LUBA Overturns Deetour Permit Extension


It may be near the end of the road for Deetour, Apollo Land Holdings LLC’s controversial concert venue proposal on the Hood River on the site of the old Dee Mill. On April 9th, Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals issued a decision reversing Hood River County’s granting a fourth permit extension to the project. Without this extension, the permit to develop the project expired in 2020.

This is great news. A reversal from LUBA is very rare. As an appellate court, LUBA must give a high degree of deference to Hood River’s interpretation of its own rules. In striking down the County’s decision, LUBA found that the Board of Commissioners’ decision to grant an additional one-year permit extension was inconsistent with the express language and purpose of Hood River’s zoning code and that their decision “violated a provision of applicable law and was prohibited as a matter of law”.

The project had included a proposed 437-space parking lot (about the size of the parking lot at Hood River Walmart) adjacent to the East Fork of the Hood River, home to several runs of endangered salmon and steelhead.

Since it reared its head in 2013, the mega-development proposed by Apollo Land Holdings LLC at the site of the old Dee mill met with near universal opposition from neighbors and area farmers who feared the complex of concert venue and 430+ space parking lot would utterly transform this quiet rural corner of the county. In 2015, Apollo tried to add a four-story hotel to the mix. With plans for a food cart court, meeting space, event and wedding facilities and attractions like Santaland, the project seemed like a destination resort by piecemeal land use permit applications. Thrive Hood River and community members successfully fought off the hotel addition but the concert venue permit lingered on, getting renewed every year despite no actual progress on construction of the project. Last year, Thrive appealed the County’s decision to grant a fourth extension to the project.

LUBA’s decision is final unless Hood River County and Apollo appeal to the Oregon Court of Appeals. Apollo can, of course, apply for a new permit but it will be subject to all the rules for the Dee Mill exception area that were discovered when we successfully defeated the hotel project, namely that the project must be a “rural, industrial use” or go through a new exception process – a very high bar indeed.

This has been a very long process and we are grateful to all of the community members who have stood with us, coming out again and again to County appeal hearings (despite rain, snow and COVID-19), sending written testimony, and donating to our Legal Defense Fund.

Through the many years of challenging this project we’ve had our state’s foremost land use advocacy organization, 1000 Friends of Oregon by our side. Andrew Mulkey, Rural Lands Attorney for Friends, represented us at LUBA for this case, his predecessor Meriel Darzen represented us to defeat the hotel aspect of the project and Policy Director Mary Kyle McCurdy identified key legal issues at many steps along the way. We’ve always loved the word “friends” because it truly represents our relationship with 1000 Friends of Oregon. Friends supports local land use groups like Thrive through their affiliate program offering legal assistance, deep institutional knowledge of land use laws and the best thinking around on planning. Their generosity and expertise allows little non-profits like ours to have the kind of successes we are announcing today. We hope you consider supporting Friends so they can keep helping us fight the good fight.