Cities consider future boundary options

Leaders recommend areas for urbanization and protection over the next 50 years

By Christina Cooke And Ray Pitz

The Times, Aug 13, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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Washington County residents will get a more detailed look at where growth is likely to occur over the next 50 years as civic leaders move closer to identifying cities’ urban and rural reserve lands.

Urban reserves are areas outside the current urban growth boundary that are suitable for urban development over the next 40 to 50 years. Rural reserves are areas of forested or agricultural land that leaders feel should be protected from urbanization.

The Washington County Reserves Coordinating Committee received a report from area planning directors on Monday that lays out how they believe the county should grow.

The report earmarks 33,800 acres of land for urban reserves and 108,000 acres of land for rural reserves. The next step is a public hearing, to be held Aug. 20.

Brent Curtis, planning manager for the Washington County Department of Land Use and Transportation, said the process of identifying reserves sends large portions of land that could be designated as reserve areas through a series of screens with “each one a finer and finer screen.”

Though city planning directors all submitted recommendations on where they believed growth – or in some cases, no growth – should be located, nothing is yet set in stone, Curtis said.

“This is just a draft,” he told coordinating committee members. “It’s for your consideration.”

Ron Bunch, development director for the city of Tigard, said the city expects to develop into the spaces west of the unincorporated areas 63 and 64 on Bull Mountain, as far as Vandermost Road.

But because those areas are not contiguous with the current city limits and city leaders do not know when they will be, Tigard did not submit a concept plan for the reserves-creation process.

“Since we don’t border the land out there and don’t know how many years it will take to get there, we thought, gosh, we have better things for our staff to do (than create the concept plan),” Bunch said. “We’re taking an approach that’s suitable for Tigard.”

Tigard City Councilor Gretchen Buehner said she was satisfied with Tigard’s approach.

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