Washington County and the city of Tualatin on Friday announced a proposed agreement with semiconductor equipment manufacturer Lam Research for it to invest up to $1.7 billion in Tualatin through 2041.

Negotiations took place via Oregon’s Strategic Investment Program (SIP), according to a press release. The SIP, a private-public partnership that provides property tax exemptions, was authorized by the 1993 Legislature to increase Oregon’s ability to attract and retain capital-intensive industry and high-wage jobs.

Lam Research, headquartered in Fremont, California, designs and builds products for semiconductor manufacturing, including equipment for wafer fabrication, thin film deposition and plasma etch systems.

The proposed SIP agreement would support Lam Research’s expansion of its operations in Tualatin. Plans call for creating a large, state-of-the-art research and development facility spread over multiple buildings. Previously, the company’s 120,000-square-foot Building G was completed in September 2025.

The property tax abatement would help support the company’s investment in the community and regional job creation. As with previous SIP agreements, property taxes would be partially abated for investments in the advanced facility, the press release states.

Lam Research would be required to make payments under two categories: those required by state law and those negotiated locally. Based on current models, the required payments would total an estimated $84 million in property taxes and fees over the life of the agreement, but actual amounts would vary based on finalized assessed values, timing of the company investments, and inflation. Additional fees are expected to total $27 million over the same period.

The Washington County Board of Commissioners and the Tualatin City Council will gather public comments on the proposed SIP agreement. The board of commissioners is set to meet at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, when it will receive public testimony and vote on the proposal. The city council will consider the proposal when it meets at 7 p.m. on Aug. 10.

State law would then require the Business Oregon Commission to approve the agreement before it could take effect. The group’s next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 24.

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Officials celebrated the groundbreaking earlier this month of Plambeck Gardens, which will provide 116 affordable housing units on a 4.66-acre site near the Basalt Creek natural area in Tualatin.

The project was developed by owner Community Partners for Affordable Housing (CPAH) with money from Washington County‘s allocation of the 2018 voter-approved Metro Affordable Housing Bond.

The development is named after the late Doug Plambeck, a founding member and longtime treasurer of CPAH’s board who understood the need for affordable housing in the area.

Designed by Carleton Hart Architecture and under construction by LMC Construction, the project team also includes Vega Civil Engineering, MZLA Landscape Architecture, ABHT Structural Engineers, electrical engineer Samata Consulting Engineers, and more.

Plambeck Gardens is located at 23500 and 23550 SW Boones Ferry Road in Tualatin. It will have three buildings: two residential buildings and a community building, along with surface parking, covered parking and outdoor play areas. The residential buildings are planned with a mix of one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom units.

The community building is one story, while the two residential buildings are four stories, Carleton Hart Principal Michelle Black said. The community building is closest to Boones Ferry Road.

“As we’re starting to approach those residential uses, we’re stepping down in scale and height to meet the neighborhood,” Black said.

Of the 116 units, 47 are open to residents at 30 percent area median income (AMI) or below, of which eight have project-based vouchers, and 69 of the units are to residents at 40-60 percent AMI or below. More than half of the units are two-bedroom or larger. Six of the units are 4-bedroom units, 16 are three-bedroom units, 40 are two-bedroom units, and 54 are one-bedroom units.

Black said the three- and four-bedroom units are a rarity for an affordable housing project, simply because from a space allocation standpoint they can be hard to fit on a site.

Carleton Hart Project Architect Kayla Zander said the two residential buildings are L-shaped and create a common interior outdoor space. The project sits within the Basalt Creek Concept Plan area. The design team used basalt stone to draw inspiration for the design, specifically from the natural characteristics of basalt stone, including the natural colors and columnar stone qualities.

There are balconies or patios at every unit, as required by the city of Tualatin. With units on every side of the corridor buildings, that design concept is on every façade.

The property allows for flexibility in space usage, incorporating trauma-informed and universal design concepts. This includes the use of natural colors. The color palette is based off being in a wooded area, with use of browns and greens. Features include spaces for education and family gatherings, as well as community gardens.

“(We) worked closely with our landscape architect – there’s a ton of landscaping on this project – to make sure that the plantings had a visual interest year-round,” Zander said.

There will be a variety of plants that will bloom at different times of the year.

Sustainability has been a huge point of topic for the design as well, Zander said. All three buildings exceed energy code requirements. One way they are doing this is with intermediate to advanced framing techniques with extra insulation. Zander said there is extra insulation on the outside of the buildings, paired with HVAC systems to help reduce energy bills for residents.

Carleton Hart is targeting Earth Advantage Platinum certification. They are using new heat pump water heaters. The water heaters for the project and the packaged rooftop unit (RTU) on the roof to heat, cool and provide ventilation in all the buildings are all electrical.

The roof also has a solar array, which is designed to offset energy uses for the households. The current modeling shows that Plambeck Gardens should achieve an annual production of 204,494-kilowatt hour (kWh), with an overall system size of 190.2 kilowatts (kW). This should result in the community building achieving net zero design.

This is the first project of Carleton Hart’s that will be net zero, Zander said.

Amenities for the residential buildings include meeting rooms, as well as laundry and lounge space on each floor.

“The community building is about 6,100 square feet of just all amenity space for the residents,” Zander said.

It includes a community kitchen, a commons area with open seating, two classrooms, a community garden storage room, a pet-wash room and three offices and a clinic for resident services.

CPAH will include services provided in partnership with Community Action, the Native American Rehabilitation Association, Centro Cultural, Lifeworks NW, the Cascade AIDS Project, Worksystems Inc., and the Neighborhood Health Center.

The site also has two play structure areas targeting different age groups (one for ages 2-5, the other for ages 5-12), a play field, sport court, picnic shelter and a variety of additional outdoor seating areas/patios, community garden, botanical garden and an outdoor pet relief area.

The total project cost is roughly $40 million.

Construction began in early May and is expected to be complete in the fall of 2024.

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Fox Meadows Apartments, a 95-unit garden-style complex in Tualatin, has sold for $19.35 million. Kidder Mathews represented the seller, Trion Properties. The buyer was a national multifamily investor based in California.

The property was constructed in 1958, according to Zillow. It has one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom units.

Located at 19545 and 19605 S.W. Boones Ferry Road, Fox Meadows is within a short distance of popular dining and shopping destinations, including Bridgeport Village. The property offers convenient access to major thoroughfares that connect to all parts of the Portland-metro area.

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The city of Tualatin has approved an architectural review request for a new Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue fire station that would be located on Southwest McEwan Road, near Interstate 5.

Bidding for the project is scheduled to open Sept. 18 as the fire district continues to upgrade its facilities around the metro area.

City staff on July 6 issued a notice of approval for a proposed 9,500-square-foot station and a 600-square-foot community room. The main building will house the station’s firefighters and have an interior two-space parking bay for fire trucks and necessary emergency apparatus. The proposal calls for 12 staff parking spaces and 21 public parking spaces on-site to serve the facility. TVF&R envisions that Station 39 will include 24-hour staffing starting with four persons per shift and ultimately growing to six persons per shift.

Ankrom Moisan Architects is designing the single-story station, which will have a hip roof. The building will look similar to TVF&R Station 55, which is under construction in West Linn. Primary exterior materials will include brick masonry veneer, metal wall panels and precast concrete. Other materials include metal clad wood windows, steel apparatus bay doors, standing seam metal roofing, and hollow metal and aluminum entrance doors.

The fire station project already received the go-ahead from the Tualatin Planning Commission in April and now is on the fast track toward ground being broken. A city staff report prepared for the architectural review suggested that with approval, construction of Station 39 could begin in fall 2018, with occupancy and operation beginning in late 2019.

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The Basalt Creek Concept Plan has finally been finalized.

Wilsonville and Tualatin city councils formally adopted the plan at respective meetings on Aug. 6 and 13, pushing forward the effort to allow industrial, commercial and residential development in an 847-acre area of rural Washington County between the two cities.

The effort stretches back to 2004, when the Metro Council added the Basalt Creek Planning Area within the urban growth boundary. Seven years later, Metro entered into an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) with the two cities to carry out concept planning. That began in 2013, but eventually a disagreement arose over the land use designation for the central subarea. To solve the dispute, Metro, Washington County, the city of Tualatin and the city of Wilsonville earlier this year entered into another IGA allowing Metro to settle the issue.

Metro made its decision May 3, giving the cities just 120 days to adopt a resolution accepting the concept plan. A conceptual land use plan addresses the general nature of proposed land uses for a specified area. It delves into transportation, natural resources, public facilities and infrastructure strategies, among other areas. In short, the concept plan broadly oversees the ultimate layout for development. It doesn’t have to be completely engineered, but it should have details sufficient to illustrate a probable development pattern.

In general, Tualatin has long wanted to expand its housing stock, while Wilsonville has primarily sought additional industrial and commercial space. With the Basalt Creek Concept Plan, those broad wishes are generally addressed.

The planning area generally is bound by Southwest Norwood Road and Helenius Street to the north, Interstate 5 to the east, Day Road to the south and Coffee Lake Creek to the west.

The area has distinctive natural features as well as wetlands running north to south through the eastern portion. Existing land uses include agricultural, industrial and rural residential.

Washington County recently completed construction of a section of the Basalt Creek Parkway. In the future, it will connect Grahams Ferry Road and Boones Ferry Road, and extend east over Interstate 5.

For more information, visit .

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Inside the urban growth boundary in the southern Portland-metro area sits one of the largest swaths of undeveloped industrial land in the tri-county region.

Dubbed the Basalt Creek Planning Area, the 847 acres of mostly unincorporated and undeveloped land in Washington County separates the cities of Wilsonville and Tualatin. Both residential and commercial developers have long eyed possibilities there. Soon, they may be within reach.

But first, activity is under way just to the south, in the Coffee Creek Industrial Area – 258 acres of industrial zoned land in north Wilsonville. There, at least one sizable project – the 61,936-square-foot Willamette Valley Behavioral Health Facility for Universal Health Services – already is in the design stage. The clinic is just the first link in what is likely to be a long chain of development in the south metro area.

“That’s going to be our first focus area,” said Miranda Bateschell, the city of Wilsonville’s long-range planning manager. “That area has already been master-planned. We’ve passed urban renewal for it and planning for the infrastructure. I think in terms of while we’re working on our urban planning agreement on the Basalt Creek side, we’ll start to see development in Coffee Creek, and we’ll sort of see a process that extends north over time.”

The Basalt Creek planning process has taken longer to unfold following several years of disagreement between the two cities over how best to utilize a key center parcel. But now a path forward appears to be clearing.

“It is attractive,” said Ken Sandblast, planning director for Westlake Consultants, a Tigard-based firm specializing in land use planning, civil engineering and surveying. The company is guiding Universal Health Services through the state and local planning process for its Wilsonville clinic.

“To my knowledge there’s been interest in doing things there,” Sandblast said. “But they’ve been waiting to finish up the Basalt Creek planning effort. And now that that appears to have come to a conclusion, I know of some of the development that might want to occur in the Tualatin area. The market has been waiting.”

Basalt Creek planning started in 2007. And when Wilsonville and Tualatin tentatively reached agreement in late 2015 on a preference for future zoning, it looked as if both would achieve their primary aims: Wilsonville would get industrial land for commercial expansion, while Tualatin would get residential land to grow its housing stock.

The process ground to a halt a year later, however, when Tualatin proposed the 63-acre central subarea east of Grahams Ferry Road be redesignated for residential instead of employment. The Tualatin City Council approved the redesignation in February 2017, citing slope, soil and other issues.

Wilsonville, however, declined to follow suit. The city instead hired KPFF Consulting Engineers to carry out a feasibility study of the central subarea. The study, led by managing principal Matt Dolan, concluded that employment development is certainly possible there. Three possible “schemes” for such development ranged in size from 480,000 to 780,000 square feet. The central subarea, the study states, “does pose some grading challenges, which will require the use of stepped foundations and retaining walls.”

“Our role was pretty limited,” Dolan said. “It was a conceptual study intended to help the cities develop this land down the road.”

Tualatin officials were not swayed, however, so Metro was forced to step in.

A resolution of sorts came last month when Metro Chief Operating Officer Martha Bennett sided with Wilsonville and ruled the central subarea should remain designated for employment. Despite receiving “conflicting evidence,” Bennett stated in a final decision that “although the central subarea may not be a likely candidate for a large industrial facility, there is sufficient developable area on the site for multiple buildings housing smaller employment uses … such as office, flex business park, manufacturing and craft industrial.”

The Metro Council formally approved Bennett’s ruling on April 19.

Where does this now leave the two cities? For now, the Metro Council decision has basically freed up the proverbial logjam.

“At this point it was the final decision that needed to be made to get to the final proposal plan map,” Bateschell said. “The two cities are currently working together to finalize the draft of the concept plan and we’re pulling that together as we speak.”

Both cities must now adopt the pending Basalt Creek Concept Plan within 120 days of the Metro Council decision. Then they will need to adopt comprehensive plan amendments incorporating the concept plan into city code and ink an urban area planning agreement with Washington County.

“That’s the middle of August, so that’s what we’re aiming for, and right now we’re on track to get that completed,” said Aquilla Hurd-Ravich, the city of Tualatin’s community development director. “From Tualatin’s perspective, that’s when the city-initiated part would end. It would be property owner and developer-driven after that.”

Hurd-Ravich added that the city already has received inquiries about future residential development in Basalt Creek’s northeast section.

“This will represent some new opportunities for development,” she said. “We have some land available for employment within the city that from a practical sense that would probably go first, and then the area for residential development would be our next neighborhood. We are definitely excited to adopt the concept plan.”

“There was a lot of desire for resolution,” Bateschell said. “We came to an agreement, all four of the parties, that would get us a resolution so we could move forward and that’s essentially where we’re at.”

Transportation elements already are taking shape. The Basalt Creek Parkway is being constructed to connect Boones Ferry Road with Grahams Ferry Road and provide the future dividing line between the two cities. Other improvements are complete or in the works, including the Southwest 124th extension, which cleaves the Basalt Creek Planning Area in two and connects the cities of Sherwood, Tualatin and Wilsonville.

“Everyone is just happy that we’re at consensus,” Wilsonville Economic Development Manager Jordan Vance said. “The significant thing is the concept plan can now go forward.”

Sandblast is also optimistic about the future development prospects.

“Is it attractive? Yes,” he said. “And once the governmental approval process is finished, then we’ll get this going.”

Coffee Creek industrial development poised to advance

In the south metro area, growth in the Basalt Creek Planning Area remains in the conceptual stage, and development realistically won’t move ahead for several more years.

But Wilsonville city officials don’t mind; they’ve already begun accepting applications from developers looking to take advantage of the 231 developable acres in the Coffee Creek Industrial Area.

“We see Basalt Creek as a continuation of Coffee Creek in terms of being a thriving employment district,” Wilsonville Economic Development Manager Jordan Vance said. “So Coffee Creek is really the priority. Right now we’re focusing on improving some infrastructure to make development feasible, but this has been 15 years in the making.”

The first Coffee Creek project to move forward is a planned 61,936-square-foot health clinic for Universal Health Services. As proposed, the clinic will rise at the Coffee Creek Industrial Area’s northeastern corner, at the intersection of Southwest Boones Ferry Road and Day Road.

“We’ve actually processed a couple of development applications and we are working with a couple of other people,” said Miranda Bateschell, Wilsonville’s long-range planning manager.

Other possible projects in various stages include a biodigester facility for use in recycling food scraps, as well as building space to house existing firm Precision Countertops.

Wilsonville is using two tools to attract development to Coffee Creek, Vance said. The first is an urban renewal district, which will provide money for the infrastructure improvements needed to accommodate new development. The second is a new form-based code exclusive to Coffee Creek that gives builders and developers a shorter path to approval by laying out pre-existing building and aesthetic standards.

The form-based code may be the first such one in an industrial-zoned area in the U.S., Vance said.

“If a developer wants to take this track, there will be more certainty,” he said.

For now, the city is hoping that once development in Coffee Creek starts, it won’t stop until the area is built out.

“Now we’re really at a point where we’re ready to finance the roads,” Vance said.

Southwest Garden Acres Road, between Day Road and Clutter Road, is the city’s first capital project in this regard. It will extend roadway and utilities north of its current alignment. A few other parcels are development-ready, but many still need infrastructure improvements, access or utilities.

“To pay for that, we need development,” Vance said. “We get a lot of calls, and they say, ‘When’s the road going to be ready?’ Once we have the first few developments in, it will make a world of difference. That will help jump-start it. But it’s just challenging for us for the first few to make the financing work.”

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After holding three combined city council meetings over the past year, the cities of Wilsonville and Tualatin have agreed on a common jurisdictional boundary that will allow further development of the Basalt Creek Concept Plan.

Some of the parameters for a future planning document are spelled out at , Wilsonville planning director Chris Neamtzu said.

“We had looked at different alternatives at each of the meetings and after three meetings reached this major milestone,” he said.

The two city councils agreed that the boundary will become the Basalt Creek Parkway, running slightly south of and parallel to Tonquin Road, according to a statement from the city of Wilsonville.

By establishing the boundary, the two cities can move forward and write a concept plan, Neamtzu said.

“That document is yet to be created, but all these land uses are tied to the boundary and allows us to focus on specific land uses to be used by each city,” he said.

Once a concept plan is written, the public will be invited to weigh in, Neamtzu said. Then each city will create its own plan.

“At some point the cities will go their own ways and will implement (individual city plans) through a master plan,” he said.

The Basalt Creek Concept Plan area covers approximately 847 acres between the southern edge of Tualatin and the northern edge of Wilsonville, where the two cities are less than a mile apart, according to the plan’s website.

The land was included by Metro within the urban growth boundary in 2004.

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Harsch Investment Properties recently acquired the Teton Industrial Building, a 100,000-square-foot industrial warehouse on 7.45 acres of land in Tualatin.

Formerly occupied by Stanton Furniture, the building has been vacant for about four years, said Steve Roselli, Harsch Investment senior vice president and regional manager. The building was built in 1979, Roselli said, and was purchased from Gayle Makem, whose family was the original owner.

Roselli said the building’s size, along with the fact it is a large plot of land, makes it prime industrial and commercial real estate.

“There aren’t a lot of alternatives for 100,000-square-foot users in Tualatin,” he said.

The building will require maintenance, including possibly a new roof along with painting, warehouse lighting upgrade, landscaping and improvements to the parking lot. Improvements will begin immediately and should take between 60 and 90 days, Roselli said

The building is a quarter-mile south of Tualatin/Sherwood Road at Teton Avenue and includes ample parking and power requirements, according to a news release from Harsch Properties. The concrete tilt-up building has ample truck access, nearby railroad tracks, flexible interior design possibilities and 25,000 square feet of outside fenced storage. The building also has 15 dock-high doors and two grade-level doors.

Tualatin is a strong and growing submarket, Roselli said.

“We have been looking for opportunities in Tualatin, Tigard and Wilsonville for a year,” he said. “Over the years it (the Teton Industrial Building) has not been for sale but we had the right price at the right time. We are happy to finally (own) some property in the southwest part of  (the metro ������).”

The building will rent for $47,000 per month, not including maintenance, insurance and taxes. Stu Peterson of Macadam Forbes Commercial Real Estate Services will handle leasing for the property, Rosselli said.

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Bids will soon be solicited from contractors interested in taking on a $3 million project to close a 0.77-mile gap in the Tualatin River Greenway on Metro-owned property.

A new, 10- to 12-foot-wide, paved bicycle and pedestrian path is planned between Barngrover Street (near the Tualatin Public Library) and a former RV park on Nyberg Lane.

The greenway, scheduled for completion by winter 2015-16, will be 4.5 miles long. It will connect several apartment complexes and neighborhoods east of Interstate 5 with shopping and job centers to the west at the Nyberg Street overpass.

The project will be paid for with a combination of public and private dollars, including a $1.58 million ConnectOregon V grant, a $750,000 contribution from Washington County‘s Major Streets Transportation Improvement Program, $352,000 from the City of Tualatin Park Development Fund, a $3,200 grant from the Healthy Eating, Acting Living program and a $600,000 contribution from CenterCal Properties, owner of Bridgeport Village and several properties in the area.

The greenway will connect to the Fanno Creek Trail and the Ice Age Tonquin Trail, which will eventually connect to Sherwood and Wilsonville.

A presentation outlining the greenway’s final design is scheduled for Jan. 27 at the Community Services Administration Office, 8515 S.W. Tualatin Road, at 6 p.m.

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Developer Fred Bruning has often driven from Tigard’s Bridgeport Village to Tualatin’s Nyberg Woods – both developed by his company, . And on that route sits a Kmart shopping center in Tualatin that he believes has the potential to become the next major shopping mall in the Portland-metro area.

“Every time I’d drive (from Bridgeport Village to Nyberg Woods), I would go by the existing (Kmart) center and see how run-down it was getting,” he said. “Our thought was maybe it would be opportunistic to do another project there.”

A proposed $50 million endeavor would be to renovate part of the existing center, which includes a number of retail stores, a bank and a fast-food restaurant, and add 150,000 square feet of retail space. CenterCal is working with the property’s owner, the Nyberg family, which owns a variety of properties in Tualatin, to create a development proposal to submit to the city.

A large number of potential tenants have shown interest in the project, according to Bruning, including a couple of big-name retailers that do not yet have a presence in the Portland area. These new stores could potentially draw shoppers to Tualatin, Bruning said.

“It would be retailers adding something new to the overall retail mix of town, and they would be added as opposed to being more competitive (with other local stores),” he said. “Most of the tenants we’re working with are new.”

The property, on Southwest Nyberg Street, could be viewed as prime real estate because of its proximity to both Interstate 5 and the Tualatin River. Presently, however, a large portion of the property is not being used, and some existing stores are in disrepair, Bruning said.

“I would say the site is underutilized today,” said Alice Rouyer, community development director for the city of Tualatin. “We’ve had talks about utilizing the property more that sits up on the river.”

The river would play a big part in the new development, according to Rouyer and Bruning. CenterCal has been working with Tualatin’s parks and recreation department to possibly extend the city’s trail system along the property on the river’s edge. Additionally, one of the center’s potential tenants – Bruning could not name it yet, though he hinted at an outdoor store – could use the river for outdoor activities, like fishing classes or canoeing demonstrations.

As it did with Bridgeport Village and Nyberg Woods, CenterCal is working with to figure out how to reduce traffic in the area. The team is looking to add more lanes to Martinazzi Avenue, which borders the property to the east, and a driveway to Southwest Boones Ferry Road to the north. Street improvements around the other shopping centers have greatly benefited traffic flow in those areas, according to Rouyer.

Even with significant road work, the development would still significantly increase traffic flow in the area. However, Bruning said traffic impacts would primarily not come during rush hour, but rather on weekends.

Bruning did admit that if the project were to move forward, some of the center’s existing businesses would be at risk of being replaced. As a result, some people could lose their jobs.

“Some will stay (and) some will be cycled through, but in the end we think (the mall) will add a large number of family-wage jobs,” he said.

Bruning predicted that the renovated center would generate as many as 400 new jobs, including a number of full-time positions.

Bruning and the Nyberg family plan to submit a proposal to the city in the next few months. All tenants will be finalized in the next month, Bruning said. The development does not yet have a name, though Bruning said it would “probably have the word Nyberg in it.”

City officials cannot comment on the chances of the project moving forward until the proposal is submitted, Rouyer said. CenterCal last year pulled the plug on a plan to develop a 650,000-square-foot shopping center in Oregon City because of a “divisive political environment,” according to Bruning. However, talks with Tualatin officials have gone smoothly and the project has gotten positive feedback overall, he said.

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