Protection vs. development battle continues

Three Metro counties plus Metro are trying to figure out the Urban Growth Boundary’s next look

By Lee Van Der Voo And Steve Law

The Lake Oswego Review, Apr 9, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

SUBMITTED MAP / COURTESY OF METRO

This map indicates areas outside the metropolitcan Portland Urban Growth Boundary that are candidates for “urban reserves.” The map incorrectly shows all of the Stafford Triangle as suggested urban reserve. The eastern portion of the Stafford area, north of I-205, is not suggested as an urban reserve.

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A new round of scuffling is beginning over the future shape of the Portland metro area, as public officials, developers and others jockey over outlying parcels to urbanize – or protect from development – over the next half-century.

Advisory committees for Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties are finishing lists of potential “urban reserves” and “rural reserves,” as required by a 2007 state law. Urban reserves would form a pool of developable land Metro draws upon over the next 40 to 50 years when it expands Portland’s urban growth boundary. Rural reserves would be off-limits to urbanization for the same period.

Metro’s Reserves Steering Committee were winnowing the two lists Wedneday, April 8, and then put them out for public scrutiny.

The process could shape the future of sensitive areas such as:

n The Stafford Triangle between Lake Oswego, West Linn and Tualatin.

n The hills west of Forest Park in Portland.

n Prime Tualatin Valley farmland.

n Orient and surrounding areas west of the Sandy River.

n Sauvie Island.

Metro, a tri-county regional government, is obliged to provide land for 20 years of population growth inside the urban growth boundary – which protects rural lands and focuses development in built-up areas.

Past Metro efforts to expand the boundary have been messy, and often fizzled under legal appeal.

The 2007 Legislature devised an optional method for expanding the urban growth boundary, which would enable development of prime, close-in farmlands, such as potential job centers outside Hillsboro.

The new law, Senate Bill 1011, requires an uncommon degree of cooperation among the three counties and Metro. They must jointly submit rationale for the urban and rural reserves to the state Land Conservation and Development Commission.

The law is a recipe for horse-trading, allowing development of some lands as tradeoffs for protecting others. But that hasn’t stopped quibbling over long contentious hot spots such as the Stafford area and Hillsboro-area farmland.

“It does have a certain groundhog quality to it,” observed Greg Leo, lobbyist for the city of Wilsonville.

At a reserves steering committee meeting on March 16, West Linn Mayor Patti Galle was aghast that the Clackamas County advisory committee listed the Stafford Triangle as a possible urban reserve.

Lake Oswego and West Linn have long opposed urbanization of the pastoral area outside their borders, and say they don’t have the money or desire to provide roads, sewers and other services needed for subdivisions or other construction.

“Nobody’s been listening,” Galle said. “Cities are entitled to their own unique vision of their future,” she said.

Developers and others say Stafford makes sense for urbanization, because it’s close to developed areas, hugs Interstate 205 and lacks prime farmland.

But within the Stafford area, discussion among property owners is tense as Metro inches closer to a decision about protecting the area’s rural character or opening it for development.

Inside Stafford

The Stafford Hamlet, an advisory group to the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners, has convened meetings among residents for years, gathering people in churches and schools and pressing the populace toward shared goals for the future of the Stafford Triangle.

The Hamlet first formed in 2006 to prevent surrounding cities, counties and Metro from deciding the area’s future without input from the people that live there.

As a decision about future zoning comes near, emotions are running high in Stafford.

Since forming in 2006, the hamlet has fostered dialogue between two distinct sides of the debate surrounding development: landowners with large parcels who want to build and small property owners who want the area’s rural charms preserved.

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