Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
The city of Sweet Home is working with a University of Oregon program, Community Planning Workshop (CPW), to create a new buildable lands inventory.
The study will identify where vacant land is within the city limits and how those properties are zoned. The last time Sweet Home completed a buildable lands inventory was 2000 in conjunction with a Comprehensive Plan update in a planning process called “periodic review.”
Since that time, the picture has changed throughout Sweet Home in terms of land inventory, Community Development Director Carol Lewis said. Also since then, the state has changed its statewide planning goals nine and 10, which deal with the economy and housing.
The city is required to look at industrial, commercial and residential land inventories by these state planning goals, Lewis said. With so much construction and so many new subdivisions in the last couple of years, the city does not really know what’s available any more.
That became apparent within the last year when a developer wanted to change the Comprehensive Plan designation for a 12-acre parcel of land, Lewis said. In a City Council hearing on the matter, “we didn’t really have a feel what our inventory was any more,” and the applicant didn’t either.
The council ended up denying the request.
Bob Parker, director of CPW and a professor at UO, completed the 2000 study with Eco Northwest. This time, he is completing it with CPW in partnership with a graduate student.
The pair are using the city’s original database of information in conjunction with new information about housing starts, new subdivisions and other details to determine how many acres of land Sweet Home has available in five categories, including vacant, redevelopable, potentially developable, developable and partially developable.
“We need current numbers, and we don’t have them,” Lewis said. “The old numbers are definitely skewed out of proportion now.”
At the same time, “I don’t think we have a shortage in any category,” she said. “We just don’t know. That became obvious when we had (that) Comprehensive Plan redesignation request. It would have helped me as staff give City Council information we didn’t have currently.”
The completed study will be incorporated into the Comprehensive Plan as an appendix, she said, replacing the study from 2000.
The study will cost about $5,000 in funds budgeted for this fiscal year.
The District 55 School Board learned about the city’s study last week, and Supt. Larry Horton proposed using CPW to complete enrollment projections. CPW will have much of the information it will need to do that by the time it finishes its work with the city meaning the cost will be $5,000 to $7,000 instead of the $10,000 to $12,000 that Portland State University would charge for a similar study.
School district and city officials met to discuss growth information so the district can complete a long-term facilities plan. That’s where the district learned about CPW’s work. City officials suggested contacting CPW, and piggybacking a study for the district on the city’s work.
The district board will consider a proposal by CPW at its next meeting, in December.