04/29/2001

Zoning decisions lead to trouble

History: Putting an industrial site next to a residential one backfires.

By Joe Harwood
The Register-Guard

COBURG - The mess that Monaco Coach Corp. and a group of Coburg homeowners find themselves in traces back more than 20 years to ill-conceived land use decisions.

In 1979, Coburg planning officials drew lines on a map designating a 217-acre strip between the city and Interstate 5 as an industrial park.

A few years later, planners sketched in additional lines, this time slotting land south and west of the industrial park for residential development.

Those actions have now come back to haunt the community.

The incompatible zoning has resulted in Monaco's RV factory, which pumps out 130 tons of hazardous chemical fumes per year, sitting next to a new 14-home subdivision and dozens of older homes nearby.

The dispute begs questions: How could officials have allowed housing and industry so close together? And why did people buy new homes near an RV factory?

In 1994, when booming Monaco started looking to move from its cramped Junction City plant, Coburg leaders and state economic development officials wooed the company to keep jobs in Lane County.

Monaco at the time said it was considering sites in California that offered tax breaks and free land.

But Coburg won the rapid courtship contest after city officials promised property tax waivers. In July 1994, Monaco started work on its new Coburg factory. About 11 months later, the company was up and running in Coburg.

In 1996, home builder Bill Moody received approval from the Lane County Boundary Commission to annex a parcel of land immediately south of Monaco's complex into the Coburg city limits.

Moody named his 14-lot development Coburg Commons.

At the time, moving in near Monaco's land seemed like a good idea.

Monaco's buildings were far away from the new homes. The new subdivision
offered a chance for quiet, small-town living. It seemed an ideal oasis
to raise kids and grow a garden.

But that was before the luxury coach maker started an expansion in 1998
to keep up with heavy demand. The $25 million expansion added almost
500,000 square feet of manufacturing space to Monaco's 55-acre campus.

What had been a hay field north of Moody's subdivision when he started
work is now paved and dotted with buildings, including a new painting
booth facility that emits heavy volumes of malodorous chemical fumes. Nearby
residents blame the fumes for headaches, nausea and respiratory ailments.

Attempts by Monaco to fix the problem haven't worked, though the company
is in the process of making additional modifications in the hopes of stopping the
emissions.

Families knew when they bought the new nearby homes beginning in 1996
that the land immediately to the north, though then partially vacant, was zoned for
industry. Monaco had owned the land since 1994.

"When we moved here, we figured if there were severe emissions, there
would be standards to capture those emissions," said Dick Brown, who
lives next to the factory. "We were naive and thought the rules would protect us."

Brown moved into his house just west of the subdivision in February 1995,
when Monaco was building the first phase of its factory.

"We can live with Monaco being our neighbor," Brown said. "But we
shouldn't have to tolerate all the emissions leaving their property; that prevents us from
enjoying our property."

Under federal hazardous air pollution rules, Monaco has the legal right
to emit its fumes. The federal government plans to issue new, tougher rules for
industrial painting firms later this year, and the RV industry is lobbying to be exempted from having to install incinerators that would burn up those fumes.

In the meantime, nearby residents will live with the consequences of inept zoning decisions made long ago.

"I wish those homes had not been allowed to be built there," said Brian Jennison, director of the Lane Regional Air Pollution Authority, which enforces federal air laws in Lane County. "Monaco was there before most of the homes, and that land should have been left as a buffer."

Jennison added that most complaints to his agency stem from zoning
conflicts.

The dispute between residents and Monaco is the latest evidence of
friction over growth in tiny Coburg. The city of 800 people has long been
ambivalent about expansion.

The City Council in 1994 hastily and with little publicity approved a
state enterprise zone designation for the industrial park in order to offer Monaco the property tax waivers it wanted. But once word spread, residents rebelled.

They voted out Mayor Mary Guldager, a Monaco champion. Seven months
later, the council scrapped the enterprise zone. That made Coburg the
first and only city in Oregon to terminate an enterprise zone before its legal
10-year sunset.

Despite the city's decision to scrap the zone, Monaco still has benefited
handsomely from the breaks. That's because Monaco was already in the zone
before officials rescinded the program, so the company is grandfathered in.

The program waives property taxes on new buildings for three years. For the period 1996-1999, Monaco was waived from paying $432,718 in taxes.

For the 1999-2000 tax year, the exemption expired on the company's older
buildings, so Monaco started paying full taxes on those structures.

But the new expansion, including the controversial paint-booth building,
will be exempted from taxes through the 2002-2003 tax year. In the
current tax year, Monaco was exempted from $351,340 in property taxes on those new
buildings.

- Joe Harwood