Calling it a watershed moment and a plan to protect farms, forestland and urban form, the Metro Council voted 6-0 Thursday to add 1,985 acres to the urban growth boundary, including the region's first addition of residential land since 2002.
The council's unanimous vote came after more than a year's worth of analysis of the boundary, including a hard look at what areas were likely to develop first. But the council also overlooked the objections of several speakers, some who questioned plans to turn over land for urbanization, and others who said the plan wasn't ambitious enough.
"I don't remember a hearing like this one, where the overwhelming majority of people who testified said we should be making a bigger expansion," said Metro Council President Tom Hughes. "In some respects, that is a statement that we have exercised a lot of caution in terms of how much we've expanded the UGB."
The vote included adding land south of Hillsboro, southwest of Beaverton and southwest of Tigard for new residential communities. Another 300-acre area north of Hillsboro was designated as a potential site for large-lot employers.
The council only made one change to the urban growth boundary ordinance Thursday before its vote. The Oregon Department of Transportation submitted a proposal to require that Hillsboro complete plans for a U.S. 26 interchange and continue working on the Tualatin Valley Highway Corridor Plan.
That proposal was accepted unanimously by the council.
Metro is required to keep enough land in the urban growth boundary to accommodate 20 years of residential and employment growth. Metro's official estimate is that the region needs 47,100 more homes to accommodate growth through 2030; the council said the boundary needed to expand by enough to handle about 16,000 more homes. Undeveloped and redeveloped areas already in the urban growth boundary are expected to accommodate the rest of the growth.
The vote was a new beginning for the agency. It's the conclusion of a years-long process to envision a new way to handle urban growth boundary adjustments; it was the first time the agency drew from its 50-year supply of urban reserves for expanding the boundary. And the vote launched a new way of analyzing potential urban growth boundary expansions, based more on likelihood of development than strict data analysis.
The reserves process was a years-long effort to get away from a system that forced Metro to look first at land with poor soil conditions for outward growth of the urban area. That older system led to the problematic expansion of the boundary in Damascus, a difficult-to-develop area that is still trying to meet state and regional planning requirements, nine years after being brought into the urban growth boundary.
The 2002 Damascus expansion, and another one in Washington County's North Bethany area, didn't just prompt Metro to change the way it looked at the geography of potential urban growth boundary expansions. Former Metro chief operating officer Michael Jordan stressed that the agency should only expand the boundary into areas that appeared ready for new development.
That meant looking at whether property owners were ready to see their land developed, whether developers would be likely to turn dirt quickly and whether adjoining cities were able and willing to serve the area's infrastructure needs.
With Thursday's vote, the council said the expansion areas near Hillsboro, Beaverton and Tigard met those criteria.
Metro Councilor Carlotta Collette harkened back to the beginning of Oregon's land use system in the 1970s, when Gov. Tom McCall talked about protecting farms and forest land and "creating great communities and great urban form."
"I think (the ordinance) accomplishes what the governor had in mind then, and what the people of this region have had in mind since," she said.
Not everyone was happy with the proposal. Forest Park neighborhood activist Carol Chesarek criticized Hillsboro's reluctance to plan for about 20 homes per acre in South Hillsboro. She said the city had a split personality, saying it could bring in urban-level density in its planned AmberGlen development but couldn't do the same in South Hillsboro.
"They're like a Victorian lady clutching her smelling salts," Chesarek said of Hillsboro's reaction to denser development in South Hillsboro. "'Ooh! It's too hard!'" she feigned.
The area is planned at about 15 homes per acre, with densities ranging from 10 to 40 homes per acre, Hughes said earlier this week.
Others, like Westside Economic Alliance director Jonathan Schlueter, said there wasn't enough land for new growth in the proposal.
"Your projected increase of 330 acres (for employment land) is below your own projections," he said. "You're not even meeting your own standards."
Some opponents are likely to appeal the Metro Council's decision; the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission will have to review whether Metro's growth estimates for the next 20 years are reasonable, and whether the agency followed the law in adding to the urban growth boundary. That review is expected in early 2012.
Some of the 21 speakers on Thursday supported the proposal. Eric Wasik said his fiancé's home is in South Hillsboro, and he plans on getting married in the area next summer.
"South Hillsboro is like a second home to me," said Wasik. "South Hillsboro has done everything it needs to show it should be included."
The council agreed, and the 1,000-acre area west of Aloha known as the St. Mary's property is now part of the region's plans for development.
The addition is the fourth-largest expansion of the boundary since 1979, when 227,491 acres were originally included in the urban growth boundary. Metro has added more than 1,000 acres to the boundary six times since then – in 1980, 1983, 1998, 2003, 2005 and again Thursday.
The Metro Council's next urban growth boundary review is scheduled for 2014.