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When regional government Metro marks areas for development, communities often face financial obstacles to getting property developed. So when Metro made $3.5 million available to help plan for growth, 23 applications worth $6.4 million came in.

The screening committee recommended that 15 of the applicants get all the money they asked for, and that another two get a smaller amount, Metro announced this week.

Six would get no money. The Metro Council will make the final decision June 10.

The city of Happy Valley, in Clackamas County, got good news and bad news from the recommendations.

One request was for $105,000 to complete planning work on 32 acres near Interstate 205 for the Eagle Landing mixed-use development. The committee didn’t recommend any grant money go to that project.

Another Happy Valley project, the industrial pre-certification study for the Rock Creek Employment Area, was recommended for the full $32,600.

That project will get large tracts of land ready for industrial development by getting them qualified for a state certification process, said Michael Walter, economic and community development director for Happy Valley. State officials would direct developers to certified industrial sites, including those in Happy Valley.

“In this case, it’s not necessarily shovel-ready, but it’s development-ready,” Walter said. Developers would still need to improve streets and bring sewer and water lines to the site, he said.

But the early work, including identifying parcels of at least 20 acres and agreeing to rough prices with the owners, would make the process easier. “Basically, a company comes in and says, ‘these are my needs for land and services,’ and we say, ‘here’s the certified site and here’s the binder on it,’ ” Walter said.

Eagle Landing would still move ahead without a Metro grant, said Jason Tuck, Happy Valley’s city manager. “If they do not fund it, we’re going to work with the developer to see if there’s other ways we can help out,” he said.

But there aren’t a lot of similar pots of money available, Tuck said. “It’s limited funding.”

The committee recommendations would give $485,000 to a project that would create an employment-focused transit-oriented-development district along the Portland-to-Milwaukie light rail line.

Typical transit-oriented development looks at residential mixed-use projects, said Steve Iwata, planning supervisor with the city of Portland. The grant would help tailor the concept to an industrial area.

“(Industrial sites) are typically one-story buildings, maybe two, with lots of parking,” Iwata said. “We’re looking at a little higher density and the fact that we’re in a constrained environment to begin with.”

Given light-rail and streetcar access, the corridor could require less parking than other employment areas, Iwata said. “That’s one of the assumptions we’ll need to test,” he said.

The largest grant application, Washington County’s Aloha-Reedville study, would receive only a fraction of the money requested. The recommended $442,000 would still place the project among the biggest grant recipients, but it’s a far cry from the $2.3 million applied for.

Andrea Vannelli, senior planner with Washington County, said it’s too soon to look at other ways to fund the study, which would direct development to areas best suited for each use. Metro’s chief operating officer, Michael Jordan, will make his final recommendations to Metro Council a week before its June 10 meeting.

“Now we’re at a point where it looks like it could materialize,” Vannelli said. “We’re certainly willing to refine (the study).”

If the money doesn’t come through, county planners would look for ways to move the study forward to a point where the work wouldn’t be lost if the project were put on hold temporarily. “Those are exactly the kind of things we’d want to work at some more,” Vannelli said.