Of the many frustrations in the past several months, Toni Larson singles out one for the top spot:

"That we've had to pool money in order to be heard by our city government."

Larson and a group of her Northeast Salem neighbors have filed an appeal with Oregon's Land Use Board of Appeals after a developer constructing a new commercial building pulled a conditional use permit with the city. The move seemingly allows the development, at the intersection of Columbia Street Northeast and Fairgrounds Road Northeast, to evade several stipulations limiting use of the property.

"Basically, we want the city to follow its code," said Wallace Lien, an attorney working with the Columbia Addition for Revitalization and Livability (CARL), the neighborhood coalition whose members pooled money to file the appeal with LUBA.

Larson and her neighbors knew a commercial development was planned for the intersection, but the first time anyone heard specifics was during a neighborhood association meeting in March.

"The builder, Joe Barnes, attended the meeting and basically told us that there was a Subway with a drive-thru going in and that it was a 'done deal,'" said Larson.

The sandwich shop was not the primary concern, but the drive-thru drew fire in regard to the plan to exit vehicles onto Columbia Street.

Larson and others in the neighborhood researched the traffic impact of Subway drive-thrus and estimated the new sandwich shop would filter another 980 cars onto Columbia each day.

"We are a residential street with average of about 230 trips a day and most of that is coming into the neighborhood because we all know how dangerous it is trying to get back out onto Fairgrounds from Columbia," said Larson. "We know all those cars are going to end up coming through our neighborhood."

In May at a planning hearing on the conditional use permit to allow the drive-thru, residents turned out en masse to protest the Columbia Street egress. The hearings officer did not change the location of the exit, but placed several other conditions on the construction of the site including: signs directing all traffic exiting on Columbia to turn toward Fairgrounds Road; the construction of a buffer wall; reduced hours of 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. for any shop on the site; and lighting designed to reduce impact on residential neighbors.

When the matter went before the city council on June 22, members of the council approved the additional stipulations and took the additional step of requiring the entrance/exit to be sited on Fairgrounds Road.

"We were jubilant," said Meri Patterson, a Columbia Street resident. "We got everything we were asking for. Then it all came undone."

Approximately two weeks after the council voted to approve the conditional permit with all the changes, Barnes pulled the permit and started laying the foundation for the building.

Lien said the city does not have any provision allowing or prohibiting the withdrawal of a conditional use permit, but does have a specific provision for voluntary dismissal. Under the voluntary dismissal guidelines, the permit can only be withdrawn by a representative of the development company and cannot be withdrawn after the city council takes final action.

"The voluntary dismissal provision is designed specifically to prevent developers throwing up test balloons to see how much they can get away with," said Lien.

Barnes was allowed to pull the permit because the city council had not taken final action, which would have happened at the subsequent city council meeting in July, said Aaron Panko, an associate planner with the city of Salem and case liaison for the development.

"It is not common for applicants to withdraw their applications, but it has happened before," said Panko.

As to whether such a policy negates the existence of the permitting process, Panko said, "Applicants are guaranteed certain rights through the permitting process. One of those is the ability to withdraw an application at any time before a final decision has been made."

The building, currently under construction, meets the specifications of the initial design plan, but any tenant would not be able to operate a drive-thru without a valid conditional use permit, he said.

Lien is cautiously optimistic about the possible effect of the LUBA appeal.

"We're hoping that [LUBA] will shut down construction until the developer agrees to go back and incorporate the changes that were included when the conditional use permit was approved by the city council," Lien said.

This late in the game, it's cold comfort to Larson.

"We know we aren't the best neighborhood, we've got problems. But when we were first told about what was going in there, it was going to be two stories with apartments on the top and businesses on the bottom - like the great new buildings on Broadway," said Larson. "Now we know that U.S. Market is the other planned tenant. That's only going to make the problems we have worse."