As it now stands the City of
Bend will have spent 10 years trying to develop it’s state-required Urban
Growth Boundary plan to address land
needed to accommodate growth for 20 years.
During that time since the process began in 2004 the city
experienced a boom in housing that
resulted in Bend being ranked No. 1 in the nation for housing appreciation, and
a bust in which it fell to last among about 300 statistical areas tracked by
the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
(The federal statistics include all of Deschutes County
and other areas of Central Oregon--but Bend is and was the largest housing
market).
Bend’s current UGB planning process that began in
2004 resulted in the city approving in
2009 expansion of the city boundary by
about 8,500 acres. The plan was rejected by the state Department of Land
Conservation and Development, which sent it back for revision.
The state agency decided the plan did not account for “infill”
property within the current boundary that could be developed, and did not
address increasing density to mitigate urban sprawl.
Earlier in May the city announced it would hire a
Portland firm, Angelo Planning Group, to assist in developing a UGB proposal
that could meet the new state deadline of 2017-- 13 years after the process
began.
