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Following a decision by the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals, a drive by Beaumont-Wilshire residents to upend developer Wally Remmers‘ four-story apartment project has run out of road.

In a final opinion issued Dec. 4, LUBA remanded to the city of Portland its decision to issue Remmers (who is developing the project with his son Victor Remmers via Everett Custom Homes) a building permit for what the judicial board called “trivial” changes. The developer will need to revise certain design details – such as the location of a gas barbecue – before proceeding with construction, which is well under way.

In April, the Beaumont-Wilshire Neighbors for Responsible Growth began a costly process to appeal Remmers’ 50-unit Beaumont Village. Margaret Davis, a BWNRG member, said the decision was not what she had hoped for, but it isn’t a total loss.

“A remand is not an outright win, but it does feel like we’re going to get some things fixed with the building, and it’s also a chance for the city to just look at the project again,” she said. “So I have hope that we’ll turn out with something better. It’s not everything we wanted, but hey, we didn’t get an affirm, which would have been a loss.”

BWNRG members have adamantly opposed the project’s size and lack of parking, contending it neither followed code nor adhered to city criteria. The group sought to stymie construction by identifying in its appeal some of those perceived flaws, which ranged from sizable issues like a lack of parking to details like the amount of setback for dry wells.

LUBA found the project’s building permit to be complete before the city adopted its minimum parking requirements, and denied the argument that parking should be required. The board sustained the group’s argument about setbacks for dry wells, but with a major caveat.

“If we were not to remand this decision for other reasons based on our resolution of the fourth assignment of error, we would be hard-pressed to remand the decision based solely on such a minor error,” the board wrote in its opinion.

The fourth assignment of error had to do with minimum setbacks from adjacent residential properties, which in the case of a trellis and the location of a gas barbecue pit LUBA decided did not meet requirements. In the end, changes will likely be easy fixes for the developer.

“The changes that will be required on remand are trivial,” the board wrote. “In each case the needed changes are the kinds of minor changes that are routinely made via modifications of a submitted application or via conditions of approval. Reversal is not appropriate in these circumstances.”

A reversal decision would have completely nullified the city’s decision to issue a permit in the first place.

Legal counsel for Remmers declined to comment. Davis, meanwhile, said she is frustrated that her group needed to resort to such tactics just to be heard. BWNRG so far has raised $5,500 for its cause; Davis hopes the final tab won’t be much more than $10,000.

“Just to have the project be brought to code, it took all of that,” she said. “How did it turn out that we had this adversarial relationship with our own city? They have the rulebook sitting on every corner of their desks. It shouldn’t take us a year and a half worth of work to have (the project) be to code.”