QuickTake:

As the city grapples with a housing shortage, a plan to build 38 houses in the south Eugene hills is pitting neighbors against a developer, in a long-running case that reflects the challenges of balancing housing goals and neighbor rights.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct details about the appeals of the development proposal. The developer was the party that appealed a portion of the city of Eugene’s conditions of approval for the project to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals, not the neighbors. Additionally, the project was not appealed to the Oregon Court of Appeals.

In many ways, the fight over 15 acres of undeveloped land in Eugene’s south hills is an old story: Homeowners in an upper income neighborhood are pushing back against a developer’s plan to build more single-family houses next door.

But the seven-year saga in the Braewood Hills area of southwest Eugene stands out, both for the length of time neighbors and the developer have spent arguing over the rights to build 38 higher-end houses on 15 acres of the meadow, and for unfolding while city and state leaders have pledged to remove construction barriers and make the first meaningful dent in the city’s spiraling housing supply and affordability crunch.

The project is awaiting a hearing at the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals for a second time since the clash started in 2018.

Over that time, residents who live near the meadow along West 29th Avenue and Randy Lane formed Save Videra Oak Meadow, a nonprofit hoping to limit the development or buy the land and preserve it. The group has hired an attorney to research the case and push back against the project’s size. And it has submitted hundreds of pages of testimony to the city of Eugene and land use board of appeals arguing against the project.

“We aren’t against developing the property, and we don’t disagree that Eugene needs housing,” said Save Videra Oak Meadow’s secretary, Julie Butler. “What we’re against is developing it incorrectly.”

Neighbors have a list of environmental and safety concerns, from removing native oaks and filling wetlands on the property, to increased traffic and greater difficulty escaping if a wildfire were to break out.

For the developer, Piculell Properties, building on the meadow shouldn’t be so controversial.

The lot would be the last phase of a larger plan that envisioned more than 180 houses on the hillside. Many of those houses have been built over nearly two decades, and the city identifies the meadow as residential development land in its long-range plans.

Those decisions were made long before Picullel Properties bought the meadow, said Carol Schirmer, a Eugene landscape architect and land-use consultant representing the developer. 

“In my experience, in spite of the opposition to the projects, they eventually are approved,” Schirmer said. But the appeals “cause delays and drive up housing costs unnecessarily.”

The meadow project envisions houses in the 2,500- to 3,000-square-foot range, Schirmer said, slightly smaller than those in earlier phases but likely in the ballpark of the $750,000 to $1 million price range of homes that have recently sold in the area.

The Eugene Planning Commission in February approved the project for a second time, with one exception about building elevation that would keep a small part of the property undeveloped.

Picullel Properties has appealed that part of the ruling back to the state board, where it has yet to be scheduled for a new hearing.

And though the appeal is between the developer and the city of Eugene, the attorney representing Save Videra Oak Meadow has joined the case as an “intervenor,” filing legal briefs to support limiting the development, Butler said. 

The group hopes to see the Eugene Planning Commission’s approval reversed and sent back to the city for another review. Butler said their goal is for the city to approve a smaller housing plan that preserves more open space and addresses their other concerns. 

“But instead of saying, ‘Let’s sit down and look at the reality,’ in our case, people go, ‘Oh, they’re a bunch of NIMBYs,’” Butler said. “But you’ve got to be rational sometimes. You can’t just make blanket statements and assumptions.”

Schirmer said the developer remains committed to moving forward.

“I do believe in the public process, that people should have a say in it,” she said. “I’ve just seen housing stalled so much because of it.”

For more than a decade, Elon Glucklich covered business, government and health care for several dailies and online news organizations across Oregon. His reporting and commentary has been recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association.