Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to clarify that Atticus Hotel partners Brian Shea and Erin Stephenson are business partners and are not married, as an earlier version stated.

Construction is booming this summer in McMinnville as local officials and business owners seek to capitalize on strong demand for wine-country tourism.

Several projects are under way to take advantage of high-income visitors and attempt to expand business beyond Third Street, McMinnville’s downtown retail thoroughfare.

A major makeover is under way at Alpine Avenue, a downtown artery. The project is intended to link McMinnville’s historic Third Street, where tourist-friendly wine bars mix with longtime local haunts, and the Granary District, a former agricultural center that now hosts wineries, breweries and related businesses.

The Alpine Avenue project is funded by a transportation bond McMinnville voters passed in 2014. The project includes street surfacing, pedestrian improvements, bike lanes, utility upgrades and landscaping along four blocks of Alpine, from Northeast Seventh to 11th avenues.

McMinnville boosters hope Alpine Avenue transforms into a corridor of high-end restaurants, coffee shops and art galleries.

Ellen Brittan, co-owner of Brittan Vineyards, said Alpine Avenue will become “more mixed-use and enticing to walk through,” bridging the gap between downtown’s retail shops and the hands-on artisan manufacturing businesses of the Granary District.

“For us, it’s a positive thing,” said Tres Burns, associate winemaker at Brittan Vineyards. In the Granary District, he said “it sort of feels like you’re miles away from Third Street. Just getting those corridors improved, that improves the connection to downtown and to Third Street, which is important for us because we’re trying to be part of the downtown experience.”

McMinnville’s status as a tourist destination is intimately tied to Oregon’s growing reputation for winemaking. More than 200 wineries have sprouted within a 20-mile radius of McMinnville, and some Oregon pinot noirs have been compared to the best of Napa Valley and France.

McMinnville is among the major outposts for Oregon’s alcohol industry, which now outpaces all others for job growth, surpassing even the much-lauded Silicon Forest software industry, according to an analysis by Jones Lang LaSalle.

The alcohol industry, including wine, beer and distilled spirits manufacturers, generated 7,400 new jobs between January 2008 and September 2016, according to JLL.

McMinnville is benefiting from the boozy trend. In addition to wineries such as Coeur De Terre and Yamhill Valley, breweries such as Heater Allen and Golden Valley have contributed to the grape-and-grain scene.

Ellen and Robert Brittan founded their winery in 2008 after careers in Napa Valley. Ellen Brittan said the town has since changed.

“We’ve seen quite a bit of transition into higher-end restaurants, more quality retail,” she said.

With the winery scene comes high-end tourism, and the town has few hotel rooms to absorb it. A local partnership is stepping in to fill that gap with the Atticus Hotel at the intersection of Northeast Fourth Avenue and Ford Street.

An R&H Construction crew broke ground on the project May 15. The hotel, which is on track to open in spring 2018, will offer 36 rooms that average about $350 a night.

It follows other luxury wine-country developments such as The Allison Inn and Spa in Newberg.

The Atticus Hotel will fulfill an unmet market for luxury lodgings in downtown McMinnville, said Erin Stephenson, who is part of the ownership group for the project. The other partners are Brian Shea; her father, Rob Stephenson; and Jeb Bladine, who owns the lot and other downtown properties and is publisher of the local newspaper, the News-Register.

The design for the 22,640-square-foot, four-story building comes from architect Nathan Cooprider.

“We recognize there are some guests who don’t come and stay in McMinnville at all because there isn’t a hotel that can meet that full-service experience,” Erin Stephenson said.

The Atticus Hotel is the most significant ground-up construction under way this year. It follows major renovations of historic buildings, including one to suit McMenamins‘ 42-room Hotel Oregon, which occupies a 112-year-old building in the heart of Third Street.

In 2015, local businessman Bob Emrick completed a new building, called the Kaos Building at Third Street and Galloway streets. The project is anchored by a fine-dining restaurant, The Barberry, on the ground floor. The second floor holds offices and the third floor is occupied by a casual eatery, 1882 Grille.

One project coming later this year is Allegory Brewing, in a converted warehouse on Northeast Fourth Street. The project won a $100,000 grant as part of the state Historic Preservation Office‘s Main Street revitalization program.

The grant program is focused on supporting healthy downtowns, said Kuri Gill, grants and outreach coordinator for the Historic Preservation Office.

“Some of these downtowns are already vital, and we want to keep them that way,” Gill said.

The grant will go toward creating a taproom and beer garden at Allegory, at 777 N.E. Fourth St., with seating indoors and outdoors separated by roll-up garage doors. The building has 5,800 square feet, with an 8,000-square-foot parking lot.

The new brewery’s owner, David Sanguinetti, said Allegory will provide a missing way station between Third Street, the Granary District and Alpine Avenue.

“This might help with the gateway to those,” he said. “It’s a natural progression.”

Fourth Street has potential to extend the downtown tourist district, Sanguinetti said.

“I think Fourth Street is the next to develop,” he said.

Sanguinetti is well-known to locals as the proprietor of The Bitter Monk, a popular Third Street taproom. He’s hoping to open Allegory in July and self-distribute beer to the Portland market.

Also bringing life to Fourth Street is Type A Press, a boutique letterpress operation that produces stationery, promotional materials and business cards. The business was founded in 2010 by Chelsey Bladine, daughter of Jeb.

McMinnville has other tourist draws, chiefly the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum on Oregon Route 18 southeast of the town center.

Yet it is wine that drives the economy in McMinnville. Town officials have created a wine walk modeled after the Bend Ale Trail to encourage tourists to make their way around town.

One winery, Elizabeth Chambers Cellar, recently completed a $1 million renovation to attract wine drinkers. The winery is in a former diesel electric power plant at 455 N.E. Irvine St. that was in use from 1926 to 1978. The renovation retained the building’s brick bones but allows visitors to see a vast barrel room and aesthetic touches. A garden provides outdoor seating and often hosts events.

The winemaker, Michael Stevenson, said the town has continued to evolve since he arrived in 1994. He’s eager to see the town better connected.

“Every year is better and better,” he said.

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A boutique hotel coming to downtown McMinnville will hold true to its local roots, from ownership of the building to its design.

A parking lot currently occupies the corner of Northeast Fourth and Ford streets. But in May, R&H Construction is expected to begin work at the site to build a four-story, 22,640-square-foot building to house the Atticus Hotel.

The project is being developed by a group called Odd Fellows Building (OFB), a limited liability corporation that’s composed of Jeb Bladine, Rob Stephenson, Erin Stephenson and Brian Shea. Bladine is president and publisher of Oregon Lithoprint, the parent company of the News-Register Publishing Co., publisher of the award-winning News-Register newspaper. Rob Stephenson is a landscape architect and former owner of McMinnville-based Cascadia Landscaping.

Erin Stephenson and Shea will lease the new building and operate the Atticus Hotel through their hospitality company Live McMinnville LLC. The company also operates 3rd Street Flats, a lodging business offering flat-style apartments for short- and long-term rental at two locations in downtown McMinnville.

Nathan Cooprider, the architect for the hotel project, is no stranger to the community of McMinnville. He grew up in the area, according to information provided by OFB, and designed the KAOS building – a restaurant complex that made history a few years ago when it became the first new building to be constructed in downtown McMinnville since the 1960s.

When the Atticus Hotel opens in spring 2018, it’s expected to create about 50 new jobs in McMinnville, although Erin Stephenson and Shea didn’t provide information about whether those jobs will be full- or part-time positions.

Once the hotel is fully operational, it is expected to drum up $63,000 per year in property taxes for the city’s Urban Renewal District and collect more than $200,000 per year in local transient lodging taxes.

McMinnville is approximately 40 miles southwest of Portland, in the heart of winery-heavy Yamhill County. The OFB team estimates that Atticus Hotel guests will spend about $2 million per year at local businesses, including the 18 wineries and tasting rooms located within walking distance of the hotel.

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The state of Oregon has drawn the line on a proposed 1,200-acre expansion of McMinnville‘s urban growth boundary – essentially leaving it unchanged from 2000.

On Feb. 28, the remanded McMinnville’s UGB amendment to the city, after a July 2011 decision by the Oregon Court of Appeals found that the expansion violated state laws. The decision signals a victory for conservationists and presents a huge question mark for city planners.

Doug Montgomery, planning director for the city of McMinnville, said the decision was a huge disappointment and one that came after significant time and money was expended. He said the city must now either try to re-justify its proposed expansions or look for new locations to plan for future growth and development.

“But frankly, at this point in time, we won’t do either of those,” Montgomery said. “We’ll probably put the project to the side until we have more financial resources or political will to move this thing forward.”

Montgomery said the city in 1995 realized it was running out of land for future growth. From 1980 to 2003, McMinnville’s population doubled to 28,500 residents, according to a study commissioned by the city. The study estimated the city would add 15,545 more people over the next 20 years.

So the city began planning for a UGB expansion, and in 2008 the LCDC approved its application. Shortly thereafter, , and other interested groups appealed that decision to the Court of Appeals – claiming that the UGB expansion added too much land and that it improperly sought to re-designate prime agricultural land for urban uses – and won.

“When people … when developers and other boosters talk about economic development, it’s important to remember that we have a thriving (agricultural) industry,” said Sid Friedman of Friends of Yamhill County. “It’s the second largest industry in our state, and we shouldn’t be undercutting what we already have in search of the golden goose.”

According to the organization, agriculture accounts for 10 percent of Oregon’s total sales and 12 percent of its jobs. Friedman said conversion of prime farmland for urban growth should be a last resort, especially when better alternatives exist.

McMinnville’s UGB expansion would have included approximately 800 acres of buildable land that 1000 Friends of Oregon considers prime farmland. Mary Kyle McCurdy, a staff attorney for the organization, said that land was unnecessary for expansion because other undeveloped sites within the UGB can accommodate growth.

McCurdy said the group, however, approved of the city’s plan to create Neighborhood Activity Centers – essentially, highly walkable retail- and commercial-anchored communities.

“We support that, but we think that the housing mix and densities that they were proposing were not realistic,” McCurdy said. “They didn’t meet either the projected needs of the future residents of McMinnville, nor were they designed in a way that we thought would be very effective.”

She said 1000 Friends of Oregon has experience in designing these types of developments and that it hopes to work with McMinnville to that end.

But Montgomery said that even with those parcels, the city would still lack land. He said those existing sites on the city’s edges would not suit compact, centralized neighborhoods, but rather invite strip developments.

“We were trying to contain future development within some of the ridgelines and creeks and river that form the natural or physical boundaries of the geography of McMinnville,” he said. “Some of these areas that they were pointing to would extend into open farmland without anything adjacent to it to stop further development beyond that.”

Both McCurdy and Montgomery said development costs would be significantly different for the parceled sites than for the 800 acres of open farmland – though they disagree on which would be more expensive.

McCurdy said sites within the UGB would be less expensive in the long run because they are already partially served by services, whereas the expansion would require construction of new utility lines. She said that although cities are required to compare the costs of developing new sites in a UGB expansion, they usually don’t compare them to the costs of developing sites already within the boundary.

Montgomery contended that existing sites face slope and transportation access issues. He said he believes the city won’t be able to grow if it cannot expand into farmland.

“Nearly any direction we step outside the current boundary, we’re going to be touching farmland,” he said. “So to not do so and suggest we could put another 16,000 people inside our current boundary, on lands that are small three-acre and four-acre parcels, which people are enjoying now in a very rural lifestyle … seems a little difficult to imagine.”

He said the end result would likely interest other cities like Bend, Woodburn and Newberg, which are engaged in UGB amendment processes. And the LCDC, though it carried out the court’s decision, has cited concerns with the outcome – especially that such a long process yielded an “uncertain conclusion” for McMinnville.

“It certainly kind of puts a question mark for other cities going through this,” Montgomery said.

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Plans for a Habitat for Humanity development in McMinnville include some of the most energy-efficient building techniques the nonprofit has used to date. But the strong sustainability angle isn’t enough to win over a group of local residents opposed to the project.

The wants to build a 35-unit subdivision of highly energy-efficient homes on an undeveloped 3.47-acre lot off of Atlantic Avenue. The project, which required a zoning change to allow for increased density, won narrow approval from McMinnville City Council last summer – Mayor Rick Olson broke a 3-3 tie with a vote in favor of Habitat’s proposal.

But a group of McMinnville residents who object to the location of the development appealed the approval, sending it into the hands of the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals.

“This isn’t your typical story of a rich neighborhood not wanting ‘those kind of people’ coming into the neighborhood,” said lead petitioner Marcie Rosenzweig. “We are a mostly blue-collar community of Habitat supporters and ex-volunteers.”

What Rosenzweig and the dozen other petitioners object to is the density of the new development, which they say runs contrary with the existing neighborhood and could strain local infrastructure.

Because the area is somewhat isolated from the rest of the town, Rosenzweig said, there also are concerns that any young children moving into the area wouldn’t have safe access to recreation.

The size and site plan of the subdivision depart from prior Habitat projects in McMinnville, which have typically been common-wall infill projects.

“If this project was proposed for a Portland community, where schools were in walking or biking distance and there were parks for kids, I think this would be a really elegant solution,” Rosenzweig said. “But not every site fits every project.”

The McMinnville Habitat chapter worked for nearly two years with designer Matt Daby to develop a plan for the site. Even though the project will be built almost entirely by volunteer help, Daby’s design calls for extremely tight construction in order to achieve energy-efficiency standards that go well beyond other Habitat homes.

“For me this has been quite exciting,” said Daby, who has contributed more than 50 percent of his hours pro bono. “We have the opportunity to take Passive House ideas, one of the strictest building standards, and push them to see if we can make affordable houses, built by volunteers, without turning to crazy materials to make it happen.”

, the high-performance building energy standard born in Darmstadt, Germany, emphasizes air-tight design and high insulation levels to create extremely energy-efficient buildings.

McMinnville City Councilor Kevin Jeffries praises the project design work, even though he voted against the project last summer.

“The design itself I thought was really beautiful, and for energy conservation, I thought they were really progressive,” Jeffries said. “That was a really tough vote, but to me it was a matter of location.”

Jeffries was concerned it would be difficult for the influx of new residents to get to other parts of town. He also worried noise from nearby highways makes the site undesirable, which violates rules for low-income housing projects.

Habitat administrators, however, maintain their position that they’ve found the right site for the project.

“We think it’s a great location,” Gretchen Phelps, executive director of the McMinnville chapter, said. “Hopefully, we’ll eventually have some more support from the neighbors, but we just have to take it one step at a time.”

In the meantime, the organization is building a house on Elmwood Avenue that is similar to the ones planned for the larger development. The house features a slab-on-grade insulated foundation, 14-inch-thick walls and raised heel trusses, all of which combine to reduce future energy needs in the house. The added costs for these features are minimal, according to Daby.

If LUBA upholds the city council’s decision, Habitat will move forward with engineering plans for the larger site’s infrastructure. Candace Haines, city attorney for McMinnville, said the agency was slated to announce its decision by Dec. 29, (after the 91��Ƶ’s press deadline for this story).

“We’re doing some things we haven’t done before, so we’re using the delay as an opportunity to build a sort of model home before moving into the larger development,” Phelps said. “We’re aiming for the most energy-efficient homes we can get while balancing that with affordability. Now we’re just waiting for the green light to move forward.”

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Three McMinnville women – all widowed mothers of adult children with developmental disabilities – are inspiring a building movement. Or they’re at least raising awareness of community needs that could lead to one.

Living options are scarce for adults with special needs, and Patricia Smith, Patricia Britton and another woman who asked not to be identified became friends through their efforts to build appropriate housing for their children. Now in their 60s and early 70s, the women are thinking of their own futures and, again, found few existing options.

“We thought it would be good if we could be neighbors – not roommates, but neighbors in small, energy-efficient homes,” Britton said. “Like an informal assisted-living community where people would know whether we were coming or going, where people would come in and check on us if there was no activity for 24 hours.”

So with the help of John Mead, founder of , the three women found a property near Cozine Creek, purchased it and helped Mead refine “50/10 Houses” – a design concept that, for many homebuilders, reflects the market’s desire for affordable green homes.

The “50/10” concept is to build houses that are 50 percent more efficient than those built to Oregon code, at only a 10 percent premium. The challenge, Mead said, is targeting prospective buyers.

“Part of our success as a green builder is getting creative in our marketing approach,” he said.

Matt Daby, owner of , designed the Cozine Creek homes, as well as a suite of options for future 50/10 homes. The team was inspired by the desire of the McMinnville women to live near each other, and it hopes to bring a similar sense of community to future 50/10 projects.

“With Cozine Creek, the idea was that we’re not only paying attention to your lot and your house, but also to the spaces in between and how they intersect,” said Daby, whose efforts were also influenced by his work to design a future 35-unit community for the . “You’re thinking about your neighbors rather than just yourself.”

Daby and the team from Cellar Ridge are hoping to build another “pocket neighborhood” at Valley’s Edge, a McMinnville development with some existing homes and apartments, but 28 lots still for sale.

“We approached the developers and said, ‘Hey, we’re not in a position to buy these lots, but we’ll put them on contract (for six) and market the concept,’ ” Mead said. “We agreed upon a purchase price with them so when we get started we have those lots ready to go.”

A couple of prospective homebuyers are in discussions to purchase lots, according to Mead, but so far all six are still available. The new home models start at $225,000, and the team is exploring options for building 50/10 houses on single infill lots in Portland.

Britton moved into her new, 1,300-square-foot home along Cozine Creek about three weeks ago, and Cellar Ridge will begin work on Smith’s house in the coming weeks.

The double-wall construction, heat recovery ventilators, high insulation levels and solar orientation are paying off, according to Britton. Her first utility bill was $25.

“Our experience is if it doesn’t exist, then see what you can do to create it,” she said.

After struggling to find suitable housing for their kids, the women worked with Families United for Independent Living, a Yamhill County nonprofit, to build two apartment buildings – one in McMinnville and one in Newberg – for low-income, developmentally disabled adults. Both Britton’s and Smith’s children live independently in the units at Hendricks Place in McMinnville.

And now their ingenuity is helping them plan ahead for the realities of their own futures.

“So many women are left alone and as we age we need support from other women friends,” said Smith, who has outlived two husbands. “It’s just part of life.”

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McMinnville Planning Director Doug Montgomery has worked for years to help the city receive final approval for an urban growth boundary expansion. And after multiple appeals and remands, he is finding that the involvement of planners in the process is decreasing while the involvement of lawyers is increasing.

The trend, he said, shows that Oregon’s land-use process is heading in the wrong direction. From Bend to Woodburn to McMinnville, cities are encountering uncertainty, long delays and different interpretations of rules. But state land-use officials say finding practical solutions is difficult.

The state requires cities to review every five years whether they have enough land to accommodate job and population growth over the next 20 years. If a determination is made that the city has insufficient land, then officials must propose an expansion of the city’s urban growth boundary, make justifications for the amount of land brought in, and state why the particular land was chosen.

A UGB expansion proposal approved at the city, county and state levels then goes in front of the Land Conservation and Development Commission. The board can choose to either approve the proposal or remand it. Approvals often are appealed to the Oregon Court of Appeals by land-use activists. The court can choose to seek revisions from either the LCDC or the city. Those changes could also be appealed.

That happened in McMinnville earlier this month and in Woodburn earlier this year. Officials in both cities have worked toward UGB expansions for nearly a decade, and they feel less certain about an outcome now than when the process started.

Rob Hallyburton, planning services division manager at the Department of Land Conservation and Development, said the recent McMinnville decision highlighted one of the main issues: The LCDC is working from an administrative rule, while the Court of Appeals is working from a state statute.

“They talk about the same things but (without) the same words,” said Hallyburton, in reference to statewide planning goal 14 and ORS 197.298. “Because of this interplay between rules and statutes, there are lots of places opponents can find to appeal.”

Montgomery agrees that in McMinnville’s case the problem is with different interpretations of the same rules.

“I’ve joked that we would be more comfortable with a UGB amendment czar than with our current system,” he said.

A city may disagree with a single authority’s decision, but at least it would be certain. In the existing system, Montgomery said, a UGB amendment could reach the Court of Appeals before a problem arises that could change everything.

“We went through a long process to determine how much land we needed, and now with the most recent ruling, it seems like we might have to change that,” he said. “That changes the entire process.”

Damian Syrnyk, a senior planner in Bend, agrees that in McMinnville’s case there is more uncertainty now than before the decision.

“In McMinnville, LCDC thought it was ‘A,’ (1000 Friends of Oregon, the appealing party) thought it was ‘B,’ and then the court decided they were both wrong and it was ‘C,’ ” he said. “It was a sobering moment for me when reading that decision.”

Bend has its own UGB expansion issues. Thirty years have passed since its existing boundaries were set, and planners have worked for the past five years to gain final approval for an expansion. Bend submitted its proposal in April 2009; the LCDC remanded it in November 2010. Now a city task force is making changes for resubmission by May 2013.

Montgomery added that cities are given strict deadlines to submit plans, but courts have no urgency. The court heard oral arguments for McMinnville in September 2010, but the remand wasn’t given until July 13, he said.

Hallyburton said past efforts by the state to improve the process have focused on increasing efficiency.

“We have a history of trying to streamline things, and I have a feeling that moving forward it will still be an issue,” he said.

Another key issue, according to Syrnyk, is that state rules and statutes limit a city’s ability to aspire. He believes officials should be able to plan for more than only expected population and economic growth.

“Maybe you look at something like tax framework or regulatory framework,” he said. “Cities have different goals and not everything should be tied to population.”

Hallyburton said recent decisions affecting Woodburn and McMinnville are leading more people to scrutinize the system. The Department of Land Conservation and Development is assembling a policy agenda for the LCDC to look at areas that could be improved.

Because of the issues between rules and statutes, he said, a fix probably would have to come at the legislative level.

“The McMinnville decision heightens the concerns around the state,” he said. “I would be surprised if we don’t see more attempts at the legislative level to fix these things.”

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Urban growth boundary expansions usually put land-use activists and city governments at odds in Oregon.

But in McMinnville are two other unlikely foes: the Oregon Court of Appeals and the Land Conservation and Development Commission.

State land-use officials today expressed concern over a recent Court of Appeals decision to overturn McMinnville’s urban growth boundary expansion, which was approved by LCDC in 2008. The remand adds even more time to a process that McMinnville started in 2000 as part of the state-required review of its comprehensive plan.

The Court of Appeals determined that LCDC incorrectly applied state statute in determining that the city had significant evidence to expand its UGB by 1,200 acres. The decision remanded the approval back to LCDC so the commission could make a better case for the expansion or make revisions to it.

“We believe the commission followed its own rules faithfully and acted reasonably in upholding McMinnville’s UGB amendment,” said Department of Land Conservation and Development Acting Director Jim Rue. “…It should concern anyone involved in Oregon planning that a process consuming several years and still reaching an uncertain conclusion is not good for the state land use planning program.”

The UGB expansion’s approval was appealed by 1000 Friend of Oregon, the state-wide land-use advocacy group. The group appealed the original approval of the expansion to LCDC in 2006. Then after changes were made and it was approved by LCDC, the group appealed it to the Court of Appeals, the final land-use decision maker in the state.

But now that the Court of Appeals has sided against the other state land-use decision maker, LCDC, no one is sure how to proceed.

“The implications, while initially troubling, are not fully understood by many planners or lawyers,” said Richard Whitman, former DLCD director and current natural resources policy director to Gov. John Kitzhaber. “It will take some time to understand and resolve the issues raised in this decision. I expect to engage (Rue) and stakeholders from around the state to craft a workable solution.”

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The city of McMinnville must return to the drawing board as it attempts to expand its urban growth boundary.

The Oregon Court of Appeals late last week sided against recent Land Conservation and Development Commission approval of the expansion, and called into question the inclusion of nearly 800 acres of farmland to accommodate population and job growth. Portions of the proposal now must be re-examined by the LCDC and retooled to receive state approval.

The city has worked since 2003 to expand the UGB in preparation for a projected population increase to 44,055 by 2023. The city’s population in 2010 was 32,187.

An original proposal was approved by the Department of Land Conservation and Development in 2004; however, it was appealed by land-use advocacy groups Friends of Yamhill County and 1000 Friends of Oregon to the LCDC and then remanded to the city for more work. The city then adjusted some of the boundaries and eventually received approval from the LCDC.

Then the same groups appealed the amended plan to the Court of Appeals, which remanded it to the LCDC.

“We reached the frustration point several years ago,” said Doug Montgomery, planning director for the city of McMinnville. “We are now halfway through our 20-year projection period and it doesn’t seem like we’re that much closer than when we first started this 14 years ago.”

The appealing parties argued, and the court ruled, that the LCDC erred in approving the inclusion of 800 acres of high-priority farmland – productive land featuring top-quality soil. State law – ORS 197.298 – prioritizes which lands can be included in a UGB expansion; highly productive resource land, like farmland and forestland, is at the bottom of the list.

According to Sid Friedman, a 1000 Friends of Oregon staffer who represents Yamhill County, both rural residential exception lands and lower quality farmlands should have been included instead of the highly productive and well-used farmland. Friedman cited Southeast Booth Bend Road and Southwest Old Sheridan Road as examples of potential expansion areas.

“We hope and think that McMinnville can justify a UGB expansion without including intensively farmed areas with productive soil,” he said. “And while the court didn’t mention this, our concerns are more than just over the use of farmland in the expansion. It’s about keeping McMinnville a great place to live.”

Friedman added that the groups feel that the court’s decision vindicates their position.

“Let me add that both DLCD and LCDC don’t do these cities any favors by stringing them along and saying yes to these questionable lands,” he said. “It adds time and money to the process.”

Montgomery, meanwhile, is concerned about the state UGB expansion process.

“McMinnville isn’t alone here,” he said. “The city of Woodburn as well as plenty of others around the state are dealing with a similar appeals process. It takes a lot of time and money.”

But as Friedman pointed out, if cities’ expansion proposals weren’t so aggressive, appeals wouldn’t be filed. There are many cities that expand their UGBs without any contention whatsoever, he said.

Next, McMinnville officials will meet with attorneys to better understand the Court of Appeals ruling. City officials will then meet with the city’s assigned field representative from the DLCD and decide how to proceed.

Options range from retooling the expansion map, trimming the expansion, or providing more accurate and more thorough justification by the LCDC for approval of the UGB expansion.

“We’re all in this together,” Montgomery said. “It’s a requirement by the state, so we will sit down and once again work through this thing.”

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A major renovation and addition to McMinnville‘s Head Start facility will double the amount of classroom space so that more children can participate in the program.

“We have over 100 kids on the McMinnville waiting list, said Michael Eichman, executive director of Head Start of Yamhill County. The program’s four locations offer developmental and preschool education services to children who live in poverty or whose families struggle to meet basic needs.

The McMinnville Head Start project, designed by Scott | Edwards Architecture LLP, involves a complete renovation of the existing 4,000-square-foot, wood-frame facility and a connecting 3,800-square-foot addition to provide extra child development classrooms and teacher offices.

One project challenge, according to S | EA project manager Andrew Kraus, was developing a design to comply with the city’s downtown development guidelines. The interior of the existing, single-story building will be gutted and rebuilt, and all of the existing plumbing and finishes will be redone, Kraus said.

In order to meet the sustainable standards set by Head Start’s newer locations, the design includes high-efficiency mechanical systems and heat recovery ventilators as well as photovoltaic solar panels. Additional insulation and new siding, along with new windows and doors, will enhance thermal performance and reduce energy consumption. The second floor of the addition will provide access for future development of a garden and landscaping atop the roof.

The project also incorporates the development of 10,000 square feet into new parking, landscape and play area.

Construction is scheduled to begin in June; a general contractor has not been chosen yet.

Principal Sid Scott of S | EA is part of the project team. Other project partners include WDY Inc., civil engineering; Shapiro Didway, landscape architecture; Butler Consulting Inc., structural engineering; and Interface Engineering, mechanical/electrical.

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An Evergreen International Aviation 747-100 airliner serves as the visual centerpiece and launching point of four water slides at the Evergreen Wings and Waves Waterpark in McMinnville, which will open for business in June.

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