By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
A local conservation group organizing an effort to buy 30 acres of undeveloped land along the Yachats River is putting the effort on hold and dropping a request to the city for $200,000 to help fund the purchase.
View the Future, a 15-year-old Yachats-based nonprofit, said it could not readily raise the money to meet a $1 million appraisal of the property.
“We just felt like we couldn’t justify it,” said View the Future co-chair Joanne Kittel. “We don’t think we could raise that from the community.”
The property consists of two parcels along the Yachats River just east of the U.S. Highway 101 bridge – 3.2 acres just to the east of the Quiet Water subdivision and 27 acres on the south side of the river. It is owned by Mike Evans and Geri Betz, two Eugene-area developers who asked the Yachats group three years ago if they could help arrange a purchase and keep the land in conservation.
The group approached the city of Yachats to buy the property and worked with the Portland office of the Trust for Public Lands to get an appraisal and start looking for grants. In 2018, the City Council pledged – but did not appropriate — $200,000 from its capital improvement budget to help with a future purchase.
The basic idea for the property was to use it much of the south parcel for wetland protection and to build public hiking trails. The smaller north parcel was envisioned as a small, undeveloped park or launch area for kayaks.
But the Trust for Public Lands closed its Portland office last summer and the appraisal it arranged was incomplete. View the Future started working with Eugene-based McKenzie River Trust late last year and then split the cost of a second appraisal with Evans and Betz.
That appraisal came in last week at $1 million. View the Future isn’t disputing the number, Kittel said.
At the same time, the city is preparing its budget for fiscal 2019-20 and needing to slice about $1 million from $1.8 million in capital improvement requests or commitments. The $200,000 pledge was one of the 2019-20 requests.
Kittel said her group thought it best not to keep the city and the property owners in limbo any longer.
“We’re working with the city and we want to be transparent,” she said of the project and its costs. “Everyone, the city and Mike (Evans) and Geri (Betz) have been extraordinarily patient with us.”
Kittel said View the Future will keep the property purchase on its radar and will keep working with McKenzie River Trust. But it will drop its request to the city and put any fundraising aside for now.
“A lot of hours have been put into this. It is a pristine piece of property,” she said. “If there’s any sadness it’s with View the Future. But it’s also View the Future which put the brakes on this.”