Hood River City Commision meeting Monday. Be heard!

[scooter_bell]

THIS Monday Night, the 16th,

Speak up for keeping Hood River's waterfront public and accessible!


Tell the Hood River Planning Commission to REJECT a Portland
developer's plan for a private "cable park" on Hood River's
waterfront!

This Monday night at 5:30 pm at City Hall (211 Second Street) the
Planning Commission will be deciding whether to approve plans for a
massive wake boarding cable park, hotel, 234 space parking lot, and
commercial building on Hood River's waterfront at the Nichols boat
basin.

Does your vision for the Hood River waterfront include: Converting
publicly owned waters from public use to private for-profit use? 7
large crane-like towers connecting a spider's web of steel cables that
would sit idle like an abandoned amusement park for 6 months a year?
Over 280 concrete anchors which each weighing 300 pounds? Over 11,000
square feet of new private docks
and infrastructure over the water?

And, most importantly, three quarters of the publicly owned boat basin
will be blocked off to all who want to continue to enjoy this area for
other uses.

While Hood River's Mayor is claiming the cable park is really an issue
to be debated at a later time, before the Hood River Port Commission
(see last Saturday's, 4-7-12, HR News Business section), this ignores
the reality that the Planning Commission has FULL LEGAL authority to
stop this project now since the developer has not even prepared basic
reports and impact studies required to justify approval by the City.
In fact, there is not even a revised site plan showing the correct
locations of the hotel and commercial buildings and cable towers.

While the City has tried to claim that the cable park is exempt from
the City's planning rules since it's on the water, there is simply NO
legal support for this claim. Would it be politically more convenient
to approve the cable park while ignoring all of its impacts and the
need to meet city land use rules? Sure. But it would be bad for Hood
River's waterfront and set a bad precedent.

Please join Friends of the Hood River Waterfront in telling the
Planning Commission that it should DENY this application. A full
debate and evaluation of a cable park should be part of a
community-wide process BEFORE the city approves building permits not
after. With so little information, questions regarding jurisdictional
authority, and a continually changing site plan there are just too
many unknowns.

To review our detailed comments to the Commission visit our Facebook
page or email Derek at scooter_bell@Facebook.com

[Cya]

...

[geohaye]

Thanks Scooter for bringing this to everyone's attention.

This would definitely be a meeting worth attending.

[jsampiero]

Scooter,

While I fully respect your opinion, I think a little clarification is needed. The way you perceive this project (and the way you're presenting it to others) is off. While I appreciate your concerns for the process, it seems like you've made a decision before hearing the facts, and now you're drumming up as many possible reasons as you can to back up your position.

[arthurb]

A reminder: Planning Commission decisions are based on a specific list of criteria. The most effective testimony tells them how the proposal does or does not meet the criteria. You can find the list of criteria in the staff report http://centralpt.com/upload/361/15380_Naito.pdf. Time for verbal testimony will be limited by the chair (usually 3-5 minutes per person). Written testimony can be submitted up to the meeting time, though if you're submitting it on the final day I recommend making it brief, as they've already received stacks of written material which they've probably been reviewing all weekend.

[jota]

You're entitled to your opinion Josh, and they're entitled to theirs. I realize you are respecful and try to stick to facts, so that's fine, I'm not calling you out.

But I won't quibble with the use of the word "massive" or other details - I think the main point is that many people don't think this project fits with the image of Hood River as an outdoor sports and natural environment destination.

I could totally respond to every one of your points, as you did to the prior poster, but I won't bother. (Well, okay - just because it's not the MGM Grand doesn't means it's not out of scale, and of course this isn't like the Kayak Shed's concession, and your ski area analogy is totally a red herring, and the freaking pedestrian path will not even be along the waterfront - it will be behind the hotel and office building . . . .) You're just stretching and distorting the facts to fit your desired conclusion!

Just because the area is an eyesore now doesn't mean we can't wait for a better project there. We fought a hotel on Lot 6 (an eyesore) for years, and then the Waterfront park came along, thankfully.

[Mulekick84]

Jota said:

[jingebritsen]

i'm just a tourist at hood river. the log jams of people in high traffic times are getting bad now. why would anyone want to add to that? if the repelling factor in the highest of traffic times leads to displeasing your base when it's there at its height, the largest number of your consumers will feel jaded. bad move. look at panama city, myrtle beach, daytona. they repel the highest demographic, and get the lowest coming back for more. i've had to deal with the traffic issue in tourist and retirement towns in florida for years. i try avoid the most annoying times. does hood river want to expand those annoying times? folks like me that want less of what they get at home while on their vacations tend to avoid traffic jams.

sight pollution, congestion, and blocking of the hood river access all seem to add to the potential liabilities. what about any fish swimming upstream up hood river, do they matter? why would a private enterprise have and block the hood river for all other users? what about canoe and kayak folks? anyone doing the white water SUP thing down hood river? what happens when another giant runoff event happens? who cleans up the mess then?

the cable park in central florida is placed in an industrial area along a major highway. to me, it looks crappy. to others, it does not. but, at least it's not adding to road bottle necks and such.

again, bingen seems to have all the same elements as the cable park area in central florida. bingen could certainly use the economic boost too.

[jota]

Thanks for your comments, jiigebritsen. Just to clarify, however, the proposed cable park will be in the old Nichols boat basin, which is completely separate from the Hood River itself.

The boat basin is a still body of water connected to the Columbia River by an increasingly small channel that comes out between the event site and the "sandbar." So this won't block Hood River access, or fish swimming upstream.

I think your comments about congestion, based on your Florida experience, are right on and very instructive for us here. We are at that critical point where congestion around the waterfront/downtown/bridge crossing are becoming unreasonable during peak months, and we should be very cautious about anything that might push us over the brink.

[isobars]

If I were a developer or a builder or an investor, I'd be scared $#!+less about investing my money in tourism in this house-of-cards economy. At the very LEAST, I would sign absolutely nothing until mid November, and then only if the present administration, from top to bottom, is ousted before it can achieve its stated goal of ANOTHER doubling of gasoline prices. I live in the fastest-growing urban community in the U.S., but even here real estate is finally feeling some negative impact from national market forces. Even worse than an amusement park shoehorned into a small resort town is a defunct amusement park abandoned in a small resort town.

Mike \m/