Clackamas County hearings officer to decide on home-occupation storage business after public hearing

Clackamas County hearings officer Joe Turner took public testimony Feb. 12 on application Z0465-25, in which Sheila and Steve Amundsen seek permission to use about 3,000 square feet of building area at 19609 Southeast Chitwood Road for a home-occupation storage business.

Staff planner Joy Fields told the hearing the property is roughly 1.7 acres in a rural RA-1 zone near Highway 212. Fields said staff recommended approval with conditions but identified three exceptions that would be required for the proposal to be allowed: an exception to the standard Level 2 home-occupation floor-area limit (the application requests 3,000 sq ft vs. the 500 sq ft typical limit), an exception to allow vehicle storage on the property, and an exception to allow more vehicles on-site than the 4-vehicle limit for Level 2 uses.

"Under a level 2 home occupation, the building floor space is limited to 500 square feet," Fields said, and standard vehicle- and trip-count limits apply. She told the hearings officer that the applicants had proposed storing commercial trucks and equipment and that staff viewed those stored trucks as customers…