Of the appeals filed, one has been settled, two have been recommended for denial and one, related to methane emissions at the site, is prompting the Tualatin City Council to recommend what the developer was planning to do anyway--wait on building permits until there is direction provided by the state Department of Environmental Quality. The city council hearing is scheduled for later today.

Bruce Wood, a senior director with Opus Northwest in Portland, OR, tells GlobeSt.com that while his firm does plan to pull a grading permit for the site as soon as the DEQ signs off on a soil management plan, which could be any day now, Opus has never planned to obtain a building permit without approval from the DEQ on a long-term remedy. Moreover, Wood says grading at the site, which will consist of sifting through the dirt and extracing large objects, will benefit the effort to decide on a long-term remedy by helping to establish more information with regard to the methane emissions at the site. "We have several months of grading work to be done before the building permits will be needed," says Wood. "We have to push around 250,000 cubic feet of dirt."

Of the appeals that will likely be denied, it is not likely either of them, if appealed to the state Land Use Appeals Board, would lead to a denial of the grading permit, which means the 680,000-sf mixed-use project should be able to remain on schedule. Any appeal of a city council decision probably wouldn't be decided by LUAB until January 2004.