Let's lower our sights and cut deal on Alpine project

Palindrome’s $80.5 million proposal for redevelopment of Alpine Avenue’s former RB Rubber site stood out for one clear reason: It was the most audacious and ambitious of the eight submissions. Ticking off virtually every item on the city’s wish list, it rose to the top because it seemed almost too good to be true.

Combining a boutique hotel, 65 market-rate apartments, 123 affordable apartments, a 5,600-square-foot pavilion, 135 parking spaces and 18,000 square feet of office, restaurant and retail space on just 3.5 acres? What wasn’t to like?

Warning lights flashed early on over what Palindrome was willing to pay for the property — zero, some $4.25 million less than the city paid when RB Rubber pulled up stakes — and what Palindrome was willing to provide in the way of parking spaces — 135, less than half the 280 called for in city code.

However, warning lights always seem to flash brighter in the rearview mirror.

As it happens, six long, costly and painful months of negotiation, aimed at making such a grandiose plan somehow pencil out, proved fruitless. The vision did, in fact, prove too good to be true.

Palindrome President Robert Gibson warned at the outset, “There’s a dozen different scenarios that may work, but the one that we proposed does rely on a writedown of the land.” So maybe we should have seen it coming.

There were two other finalists, Ethos and Guardian.

At a cost of $63.6 million, Ethos promised 80 low-income apartments, 104 affordable apartments and 14,000 square feet of commercial space. At a cost of $74 million, Guardian proposed 171 low-income apartments and 3,000 square feet of commercial space.

There was one big difference.

Like Palindrome, Ethos wanted the city to donate the land. In contrast, Guardian offered $4.7 million for it, some $350,000 over what the city paid in 2023. It comes as little surprise then to see the city now entertaining talks with Guardian, a large, well-established Portland Metro developer partnering locally with the Housing Authority of Yamhill County.

On the minus side, the two housing-first proposals would produce only a trickle of the tax revenue Palindrome promised through its hotel, restaurant, office and market-rate housing elements, going forward.

On the plus side, they would do a lot more to address an affordable housing crisis helping drive homelessness in McMinnville. And Guardian has a well-established local track record, having also partnered with HAYC on the recently completed 175-unit Stratus Village affordable housing project on Highway 18.

We expressed our thinking on the proper point of emphasis back in September, when the Palindrome proposal appeared to be faltering, but had not yet collapsed altogether. We said in this space:

“It worries us to see a major portion of the RB Rubber site devoted to a 60-unit hotel. It worries us even more to hear apartment units are being sacrificed in negotiations with the prospective developer, in order to meet parking requirements, while the hotel element remains intact. It seems to us the priority here needs to remain affordable housing, period.”

However, adequate on-site parking does, clearly, need to be provided. There is virtually no off-site parking available on Alpine and precious little on adjacent cross streets.

As is stands, the Guardian proposal is also significantly short of parking. But without the need to devote space to major hotel and retail elements, it seems to us a way can surely be found to factor more in.

Writing off its site investment appears to be a hard no for the city, and it’s paying more than $18,000 a month interest on money it borrowed to close the deal. That suggests the city would be best-served by finding a way to incorporate enough parking into the Guardian plan and getting on with it.

Time’s a-wasting. And time is money — lots of it in this case.