After four years overseeing a dramatic shift in the way Metro evaluates its urban growth and transportation plans, Robin McArthur is ready for a new challenge.
McArthur, who has served as the director of Metro's Planning and Development Department since 2009, announced Monday she'll be stepping down in June, and will spend the latter half of the year building a barn on a ranch she and her partner own in Lyle, Wash.
"I want to keep challenging myself in life, so the idea of doing something I've never done before… it's a vast area of opportunity for me," she said.
McArthur came to Metro in 2005, after working at the state level, first as Gov. John Kitzhaber's land use adviser during his first tenure as governor, then as a planning manager at ODOT.
When she got to Metro, as the manager of the long range planning program, she inherited a department reeling from the urban growth boundary expansion in 2002, where state laws forced the Portland region to add difficult-to-develop land to its UGB.
At the same time, Metro was starting a major re-evaluation of its Regional Transportation Plan, as active transportation was still on the cusp of being accepted as a mainstream way to get around.
Since then, Metro has overhauled the way it approaches land use planning. The years-long urban and rural reserves designation process is behind the region, provided the Oregon Court of Appeals accepts the plan in a ruling expected in the coming weeks.
And instead of focusing on drawing lines on maps where transit should go, Metro's planning department is focusing on community and business development to encourage strong economies around the region.
"We're totally in that direction now," McArthur said. "We're not just putting a bunch of project lists in the RTP."
She said she's proud that Metro's planning department has focused on hiring people with development experience.
"You bring in those kind of people to integrate with people who have a singular focus on land use and transportation (planning), and it changes the whole dynamic," she said. "So I guess my biggest accomplishment is leaving a department that is, to a person, extremely talented and committed."
Metro chief operating officer Martha Bennett said McArthur's innovations helped improve the region and make local communities better and stronger.
"Robin played a large role in transforming Metro from a top-down, regulatory driven agency to one that focuses instead on on-the-ground support for community-based projects that protect our farms and forests, create good jobs now and in the future and that make the most of our existing downtowns and main streets," Bennett said in an e-mail to staff.
Metro has also made it roughly halfway through its region-wide look at reducing tailpipe emissions, the Climate Smart Communities project, as well as taking a community-wide approach to studying how people get around in the southwest part of the region. It recently completed a similar plan in east Multnomah County, and is about to launch a study of transit along Powell Boulevard and Division Street in Portland and Gresham.
McArthur said that timing represents a good opportunity for fresh eyes to lead the department.
"It's time for somebody else to come in with some new energy and keep moving in that direction, and to bring in other ideas that are creative," she said.
For now, McArthur said, her creative energy will go into the ranch in Lyle. Her partner, Lewis and Clark Law School professor Doug Beloof, started working on the barn more than a decade ago and never finished it. When she started the project, McArthur joked, she could barely hang a picture on the wall. Now, she's reading about plumbing and learning how to build trusses.
"So it's one of my goals, to finish the barn," she said. "It might be a party barn, who knows?"
McArthur said she expects to start thinking about her next career move early next year. Bennett said Metro will conduct a national search to fill McArthur's position.