91ÊÓƵ

WALDPORT – For decades, Waldport has seemed content to exist as the Oregon Coast town you don’t know much about: a blue collar, sneeze-and-you’ll-miss-it burg on the road to funky Yachats or bustling Newport.
That is about to change, in a big way.
Washougal, Wash., developer Derek Hoyte’s Columbia Pacific Enterprises has secured preliminary approval for a 576-acre project that would double the size of developed Waldport. It would include an 18-hole golf course, resort and housing complex on the southern edge of Alsea Bay. If the 1,250 planned homes are sold, the town’s population would double, too.
As one of the largest single developments in the Oregon Coast’s history, the $500 million Naples Golf and Beach Resort could change this sleepy town in dramatic ways – taxing small roads, sewer and water systems and driving up property values so sharply that some residents worry they’ll be driven out of town.
Waldport’s planning commission recently approved the developer’s plans unanimously, and the city council on Jan. 25 signed off on a slight change in Waldport’s urban growth boundary. Barring an appeal, the resort’s developers have only to get their plans for each phase of the project approved by the planning commission and Naples will no longer be a matter of debate. It will be the future.
“It’ll potentially put Waldport on the map,” Planning Commissioner Dave Perry said. “If you look at any of the tourism brochures or articles about what to see along 101 in Oregon, they talk about Newport, and the next thing they talk about is Yachats. This will change that. This will bring a lot more traffic, a lot more visitors to Waldport. I guess it was just a matter of time.”
Incorporated in 1911, the city has a population that stands at roughly 2,000 today. Despite its signature bridge spanning placid Alsea Bay, it’s not a town with much of an identity, at least not one that’s obvious to passing tourists. The existing Crestview Hills Golf Course, which is to be expanded with the new development, is marked only by a small blue sign on the coastal highway. And its 30-year-old clubhouse is showing its age.
The Naples deal came together in the fall of 2005, said Hoyte, who quit his job as a project manager at Hewlett-Packard Co. three years ago to develop real estate full time. That’s when he acquired 10 different pieces of property from eight separate buyers near Waldport. It was a rare opportunity to own such a large piece of land along the Oregon Coast, hemmed in by mountains to the east and an ocean to the west.
Not the state’s call
State transportation officials share some residents’ concerns about increased traffic. Officials with the Oregon Department of Transportation called the development’s draft traffic study “fundamentally flawed,” with little assurance that the project “will not overload the streets outside the planned development area because all the analysis needed has not been provided.”
The state estimates an additional 12,535 average weekday daily trips in Waldport if Naples is built; 10,000 average Sunday trips. The project’s developers don’t need the state’s consent, however.
As for high-end housing, the coast already has developed this way in the past five years, Perry said, with baby boomers from California and other places fleeing crowded cities and cashing out their equity for dream homes in Oregon. Waldport will inevitably grow, too, he said. With the Naples project, that growth can all fit into the same master plan – as opposed to a more haphazard, parcel-by-parcel development.
“Most of the jobs around here are geared toward real estate and development,” Perry said. “Like it or not, that’s what we have.”
If high-end housing is a given, then, a project such as Naples comes with some appealing perks, supporters say, including 10 miles of walking trails, new retail and office space, an 18-hole golf course, a 120- to 138-room lodge and a country club.

Green building
practices planned
Waldport zoning would allow for more than 2,300 houses on the 576 acres; however, Naples’ developer proposes about half that, leaving 60 percent of the property as open space.
Hoyte also plans to build houses with roofing shingles that contain photovoltaic cells, which would mean Naples could draw 20 percent of its power from solar energy. He wants to buy the rest from wind farms in Eastern Oregon if he can convince the local utility to cut a deal for the renewable resource and sell him that capacity.
Planning Commissioner Dann Cutter offered some reassurance to concerned local residents, saying the developers may decide to shrink the size of the project before it is completed. While the project’s size is “daunting,” he added, the development’s four phases are spread out over a 15- to 20-year period, during which Waldport would likely see several hundred new homes anyway.
“It will change Waldport,” Cutter said. “You can’t add 1,200 homes and not change Waldport. But we’ve added 400 or so homes in the past couple of years in developments very few people have come to express concerns about. A lot of these developments are still sitting unbuilt.”