January 17, 2007

A battle over Broughton
Resort plans for site of historic, but decaying, sawmill draw fire from environmentalists

By RODGER NICHOLS
of The Chronicle

     Should the Columbia River Gorge Commission allow a private company to convert a decaying sawmill site near Bingen into a destination resort outside any urban growth boundary but inside the national scenic area?
     That question is likely to occupy much of the commission’s time in the months to come.
     At its most recent meeting, Jan. 9, proponents and opponents delivered widely varying assessments of the situation, and this latest struggle between the forces for development and the forces for preservation in the Columbia River Gorge promises to embroil the Washington side of the Columbia as much as the proposed Cascade Locks casino has embroiled the Oregon side.
     At issue is a 260-acre parcel which sits along Highway 14, about two miles west of Bingen. It served as the former home of Broughton Lumber Mill, which is now “largely moribund,” as commission staff described it Jan. 9.
     Its owners, who also own Bingen’s SDS Lumber Company, are proposing a $60 million redevelopment plan to convert the former mill site to a destination resort.
     The resort would be constructed on 58 acres of the parcel, mostly on land currently occupied by lumber company buildings, some of which would be converted to lodge and recreation uses.
     Developers envision 260 vacation residences on the site — a mixture of cabins, cottages and townhouses as well as a limited amount of commercial activity.
     The proposal would also construct a pedestrian overpass above Burlington Northern tracks and Highway 14 to reach Broughton Beach, with approximately 300 feet of Columbia River frontage.
     Storage lockers for sailboard gear would be installed on the site to help reduce overcrowding at popular nearby windsurf sites The Hatchery and Swell City.
     The site has its own aquifer, artesian well and reservoir, though a new sewer system would have to be constructed.
     Plans call for that system to also interface with that of the nearby fish hatchery, and treat its effluent as well. The wastewater from both sources would be processed to the degree that it could be used for irrigation.
     Windsurfers deem that area of the river — which they call, logically enough, The Hatchery — to be one of the finest windsurfing areas in the gorge.
All this is complicated by a quirky set of facts.
     First, the mill site is directly in the Columbia Gorge
National Scenic Area, outside any urban growth boundaries.
     It also is one of only four properties in the scenic area to be zoned “commercial recreation.”
     Of those four, it is the largest site by far, and the only former industrial site.
Two of the other three sites are in Skamania County: the east bank of Wind River, and Hidden Coves, near Stevenson. The third site is in Multnomah County on the Dodson-Warrendale waterfront.
     The idea to develop the Broughton site as a resort is not a new one.
Seventeen years ago, members of the 1990 gorge commission approved a more modest 62-unit resort, which was never built.
     Site owners contend the scale of that earlier proposal was too small to be profitable, and that approval has now expired.
     The latest proposal had its start in September 2005 with a series of meeting involving stakeholders in the region.
     In May 2006, the gorge commission and the public was invited for a walk-through of the site, and a general discussion of the proposal.
     At the Jan. 9 gorge commission meeting, the commission took the first step toward full consideration of the proposal.
     Commission staff, in a 13-page report, presented seven policy issues to be considered by the commission before drafting any sort of modification in the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area Management Plan that would be required in order to allow the redevelopment.
     Those issues were:
     • With the objective of encouraging redevelopment of industrial sites, where should recreation development be allowed?
     • What scenic standard should apply?
     • How should the size of buildings at recreation resorts be regulated?
     • What limits to commercial uses are appropriate?
     • What limits to overnight accommodations and residential uses are appropriate?
     • How should the size of the resort be limited?
     • Should recreation resorts be found compatible with the surrounding area?
     The watchdog environmental group Friends of the Gorge opposes the current plan, arguing that it is too expansive. “While it may be a laudable goal to facilitate the clean-up of a used industrial site, the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area should not bear the cost of clean up through allowing an urban-scale development to be established outside of an urban area,” the Friends said in written testimony.
     “We’d like to see [Broughton] redevelop,” said Friends spokesman Michael Lang at the Jan. 9 meeting. “We’re just concerned about the scale.”
     The Friends group filed a six-page document in which it also argued that Broughton proponents had not met the criteria for a plan management change. Such a change would be required for a project of that size.
     After testimony from advocates and opponents of the Broughton plan, the gorge commission ultimately voted in favor of allowing staff to develop specific language in the management plan to propose a modification, which would be required before Broughton’s development application could be accepted.
     Gorge Commission Planning Director Brian Litt said the staff would have to develop the appropriate language for the proposed amendment, which would then be posted for 30 days of public comment.
     That would be followed by up to 60 days for a director’s report, which would instigate another 30 days of public comment, before it could be voted on by the commission.
     Should it pass the commission, it would be sent to the Secretary of Agriculture for approval.
     If that approval were forthcoming, then each of the six gorge counties would have to adopt ordinances, which would each have to be approved by the gorge commission.
     That process could take a year or more.
     “There’s a long road ahead before there’s even an application,” said Litt.