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| | From the Archives: Curry: Harbor Hills |
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| Jun 11 09 -- Jul 10 09 Curry County Schedules Hearing on Harbor Hills |  Harbor Hills is a hilly area south of the town of Brookings in Curry County. In 1996 some 3,000 acres of it was added to the Brookings Urban Growth Boundary. However, nothing has been built or even planned for since that time, due principally to the topography of the area. Many of the hills are steeply sloped, and the soils are fragile. Any soil disturbance of the sort required for development causes massive erosion, and also stormwater runoff that causes landslides. The people whose homes and farms lie on the Harbor Bench below (across Highway 101) have been very concerned about activity on the hills above them.
As a result of this, the 1996 Court of Appeals case affirming the UGB expansion allowed by the Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) required extensive planning for the area before any development could proceed. Curry County is presently working on a Transportation System Refinement Plan for Harbor Hills, and has completed a Stormwater Plan. The other ongoing planning effort is the most controversial. It is nicknamed MUMP, which stands for: Mixed Use Master Plan. Curry County is proposing to create this MUMP zone, which will be part of the Curry Comprehensive Plan. It will apply to land in the UGB of all three cities in Curry County: Gold Beach, Port Orford, and Brookings. However, it was developed with Harbor Hills in mind; the majority of land in that new UGB area is owned by two developers, one of whom is the well-known Hank Westbrook.
MUMP, if finalized in its current form, will allow a developer to master plan a large area for a massive urban conglomeration of houses and commercial areas in the UGB without ever requiring annexation to the city. Oregon Shores considers this to be a gross violation of the policy enshrined in Oregon's land use laws, which were designed to facilitate rural to urban transitions by bringing land from the UGB into the city in an orderly manner. It is backwards to set up a framework for encouraging massive urban development on the fringes of town and then not require annexation to the city. The people living in the new area will be using city infrastructure: probably the water, sewer and electricity; certainly the roads and commercial areas. But the city will get no revenue from it at all, and the residents of the new area will not be required to pay for their fair share of the services. This encourages the classic urban sprawl Oregon's land use laws were designed to prevent.
Curry County Planning Commission will be holding its first hearing on the proposed MUMP zone on June 11, 2009 in Gold Beach. Please contact the Curry County Public Services Department (541-247-3304) for more detailed information. There will be further hearings, and probably further drafts of MUMP. We will be providing testimony and watching this proposal very carefully.
More information:
05/05/09: Proposed Amendments to Zoning Ordinance for adopting Comprehensive Development Plans
05/05/09: Proposed Amendments to Zoning Ordinance to create the Mixed Use Master Plan Zone
05/05/09: Proposed Amendments to Comprehensive Plan to create the Mixed Use Residential Master Planned Development zone
9/07: Parametrix Review
8/07: Mixed Use Master Plan (MUMP) zone
8/07: Comprehensive Plan
Harbor Hills promotional website
Curry County Zoning Ordinance currently in effect
Curry County website
 Contact: Cameron La Follette, Land Use, (503) 391-0210, or EMAIL
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MORE NEWS... | Nov 1 07 -- Jan 1 08 Brookings Harbor Hills Update
Curry County, November, 2007: The Harbor Hills area east of Brookings continues to be a controversial area for development. These hills were added to the Brookings Urban Growth Boundary in 1996 after a lengthy court battle, which culminated in a Court of Appeals decision. However, because the face of the hills is steep and unstable, and lily bulb farmers below were vulnerable to severe stormwater ... MORE | |
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