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For three years, neighbors living down the street from the Eastmoreland Racquet Club have seethed as their cul-de-sac jammed with cars arriving for basketball and sand volleyball tournaments.
But when club owner Terry Emmert started using the outdoor tennis courts as a parking lot for the crowds, that was the last straw for the residents of Southeast Berkeley Place.
"I don't care if they play basketball, or pickleball, or any athletic endeavor," says James Dunn, who lives at the far end of the street from the club. "The problem is the number of people and the amount of traffic. Take a space that was approved for a 7-Eleven, and put a Walmart in there."
In March, a city hearings officer agreed, ruling that Emmert didn't have the right under city code to use a neighborhood tennis club to host sports tournaments.
But nothing changed. The controversial events have continued. Neighbors say city officials are afraid to crack down on Emmert, a Clackamas County heavy-hauling magnate notorious for battling city and county bureaucrats in court.
So Emmert's neighbors have taken an extraordinary step: They're suing the city to compel it to enforce its own rules.
"We had to pool our resources," says David Hyman, an architect and neighborhood resident who helped craft the suit filed Oct. 28 on behalf of the Eastmoreland Racquet Club Estates Home Owners Association. "It's kind of sad that we had to go to court to get the city to enforce its own decision."
The city's intentions are unclear. Officials with the city's Bureau of Development Services declined to comment to WW, saying they can't discuss pending litigation.
But in a Nov. 20 court filing, city attorneys argue that enforcing city code is "discretionary"—meaning the city is not legally obligated to crack down on all people who break its zoning rules.
Emmert, who did not respond to WW's calls seeking comment, is one of the Portland area's most colorful figures.
He has been involved in a variety of businesses, including the Arena Football League's Portland Thunder team, a herd of more than 400 water buffalo outside Oregon City, and a slaughterhouse and meat-packing plant in Sandy.
He bought the Eastmoreland Racquet Club in 1995. A decade later, Emmert repurposed one of the club's tennis courts as the home floor for the Portland Chinooks, a minor league basketball team he owns.
Members of the club raised a public stink in 2005, and later accused Emmert of emptying the club's swimming pool into nearby Johnson Creek. (Emmert told The Oregonian some neighbors were racially biased against the Chinook players, many of whom were black.)
Hostility between Emmert and the tennis club's neighbors heated up in 2012, when Emmert covered the club's five indoor tennis courts with hardwood flooring for volleyball and basketball.
He has since rebranded the facility "The Courts in Eastmoreland." The club's website advertises the hardwood courts for rent at $48 an hour, while the sand volleyball courts can be rented for $38 an hour.
In 2013, Emmert asked the city for a zoning variance so he could use the club's outdoor tennis courts as overflow parking for sporting events inside the building.
Neighbors seized on his request as a chance to argue that the club had long overstepped its allowed use as a neighborhood athletic club, and had become an event space—essentially operating as a small sports arena.
"The Racquet Club's change of use has turned a peaceful cul-de-sac into a daylong rush hour of cars, rumbling diesel trucks, RVs, blaring radios, chirping car alarms, glare and trash," neighborhood resident and former Oregonian reporter David Stabler wrote city officials last year. "Vehicles begin arriving before 7 am on Saturdays and Sundays."
Emmert replied in a letter that by challenging his use of tennis courts as a parking lot, neighbors were only making their traffic woes worse. "The off-site parking will continue unabated during large events if the appellants are successful," he wrote, "which will, in effect, render the character of the neighborhood exactly the opposite of what the neighbors say they want, e.g. no street parking!"
A city hearings officer ruled March 12 that the residents of Southeast Berkeley Place were right: Emmert had changed the club's use to something entirely different from what the zoning allowed.
"To ignore the current uses," hearings officer Gregory Frank wrote, "such as minor league basketball, regional/national basketball/volleyball tournaments, sand volleyball tournaments…and basketball/volleyball clinics attracting non-neighborhood resident participants would be to ignore the reality of the operation."
Neighbors say they waited in vain for months after the ruling for the city to issue citations against Emmert and the Eastmoreland Racquet Club.
When the city failed to act, they filed a legal notice in Multnomah County Circuit Court, asking a judge to make the city enforce its zoning code.
"We didn't see another recourse here," says Dunn. "It's very frustrating that we have to coordinate this level of effort to get the city to recognize something obvious."
Willamette Week