It's well known by now that although destination resorts are supposed to be focused on overnight visitation that they're becoming increasingly residential in nature and use. For several years now, the industry has focused on relaxing laws that restrict the sale of individual lots and the private single-family houses that are built upon them. The increase in privately-owned houses has been justified in part by the fact that many of them are supposed to be made available to overnight visitors, and that the owners themselves are only there - we're told - about 25% of the time, on average.

However, some of us have speculated that even if current owner occupation is low and homes operate successfully as rentals for the time being (the jury's still out on both these assertions, with the latter falling into the "extremely dubious" category), that over time many of these units will become places of primary residence. It's happened in other resorts areas - will in happen in Central Oregon?

I'm reporting on this not to pick a fight with two of our County Commissioners, but because I think it's important that people understand just how the issue of destination resorts is being legislated in Deschutes County.

Earlier this week, the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners held a final scheduled worksession regarding an application from the resort industry that if approved would significantly relax the county's resort guidelines. Additional Details are here, but most significantly these rules would allow resorts to back out of the obligation of providing dedicated overnight lodging units and instead allow them to pursue potentially limitless numbers of private residences. In other words: less resort, more subdivision.

Mollie Eder, Powell Butte resident and now resort activist, printed a short letter in the October 8th Bulletin in which she bemoans the impact of destination resorts on the ability to drive cattle down country roads. Eder writes:

Oregon Business Magazine has published another piece (their first piece is here) on destination resorts in its October issue, quoting both myself and resort advocate Linda Swearengin.

This is a short piece focusing on the anticipated application for Seven Peaks resort in western Crook County as well as the status of the effort to protect the Metolius River from resorts there. Swearengin told the magazine that she believes that market for resorts in Central Oregon has yet to reach its peak, offering "You don’t come in on a wing and a prayer to develop these resorts" as evidence of a long-term demand.

We have our doubts.

It seems that everyone in the planning world is talking about a new report from the Urban Land Institute relating urban planning and land use patterns to climate change. The fundamental premise? Sprawl - and increased traffic - is a leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions and human-induced global warming, and land use and urban planning policy holds one of the most important keys to staving off the ills of climate change.

The Source printed a rare editorial in this week's paper (07/27/07) suggesting that the community should think twice before accepting the deal that Skyline Forest's owner - Fidelity National Financial - has offered to build on 5,000 acres and donate 28,000 acres.

This is really curious, and thanks to Land Use Watch for catching it. It seems that Oregonians In Action's Dave Hunnicutt understands that Measure 37 has gone too far in the minds of most Oregonians.

On Thursday, the Central Oregon Commission on Transportation (COACT) met in Redmond to discuss the issue of transportation impacts of destination resorts. I have to say, this sounded like a pretty dry meeting even for a wonk like me, but this is getting to be really big issue and the dialogue proved to be pretty entertaining.

To sum up, cities really don't care much for destination resorts. They don't collect any property taxes from them and bear many of their impacts. Counties, on the other hand, collect far more in property taxes than they have to shell out for impacts, so they generally have been very accommodating.

So I expected that the city reps would express concern but because they have to do regular business with counties would tone down their distaste. And because counties have been so unabashedly supportive of resorts, I expected the usual rhetoric about how wonderful resorts are and how lucky cities should be to get to house their workers, sell them their groceries, and so on.

But a funny thing happened on the way to meeting and not only did the city officials come out firing, but the county officials did little to shut them up or in many cases even refute them.

The Oregon League of Conservation Voters has finally released its Green Scorecard for 2007. Blue Oregon has some commentary here.

Notables? Ben Westlund scored 100%. Nice work, Ben! Chuck Burley came in with a 56%, while Gen Whisnant hit just about the Republican average with 42%.

Wow, this is a familiar topic - how can a massive 10,000 square foot home be considered efficient regardless of the materials, construction techniques, or any other elements of its design? The answer is it can't.

McMansions Equivalent To 'SUVs That Run for 100 Years' - Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:00:00 PDT

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[Planetizen]