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Photo by Bob Pennell The Rev. Ron Norris of St. John Lutheran Church stands at the entrance to a new access road added off Alta Vista Road to reach his church. The state forced the church to sell half its six acres to allow for widening Highway 62. The parsonage where Norris lived was demolished, and the church had to put off plans to expand its preschool. Rural no more Plan for big grocery story is latest sign that little Eagle Point is growing up By MELISSA MARTIN EAGLE POINT -- Ron Miller won't lose the view of Mount McLoughlin he's enjoyed for 30 years. Neither will he mind having an Albertson's grocery store in the neighborhood. But the retired egg farmer will be sorry to lose the peaceful farm scene across the street. "The farm community in Jackson County is on the way out," Miller says. Improvements at Highway 62 and Alta Vista Road have left St. John Lutheran Church on an island surrounded by traffic. Miller lives in what used to be a rural corner of Eagle Point, but is now one of the fastest-growing sections of the city. There's an 18-hole golf course that Golf Digest magazine rated one of the nation's top new, affordable courses; a subdivision with several hundred homes; and an upscale, 24-home subdivision planned across the street from the golf course's future clubhouse. The latest development in the works is an Albertson's grocery store. "We've lost our country atmosphere out here," said Miller, a mortgage and real estate broker who served on the City Council when the golf course was being developed. "But the land is zoned commercial so there is going to be something built there." Medford developers Chris Galpin and Chuck Martinez are proposing 55,000 square feet of shopping including an Albertson's supermarket with a bank, florist, deli and pharmacy as well as small boutique shops. They also hope to build 40 condominiums. "You can't have residences without the support of commercial," Galpin said. "People should not have to drive all the way into Medford to do their shopping." Cattle now graze on the 10-acre site near the corner of Alta Vista Road and Highway 62. Council will hear plan EAGLE POINT -- Plans to build an Albertson's grocery store and 40 condominiums are expected to come back to the City Council this spring. The Eagle Point Planning Commission rejected Medford developer Chris Galpin's site plan last November. His appeal to the City Council was scheduled to be heard this week. But Galpin asked to reschedule the appeal hearing so he could have more time to gather information. Galpin said he will complete a traffic study for the proposed grocery store, the nearby subdivision and Eagle Point Golf Course. He also plans to interview neighbors to hear their concerns. Galpin's partner, golf course developer Robert Trent Jones, wrote a letter to the City Council endorsing the project. "We believe that everything that is proposed in this plan is good for the golf course and positive for the community," Jones wrote. One neighbor is concerned about the traffic that a large grocery store would generate. The Rev. Ron Norris, minister at St. John Lutheran Church, fears heavy traffic would warrant the widening of Shasta Avenue. "And the only place to take land for that project would be us," Norris said. The City Council will address issues such as traffic, lighting and landscaping, but can't do much about the basic issue of building a grocery store, said David Hussell, city administrator. "The issue is not whether he can build a grocery store," Hussell said. "The issue is what is the impact that's going to be created by this facility and can those impacts be addressed." Galpin predicts that the pathways he has planned between the housing area and the shopping area will help reduce traffic. "People can walk to the store," he said. "The whole idea of a local grocer is to keep people off of the highways." The store would be too big, Sam Fagone wrote in a paid advertisement in the Upper Rogue Independent last week. "A grocery store means an Albertson's destination super market," wrote Fagone, who declined to be interviewed for this story. Neighbors first heard about a proposed shopping area about five years ago when the council annexed the acreage into the city. Under the city's comprehensive plan adopted nearly 20 years ago, the land was designated for commercial zoning where the Albertson's is now proposed and high-density residential where the condominiums are being proposed, Hussell said. "The real controversy with the neighbors stems from the talks during the annexation hearing, when developers were talking about less intense commercial use and a greater intensity of residential use," Hussell said. "When it actually came back for site plan review last November, it had a higher commercial use and a reduced residential." Galpin has the right to propose a bigger project, but then has a greater responsibility to show how he will deal with the neighborhood impacts, Hussell said. Galpin said the 50,000-square-foot grocery store he is proposing is not a regional store. "A destination store is like Costco that draws someone who lives as far away as Yreka," Galpin said. Costco covers about 140,000 square feet. Neighbors have also expressed concern about the store's effect on local businesses, but the merchant most directly affected is unconcerned. "If Albertson's does come in, it's not something that will happen next week," said Rick Nichols, owner of Greatway Market, "and by the time it gets here the area will be able to handle it." Greatway has been Eagle Point's only grocery store since Eagle Thrift closed last year. Nichols doubled the store's size and added a bakery, deli and florist, and will soon have a bank. "We are an established business, a modern facility, and we will be able to compete," he said. "The competition will make us sharper." Galpin is also involved in three other Albertson's projects. New stores are planned in Central Point, west of Medford and at Barnett and North Phoenix roads. The Boise-based chain designs its stores to match the flavor of the neighborhood, Galpin said. "It's not a cookie-cutter store. It's been designed for that site." Church: 'We got hit the hardest' By MELISSA MARTIN EAGLE POINT -- There's a mound of dirt where the parsonage used to be and blueprints for a new school have been nixed. It's the price paid for making Highway 62 a safer road to drive. But the minister at St. John Lutheran Church on Alta Vista Road feels the church's share of the cost has been higher than most of the 52 property owners who gave up land for the Highway 62 improvements. "We got hit the hardest," the Rev. Ron Norris said. Six months after Norris and his wife arrived from Ohio to their new parish, they had to move out of the parsonage and into a rented home in Eagle Point. The state bulldozed the 2,600-square-foot building in order to realign Alta Vista Road and Shasta Avenue. "That section of Shasta came extremely close to the parsonage so St. John asked that we buy the parsonage because the impact would be so great," said John Vial, regional manager for the Oregon Department of Transportation. St. John Lutheran was one of 52 property owners forced to sell land when the Oregon Department of Transportation began widening Highway 62 from the Veterans Affairs Domiciliary in White City to Linn Road in Eagle Point. "That's not that many properties for a highway project that long," said Gary Taylor, right-of-way supervisor for Region 3 in Roseburg. The state spent $798,180 in right-of-way costs, buying properties that ranged in size from 700 square feet to 4.9 acres (a wetlands area), Taylor said. The only dwellings involved were two mobile homes and the parsonage. The state paid moving costs for the two families on Nick Young Road and for Norris. The buyout split the church's six-acre parcel in half and razed what had been the ministers' home and the original meeting place when the congregation started 20 years ago. It also could cancel church plans to expand the preschool to other grades. "The school has been a dream of the congregation," Norris says, who serves as chaplain for the Eagle Point Police Department. "It's limiting to us. Now we have less land to work with and build on and the road comes very close to our playground." The church sits above the old Alta Vista intersection, which was a priority for the state because its angle made it dangerous for drivers pulling onto Highway 62, Vial said. A noted accident in recent years killed a mother and her two children, he said. The problem is compounded by heavy traffic and distracted drivers, said David Strand, Eagle Point police chief. "You had an uncontrolled intersection on Alta Vista with people pulling out onto a two-lane road in heavy traffic," Strand said. "When you widen the road to four lanes, put in a traffic control device and reconfigure that stretch of roadway, you cut down on that portion of the danger of driving Highway 62." But Highway 62 remains a dangerous road to drive, he said. Today's Business Index Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA