 Fire Station 68 update
Last summer, Washington County approved Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue's (TVF&R) application to construct a fire station at 13545 NW Evergreen Street. This full-sized fire station is planned to replace a satellite fire station, Fire Station 68, currently housed in a converted residence at 3260 NW 147th Place. Washington County based its approval on faulty code interpretation. The Washington County decision was appealed to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) by a neighbor with support of other neighbors and community members.
In the review of the appeal, LUBA had the authority to make one of three rulings: approve, reverse, or remand the case back to Washington County. LUBA remanded the case back to Washington County to respond to two questions:
Code requires a public building in residential zones to have direct access to an Arterial or Collector, unless the building is a satellite building. How does a full-sized fire station qualify as a satellite building?
Code requires a satellite building to create no more traffic than a residential use. How can a fire station, anticipated to create 50 trips per day, create no more trips than a residential use?
TVF&R plans to take two steps: seek a code amendment to clarify the two aspects of code in question; and appeal, at the Oregon Court of Appeals, to overturn the LUBA ruling. TVF&R would like to change code to allow fire stations to be located anywhere in residential zoning. The Court of Appeals hearing is scheduled for January 26, 2012. If accepted to the Washington County 2012 work program, the code amendment is expected to take at least six months, Until TVF&R has successfully completed one or the other of these steps, the Fire District's application is on hold and further work on the site has ceased. If they are not successful in the Court of Appeals, they will have to file a new land-use applicatin with the county after the code is clarified.
The rebuilding of Station 68 was identified in TVR&R's 2006 Bond Measure as a facility to serve the citizens of this region for decades to come. Prior to beginning this project, an extensive search for property was conducted. The District says that the Evergreen site was selected because it was adequately-sized, financially feasible, and suitable for emergency response based on decades of incident data. Because Fire Station 68 plays a critical role in protecting not only the nearby neighborhood, but also the northwest corner of TVF&R's service area, it is curious that the Fire District would select a site on a narrow, heavily-congested, local street with limited connectivity to other adjacent neighborhoods.
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