2 public courses’ days may be numbered

Colwood, Broadmoor for sale; rezoning may be in future

By kerry eggers

The Portland Tribune, Jul 15, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (2 Reader comments)

L.E. BASKOW / TRIBUNE PHOTO

Many of Northeast Portland’s Concordia and Cully residents are trying to halt rezoning of the Colwood National Golf Club to industrial land, preferring to keep open space.

They are bookend courses on Portland’s old north side, a couple of miles apart on Northeast Columbia Boulevard, joined at the hip in the annals of public golf in the city.

Colwood and Broadmoor — both opened for business in 1931 — are for sale. After they are sold, they won’t remain golf courses for long. The land is simply too valuable for commercial use.

But it’s not going to happen for a while.

Colwood, owned by National Golf Courses — a private company that owns and operates public courses for profit — is furthest along in the process.

In 2005, owners expressed interest in rezoning the course’s 143 acres from open space to light industrial.

Plans call for the upper portion to be zoned industrial, the “north 40” to be sold for Portland International Airport expansion, and the land in the middle, between the Columbia and Whitaker sloughs, to be donated to Portland Parks & Recreation.

In May, after considering protests from neighbors of Colwood’s surrounding areas and Oregon Department of Transportation concerns, a hearings officer recommended the rezoning request be denied.

The recommendation was to be transmitted to the City Council for review, and then to a public hearing before the council made a final recommendation. That probably will happen in late summer. At best, approval of the rezoning request doesn’t seem imminent.

“We think we can deal with the ODOT traffic concerns,” says Bill Saunders Jr., president of the Colwood Limited Partnership. “The overwhelming outcry in the Cully neighborhood for more open space is of greater concern. We realize there are valid concerns raised by the neighbors. We’re hopeful we can come to some sort of a compromise, where part of it remains open space and part of it is industrialized.

“If we don’t get it rezoned, we’ll just hold on to it and run it as a golf course until the airport decides it needs our northern land.”

So Colwood will be open for business for at least the near future.

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