It’s a new year and the right time to take up a new topic in this space. Previously I discussed projects and market issues in Portland’s South Waterfront District. But with the start of the new year, I am pivoting my gaze beyond the city center to new horizons. I will spend 2015 delving into just what exactly is happening with the urban growth boundary in the Portland-metro area.

For those uninitiated in the legal framework for UGB amendments, some context is in order. State law mandates that Metro Council review and amend the UGB every six years in order to meet the region’s residential and industrial land needs for the next 20 years. This is one of those decisive years; the next decision on whether to add more land to the UGB is scheduled to be made toward the end of this year.

In the coming months Metro will mull over considerations such as how much acreage to bring into the UGB. How much of that acreage should be for residential or employment uses? And which particular tracts of land should be included?

Metro’s decision-making process is guided by state law intended to balance the need for urban land with protection and retention of high-value agricultural and forest lands. which land has first priority for inclusion in the UGB over the next 50 years (the urban reserves) and which land is protected from inclusion in the UGB over the next 50 years (the rural reserves).

Metro will determine which urban reserves, if any, will be brought into the UGB. In order to do so, Metro must forecast the land needs for the entire region for the next 20 years. Such forecasting is necessarily uncertain and based on any number of policy decisions that are less than scientific.

To assist in this process, Metro Council adopted the , which provides copious amounts of information and analysis of the scenarios under which the region can grow, and ultimately suggests that Metro not include any additional acreage in the UGB until the next six-year decision cycle.

The recommendation to stand pat is contentious and not favored by many stakeholders, including cities, counties and industry groups. Each has its own set of interests, which Metro will attempt to balance to determine what is best for the region as a whole. The methodologies used to come to the stand-pat recommendation are also malleable, so the Urban Growth Report is far from the final word on the subject.

I will use this space to follow the UGB amendment process throughout the year, and touch on the following topics:

• What housing development trends does Metro project?

• On what issues do Portland and the suburbs have diverging interests?

• Is there an adequate industrial land supply to support employment growth commensurate with projected population growth?

• Will there be another UGB-related “Grand Bargain” at the Legislature?

• Is the future of the Stafford triangle rural or urban?

• What will be done with Damascus?

In 2015, the UGB amendment process is likely to provide contentious debate among a broad constituency of regional interests. Contact me if there are specific topics you’d like me to address.

Damien Hall focuses on land use and real estate law as an attorney at Ball Janik LLP. Contact him at 503-944-6138 or dhall@balljanik.com.

The post OP-ED: It’s UGB amendment time in Portland appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Welcome back to my serial musings on all things development in the Central Eastside, South Waterfront and in between (e.g., the Tilikum Crossing). Since the last iteration of this column, work has taken place, nonstop, on the shiny new bridge, the OHSU Collaborative Life Sciences Building and private projects throughout the Central Eastside. Needless to say, the city’s economic development engine is up and running in these areas and creating new jobs, places and opportunities.

But what happens to the old jobs and places when faced with this new development? This is an issue that is near and dear to the heart of many existing Central Eastside industrial users. In prior columns, I have mentioned that the district’s users are concerned with a perceived lack of parking facilities to support the proposed increase in residential development.

However, there are broader issues at play than the transportation choices of apartment renters. At issue: What happens to industrial operations when non-industrial uses are immediately adjacent? This is one of the fundamental land use conflicts that zoning was created to address.

This issue is playing out in various forms throughout the district. Of greatest concern are some of the practices that industrial operations rely on the most, such as freight delivery and shipping.

The delivery of materials and shipping of products is central to almost any manufacturing or industrial outfit, and the Central Eastside is no exception. Many of the businesses rely on truck routes that connect the area to the Brooklyn rail yards and the surrounding freeways, allowing delivery of goods throughout the region. In contrast, new development will put pedestrians and cyclists in the same area, along with single-occupancy vehicles.

At a minimum, industrial users will need to be vigilant and increase their safety efforts associated with operating machinery such as forklifts and trailer trucks. The hypothetical worst-case scenario would be a business being forced to relocate because it could no longer operate in a profitable manner due to the measures required to ensure a safe environment that includes adjacent non-industrial users.

Fortunately, these issues are being considered by the various planners in Portland and beyond. The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is undertaking a review of the Comprehensive Plan designations in the Southeast Central City, which is mostly the Central Eastside. This process will determine the policy for which areas are intended to be retained as industrial versus being made available for other forms of development.

The city will then look to the zoning patterns and designations for the area, which will implement the new Comprehensive Plan policies. The resolution of this process is likely to be in 2016 at the earliest, and outcomes are unclear.

In the interim, the conflicts between traditional industry and new development are playing out in different ways. Recently, one of the premier developments in the Central Eastside was appealed to the City Council. The project, commonly known as the “Goat Blocks,” includes a mix of retail, commercial and residential development on a multi-block swath of vacant land. The developer made sure to include discussions with the Central Eastside stakeholders as part of its project planning, and made many adjustments to the project to accommodate the interests of local neighborhood associations and the Central Eastside Industrial Council.

However, once the project was approved by the Portland Design Commission, some of the neighboring business owners became wary of potential impacts to their forklift usage and truck-loading operations, which use the same public streets serving the Goat Blocks.

So far, the Central Eastside has successfully incorporated many non-industrial uses such as offices and restaurants. But the residential, commercial and retail uses of this scale may be the first of its kind in this district. The City Council indicated recently that it would deny the industrial users’ appeal and allow the Goat Blocks development to move forward. This leaves the opportunity for new and traditional Central Eastside residents to begin establishing the ground rules for how the different uses can co-exist in such close proximity.

A good neighbor agreement between the developer of the Goat Blocks and the surrounding property owners is still moving toward finalization. Between the efforts of the property owners, business owners and the city, it stands a good chance that there will be a framework in place to guide new residents and existing business through the new reality after the construction phase ends and people start to move in to the district. Until then, property developers will need to continue to craft custom solutions to ensure compatibility among surrounding uses, and the success and creativity of such solutions will influence the viability of the district as a whole.

Damien Hall focuses on land use and real estate law as an attorney at Ball Janik LLP. Contact him at 503-944-6138 or dhall@balljanik.com.

The post OP-ED: Working out differences in the Central Eastside appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Welcome back to the recurring chronicle of two of Portland’s fastest changing neighborhoods, the South Waterfront and the Central Eastside.

Past columns have touched on the construction and naming of the soaring Tilikum Crossing that connects these two neighborhoods, and the regulatory framework that the city of Portland has put in place to create conditions that support active, beneficial redevelopment of these areas.

Today let’s discuss one of the most significant challenges facing these neighborhoods: the public infrastructure needed to support the growth associated with fast-paced, private redevelopment.

The public sector has made extraordinary investments in transit infrastructure in both the Central Eastside and South Waterfront. Both are served by streetcar and bus, have extensive riverfront pathway systems for pedestrian and cyclists, and will be served by light rail when the MAX orange line begins operating in 2015. Also in play is the aerial tram that bridges Oregon Health & Science University’s growing Schnitzer campus in the South Waterfront with the established Marquam Hill campus.

The investment in transportation infrastructure has been significant and is integral to accessing and traveling through these parts of the city. However, ongoing development will drive the need for additional infrastructure investment in both areas. This is particularly true for the Central Eastside.

The number of residential development projects planned in the district has increased significantly. Historically, it has been an industry-centric district with fewer than 1,000 residents. Now there are over 1,650 units in the development pipeline (figures courtesy of the Central Eastside Industrial Council Land Use Committee).

Not all of these projects may be built, but this glut of apartments is working its way through the city’s design review and entitlement process – and those that do get built will likely be finished within two years. Even assuming the most conservative occupancy levels, this will more than double the number of residents in the Central Eastside.

This change in demographics will mean various clashes of residents with existing warehouse and manufacturing operations in the neighborhood. But nowhere is the potential for conflict greater than in the competition for limited on-street parking.

If you’ve traipsed through the Central Eastside, it is not uncommon to see curb space being utilized for loading and unloading of trucks associated with an adjacent warehouse. These uses have the potential to be directly in conflict with future residents searching for on-street parking. With on-street parking already at a premium, and the planned residential projects not required to provide parking for all tenants, there remains a high probability of the Central Eastside seeing increased competition for on-street parking that has been associated with multifamily residential development throughout Portland.

Anticipating the problem, the city has worked with local business interests to implement a permit system for on-street parking. While effective to a point, permitting does not create new parking spaces, and if demand for on-street parking continues to grow beyond the already outstripped supply, the problem will persist.

To address the issue, there will need to be a solution that creates additional off-street parking, either in a structure that could be prohibitively expensive, or surface parking not favored by the City and likely not the economically most advantageous use of limited amounts of vacant land in the Central Eastside’s thriving development market.

This leaves the fundamental question of who carries the burden of the impending parking shortage. If nothing additional is done, the local businesses and future residents will share the burden as they compete to use the same spaces for potentially incompatible purposes.

If the city were to step in and require additional parking to be constructed in association with residential development, it would shift the burden to property owners through increased project costs to build additional on-site parking. This would have the dual effect of reducing the amount of apartments being built, and increasing the amount of auto-oriented facilities supporting the apartments that are built – and neither of those results are consistent with the city’s efforts to promote high-density residential development in the city center and reduce the amount of auto trips associated with such development.

The good news is that the Central Eastside is a step ahead on this issue because the ample transit options in the area provide alternatives for residential commuting. That will likely mean fewer cars. But even with this advantage, the sheer numbers of new residents coming to the neighborhood will exacerbate the competition for on-street parking – a limited commodity.

The infrastructure needs in the South Waterfront are even more extensive. Development of the OHSU Schnitzer campus and the Zidell property will require extension of the street grid through them as well as improved capacity on the limited streets that access the South Waterfront. I will address that issue next time.

Damien Hall focuses on land use and real estate law as an attorney at Ball Janik LLP. Contact him at 503-944-6138 or dhall@balljanik.com.

The post OP-ED: Infrastructure needs of a growing neighborhood appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A couple of eventful months have passed since I previously chronicled the rise of the new transit bridge over the Willamette River, and the changing nature of the neighborhoods it connects.

The dramatic suspense of the name selection process has turned to congratulatory revelry for a name well chosen. “Tilikum Crossing” loosely translates as the people’s crossing from the Chinook Wawa language, in honor of the indigenous tribes who have lived near the Willamette River for over 14,000 years. The choice is an apt convergence of historic symbolism with this amazingly modern, carless transit bridge.

As the Tilikum Crossing inches toward completion, its blend of bus, rail, pedestrian and bike transport grows more opportunistic to the neighborhoods that it serves. The city of Portland has taken steps to capitalize on the economic development potential of the Tilikum Crossing and associated public transportation projects, some of which are highlighted here.

Tilikum Crossing is an important part of transit investment that includes the orange light-rail line, which extends from downtown through the South Waterfront District, across the Willamette River via the Tilikum Crossing, to the Central Eastside, and then off to points south. Once completed, Central Eastside and South Waterfront neighborhoods should experience improved access, and gain visitors and community activities. Property owners and developers in the South Waterfront and the Central Eastside are planning their moves and determining the best time to take advantage.

Property owners and developers are not the only ones positioning to respond to the newest transit investment. The city of Portland is taking strategic steps to ensure that the orange line meets its economic development goals. Both the South Waterfront and Central Eastside contain long-standing urban renewal areas that allow the city to make targeted investments in public infrastructure and private redevelopment. The city has taken calculated steps to bring resources to bear in order to shape development around the future light rail station areas.

For example, the city and the Portland Development Commission recently have undertaken the process of realigning the boundaries of the Central Eastside urban renewal area to include the under-construction light rail stations adjacent to OMSI and the Clinton Street station. OMSI has undertaken an extensive master planning process for its property holdings around the museum, and the commercial development along the close-in Clinton Divisions corridor is well under way.

This, combined with the opening of the orange line, will prime these station areas for development. Inclusion of the station areas in a URA will allow the city to marshal the funding needed to influence the coming development to help it meet the goals of the city’s economic development strategy.

On the other side of the river, it is likely that the city will use URA dollars to assist with the build-out of infrastructure to serve the Zidell Marine site. A significant portion of the property is vacant and assessed accordingly, and is thereby ideally situated for the creation of tax increment.

Furthermore, the city has employed another available resource to attract the kinds of development that will further its economic development goals: the state’s enterprise zone designation. In collaboration with the property owner, the city has undertaken the requisite process to receive the enterprise zone designation from the state as of last year. This means companies that locate to the site will be allowed to be exempt from property taxes for up to five years if they meet certain standards, such as creating and maintaining jobs with wages that exceed the local average, and providing local job skills training.

The city and private property owners are actively considering how best to invest to transform vacant and underutilized land into successful, dense station area communities, with the orange line slated to go operational in 2015. The new transit options and connections will cause these considerations and the associated development timelines to shorten. The Tilikum Crossing will soon connect neighborhoods that look very different from what is on the ground today.

Damien Hall focuses on land use and real estate law as an attorney at Ball Janik LLP. Contact him at 503-944-6138 or dhall@balljanik.com.

The post OP-ED: A tale of two connected districts appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Looking out my office window, I see the yet-to-be named transit bridge over the Willamette River, its twin decks hovering suspended and nearly connecting in the middle. The bridge stands alone as an impressive feat of engineering and design, but like all bridges, its main utility is to connect places. This particular bridge connects two districts: the South Waterfront and the Central Eastside.

At first blush, these two neighborhoods seem dissimilar. The South Waterfront is Portland’s newest neighborhood, typified by shining condominium and medical research high-rises. Walking among the tall glass towers of the South Waterfront, one feels the newness of the roads, sidewalks and parks that lend a sense of the hygienic freshness.

In contrast, the Central Eastside is an established industrial sanctuary where both new buildings and residents are scarce. The favored word to describe the feel of the Central Eastside is “gritty” – an appropriate descriptor for the numerous on-street loading zones and freight train crossings that dot the warehouse landscape.

But take a closer look at the trajectory of the neighborhoods, and speak with planners and developers, and you may begin to realize that these two areas share certain similarities – and each is likely to be among the city areas most invested in over the coming years. Each neighborhood is in the midst of a renaissance of sorts, with some of the premier potential developments in the entire city. Optimism about the coming changes in the landscape of each neighborhood is palpable.

In the coming months, this column will focus on the development trends and patterns that are driving development in the Central Eastside and the South Waterfront neighborhoods. Some of the South Waterfront topics that will be addressed in more depth are:

• Creation of river access and completion of the Willamette Greenway. One lawyer will provide insight into the visions of the city and property owners to connect to the river and the entirety of the westside greenway, and the plans that are in the works to make this a reality.

• The Zidell property is one of the premier urban brownfield infill opportunities in the nation. A discussion of the remarkable cleanup and plans for redevelopment of this site is on tap.

• The OHSU Schnitzer campus build-out and the Knight Cancer Institute challenge. We will look at what campus plans are on the books, and how that could change if OHSU meets the challenge.

• What public transportation improvements are needed to support the South Waterfront at build-out? We will analyze the city’s plans to coordinate the various modes of travel available in the area (light rail, streetcar, bus, bike and pedestrian) with expansive upgrades planned for the road system and points of entrance and egress to the South Waterfront.

Not to be outdone, the Central Eastside is similarly flush with development potential and opportunity. Some of the Central Eastside storylines that will be addressed are:

• Will the Urban Land Institute “redefine” the Central Eastside? A study under way by urban planning fellows at the ULI will generate recommendations for how the city should shape, regulate and invest in the future of the neighborhood. We will examine what is known about the study and what it means to the Central Eastside.

• Adaptive reuse for creative office space has thrived. An upcoming discussion will look at whether there is more to come for this type of trendy space with industrial feel, or if rising rental rates have resulted in demand for new construction.

• The city wants to target the light rail station areas for dense, transit-oriented development. A primer is slated on plans in the works and how station-area planning will impact existing neighborhoods.

• What role will OMSI play in the development of the area? Over the years OMSI has expanded its operations, but avoided non-museum development. Will that trend change?

• Apartments are rising along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Will the numerous apartment units slated to come online change the vaunted grittiness of the Central Eastside, or complement existing uses and character of the area.

• ODOT Blocks are headed for being more than rubble. A brief history and forward look at what’s in store for these prime development blocks.

Each column will feature two insightful vignettes, each describing one of these neighborhoods … until we’ve run out of things to say, and we turn our gaze to other topics.

Damien Hall focuses on land use and real estate law as an attorney at Ball Janik LLP. Contact him at 503-944-6138 or dhall@balljanik.com.

The post OP-ED: A tale of two connected neighborhoods appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.