Lawyers representing Home Depot will appeal two decisions made by the city related to the former Fry’s Electronics building.
An appeal of the City Council’s April 15 ruling about the current legal status of the former Fry’s Electronics building will be filed to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals, according to a notice received by the city on Friday, May 3.
On Tuesday, May 7, the Home Depot representatives also filed an appeal of the Wilsonville Development Review Board’s April 24 decision to deny Home Depot’s proposed use of the building to City Council. A special City Council meeting will be held at 12 p.m. on Friday, May 17 to discuss the appeal.
In legal terms, Home Depot’s hope was to use the building as a continuation of the legally established non-conforming use of the property. Fry’s Electronics’ use of its building became non-conforming to updated zoning codes when the Town Center Plan took effect in June 2019, restricting retail use of the property to 30,000 square feet. The 159,400 square-foot property is bigger than that limit.
Last fall, Home Depot’s representatives filed two separate review applications: one seeking to confirm the existing non-conforming use of the former Fry’s Electronics property and the other to confirm that a proposed Home Depot location qualifies as a continuation of the non-conforming use.
Fry’s Electronics was allowed to continue operating on the property because it existed before the new zoning codes took effect. The City Council’s April 15 decision — the subject of Home Depot’s upcoming appeal to LUBA — upheld a previous Development Review Board determination that the property is a “159,400 square-foot electronics-related retail store” based on Fry’s Electronics use of the building at the time it became non-conforming to city code.
The City Council’s decision on the current status of the building aided the Development Review Board’s determination that Home Depot would not continue the existing use of the property — denying the company’s proposed use.
Unless the Development Review Board’s decision is overturned, to move into the building Home Depot would either have to be approved for a change of use for the property, or submit a development application that fits the Town Center Plan standards, Wilsonville Planning Director Miranda Bateschell said in a previous email to the Wilsonville Spokesman.
In Home Depot’s appeal notice for the Development Review Board determination, representatives reasserted their previous argument that the project would be a continuation of the existing non-conforming use. They argue the existing non-conforming use of the property is broadly a commercial retail use, rather than specifically an “electronics-related retail store,” citing a Wilsonville land-use decision from 1991.
A staff report for the April 8 Development Review Board hearing on the matter says the city approved a master plan modification in 1991 that changed the land use classification for the property to “Central Commercial.” This allowed proposed development for the anonymous “Project Thunder,” which described itself as an “electronics related retail store” or “commercial retail store.”
At the April 8 hearing city staff said that the 1991 decision is not relevant to the Development Review Board’s current determination, and also said the Home Depot representatives have an inaccurate understanding of how the 1991 regulations would apply.
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