December 18, 2009

The roast was held on Halloween night, and the crowd -- almost all of them old enough to remember their own hippie days -- laughed hard at the photos of Bob Stacey in full 1970s regalia. In the photos, he was a caricature of how many perceived 1000 Friends of Oregon at the time: bearded, bushy-haired land-use lawyers, bristling with a "sue 'em" mentality.

But time has a way of mellowing people and organizations. The fierce young lawyers of the old photos and legions of spear-carrying staffers have long since cleaned up. 1000 Friends has mind-melded with institutional Oregon.

Stacey, 60, is running for president of the Metro Council, the regional government that coordinates land-use and transportation planning in Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties.

If he defeats Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder and former Hillsboro Mayor Tom Hughes in the election next year, Stacey will add to the stream of former Friends who've won elective office or who populate municipal planning departments, law firms, university faculties and various government agencies.

Stacey would join a Metro Council that includes Robert Liberty, a fellow firebrand lawyer from the early days and the second executive director of 1000 Friends. Another old colleague, Dick Benner, is on Metro's legal staff. Yet another former 1000 Friends staffer, Randy Tucker, is Metro's legislative affairs manager.

Clackamas County Commissioner Lynn Peterson made her bones as 1000 Friends' first transportation advocate. State Sen. Betsy Johnson was the organization's first paid member and secretary to the first board of directors.

1000 Friends was founded in 1974 to enforce the state's pioneering land-use planning law, Senate Bill 100, and revered Gov. Tom McCall was chairman of its first advisory board, accompanied by a roster of some of the biggest names in Oregon.

There were struggles along the way. But after "a lot of barbs and spears thrown from trench to trench," as original director Henry Richmond puts it, 1000 Friends has largely won the land-use war.

Take a look around. Although the state has added a million residents since 1000 Friends was formed, a trip to the edge of any Oregon city shows urban growth boundaries holding sprawl in check, with farm and forest just beyond. With a few exceptions, bountiful Willamette Valley farms flank Interstate 5 from Portland to Eugene.

Oregonians approve. A 2009 survey in greater Portland by the firm Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall, Inc. showed strong support for Metro's growth management policies, which largely dovetail with the views of 1000 Friends.

"There is widespread support for the region's Urban Growth Boundary, smart growth and protecting the region's farmland, natural areas and standing forests," a survey summary said.

Not to say there isn't a countering view.

"That may be true in the Portland area, but most of the state is not in the Portland area," says Dave Hunnicutt, president of the property rights group Oregonians in Action. "You don't see 1000 Friends on the board of the Harney County commissioners."

Searching for a wonk

But there's no denying 1000 Friends' victories or its institutional influence.

"It's a proud legacy," says Stacey, who stepped down in September as only the third executive director in 1000 Friends' history. "The point is, of course, is that it was 35 years ago, and we need to be in service today."

"It's always an issue for an organization born of a particular struggle," says David Bragdon, the current Metro Council president. "What's their next generation? They're looking for that now."

Stacey's roast on Halloween night reflected the unsettled ground Oregon's best-known conservation group occupies as it enters what Bragdon calls its "post-litigious stage of life."

The celebration was held at The Nines, one of the swankiest hotels in Portland's rejuvenated downtown core. The hotel is located right on the MAX light-rail line, a glittering example of what's emerging as 1000 Friends' revised focus: transit, vibrant and livable cities, development that goes up not out. But you would have been hard-pressed to find anyone there younger than 40.

1000 Friends hasn't yet replaced Stacey. In November, after interviewing a half-dozen applicants, 1000 Friends hired a headhunter to scour for more candidates. After three lawyers -- Richmond, Liberty and Stacey -- 1000 Friends' search committee is looking for a charismatic wonk: someone who can get deep into the policy weeds if necessary but also reach across the line to legislators, developers, farmers and the host of newcomers who appreciate how Oregon looks but don't have a clue how it came to be.

"There's ... a vast new range of Oregonians, the under-35 crowd, who moved to the state and don't have too much background on something that distinguishes Oregon from the rest of the country," says Portland lawyer Charlie Swindells, a longtime 1000 Friends member.

"It's harder to reach out to them. It was easier in the old days when you were fighting against something rather than for something."

The 1974 letter

The "old days" began with an August 1974 letter to then-Gov. Tom McCall from Henry Richmond, a young lawyer with activist roots in OSPIRG, a student public interest research group out of the University of Oregon. Richmond proposed that the state's new planning law, Senate Bill 100, needed a similar nonprofit group "whose sole purpose is to urge state and local bodies to make good land-use planning decisions."

McCall agreed. Joining him on the advisory board were Oregon heavyweights: Glenn L. Jackson, the former state highway czar, chairman of Pacific Power & Light and namesake of the I-205 bridge; John D. Gray, chairman of Omark Industries and developer of Salishan and Sun River; celebrated landscape photographer Ray Atkeson; respected newspaper publishers Eric Allen Jr. of Medford and J.W. Forrester Jr. of Astoria; and state Sen. Hector MacPherson, the Linn County Republican and farmer who had shepherded Senate Bill 100 through the Legislature.

The fight was on. 1000 Friends -- labeled "1000 Fiends of Oregon" by opponents -- became the self-appointed enforcers of Senate Bill 100 as the state began to rethink where subdivisions were allowed and how farmland was zoned. The group's brash young lawyers rattled county commissioners, developers and property rights activists statewide.

"Planning was a blood sport," shrugs Metro's Liberty.

But 1000 Friends won case after case, setting precedent and clarifying the land-use planning system that still sets the state apart.

It wasn't all fight. Early on, 1000 Friends struck an unexpected alliance with the Oregon Home Builders Association, challenging a Beaverton moratorium on multifamily housing that violated the state goal of affordable housing and -- from the builders' perspective -- created a shortage of building sites. Farmers found a natural Friend in a group that prevented cities from sprawling.

New alignments

But alliances faded, and the tide turned when some property owners found their land rezoned out from under them.

Voters in 2004 approved Measure 37, which gave property owners the right to develop their land in the way that was allowed when they bought it. Thousands of rural property owners filed claims asking for compensation or for the right to build houses. Voters later scaled back development rights by passing Measure 49, but the point was made.

Hunnicutt believes the measures were a reality check for 1000 Friends and led to their becoming more collaborative with opponents.

It will take collaboration to tackle the new issues facing 1000 Friends: Transportation. Greenhouse gases. Affordable housing. Infrastructure. A rural economy healthy enough to stave off development.

Tom Keffer, the group's interim director, cites the percentage of household income spent on transportation. The U.S. average, he says, is 19.1 percent. In Portland, however, where the values 1000 Friends holds dear have been applied as policy, it is 15.1 percent.

"We celebrate that but build on it," he says.

-- Eric Mortenson