Pollay again questioned whether there was any actual legal liability. DDA board member Joan Lowenstein, an attorney, indicated she didn’t think there was a legal problem – and the matter of fairness was one that’s to be addressed through an administrative process.

Hewitt reiterated his position – he was worried that in the future, because of the availability of the monthly permit options, “nobody builds parking.” DDA board member John Splitt ventured that it’s not completely clear whether a project that satisfies its parking requirement through the purchase of monthly permits would be more profitable than one that builds onsite spaces. He said the DDA doesn’t know what the return on the investment for a private developer is – one who charges residents for the use of an onsite parking space – to build those spaces. Hewitt ventured that the return is less than building “student dorm space.”

Pollay noted that the DDA was established to encourage new development, to increase TIF (tax increment financing), and that the contribution in lieu (CIL) of parking is specifically designed to encourage residential development. She stated that the only way the 624 Church St. project could be built – due to constraints of the site configuration – is if the CIL program were available.

DDA board member Leah Gunn noted that the only open question is the location of the monthly permits – because the board had already voted to allow 624 Church St. to purchase monthly permits somewhere in the system. She wondered if it were possible to sell some of the permits in the Forest structure and some elsewhere.

The conversation circled back to the question of fairness. Pollay asked if Hewitt was worried about fairness with respect to future projects or current projects? Hewitt seemed to indicate that fairness would dictate that existing projects should also have the option to obtain permits under the CIL program. Pollay stated that projects like Landmark and Zaragon Place are already built – so she didn’t see it as a fairness problem.

Landmark and Zaragon have onsite parking spaces, and those developments are renting the spaces to their tenants, Pollay noted. So Pollay said it seemed to her like those projects built parking spaces onsite because they chose to. Lowenstein ventured that it’s a competitive market, so the availability of onsite parking could be an advantage.

On the issue of fairness, Gunn asked if it was fair for Google’s parking permits to be subsidized initially, but not the parking spaces for Barracuda Networks. She allowed that employees of Barracuda are still getting a deal, because of the discount that the DDA has applied (for anyone, not just for Barracuda) to the cost of permits in the new underground Library Lane structure.

Gunn came back to her point that the DDA had already determined that the public parking system had adequate capacity to sell 40 permits to the 624 Church St. project. The only question is where, she said. Responding to concerns voiced again by Hewitt, Splitt suggested that the question of location could require “a bit more of a deeper dive.” Splitt didn’t want the choice of location for the permits to translate into a disincentive to construct onsite parking spaces.

Pollay suggested putting off a decision and asking city planning staff for their input. She suggested forming a subcommittee. Gunn wanted clarification: Would the subcommittee focus just on the 40 permits for 624 Church St.? Hewitt stated that the subcommittee should work on a general policy on location, saying, “We need a policy to defend in public.” Splitt wondered if it might not be possible to approve the 40 spaces for 624 Church St. in a particular location without the general policy. Pollay suggested that it might be worth hearing from the DDA’s legal counsel.

Northwest Travel: Nehalem Bay

One of the simple pleasures of being a writer is that I am sometimes able to join two names of decidedly different eras in a single stream of consciousness ― such as those of Fig Walnut and Sir Francis Drake.

Although Drake’s lifetime and that of Ms. Walnut missed overlapping by nearly four centuries, both individuals have ties to the estuary of the Nehalem River, at the northern edge of Tillamook County on the Oregon Coast.

Recent historical research suggests that Drake spent five weeks within the Nehalem River mouth in the summer of 1579, during which time he made extensive repairs on his ship, the Golden Hind.

For centuries he was believed to have harbored on the Northern California coast, claiming “Nova Albion" (New Britain) for Queen Elizabeth I. But historians have discovered that Drake falsified many of his maps and journal entries to hide his actual location from the Spanish. Plentiful new evidence suggests that it was here, at the foot of a mountain the Tillamook Indians called “Neah-kah-nie," that the British privateer found a quiet haven.

The very fact that Drake slept here gives credence to a longtime local legend ― that a chest of pirate treasure is buried on the slopes of Neahkahnie Mountain, which rises 1,795 feet above the Pacific Ocean near the resort village of Manzanita.

This story is not unknown to Fig Walnut. She adopted the stage name some years ago to accent her work as a jazz singer (she has several recordings) and a textile artist. She is also the bartender at Dixie Lee’s Vino Manzanita wine bar, and it was in this capacity that she advised me to climb the mountain.

The 1?-mile hike to the summit actually took me closer to an hour, even though I took off from the higher of the two trailheads. (The north trailhead, beginning on U.S. Highway 101 in Oswald West State Park, is an extension of the Oregon Coastal Trail; I started a mile nearer to Manzanita, off a short gravel road that wound up the hillside.)

The walk was steeper than I had anticipated, like Pilot Butte times three. I counted 14 switchbacks on the lower slopes alone. Cut through sword ferns and the thorny stalks of salmonberries bereft of summer fruit, the trail was well maintained, but it was muddy in patches from a rainstorm that had passed through the night before.

I often found myself scrambling over Sitka spruce roots so thick they formed gnarled staircases in the mountainside. More than once I stumbled.

The switchbacks ceased where the trail crossed a primitive road. It then wound around Neahkahnie’s northeastern flank. Far below me, I could see and hear loggers at work. But the trail’s ascent was gentle from here until the very end, where it zigzagged twice more over a ridge to the mountain’s seaward side, just beneath a final rocky pinnacle.

Fig was right: The view was stunning, despite a light haze blowing in from the Pacific that kept it from being absolutely crystal clear. This was a treasure worth holding in memory. Row after row of ocean surf washed a perfect, crescent-shaped beach that stretched for miles to the south. Behind the golden sand in the near distance, the homes of Manzanita protruded through a forest of shore pine.

Beyond the beach, the Nehalem River jetty marked the point where Drake must have entered the harbor. It broadened into a shallow but placid anchorage where one might easily have imagined a medieval galleon finding moorage.

At the Nehalem Valley Historical Society, volunteer Lila Hendrickson told me that Indian lore first enticed early settlers to look for Neahkahnie’s pirate treasure in the 19th century. Since 1890, when the first of several carved rocks were discovered at various places around the mountain, small fortunes have been invested ― and a few lives lost ― trying to decipher the glyphs to find the treasure. Yet it remains a mystery.

In the sands of Manzanita Beach, at the foot of Neahkahnie Mountain, a different sort of treasure has been found: Beeswax. Once prized in candle-making before man learned to harness electricity, beeswax washed ashore from a shipwreck here between 1694 and 1705. Historical records confirm that a Spanish galleon was blown off course while en route from Manila to the missions of Mexico and California.

“They’ve even found Philippine bees in the wax," Hendrickson assured me. She showed me several pieces of beeswax kept behind the counter of the historical museum. “People are still finding it on the beach, all the time," she said.

“We use a process called ‘scavo,’ which is Italian for unearthed," Roger Crosta explained to me. “It’s an obscure Venetian technique that requires sifting a mix of organic compounds on an unformed glass piece, then blowing and shaping it without tools. It’s all hand-blown, but it’s rough in texture and looks like it’s been dug up after hundreds of years."

Laneda Avenue, Manzanita’s main street, is about eight blocks long from Highway 101 to the Pacific Ocean. En route, it passes two banks, the town library, city hall and a slew of small shops that include a couple of galleries, two bookstores, two grocery stores, several beachwear stores and a pet boutique.

There are even two spas serving the community. And recreational purveyors offer bicycles, surfboards and stand-up paddleboard rentals and lessons.

Though small, Manzanita has a variety of lodging options: motels, vacation rentals and bed-and-breakfast inns. At the top end is the luxurious, beachside Inn at Manzanita. I saved money by spending two nights off the beach at the pet-friendly San Dune Inn; unpretentious and comfortable, it is operated by a jolly Englishman named Brian Hines.

There is a surprising variety of dining options, a dozen in all. I ended my visit convinced that the Terra Cotta Cafe serves the best food between Cannon Beach and Lincoln City. My paper-wrapped halibut was perfectly poached, and the selection of wines was outstanding.

But for pure quirkiness, nowhere beats Wanda’s Cafe, just down the road from Manzanita in tiny Nehalem. No sooner had I walked in the door than a waiter asked if I was meeting someone named Joseph for lunch. “He’s been waiting there for quite a while," he said. I assured him I was not ― then laid my eyes upon an illuminated plastic mold of St. Joseph, sitting piously at his own table.

Once a bustling logging community, Nehalem today is down to a couple hundred residents. In decades now long past, the town was partially built upon the river itself, with log planks supporting structures beside a lumber mill that cut logs carried by rail from further inland. The logs were then shipped out through the river mouth.

Today, a single row of two-story buildings on either side of Highway 101, where it makes a 90-degree turn through the village from the north, is the only real clue to its former prosperity. Cross streets end abruptly at municipal piers that are all but submerged twice daily by estuarine tides; when they meet heavy rains flowing downstream, the overflow sometimes floods the highway itself. A regal high school that once served the entire valley stands two blocks away, its purpose having been diminished to that of an elementary school.

“They say you’re losing your mind. They say you’re leaving Nehalem," wrote Art Alexakis of the Portland band Everclear in 1995. In fact, a lot of citizens have departed over the years. But it remains a picturesque community, especially as viewed from the southbound highway bridge over the river.

Just across the bridge, state Highway 53 branches east to the hamlet of Mohler, home to the Nehalem Bay Winery. A part of the community since 1974, when Oregon’s fermented grape business was just getting off the ground, this winery is at home in a historic creamery. Although it’s best known for its berry and fruit wines, it also offers some reputable chardonnays and pinot noirs from Salem-area vineyards.

Wheeler is built on the lower slope of steep Onion Mountain overlooking Nehalem Bay. A small riverfront marina provides inspiration for some visitors to get out on the water. Highway 101 cruises through the town of 350 people, past the Old Wheeler Hotel ― whose eight historic rooms (dating from 1920) now offer an elegant bed-and-breakfast experience ― and a row of antique stores.

Greg Nichols and his wife, Katie Brown, own both the hotel and Old Wheeler Antiques and Collectibles. They moved to town in 2008 and began buying art deco-era fixtures for the refurbishment. And Nichols had an “Aha!" moment, one as simple as turning on a light bulb. Or a whole lot of light bulbs.

The first thing a visitor now sees upon entering Old Wheeler Antiques is a display room showcasing a couple hundred lamps from the 1920s and ’30s. There’s a lot more in the expansive store, to be sure, but these are Nichols’ calling card. Just this year, in fact, he struck a deal to provide a West Hollywood restaurateur with 100 period pieces to decorate a new Southern California business.