YACHATS – The owner of three commercially-zoned lots in downtown Yachats has cleared the land of trees in preparation of eventually doing something with the property – but there is nothing imminent in the works.
“There are no concrete plans,” Brian Serbu of Yachats told YachatsNews.
The three lots along West Fourth Street at Pontiac are owned by his father, Daniel Serbu, owner of the Dublin House motel in Yachats. Serbu bought the lots in March 2020.
Brian Serbu said his father purchased the properties “because there were only two commercial properties on the market in Yachats and this was one of them.”
Because they are zoned for commercial use, it is possible to do almost anything with them so long as it gets the OK from the city and the Lincoln County Planning Department. There is a 30-foot height restriction on any buildings, but no restrictions on clearing trees.
“We have commercial property,” Brian Serbu said. “That’s what we understand.”
Serbu said they have asked the Oregon Department of State Lands to determine the extent of any wetlands on the property. There are wetlands to the north across Fourth Street on city-owned land.
The three lots are each 50 feet wide by 100-feet long and total 15,000 square feet. Serbu said the most logical choice for the property might be to build apartments, but the family is just not sure how those would be cost-effective.
“The economy is uncertain, but we do housing” as a business, he said. “There just aren’t any plans for it at the moment.”
There was an outcry by some people on a Yachats Facebook page last weekend over the clearing of the land. But Oregon’s pioneering and decades-old land-use laws are designed to concentrate housing and commercial activities inside cities in order to protect forest and farmland from housing sprawl.
Daniel Serbu built the Dublin House along U.S. Highway 101 in 1989 and has been operating it since then with his two sons.
The ridiculous clearing of this important piece of property is tragic and wasteful.
Of course the owners have “no idea” what will be built. Well in that case certainly destroy the wetlands and the trees. If you had an idea, then you could take a more measured approach. As the Dublin House is no showcase of design, let us pray that something similar will not be foisted on our little community. People need to be more farsighted than this I’m afraid if we are to survive climate change.