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The next few months should prove crucial to the owners of waterfront property in Portland as the city and state will take action on several important topics.

The first is the , which was adopted by City Council on April 15. The plan is a comprehensive land-use plan for land along the Willamette River north of the Freemont Bridge to the Portland Harbor.

The Working Waterfront Coalition, an industry group representing 17 water dependent businesses, as well as the public companies, Schnitzer Steel and Gunderson, immediately appealed the decision to the Land Use Board of Appeals.

Basically, part of the River Plan states that most any development project that takes place along the river will have to go through an in-depth and time consuming (costly) process known as the River Review. Businesses don’t want to do this. They would rather pay into a mitigation fund as a fee in lieu of River Review. They’ve proposed a fee of 1.5 percent of the total cost of the project.

LUBA will take up the appeals during hearings starting Dec. 2 in Salem, and is expected to have a ruling in January 2011. While the final ruling will only take effect on the north portion of the River Plan, it will surely have implications on how the city approaches the Central Reach (Freemont Bridge to Ross Island Bridge) and South Reach (Ross Island Bridge to city line).

Not to be overshadowed, the Portland City Council is . While the project is focused around updating the airport master plan, if approved as is, it will also ban future development within 50 feet of the entire Columbia Slough. The Columbia Slough runs through one of Portland’s major industrial areas in Northeast Portland and would have an effect on several business located on it.

Anything that currently sits within the 50-foot zone – a loading dock or generator, for example – would be allowed to be repaired or replaced, but not improved . And if nothing is presently in that zone, nothing would be allowed.

While there are very strong, and well-founded, opinions on both sides of these two issues, waterfront property owners, or individuals looking to purchase waterfront property, should keep an eye on both.