This Week in the Mercury
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Build Out With All Due Respect: Adams Spars Over Sprawl
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 12:50 PM
I rode the MAX to the end of the line in Hillsboro last night, departing on foot into a vast empty parking lot between a post office and a Taco Del Mar. OPB and Pamplin newspapers chose this scenic location, the Hillsboro Civic Center, to host a debate between Portland Mayor Sam Adams and Washington County Commission Chair Tom Brian on a touchy subject: should the Portland region build up (dense) or out (sprawl)?
The issue "up or out" is the most comprehensible way to understand the immensely wonky and complex process surrounding the redrawing of our Urban Growth Boundary. Adams and Brian are on opposite ends of the spectrum on whether building dense or sprawling out is good for the region and toward the end of the night, I noticed a lot of the pairs' sentences began, "With all due respect..." which, as we all know, is the red flag phrase signaling you're about to very politely call someone an idiot.
- Live from Hillsboro! Tom Brian, Sam Adams and OPB's
April BaerEmily Harris
A reporter from the Forest Grove News Times asked Adams, rather tongue-in-cheek, whether Portland would benefit from having Hillsboro turning into a sprawling Bellevue-like suburb. After all, it would bring more Christmas shoppers into downtown.
"No," replied Adams frankly. "We don’t have to. Better land use, more effective land use, I support that." Adams says developers should build first on the 15,000 acres of vacant land already within the UGB—that's acreage roughly the size of Manhattan. "Between what’s already vacant and what’s buildable, we don’t have to expand like it’s been proposed."
Pro-expansion Tom Brian argued the progressive angle on sprawl, saying that expanding the development borders would allow for more affordable housing. "We’ve got to be careful as we demolish old structures and create a scarcity of land, real estate values go up," said Brian.
Washington County started out the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) process wanting to add 34,000 acres of urban reserves, or land slated for future development, to the current boundaries. Environmental and political pressure has whittled that request down to 13,000 acres. Smart hagglers: start high to get what you want.
- Boo.
The hottly-debated map of the urban and rural reserves is now in "preliminary final draft" phase (i.e. "waffly waffle political compromise endgame" phase). The four county representatives are under pressure from developers to open up more land outside the UGB to possible development—which boosts land values, too.
"I get lobbied by developers to bring land into the urban reserve. I don’t get lobbied by a lot of farmers to bring land in. I think that speaks for itself," said Adams last night.
As for his thoughts on the current UGB plan, which keeps the urban growth boundary line firm for now, but adds 29,000 acres of urban reserves regionwide: "We’re a long ways from anything I can support," says Adams. Too bad it's not up to him— Multnomah County Commissioner Jeff Cogen is the local vote on the plan and at last count he "seemed pleased" with the plan.
Check out video of the debate on BlueOregon and the whole damn hour-long audio on Think Out Loud.
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You're right! This is what happens when I read April Baer's Twitter feed while trying to post anything about OPB. Name changed, thanks.
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*Don't believe that? Look at the CRC. We've got a bridge right now with some problems, but if we spend $4B and add another 45,000 cars, it will still have very similar problems. Looking at the current Portland commuters to houses ratio (1:3) in Clark County, those new 45,000 cars works out to around 135,000 more houses. If Clark County made developers pay for the costs of development, they should kick in $30k ($4B/135,000) for each new lot to pay for the bridge upgrade. They should also pay money for the local streets for those houses, and some more money for the new I-84 interchange that will be needed if we do the bridge, but the bridge alone would add $30k per lot. Unfortunately, newly developed lots in Vancouver doesn't believe in paying for their share of development, they want everyone to pay, including the people of Portland. And then they have the nerve to complain that "Portland is too expensive." Yeah, it is, when I have to subsidize their lazy asses!
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One is that infill development is also very expensive. PDC, TriMet, and the City throw a lot of money at subsidizing taller buildings with more density. South Waterfront has been hugely expensive to the public, and we're still building infrastructure down there, even as the buildings sit empty.
Speaking of which, why are those buildings empty? Doesn't everyone want to live in a dense urban environment? Surely if density is the wave of the future, those buildings would be filling up as soon as they're built, with thousands of people clamoring for more?
The fact is that despite the claim that everyone wants to live in such a place, we have years of condo and apartment inventory sitting in the very center of the city right now. A majority of people, even in Portland, if given the choice would prefer to have more space (say a home on a 50 x 100 sf lot). This is a very important point: people in Portland love density and transit FOR OTHER PEOPLE, not themselves.
Another point that almost everyone misses is that it's not economical to build dense structures in the suburbs. They don't pencil out. Ever wonder why smaller cities and towns don't have buildings over three or four stories? Because if you build one, you'll lose money.
Need proof? Read the beginning of Sarah's article about getting off the MAX in Hillsboro to find parking lots and a Taco Del Mar. That station has been there more than 10 years. Where are all the transit-oriented mixed use buildings? Where are all the condos and walkable urban amenities? If one could build those in central Hillsboro and turn a profit, surely the recent real estate boom would have been the time to do it. Look at the Beaverton Round. How many public subsidies did it take to get it built? Why has it still gone through multiple foreclosures and lost a ton of money and remains partially undeveloped? Even if the UGB isn't expanded when do you think the people of Beaverton will be stupid enough to try to subsidize that kind of density again?
We have to build up and out and acknowledge that A) Portland and the suburbs are not the same, and B) it's very condescending and domineering for Portlanders to try to tell these other cities what to do.
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