Reinert v. Clackamas County

398 P.3d 989, 286 Or. App. 431, 2017 Ore. App. LEXIS 824
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedJune 28, 2017
Docket2016049; A163389
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 398 P.3d 989 (Reinert v. Clackamas County) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Reinert v. Clackamas County, 398 P.3d 989, 286 Or. App. 431, 2017 Ore. App. LEXIS 824 (Or. Ct. App. 2017).

Opinion

SERCOMBE, P. J.

This case concerns whether the Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) erred in affirming a county hearings officer’s approval of a subdivision application. Petitioner contends that LUBA erred in sustaining the hearings officer’s interpretation of two code provisions applicable to the application, one that bars a refiling of “the same or substantially similar [subdivision approval] application” within two years of the “final denial” of an earlier application, and the other that requires preservation of “significant clumps or groves of trees” in a subdivision plat “whenever feasible” and consistent with the “needs of the development.” On review, we conclude that LUBA’s interpretation of the intended meaning of the ordinances and its understanding of its substantial evidence standard of review were correct, and, accordingly, affirm.1

We take the uncontested facts from the LUBA opinion under review and from a previous opinion of this court on a related development application, Lennar Northwest, Inc. v. Clackamas County, 280 Or App 456, 380 P3d 1237 (2016), rev den, 360 Or 752 (2017). Respondent Lennar Northwest, Inc. (Lennar),

“owns a 16.77-acre parcel of land located in the Jennings Lodge neighborhood of Clackamas County. That neighborhood is in an unincorporated area north of Gladstone, and is bounded on the west by the Willamette River. The property was formerly used as a religious camp and conference center and is improved with institutional dwellings, an auditorium, and other structures. The property is zoned Immediate Urban Low Density Residential R-10 (R-10) under the Clackamas County Zoning and Development Ordinance (ZDO), a zoning district that generally requires a minimum lot size of 10,000 square feet.”

Id. at 458; see ZDO 315.04 (Table 315-2).

In Lennar Northwest, Inc., Lennar sought a zone change from R-10 to Immediate Urban Low Density Residential R-8.5 (R-8.5), a zoning district that generally requires [433]*433a minimum lot size of 8,500 square feet, to increase the number of lots in a proposed subdivision plat, and also sought approval of a 72-lot flexible lot subdivision and an associated stormwater outfall. The county denied all three of the applications in a consolidated order, concluding that an approval criterion for the zone change, pertaining to the “need for neighborhood preservation,” see id. at 461, was not satisfied, and that the associated subdivision and storm-water facility applications should be summarily denied because their approval depended upon the denied upzoning. On review, LUBA remanded the denials, concluding that the hearings officer improperly applied the rezoning criteria. We affirmed LUBA’s decision to remand. Id. at 471.

While review of the denials of the applications was pending, Lennar filed a second subdivision-approval application with the county, this time under the unchanged R-10 zoning. That application proposed a 62-lot subdivision with larger lots, fewer vehicle trips per day, additional on-street parking, wider streets, a dedicated tract for the tree stand adjacent to the river, and a different stormwater detention system. Both the R-8.5 subdivision and the subject R-10 subdivision, however, had the same street alignment and both allowed development of lots in the middle of the subdivision in place of several stands of trees.

Before the hearings officer, petitioner contended that the subdivision application was inconsistent with various code-approval criteria, including ZDO 1307.16(K), which prohibits, with some exceptions, a second application for the “same or substantially similar” permit or approval during the two years following the final denial of the initial application.2 [434]*434The hearings officer concluded that the two subdivision-approval applications in question—the earlier subdivision proposed on R-8.5 zoned property and the current one on R-10 zoned property—were not substantially similar because the later request sought approval of a reduced number of lots (72 to 62 lots), an increase in the average lot size (from 7,828 square feet to 9,669 square feet), 100 fewer vehicle trips per day, additional on-street parking, and a different stormwater detention system. In the view of the hearings officer, the most significant difference between the applications was that the first application was based on a higher-density zoning (R-8.5) and the later request was for a lower-density subdivision of land under the R-10 zoning that remedied the zoning-inconsistency reason for denying the first application.

Before LUBA, petitioner asserted that the hearings officer had incorrectly concluded that the two applications were not substantially similar. According to petitioner, “[tjhere is little doubt that the two applications are substantially similar—both applications involved residential subdivisions of over 60 lots, with a similar functional layout of streets and utilities.” Specifically, petitioner contended that ZDO 1307.16(K) pertains to whether the subsequent application is “‘substantially similar,’ not whether the applications are ‘substantially different.’ The key is not what is different, but what is the same.”

LUBA upheld the hearings officer’s interpretation of “substantially similar” as involving a “high degree of similarity.” Quoting from one of its own earlier cases in which it had construed the same ZDO provision, Henkel v. Clackamas County, 56 Or LUBA 495, 501 (2008), LUBA concluded that “substantial similarity]” required more equivalence than mere similarity:

[435]*435“‘By preventing the refiling of applications that are “substantially similar” the ZDO requires a greater degree of similarity than would be required if the standard were merely “similar” applications. In other words, applications must not only be similar, they must be very similar. We agree with petitioner that the plain meaning of “substantially similar” is that under [ZDO 1307.16(K)] a second application is barred within two years of the first application’s denial only when there is a high degree of similarity.’”

LUBA concluded that the hearings officer properly applied the “high degree of similarity” test “because of the many ways in which [the] R-10 Subdivision application does not have a high degree of similarity to the R-8.5 Subdivision application.”

On review, petitioner contends that LUBA’s decision is unlawful in substance, see ORS 197.850(9)(a), because its substantial similarity test focuses more on the differences in the applications’ contents than on the similarities between the two proposals. Petitioner argues that the applications are “almost exactly the same—a substantial residential subdivision of large-lot homes with minimal tree preservation, the same street layout and same utility structure, and the same removal of the historic Jennings Lodge Retreat.”

According to petitioner, a test that focuses on the similarities between the two applications is compelled by our construction of an analogous code provision in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. City of Oregon City, 204 Or App 359, 129 P3d 702, rev den, 341 Or 80 (2006). We reject that contention. In Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., we did not analyze the correct construction of an analogous “substantially similar” provision.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
398 P.3d 989, 286 Or. App. 431, 2017 Ore. App. LEXIS 824, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/reinert-v-clackamas-county-orctapp-2017.