The City of Bend is ramping up another attempt to fashion
a long-delayed Urban Growth Boundary plan that will address how much land, and where, will be needed
to accommodate growth in a 20-year period extending through 2028.
The effort follows a state agency’s “remand” for
revisions to an earlier plan submitted in 2008 by the city to comply with
Oregon’s land use Goal 14, intended to guide urban expansion throughout the
state. Any city of more than 25,000 must update it's comprehensive plan to comply.
At the outset of the process the city forecasts that
Bend’s population will have grown by more than 30,000, to more than 115,000
residents, with another 20,000 new employees, by the end of the plan period.
In August the city began assembling “technical advisory
committees” (TACs) to work on issues related to land needed for residential
housing, for employment growth and how the urban boundary should be expanded to
meet those requirements.
Also involved in
the process are outside consultants who will use a software-based tool, Envision Tomorrow, to analyze options
for future building and locations.
The
program involves a “prototype builder,” to analyze return on investment of various
developments given current markets, land use regulations, and impacts of
parking, building height, construction costs, rents. As one example, consultants
say the program could be used to determine feasibility of such development as
mixed-use retail with housing.
The
other “scenario builder” component would design a “library of buildings”
identified in the prototype building phase and create a “painted landscape” of
the possibilities. The program would then evaluate different scenarios by critreria
the city defines such as impact on land
use, housing, sustainability, transportation and the economy.
In
remanding the original plan to the city for revision, the Oregon Department of
Land Conservation and Development emphasized it had not adquately addressed the potential for using available
land already in the UGB, or potential infill property, to meet 20-year needs.
Under
the current schedule published by the city, the final plan would be completed
in April of 2016, only 12 years before the intended 20-year goal of 2028.
Broken
down by phases, the process involves:
·
Phase 1: establishing
the methods and policy direction by February of 2015;
·
Phase 2: completion of growth scenarios and a proposed
new UGB beginning in January of 2015;
·
Phase 3: adoption
and implementation beginning in November of 2015 and concluding in April of
2016.
The
Phase 2 work will rely on the Envison Tomorrow program to test ideas and land
use options and “narrow down the universe of boundary and infill scenarios into
four competing infill and expansion scenarios that are all legal and meet the
requiremnts of the Remand Order...”, according to a memo to city staff from the
consulting group.
From
that point, there will be additional analysis of the scenarios in relation to
city service capabilities including water and sewer facilities, stormwater
system and transportation.
