WHAT’S ‘GREAT’
ABOUT GOSHEN?
Drive down Highway 99 through Goshen and you won’t
see much: the Land o’ Goshen Tavern, some homes, some
cattails and a couple mill sites. It’s a little unclear what the
big deal about Goshen is and why some people from Lane
County are pushing hard and fast to have the unincorporated
town outside Eugene’s urban growth boundary (UGB)
rezoned and revamped into an industrial park.
Lane County is calling it the GREAT Plan — Goshen
Region Employment and Transition Plan — but some land
use and economic development experts don’t think it’s great
at all. On Aug. 21 the Lane County Planning Commission
will discuss Goshen at a work session followed by a public
hearing.
“You can’t possibly invest enough money fast enough to
make the site viable,” says Bob Warren, a recently retired
business development officer with the state of Oregon.
The county wants to exempt 300 acres of land in Goshen
from Goal 14, the Oregon statewide planning goal that keeps
urbanization inside city boundaries. The land would be
rezoned from its current rural-industrial designation and be
split in two. The 83 acres east of Hwy 99 would be zoned for
light industry and the 283 acres west of 99 would be zoned
for general industry, including corporate headquarters. On
Aug. 15 the county was scheduled to vote on Goshen’s rural-
industrial lands becoming a “Regionally Significant
Industrial Area” under Senate Bill 766 and recommend that
Commissioner Faye Stewart be designated a voting member
of the Oregon Economic Recovery Review Council. Senate
Bill 766 was a priority for Gov. Kitzhaber in the 2011
Legislative session.
Some of the acres at issue in Goshen are working mill
sites; some are for sale. The major landowners in the
“Proposed Goshen Goal Exception Area” are the McDougal
Brothers, who own more than 114 acres, and Cone
Investments at about 72 acres. Both those acreages are in the
general industry zone and Lane County has said they have
high redevelopment potential.
The McDougal Brothers are associated with Greg Demers
and his Willamette Water Company. Willamette Water
controversially applied to expand its small water right out of
the McKenzie River to more than 21 million gallons of water
Proposed Goshen rezoning
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a day. On June 1, after an administrative law judge ruled the
water right attempt to be speculation, Willamette Water
reduced the application to 10.4 million gallons of water a
day. Water speculation is illegal. Willamette Water Co. is the
water supplier for Goshen.
Goshen lies within Stewart’s district and he has been
pushing for the Goshen plan. Stewart says Goshen has
everything industry needs — power, water, rail access and
highway access. He says benefits to rezoning Goshen would
include more jobs and preventing development on resource
lands for timber and farming.
On May 30, Stewart filed a public records request, using
his home address and private email, with the Department of
Land Conservation and Development asking for emails
between DLCD employees Ed Moore and Bob Cortright
(spelled Cartwright by Stewart in the request) and Mia
Nelson of 1000 Friends that had to do with Goshen and terms
including “Goal 14” and “sewer suitability.”
‘You can’t possibly
invest enough money
fast enough
to make the site viable.’
- Bob Warren, retired business development officer
Stewart says he filed the request as a private citizen. He
was concerned, he says, that the DLCD in the past three
years had been supportive of the Goshen plan, but when it
was finally brought forward, the DLCD was no longer very
supportive. He says his public records request turned up
nothing inappropriate.
Nelson says, “All he did find was DLCD and me
emailing back and forth ideas on ways to help the county do
this in ways that conformed to the law.” Nelson says she
thinks the plan is “an honest attempt to bring some jobs to
Goshen, which is great, but kind of naïve.” She continues,
“It’s way premature to talk about committing public dollars
to anything on this. You don’t throw $50 million and hope
that they sell this to someone who will pay a living wage.”
Nelson says the most recent round of edits on the plan in
response to public testimony soothed her worries that the
zoning changes would allow Home Depot and Costco-type
stores into Goshen. Under current zoning, west Eugene-type
development is already allowed there, and the proposed new
zoning improves things from a land use code perspective,
she says.
But there are still a lot of problems with the GREAT Plan,
Nelson says, from the wetlands that are in the area to
transportation infrastructure to sewage.
Goshen is not on a sewage line, so buildings there use
septic. Bob Emmons of LandWatch Lane County says
industrial campuses use a tremendous amount of water
— which would be supplied by Willamette Water — and the
clay soils are not ideal for septic tanks and the amount of
wastewater that would be generated.
Mark Rust, a land use planner for Lane County, says that
the county applied for a grant to do a sewer feasibility study
including on-site septic, but it didn’t get that grant, though
the county will be submitting an application to the USDA.
He says the county has been working very closely with
ODOT (Oregon Department of Transportation), DEQ,
DLCD, the governor’s office and Regional Solutions.
Regional Solutions is Kitzhaber’s collaborative economic
and community development agency.
Emmons says if septic were to be used and then later
found to be inadequate, bringing a sewage line to Goshen
would possibly force Metropolitan Wastewater Management
to extend sewage to the Lane Community College basin,
where he says the McDougals and developer John Musumeci
own land they would like to see brought inside the UGB and
developed.
Emmons and Nelson are both concerned about the
wetlands in the area. Rust says that the county is currently
relying on a national wetlands inventory that does show
some wetlands in the area, but the county plans to wait until
the point when development would actually occur for
on-sight wetland delineation, which would determine the
exact boundaries, he says.
Nelson says the county is doing it backwards — it should
first check the wetlands designation and the infrastructure to
see if Goshen is even developable, then go for a land use
code change. “If it penciled then Goshen would have
developed already,” she says.
Bob Warren, who has worked with Regional Solutions,
says he put it in writing to Ed Moore at DLCD that the
proponents of the Goshen plan greatly exaggerated and
overstated the benefits, and greatly undervalued and
underestimated the problems. From an economic
development perspective, it takes many years to develop a
place like Goshen; it’s not something that can be rushed
through, Warren says.
Sewage isn’t the only problem; he adds that Goshen’s
rail, highway, power and water access are all question marks
for possible investors. “Uncertainty is what kills it for an
industrial customer,” he says.
According to Warren, “These kinds of industrial
developments not only don’t use rail. They don’t want rail.”
Accessing the general-industrial portion of the plan would
require crossing the railway line on the west side of Hwy 99,
something Warren says the businesses’ insurance companies
won’t allow, nor would the ODOT rail division.
As for the highways, he says Lane County doesn’t want
to do a transportation study, and upgrading Goshen’s I-5
access, which is more of a spur off the route to Hwy 58, or
using LCC’s already crowded 30th Avenue exit is problematic.
“I wonder if [LCC President] Mary Spilde knows in her
efforts to upgrade LCC’s exit that Lane County wants to
throw Goshen into the mix?” he asks.
The county would do one level of review now but would
wait to do a detailed analysis of the transportation issue until
the time of or near any development, Rust says.
Lane County already has developable land inside Junction
City’s UGB and the old Monaco Coach site ready to go in
Coburg. Warren estimates that would it take $100 million to
get Goshen development-ready. Why rush to develop
Goshen? “I’m perplexed from the get-go,” he says.
The continued Lane County Planning Commission public
hearing is 7 pm Tuesday Aug. 21 at the Lane County
Customer Service Center, 3050 N. Delta Hwy.
— Camilla Mortensen
EUGENE WEEKLY AUGUST 16, 2012 7