"We know we're really only talking about one lot. It reeks of entitlement."
That's what Granite Street resident Carey Mastain told the Ashland Planning Commission this summer, arguing against a proposed fix to a driveway rule that was written to apply broadly but, in practice, seems to solve one very specific problem for one very specific homeowner. She's half right. There is one lot at the center of this fight. There just isn't only one lot affected by the rule itself, and that distinction is the entire reason anyone shopping for a steep parcel in Ashland right now should slow down before assuming a legal lot of record means a buildable one.
The Two Thresholds a Listing Won't Show You
Ashland's hillside code runs on two separate tests, and most buyers only ever hear about one of them.
| Threshold | What it governs | Code section | The number |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slope of the building envelope | Whether a house can sit on the site at all | AMC 18.3.10.090 | Anything steeper than 35 percent is generally treated as unbuildable |
| Grade of the access driveway | Whether you can legally reach the house you're allowed to build | AMC 18.5.3.060.F | 15 percent by right, with a variance to 18 percent capped at a cumulative 200 feet |
Real estate conversations about hillside land tend to stop at the first number. A seller says the pad is buildable, an agent points to a flat-enough building envelope, and the driveway gets treated as a landscaping detail to sort out later. Ashland's code treats it as its own gate, and that gate is currently the subject of a live legal fight that started with one lot above Lithia Park and is now being cited by the city itself as a problem affecting others.
A 2.1-Acre Lot Above the Japanese Garden Tests the Rule
The lot is 231 Granite Street, 2.1 acres on the hill above the new Japanese Garden. Its owner is Bryan DeBoer, chief executive of Lithia Motors, who wants to build a 3,400-square-foot house with a three-car garage and a pool, reportedly for his children Alex, a human resources executive, and Bryan 2.0, a trauma surgeon. The Planning Commission approved the project along with a variance for the access driveway and a permit to clear dozens of trees on the parcel, several of them large enough to qualify as significant under city rules.
Neighbors Len Eisenberg and Kent and Pamela McLaughlin appealed to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals. In April 2026, LUBA ruled that the city hadn't followed proper procedure in approving the project, because the plan required a driveway running roughly 200 feet at a 24 percent grade, six points steeper than the 18 percent ceiling the code allows even with a variance. DeBoer took the ruling to the Oregon Court of Appeals instead of going back through city review. The Court of Appeals has since denied that appeal, which closes the litigation path and leaves a change to the city's own law as the only route left for the project to move forward.
A group of Granite Street neighbors has separately offered to buy the lot from DeBoer at a 10 percent premium over his purchase price and donate it to the city's parks department, preserving it undeveloped. That offer is still on the table.
The City's Own Numbers Say This Isn't Just One Lot
If the story ended there, it would be a single wealthy landowner testing the limits of a code section. It doesn't end there. City Councilors Jeff Dahle, who currently serves as Council President, and Derek Sherrell, a local ADU developer, put forward a package of proposed code changes this summer aimed at what they call unnecessary barriers to housing construction. Two of the examples they cited by name were 231 Granite Street and a second parcel at 319 West Street, a lot created in the late 1980s that can no longer be built on because West Street itself exceeds a 24 percent grade and the original approval requires compliance with the same flag driveway standard.
City staff have gone further, telling the Planning Commission that any fix to the driveway grade language would affect 13 lots created before Ashland adopted its Hillside Development Standards in 1997. Planning Commissioner Kerry KenCairn told the Commission she had personally processed three or four similar variances under the city's prior, looser interpretation of the same code section, before LUBA's ruling this spring forced a stricter reading. That's the mechanism worth understanding if you're evaluating hillside land in this city: the rule didn't change overnight, but how the city is required to apply it did, and a batch of older lots that were treated as compliant for decades are now in question.
Why the Fix Isn't Guaranteed
Here's the part that matters most for anyone under contract or close to it. The Planning Commission already considered the proposed driveway grade fix and voted 5 to 0 against recommending it. At the same meeting, on a separate 5 to 0 vote, commissioners approved an unrelated package of code changes tied to new state housing laws, so this wasn't a commission opposed to change in general. It was a commission specifically unconvinced on this point.
Part of the hesitation is about who the fix would actually help. Commissioners have discussed narrowing any relief to owners who held their lots before 1997, which would exclude DeBoer, since he purchased 231 Granite Street recently. Mastain's comment to the Commission was aimed directly at that ambiguity: on paper the ordinance covers 13 lots, but in practice, right now, it's mostly relevant to one.
The City Council is expected to take up the question at its October 6, 2026 meeting. As of today, no decision has been made. If you're weighing an offer on a steep parcel in Ashland this fall, that date sits on your timeline whether you know it or not.
What This Means If You're Evaluating a Steep Ashland Lot Right Now
A few checks are worth doing before you treat any hillside parcel as move-in ready on paper:
- Ask whether the lot's only access is a flag drive or shared driveway, not a public street. The 15/18 percent grade rule applies to those private access routes. Public streets have no variance provision at all under the city's general street design standards.
- Find out when the lot was created. The 1997 cutoff for Hillside Development Standards is the exact line the city is currently debating for relief eligibility, and it's the difference between a lot that might qualify for a fix and one that won't.
- Don't assume a prior Planning Commission approval settles the matter. The 231 Granite Street approval was reversed on appeal after LUBA read the same code language the city had been applying loosely for years.
- Get the driveway's actual measured grade in writing from Ashland's Community Development Department before you treat the building envelope's slope as the only number that matters.
None of this means hillside land in Ashland is a bad investment. It means the buildability question has two parts, and only one of them shows up on a typical listing sheet.
FAQ
Does the 18 percent grade cap apply to every driveway in Ashland, or just flag lots? The specific 15 percent standard, with a variance to 18 percent capped at 200 cumulative feet, appears in the city's flag lot partition criteria and again in its general street design standards for private drives. Public streets get no variance under either section.
Is every steep lot in Ashland caught up in this? No. City staff have identified 13 lots created before the 1997 Hillside Development Standards as potentially affected by any code change under discussion. Most Ashland properties, including the majority of hillside homes already built, aren't part of this specific dispute. The relevant question for any individual parcel is whether its only access already exceeds the grade standard in a way that predates current ownership.
Land and hillside decisions in Ashland move through planning commission agendas and code language long before they show up in a listing description. If you're looking at acreage or a steep parcel anywhere in Jackson County and want someone who tracks that level of detail, not just the comps, Blue Mountain Group is a good place to start that conversation. Schedule your free consultation and we'll walk through what a specific lot actually allows before you write an offer.
