Developer of housing project in downtown Yachats resumes work after months of delays

 

YACHATS — The owners of a long-unfinished apartment project overlooking U.S. Highway 101 in downtown Yachats have resumed work on their properties after waiting months for permits and getting bank financing.

Luke and Jocelyn Glaze of Salem bought the two commercial lots and unfinished foundations in March 2022 from Doug Sowden of Eugene. Sowden started his four-building Sunset Village project in 2005 but had only finished half by 2008 when a recession hit.

The concrete foundation and walls for the second phase sat without any other work on them until Sowden got a conditional use permit from the city in November 2021 to finish the project. He cleaned up the area but then sold to the Glazes, real estate investors and developers who planned to continue the idea of building three apartments over two retail spaces. They found a contractor and using their own funds went to work finishing the project.

But when they went to get financing to continue, Glaze said banks told him they weren’t interested loaning money for a residential-over-retail concept on the Oregon coast.

Glaze won approval from the Yachats Planning Commission in April to change minimum lot size restrictions on the property to allow the two first-floor commercial spaces to be converted into apartments or to sell as condominiums.

But Glaze told YachatsNews this week that it took four months for the city to get his documents over to the Lincoln County planning and building department so he could apply for permits for the first-floor units.

That work had stopped so long that many in the community worried the unfinished project had gone bust again.

But now the Glazes have bank financing, the OK from the county and are again trying to schedule contractors to finish the five units. One contractor was finishing window installation this week.

There are two buildings in the Glaze’s project and now they will house five units. Four of the five will be 1,300 square feet in size. The two units on the ground floor will be one-bedroom units and the two in the northern building will be two-bedroom/two-bathroom units. One apartment on the southwest corner will be 2,600 square feet over two stories and have four bedrooms and three baths, Glaze said.

Glaze said he hopes to have them finished by the spring, but is unsure if he will keep them as rentals, sell them or do a combination of both.

“We’re really excited for this to come to a completion after more than a decade of these foundations just sitting there,” he said.