Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I trust everybody heard that. Um, so we're going to go ahead and get started. I like to uh turn it over to Cody for some opening remarks and then we'll do some introductions. Excellent. We'll just get this going uh with the calling the meeting to order. Paulo, may we please have the roll call. Commissioner Cornet here. Commissioner Casease here. Commissioner Light here. Commissioner Grant here. Commissioner Pena absent. Commissioner Pippenich. Commissioner Portella absent. Mayor Maize I'm here. Councelor Mclofflin here. Councelor Ring

here. Councelor Randall here. Councelor Richardson here. Councelor Renan here. Excellent. Strong group. Uh the pledge of allegiance, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Next is the approval of the agenda. Uh if all have reviewed the agenda, may I please have a motion to approve set agenda with a second?

I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as presented. Motion has been made. Second and seconded. All in favor of approving the agenda, raise your right hand, say I. I. I. Thank you so much. Next is a discussion item. I'll turn it over to Mr. Maze and we will get it going. Sorry, the flag. Okay. Um I suppose we should uh turn it over to the staff at this point. Yeah. Want to introduce our consultants and uh

Yeah. Yeah, we'll do. Um so, good evening everyone. Joshua Chandler, Community Development Department. Um just want to give you a little blurb here. We provided a memo for you as well as some additional documents here and just kind of a rundown. Uh beginning this last spring, the city started an update to an economic development opportunities analysis. Uh this work is being coordinated with consulting firm MIG and uh we've had three meetings with an advisory committee up to this point and uh this evening I will be turning it over to Matt Hasty, uh Jessa Miller and Arianne Colbo who are gonna who are consultants working through this. Um this is a joint session. This is really they're gonna they're going to share some slides. We're going to go over what we've done so far up to date with our advisory committee, but we want this very much to be a conversation, a discussion as we move forward. The eventual um outcome of all of this is an is the adoption is an adoption of this EOA uh with associated um comprehensive plan amendments. Um some of you counselors are probably very familiar um well maybe not familiar with how long it's been. Uh 2007 is the last time that the city updated their EOA. There was some brief updates to that in 2011. Uh we started a process about 2018 2019 2020. It was kind of a long-winded process over a couple years. Um back in I think it was 22 council decided to not move forward at that time with an adoption. Um so in that period of time reworking it, data has changed, development has occurred. So, it really required instead of just brushing that off and bringing back forward, it really required an overhaul. There's a lot that's happened. One of the most notable developments that's happened is Google's uh Gore facility, which is a 90 acre uh piece of land in our port. Um so, that has really kind of shifted the numbers of what's developable uh vacant land and um what's developable, what's vacant.

So, we'll get further into that. I'll let Matt and his team take it away, but I just appreciate everybody for being here this evening, especially council. I understand you take August off and looks like we have a a full team here. So, I really do appreciate your um your time this evening. Before Matt All right. Thank you. Hang on just a second. Could you tell us who was on the advisory committee?

I can. Yeah. So, I will be honest about it. We had quite a few people that were involved and I don't think schedule's entirely lined up all the time, but we did have um Lisa Farson uh of the chamber um Jamie Mason um with the Adventist Health, Stacy Cooper with Cooper Cherry Cooper Cherry Orchards, Andrew Danny's with Mcked, Nate Stice with the Governor's Office, Greg Price um from the Small Business Development Commission, Um Todd Carpenter, local business order owner. Um Allison Turner who is the owner of of Skookum Outfitters and I believe she is now the chair of Main Street. Um Andrea Class with the the executive director of the port. Scott Hegy our county commissioner. Um Blanca Flores who is a local realtor with Whitner. Randy Anderson with the school district. Deborah Whitefoot with Nichiwana Housing. uh Brad Ellis of of um formerly the cherry growers Pacific Coast Producers as well as Dan Spots. He just couldn't get away long enough after retiring and I think he's even on uh joining us this evening on Zoom. So um that was kind of the rundown as well as we had um assistance from city staff uh Sandy Fin, our senior planner as well as Jake Anderson our economic development officer.

Thank you. One other question. Wasn't it about a year ago we did building buildable lands inventory? Was that the one we did year and a half ago maybe? Yeah. So in uh 2000

Yeah. So in 2003 we did the residential buildable lands inventory and then this time around it's the employment buildable lands inventory. But then in 2022 I think maybe what you're remembering is that that was another employment buildable lands. So when you're looking at the either employment land or residential land, you're going to do a buildable lands inventory for both. Uh so this one will be focused on that that employment land, but this is kind of the carryover. As I mentioned, we started a process in like 2018 2018 to really 2022 and there was like starts and stops. There was an employment buildable lands at that point. And that's what with the data and the development that has occurred, that's the data that has been updated since that last time around. You bet. And with that, yeah, we'll turn it over to Matt.

All right. Can you all hear me? Okay. Yes. Yeah.

Awesome. All right. Well, thanks for having us here this evening. Um, really appreciate it even though we're we're here virtually. I'm glad to see you here. Um, so we'll walk through a presentation. Um, we'll kind of tag team it. I'll start out with the first couple of items noted here and then Arianne Colbo will cover item three, the refined employment and land demand analysis piece. Jesso will cover the bulk of the buildable lands inventory. Um I'll kind of finish that up and then talk about the um refined comprehensive plan goals, policies, and implementation measures piece at each after each of these sections. Um we're going to pause and see if y'all have any questions or comments for us. I would say, you know, if there's questions for clarification, you know, please interrupt us, but um we will pause after each of those kind of main topics and provide some time. So, um, we could just kind of roll through each section and and then we'll plan to pause and see what you have to say. Um, but if there's something that's not clear, you know, let us know and, um, we we're happy to kind of stop along the way as well. All right, next one. So, you know, just what is an economic opportunities analysis? A lot of you have heard a spiel similar to this previously. You've been part of previous um, processes. Um so it's really about what are the types of um employment trends you're you have seen and are expecting to see in the future. Um how much land is needed to support that future uh employment growth? Um how much land do you have on the ground to accommodate those future needs? Um then how's that compare? How does the land supply compare to the land need? Um, and then we're also updating the comprehensive plan to make sure you've got a um a current set of goals, policies, and implementation strategies to address the needs that have been

identified in those other uh elements of the economic opportunities analysis. So, that's just kind of a quick overview of the key components of that. The next one, um, so and that's what we've been working on. And these are kind of the steps we've been going through. And we've done this in sort of an iterative fashion. Um but what we've also done after those first two steps that are shown here is to do that comparison of um land need and land supply. I will say that um staff Josh and Jake were did a lot of the work on um recommending an updated set of draft um comprehensive plan goals, policies, and actions. And then we've drafted um a set of narrative that uh summarizes what's come out of the other parts of the EOA that would also go into your comprehensive plan. So that you've got kind of you're painting a picture of the economic landscape and then you've got a set of goals, policies, and actions to complete that. And then next step um would be to go through an adoption process with y'all with the planning commission and then the council. Before we get to that point, um there are going to be some changes that we know we're going to make based on the comments that we heard from the advisory committee and then based on what we hear from you all tonight. So, um we've got draft materials that we're presenting. We'll talk about some of the changes that have already been recommended and then, you know, we'd like to hear from you if you know there are other changes or additions or things of that nature that you want to see incorporated before this goes to the into the adoption process. Uh so just generally and and Josh has talked about some of this already but um we do you know we are endeavoring to provide an updated set of data and findings and recommendations. As Josh has said a lot has changed um certainly a lot's changed since the last DOA was adopted but even in the last couple years since the earlier um review a lot has changed um in terms of projected

future conditions in terms of you know land available on the ground etc. Um and there's a number of reasons really for any city to update an economic opportunities analysis. One is just to inform future decisionmaking. Kind of all those elements do that and particularly um I think the goals, policies and implementation measures do that. They will help you in terms of pursuing grant applications or opportunities. um they also end up being the foundation um for shorter term um economic um development strategies and work plans. And then also when you're reviewing um land use decisions um and particularly in looking at are those things consistent with the comprehensive plan goals and policies they help towards that end. So just kind of having an updated set of data and goals and policies and action items is going to help you kind of in in all those ways. So, next one. So, I'm not going to say too much about this because I think Josh pretty much covered it. Um, so I don't think I need to say too much more about it. Um, other and I will also note that kind of as we walk through the next couple pieces of the presentation, we'll talk more about um how we've updated um the information from the earlier EOA and kind of what the sources of information were, etc. So, we'll talk about that in more detail. So, I won't say much more about this slide. So, I will take sort of the first pause in the presentation and just see if y'all have any questions about um the process we've been going through um or kind of the objectives of the process before we get into the details of the the data and the information.

Any questions for Matt? I have one. Yeah. Um could you go back to the previous slide? Sure. Okay, the second bullet or wait be one, two, three. The fourth bullet point down, and this is kind of a followup to what Rod had asked. The city council did not adopt the analysis or proposed comprehensive plan updates. The reason we This was in 2022, correct? Correct. And the reason we did not was because that Google there was a a disagreement over whether account the Google property is developable or vacant or whatever it was. Is that

Yeah, I think is that fair? I think that's fair. I mean, it wasn't just that site, but that was a big part of it. I think just generally concerns about whether or not we should be considering certain sites in the inventory as developable, as buildable. And you know, we were using the state rules and regulations um as the basis for our recommendations, but there was there was fair bit of concern about that um uh on the council and generally. So that I think was the main the main reason.

Okay. So what are the are there any repercussions from DLCD or anybody else about not adopting a plan within a certain period of time? Um, so I guess a couple things. One, we've gone back in terms of what was presented then. We've pretty significantly revised what was prepared back in 2021, 2022. Um, so you're not really at this point wouldn't be adopting what we prepared back then. We've updated all of the employment projection information. We've taken a significant look at the buildable lands inventory and adjusted it um quite a bit. We've got a new set of um comprehensive plan narrative that encompasses the updated work and we've got a new set of comp plan goals and policies. So um I don't if you're sort of thinking about well you know we didn't update that before and now we're coming back and or didn't adopt that that body of work before and now we're coming back this much time later. I don't think that's an issue because we've done such significant work to update what was done previously. So,

we didn't get we didn't get any negative feedback from DLCD about not adopting it. Oh, at the time. Yeah. Um I don't know. I I didn't hear anything directly from them. Um and so and I don't I think um you know cities don't have you you don't you're not required to update these documents during a certain time period. Yeah, that's where I was getting at. That's good.

Yeah, there's not there's not a certain time period where oh you haven't updated it since 20 2007 so state says you have to update it now. It's not so much that it's more do you have something useful to use, you know, for those purposes I mentioned a minute ago. You know, do you have a set of policies where they make sense in terms of reviewing current land use decisions or in terms of, you know, coming up with a shorter term economic development strategy plan or pursuing grants or things like that. And I think it's harder for you to do those things if you've got really outdated information in your comprehensive plan and in your EO. And it's it's probably more about that than the state saying, "Oh, you absolutely have to do this every certain number of years." They used to have those kind of requirements. Um they had what was called a periodic review um program and work program and cities were required to update things within a certain period and that program is really not in place. And I don't believe I don't remember if you got state funding for that previous EOA. That's kind of the time when they tend to get I will say they tend to be unhappy if you use their money and then you don't um adopt the the the products of it and that's as much as kind of I know about what happened then. I was involved then but I didn't I didn't hear more from DLCD than that. So

okay thanks. Any other questions for Matt before we move on? I can expand just slightly on it. So the EOA that the timeline for adoption or the requirements to adopt an EOA much different than an HNA. HNA housing needs analysis is required to be updated per state law. So there's a little bit of a difference between the two of those verification. Okay. All right. So, I think uh we'll bump ahead a couple slides and I will turn it over to Arianne to cover this next piece. Thank you, Matt. Uh can everybody hear me? Okay. Yes.

Excellent. Thank you. Um so, I worked on the uh update to the employment data, the forecast and the land needs. And to go through this process, we did update all of the demographic and economic information for the DAS um which uh I believe was in the detailed report in your uh packet. Uh and here are just a few updates or an overview of those updates. Um since around 2000, which was the last time this data was looked at, the regional economy has diversified significantly, meaning uh there are more firms doing different things than there were um back in 2000. Um I will also add that uh the Dows typically grows at a fairly uh decent clip um say over 1% uh unless you were being confronted with uh economic crisis which happened of course in uh 2008 09 and then again in 2020. Employment growth has uh recovered in the Dows um since 2020. The growth rate since 2020 has been 1.2% which was the employment growth rate uh before 2020 in the Dallas. Uh and then the Oregon Employment Department does forecasting um for the Mckette region and that uh forecast from it uh I believe it was done in 2023 through 2033. Um the OED expects that the region will grow at about.9% um in terms of employment. uh they also do an occupational forecast and uh that forecast expects about 550 new jobs in

the re in the Dallas sorry and um different occupations particularly in service that's the last bullet point on on this slide and then wage growth has has grown about 4.1% in the last 10 years most of that was uh since 2020 and that's not surprising um given in uh what we've seen uh in wages wage growth since 2020. And then also median age has uh been getting younger in the Dells which was not the case in the data that we looked at back in uh 20 uh 21 uh I guess it was 2019 we were looking at that data and the Dells has since gotten younger and it looks to be uh on that trajectory which is a positive outlook for uh employment growth in the Dells moving forward And uh if if you can see the detail here, uh this is just showing an industry sector employment growth um over the last 5 years. And the green is the Mckad region. And as you can see um in many sectors it was significantly hit hard by the pandemic mainly in uh natural resources and mining manufacturing financial activities other services um retail as well although retail has recovered somewhat um so it's showing some positive growth now um and then of course information um education health services, mainly health services in that category and government have all uh grown uh during that time period. And then over on the right are oh sorry Jess over on the right are the sectors

that have maintained growth um before during and after the pandemic. So these are subsectors of the the um larger employment sectors on the left. So crop production is within natural resources, construction obviously within construction and then uh you have manufacturing and these are the sectors that maintained growth um within these the larger uh categories. And I went through that fairly quickly. I just want to pause real quick and ask if there are any questions about uh the information I just went over.

Rod Rod from city council. I I went through several pages. I couldn't find what TWWU stood for. Oh, yes. Sorry about that. That is transportation, warehousing, and utilities. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, Ben, couple of questions. Um I can't quite make out um the 114 that's in the middle of the chart. Um does that align with the information? I would imagine like IT services or something. That's right. Yes.

Okay. And then on the previous slide, I'm curious what how do how do we define a service occupation on the previous slide? So service occupations are typically uh in retail. Um most of the medical professions fall into service. Um professional and business services, other services, pretty much anything that is not manufacturing or natural resources, nothing productive. So construction, manufacturing, um all of that is is considered productive. And then um you know pretty much everything else is service.

Okay. Thank you. And I'll just comment into if anybody's like wanting to look at that um graph a little bit closer. It is on page five of the packet. It's figure six in attachment too. So just in the event because I'm having a difficult time seeing the colors myself. So if you want to look take a closer look at it. It's on page five or page, excuse me, page 10 of your packet.

Okay, Jesse, you can uh move to the next slide. Uh so these two graphs, again, uh apologies, probably hard to see, um but they outline the 20-year employment forecast and 20-year land demand. And typically in this process uh you would do three different um alternative employment growth scenarios. And I'll briefly explain the three that we did uh for for this process. The first one is based on the OED forecast that I mentioned earlier that goes through 2033 and in the Dows the growth rate uh presumed is about 7%. And so this the scenario one employment forecast is based on the OED forecast. Um the second one is based on both uh population growth in the Dells and employment growth in the Dows. And so looking to maintain a ratio uh between population and basically your labor force. And what uh we assume in uh scenario two uh is that population growth in the Dows will continue at about where it is uh perhaps a little bit lower but generally maintain positive growth. Uh and secondly we assume that the labor force in the Dows will uh improve relative to population. So the ratio will um uh become larger over time. Um and we're assuming that because uh employment growth has been growing faster than population growth and also your median age uh is uh on a downward trajectory. So you have more people working age in the Dows. Um and so

that's the second scenario. The third one is uh assuming that uh certain industries will grow faster than they have and that we're calling that a target industries and the target industries that uh we've targeted in this scenario are the productive industries in the Dallas. So manufacturing, natural resources, uh construction and then secondly, we're assuming that the the industries that support those productive industries will also see some growth. So we're looking there at wholesale trade, uh even some retail trade, uh and then some of the other service, uh sectors, uh certainly business and professional services. Um, and as you can see, there's some divergence over time uh between those three scenarios with on the graph. The light blue line that's a little bit lower than the others, that's the OED forecast. And then the dark blue at the top is the target industry forecast. And there's about a uh sorry, I'm having a hard time seeing the numbers, too. um 1,400 uh person difference employment difference between scenario one and scenario two. Any questions about the employment forecast?

I have one. Go ahead. No, you go. I'll go. On that previous slide when it said 550 jobs uh through 2033, was that 550 jobs per year or 550 jobs for this next 8-year time period? Yeah, that was referring to O the uh Oregon Employment Department's occupation forecast. And they were assuming um 550 new service jobs in the Dallas over a 10-year period. Okay.

Yeah. On the page before the the graph, which is page 13 of the packet about midway down, it talks about weaknesses and threats. And it says the most significant challenge for the Dallas is the lack of housing and land available for housing and employment growth. And then it goes on to say that this will require significant efforts by stakeholders to maximize infield development and work with regulators to expand development options. Who who are regulators? I think we're assuming uh DLCD primarily

and then any other uh agencies that are regulating land supply essentially like the gorge commission. Yes. Okay. I'm just wondering if that's a significant amount of factor that we should mention their names. Um uh perhaps so. Yes. Uh we can make note of the hat.

Any other questions?

Okay. Uh so the table on the right is the employment forecast translated into land demand and that process happens by uh taking industry standard um industry standards for each of the different zones industrial, office, retail and government and assuming a certain uh square footage per employee and then taking that uh square foot per employee and total square foot and converting that into gross acres based again on some industry standards. And so for the three scenarios um you can see the potential land demand under under each of them. And uh I'll just note in the target industry scenario three um we're assuming a significantly greater uh need for industrial land because we're targeting productive industries in the Dallas. Uh any questions about the land demand here? And this is aggregate demand um and then broken down into different zones. And this is also on page 23 of the combined packet if you want to look at the numbers. The numbers are even small on the packet so might be easier to read though. Um feel free to chime in if you have questions um and then move on. And another way to look at uh land demand is to consider site type. And this is important because um we don't know over a 20-year period uh what type of employers may want to expand in the DAS or or may uh show up

looking for lands um to site. And so we considered in in this table we considered the type of uh development patterns in the Dows. So by zoning, what types of firms are are situated and what types of sites are they are they using? And so we came up with some averages um in each of the categories and we took that that employment growth and converted it into potential sites. And so if you look at scenario three in this table, most of the the sites that will be needed are are small firms. And that's uh to be expected about 70% of firms in the Dells are small employers. So uh firms employing less than 10 people and then uh me small medium employers uh which employ 10 to 19 uh they take up I'm sorry I forget the percentage um it will become obvious here in a second but they take up a certain uh percentage of of sites and then your your medium firms uh require about 14% of um sites uh And then your large employers are using about 1% of sites. However, your your large and medium sites or I'm sorry, your large and medium employers um are responsible for about 65% of your employment. It's pretty pretty important. And so building in some flexibility to your land supply will be pretty important. And looking at potential sites uh is a good way to ensure that while we're looking at aggreate demand, we also understand the type of sites that might be needed in the future by different uh firms who we don't know what who they are right now, but it it builds in some flexibility. Um

so any any questions about this table? And also Matt, did I miss anything important here?

No, I don't think so. I I would just kind of echo what you just said is we don't know exactly what size sites some of these firms are going to need um particularly given sort of the range of target industry potential target industries we've identified and that's why some of these ranges are pretty big and so you'll see in kind of subsequent slides that we pick some averages um and those are kind of our best estimate of averages and it's pretty hard to be more precise than that with you know the information we have. So I just kind of want to note that and note that these are two different ways to look at land need and I would say that the kind of the aggregate demand or land need is the more traditional way to do this in an EP economic um opportunities analysis. It's the so almost every EOA I've worked on or been a party to was use that um that method. But the site needs analysis is another, you know, legitimate way to look at it. But it's, I will say, less precise. Um, and it's harder to sort of say, oh yeah, we're going to need exactly this many sites at exactly this size. Um, both because of the breadth of different types of firms and site needs in each of the these categories and because 20 years into the future, like Arianne said before, like it's pretty hard to know. So, we're doing our best to kind of predict this um at the level we can with the information we have. So, um mostly just trying to kind of um emphasize what Arian said, but that's what I would add.

Yeah. And I would just add one more thing regarding the transition between um your medium uh small, medium, and then your medium and large. Um many especially medium and large firms need want to have extra land available for expansion. And and I would say that uh that might even be the case for your small medium firms. Certainly they want um opportunities um available for expansion. So I think that's it for this slide. A question. Uh council ring.

Thanks. Um uh this figure figure 24 in the packet. Um my my takeaway I want to make sure my thinking is correct here. My takeaway from this is that it it could help inform strategies that we can use to take care of the configuration of our buildable lands. In other words, we have there's I think there's an identified we'll we'll probably get to it eventually, not to get ahead of ourselves, but uh sort of an aggregate versus configuration problem, right? So, do we have large enough lots for small and medium-sized businesses to actually build on and develop? And my takeaway is that this kind of gives us a projection of like where we need to focus our strategy to maybe incent how do we incentivize people to um address the configuration of our lots, our buildable lots in the city so that we can um we can help them realize growth, right? like especially as a small business becomes a medium-sized business and it goes from you know two or three acres to eight up right um how do we that's kind of the takeaway from this slide is that I don't know kind of a good way to to look at it or step back from it

yeah uh well I I would defer to um perhaps uh Josh on But um yes, I think that that's a a good way to look at it for sure.

Yeah. And I think to that point, it's actually something that we that we talk about. You know, the the overall efficiency of the land that we have, the configuration of the land. Um this is, you know, this a lot of the figures and statistics in here provide us with, you know, what's here. the, you know, um the land that's currently available and um really when it comes down to I think we'll probably get into this conversation at some point about an urban growth boundary expansion because a lot of this EOA centers around a UGB expansion and one of the things that the state actually looks at when you consider a UGB expansion is how efficient the land is being used and configured within the city itself. So, it is really important to look at and we'll get in as we we dig in further to the BLI and you kind of spoiler alert you provided, you know, kind of a sneak peek of what we're going to discuss a little bit more. But yeah, it's all about the efficiency and how to reconfigure the lots and if we need X amount of acres, but we don't have those lots to reconfigure to get that X amount of acre acreage. um that is that can be um that can show um inefficiency of land use or if we can't actually clearly document that we're you know the ability to reconfigure the land to get to those numbers and I think there's more of an argument for a UGB expansion type of conversation.

We're going to talk about that a little bit later though. We will talk about a little I assume we will. We'll talk about it a little bit on the next slide and then we'll talk about it more when we talk about the comparison of land and supply which will be kind of at the tail end of the review of the buildable lands inventory numbers.

Uh and then the this slide here is just uh noting some of the uh recommended updates and changes that uh have been uh requested throughout the project um that we've either done or will do. Um and we'll be adding some additional narrative explaining um some of our calculations. Um and then further uh uh kind of what we were just talking about um the the difference between the aggregate land need and the site need configurations. Um and then lastly, we'll be um providing a summary table with an estimate for uh the acreage needed to accommodate demand um for the different site needs. Uh and we've listed the average site sizes and this is based on current development in the Dallas. And I'll just add that there's quite a large um range of sizes um for different firms uh even on different sites. So these these really are an average um I think uh a ballpark and in quite a large range actually. So and uh if there are no more questions on this uh section I will pass it back to Matt.

Yeah. And I'll just jump in really quick. Um so on it I kind of glazed over it but in the memorandum provided by staff you know it touches on the different you know attachments one through four and to Arian's point it's um you know this first attachment one is a memo that MIG has prepared and it was as you'll see it's the most recent the one from August so this information has been shared with our advisory committee at least attachments two through four attachment one we provided here to show you that these are we're addressing comments from those advisory committ committee meetings. As we talked about earlier, this is this is the draft. This is we anticipate changes from this conversation as well as our previous conversation. Um after the um information was provided attachments 2 through 4 with our advisory committee, we didn't go back and change the information. It is the same information being presented to you from those advisory committee meetings. So that memo to get more into what Arian was just showing with that slide. Um attachment one discusses some of those other um um items that will be addressed with the changes in in future um revisions.

Yeah. And we'll talk about that in kind of each section of the of the presentation. We'll describe the changes that we'll be making that we know we'll be making and then you know hear from you about anything else that you think needs to be adjusted. So cool. Maybe it's not even Germaine, but we're just talking about buildable everything, buildable land only. Yeah, we are just about to talk about it. Yeah, we're about to go through that there. But down in our downtown, we already have things built that are empty, a lot of them. Does that subtract or add to those totals somehow or calculated in any way that we have empty buildings? We

vacancy is not vacancy is not factored into this. Vacancy of a building is not factored into this. Um so this is more this is focused on on the bare land itself. Taking a look at the bare land itself and what's developed or not. But it is a great point. It is a great point of you know the efficiency of use. maybe come up with a plan to help whatever's going on with those owners to do some kind of a I don't know something to draw people to downtown that's been done in other communities where they give tax breaks. We have things that are there already. They're not being used. So, yeah. Yeah.

All we seem to be do looking doing is looking forward to building more stuff on land we don't have.

Yeah. One thing I can mention, I mean to your point that it may be considered controversial, but I'll bring it up. Other cities do use it. There are things called like uh dark windows ordinances. And these are ordinances that some cities place on vacant storefronts. And the goal there is to there can be penalty penalties attached to them, but it's effectively ensuring that the land owners that are in those vacant buildings are trying to encourage tenants from to come in or selling those spaces altogether. so that you're not you don't have vacant downtowns with you know areas at least providing window coverings if you have vacant spaces but hopefully that kind of touches on some of the some of your comment there and I would just add when when we get into talking about um kind of goals and policies and strategies that's I think a really good one to sort of take a look at have we included some strategies around that um in that part of the proposed set of comprehensive plan um amendments and um I will give it a quick skim while Jess is talking during the next section just to see if I see that. But I think that that's a really good thing to to bring up in terms of thinking about a strategy around that. So I'll just note that. All right, if you're good to go, we will uh move forward and kind of cover the the supply side. We talked about the demand side. and then we'll talk about the supply side.

Great. Thanks, Matt. And hi, everyone. My name is Jessa. I'm with MIG and I've been working on the BLI portion of this project. So, I'm going to spend just the next few minutes walking us through um the refined employment buildable land inventory or the BLI, which as Matt mentioned looks at the supply of employment lands in the Dows, and then how this compares to the the employment demand that Arianne just summarized for us. Um, and I will note that I'm going to just throw a lot of information, give an overview of the process, methodology, our maps and key findings, and then U. Matt will do a bit of a discussion around the comparison between the supply and demand, and then we'll open it up for questions. So, um, cuz some of your questions that may come up may be answered as we keep discussing. So, um, I'll just go ahead and dive right in. So um this process refineses the uh 2020 economic opportunity analysis BLI which we mentioned earlier um to reflect new conditions such as recent development that has occurred over the past few years, tax law changes. Um there were quite a few different new tax lots in the city since that prior VI was conducted. So aligning those and then new constraints data such as the city's new 50oot stream corridor buffers and then also updated FEMA flood plane data. Um, and the BLI was composed of four main steps which are summarized in the DLI memo that was included in today's meeting packet, but I'll go over each of those today in a little bit more detail. But broadly, those include determining land type, which was our first step. So, employment versus residential with versus other. We were purely focused on employment lands within this analysis. Um, identifying and calculating constraints. So steep slopes, flood plane, wetlands, stream corridors, easements, etc. Just to make sure that those are not being included within the developable land calculations. Then classifying land by development status. So whether sites are developed, committed, partially vacant, or vacant

to help us determine that supply of employment land. And then in inventorying results, um calculating net acreage so we can comply uh compare that to the demand net acreage that Arian just went over. And then lastly comparing that land need and supply. Um so before we dive into the analysis, I did want to provide some key definitions particularly rating relating to the different development status classifications that we'll be using within um our discussion and that are included within in the memo. Um the first is developed. So developed sites include sites with um improvements and little to no additional capacity. And then vacant which is um sites with minimal to no physical improvements. Partially vacant sites are those with some improvements although they do have room still in capacity for additional development. Um then we have committed sites um which are either vacant or partially vacant sites but these sites are committed to non-employment uses or they cannot be developed within the planning horizon. So they although they may be vacant or partially vacant they are not going to be incorporated into that final um net developable acreage for various reasons. And then lastly, we have constrained sites, which are sites that are completely constrained by specific features or hazards and have zero unconstrained acreage. So although they may be technically vacant or partially vacant, due to those constraints, for example, maybe it's completely underwater, therefore it is completely constrained and won't be incorporated into those final developable land calculations. Um so just to quickly go over our methodology and I already kind of walked through this at a very high level for the BLI. Um we first start with all land in the UGB and then we remove land that is zoned for residential other um

non-employment uses to get down to just those employment lands. And then from that we remove the developed or committed land for public facilities or other development purposes or uses. And then from that we are left with vacant infill or re redevelopable land which from that we then remove the um various development constraints that I mentioned. So wetlands, flood planes, slopes um which will bring us down to unconstrained land which from there we then remove streets and infrastructure and existing development assumptions which brings us down to that net de net buildable acres um which are used to form the basis for this BLI and are available for development in the coming years. And before we jump into um the maps and as well as the summary table summarizing the results from this analysis, we did want to acknowledge that from both the prior 2019 build BLI and throughout this process, there have been numerous adjustments made to the buildable land inventory and particularly the sites that are included within that. Um adjustments include removing some portowned sites, the Loheed Martin super fund sites, sites impacted by BPA easements, um committed sites, so sites like the community college and medical center sites, um a few other sites that are committed to uses already. Um we also adjusted the um employment capacity of Google owned sites acknowledging that they have different employment density and therefore have different um impacts on available employment lands. And then also as I mentioned earlier we um remove sites that have been developed since the prior BLI which there were quite a few sites particularly Google owned sites that have been developed since the last BLI. And then also um thanks to

involvement of city staff and pack members there have been a u multiple iterations of targeted adjustments based on existing conditions and feedback. So, city staff or pack members have let us know that maybe a certain site is coming up from our GIS data as being vacant or um partially vacant, but in reality it really is not. Um so, and I see our numbers didn't get in there, but we have there were numerous sites, at least over 30 that we adjusted based off of um staff and pack member feedback. And then we also made adjustments to um eliminate buildable acreages on sites where they may be technically vacant or partially vacant, but the land that is available is so small it may be just a small sliver that it really isn't available for future development. So we made some adjustments to reflect that. And then lastly, um removing sites that have zero unconstrained acres due to those development constraints I went over a minute ago. So now we get a look at some maps. Um it's always help helpful to have more of a visual component. I'll walk us through all the maps that we conducted and completed for this process. So this first map shows um zoning in the dowels and provided the basis for how we determined employment, residential and other um lands within the Dows and informed this second map which shows um employment lands in blue. Yellow shows residential lands and then light gray are other land uses in the city. And for this analysis, we purely were looking at those blue employment lands. So you can see the majority of those are along the Columbia River and the I 84 corridor. This next map then shows the different constraints that are present within the Dowels. So the purple are showing the 50ft stream corridor buffers. So um that the city has put in place to ensure

development is not happening within those corridors. The blue are wetlands. The orange is areas with steep slopes. The bright blue are BPA right of ways. And then the kind of turquoise are FEMA flood hazard areas. And these were what we used to create a compiled constraints layer to then remove um that constrained land from the overall developable land calculations. And then this last map is probably um the most important and interesting for us in this analysis. It shows the different development status classifications that we've applied to all of the employment lands within the Dows. Um so the pink sites show committed sites. to those sites that are committed to other uses or um are not available for development within the planning horizon. The orange sites are those developed sites, so sites that there is not future capacity for development. The yellow sites are partially vacant. Green sites are completely vacant. And then those blue sites are sites that are completely constrained by um a development constraint such as water or steep slopes, etc. So, the next few slides include a series of tables that summarize the results of the BLI. We just have a few more of these before we'll um pause for questions um because I know we're sharing a lot of information, but um this slide shows the gross and net developable acres of employment land within the Dows broken down by employment zone. Um I won't go into each of the zones, but um these are included in your packets as well if you want to look at these a little bit more closely. Um but this shows that there is an estimated 254 gross acres of vacant or partially vacant employment land in the Dows and this gross acreage accounts for

a reduction in 8 acres of available land on sites owned by Google based on their lower assumed employment densities. Um we then calculated net acreage from this and as a result there is an estimated 202 acres available for employment land after accounting for things such as existing development on partially vacant sites and then um setting aside for infrastructure and setbacks on completely vacant sites. So um the high takeaway from this is there are 202 acres available for employment land based on our BLI findings. So taking this even a step further um this uh slide um we also as Aryan mentioned we're looking at different site sizes and how aggregate land need may compare to um land need for different size categories and configurations and um to meet typical industrial employment needs of target industries in the Dows. Um so as Arianne presented on earlier there is a need for a combination of small sites from 0 to 2 acres, small medium sites from 2 to 8 acres, medium sites which are from 8 to 60 acres and then large sites which are over 60 acres to encom accommodate future employment based on average firm size. Um this table then summarizes the number of vacant or partially vacant sites currently identified in the BLI. So existing sites within these site size categories in the industrial zone. So as shown the city has um buildable sites available in those first three categories but does not have an available site in that 60 to 100 category. Um so just to summarize a little further. So there are 32 based on the BLI 0 to2 acre sites, five 2 to 8 acre sites, then an additional five 8 to

60 acre sites. Um, but this is much lower than what was projected as uh demand for those different site size categories. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Matt, who's going to go into this um analysis a little bit further and what it means for overall um land demand and supply in the Dells.

All right, thanks Jessa. Um, and yeah, I'm just going to cover three more slides and then we'll pause for questions. I think kind of the key takeaway and you'll see this on the next slide um in sort of tabular form um but really the key takeaway is we're showing that based on that aggregate um uh land demand um calculation compared to the number of net acres of buildable land that we identified in the inventory. If you just look at that, you see it looks like you've got an adequate supply of land, but what you're seeing or we're seeing from the site needs analysis is you don't have an adequate number of sites in each of these size categories to meet the future demand that we're seeing. So again, these are kind of two different ways to sort of think about that equation. Um and so that site needs analysis is saying that you don't have enough um properties in the inventory in the size ranges that are needed to support the future land needs. And I think another thing to just note um is that particularly for large sites um that does have an impact on your ability to you know attract or recruit um those kind of companies or or firms that need larger sites. And that is something that we heard from members of the um project advisory committee during this process. So that's kind of one of our key key takeaways. We'll kind of see some of that in tabular form in the next one. So I want to sort of again be careful to say that this these are these numbers are based on averages. They're based on you know our understanding of sort of the current configuration of sites. Um but this is showing potentially a pretty significant um deficit of land to meet those future site needs if we just apply those average um site sizes from those different site range categories. So

there is a big difference between sort of that um estimated uh land demand based on the aggregate calculation versus the site needs calculation. Um, but I do want to sort of caveat the site needs calculation is it's frankly a little less dependable in terms of coming up with a specific number, but um, we wanted to come up with a specific number. That was one of the requests of the project advisory committee and staff. And so, you know, we've got that here in the report. And and I think either way, kind of the takeaway is we don't see enough sites in those different ranges to meet the demand that we're expecting. So, um, next one and then we'll take a pause after this next one. So, just in terms of updating the memos that were in your packet, um, we, um, we got some kind of I'll say late breaking comments from pack members about specific sites. We had made quite a few changes already to the inventory in terms of changing the status or eliminating sites or reducing acreages, but there's a few that were mentioned in uh comments from pack members that came in without enough time for us to make those changes. So, there's a few sites we still need to um adjust and then recalculate our numbers, update that memo, the buildable lands inventory memo. So, it's not what you got in your packet. Still needs a little bit of updating. And then we also just want to and Arianne mentioned this earlier um provide a little more narrative that describes that comparison um of site demand and buildable land supply in terms of the um the uh sites in those different size ranges and just include some of the things we've been saying verbally about you know how do we come up with that what are the caveats what are the limitations etc. So, there's some more narrative that we will be adding to um our reports and to the

kind of condensed narrative that would go into the comp plan um the comp plan amendments. And I'll talk about that again in a little bit. So, I will pause um and just see if you all have any questions or comments about any of that before we move on and talk about the comp plan amendments.

Questions? I have a couple. Um the map on page 11 of the you go. Um the pink areas are defined as being committed. Could you repeat the definition of a committed site? There you I know you had it up there. There it is.

Yeah. Uh so committed sites are so they're either vacant or partially vacant. Um in some cases they may um that have been reserved for a or committed to non-employment uses or they cannot be developed for employment use during that planning period. So um some of these sites like an example would be um let me think here what a good example. So the community college and medical center sites we identified as committed as these sites are already committed to another use. Um, same for maybe a site that is a parking lot or maybe a storage facility for an adjacent use. So, that site was identified as committed. Um, Matt, I don't know if you have any others you would want to throw out there.

Yeah, there are um at least one or two sites that are um that are committed for use for infrastructure, you know, wastewater treatment, etc. Um and then also um there are some things that we identified as committed because they are essentially like um super fund sites or things of that nature. Um and so within the state rules that guide these processes, they allow us to take some of those types of sites out of the mix. Um and even though they might be vacant or partially vacant, we identified them as committed. If they really due to that condition, which is again, you know, specifically um cited in the state rules, we can take them out. We classified them as committed. So those are a few different types of examples. Um there might be others, but that covers quite a few of them. Yeah, you mentioned the two you mentioned the two sites that uh I was asking about which were the hospital and the um the um the the community college.

Yeah, I guess it's it's hard for me to understand the difference between a committed site and a and a um developed site. Well, I think the reason for the uh the difference mainly is developed is sort of fully developed um committed. There is some acreage there that's not developed, but it's committed to this um this other future use that's there could be some employment I guess in the future, but we're assuming it's committed to this institutional use and and not kind of available to sell or accommodate other types of employment uses. Okay.

So, that's that's how we define them. On the next page, uh, table four, the bottom line number there, 2012 point 201.6 is is that that's the number that was the source of so much debate, shall we say, a couple years ago? Well, it was a different number a couple years ago. But but that's that was the number that caused a lot of concern, wouldn't Yes, it was a different number. It was a bigger number. Um, yeah. What what was the number? Do you remember? Gosh, I I can come up with it like before we're done, I think. But I I want to say it was like

I has I'm not gonna say it because I don't want to get it wrong. Um but I'll go back and take a quick look. One of us will um kind of while we're talking about the other pieces of the presentation and and let you know, but yes, that was that was the number and um that caused a lot of concern and um particularly um if we had a row for Google sites, that acreage number was quite a bit higher. Um so some of those sites have been developed. I will note um that there was a little bit of actual net increase in that number due to the fact that FEMA flood plane maps have been updated in that time and we have used the most recently updated um FEMA maps and so you actually now have a little bit less flood plane area. So that sort of reduced the constraints and increased the buildable land. So there were some changes that went sort of the other direction in terms of the um that FEMA mapping, but in most cases this 202 number was I mean the total was definitely higher um previously and you know across most of these cells or rows you see a reduction.

Yeah. Another reason we should appreciate FEMA so much. Yeah. Sorry. Uh okay. On page uh 16 at the top, you talk about the very first bullet point, first sentence. Uh this inventory documents the supply of land within the city that is buildable pursuant to Oregon statutes and administrative rules. So state statutes dictate the method by which we calculate that number. Is that that's a fair statement?

I mean I think that's a fair statement. They do provide a certain amount of leeway um or actually a couple but yes they also are fairly prescriptive in other ways and so you know everything we've done we're making sure that we're being consistent with the state rules because frankly we don't want you to get appealed you know if you want to adopt this and or made some other decision based on this information. We don't we don't want to see that happen. So yeah they do dictate in large part the types of things we can take out of an inventory. for instance, or call unbuildable. And you know, there was that kind of funnel diagram that Jessa showed earlier. There are some sites that are vacant that are going to be costly to develop, but we can't take sites out of the inventory simply because they're costly development, costly to develop, and we we can't take them take them out of the long-term inventory because the property owner says, "I'm not going to develop this in the next 5 years." So, that's kind of where some of those rules come in. So, yeah, short answer is yes, that is correct. Okay. And the second bullet point, um, because some of the city's larger vacant, partially vacant developable employment sites are owned by companies that have that have acquired properties for development, but do not have immediate plans and do not plan to sell or lease these properties. There is a lesser supply of properties that are traditionally available quote unquote for development in the short term. For example, three of the vacant Medium sites are owned by Google. As a result, they are not anticipated to be available to other users, but are appropriately included in the city's 20-year supply of buildable employment land. So, my question is, if they're not available, quote unquote, how can they be considered buildable employment land? I mean, I just wonder if

Yeah. if that should be rewarded or

well I mean they we can't just for the reasons I just mentioned we can't take them out of the inventory um we could reward them to say rather than available just buildable because you're right I mean they're not currently available they're considered by state rules to be buildable or again available that's the word that's used pretty typically in these kind of processes available over the long term over the next 20 years. Um but they are not available now. So yeah, we might want to update that wording. I think that would be appropriate um to do

even though we need to by rule keep them in the inventory. We can say that if you're looking at your a need for um a certain amount of property in the short term that they we can say, oh, in the next 5 years, they are not considered available. But state rules don't allow us to just completely deduct them from the inventory unless um there's some kind of deed restriction or something like that, you know, on them or one of the other things that's embedded in the state rules that says we can pull them out. Yeah. Having not attended plan commission meetings, I have a question. The Does the plan commission know why I'm asking these types of questions?

Judg.

Well, the reason we had so much debate before was because the gorge commission is using the amount of land we have available for development as an excuse not to let us expand our urban growth boundary. So that's the reason that we had so much debate a couple of years ago about that acreage and why that 201 is such an important number. And the gorge commission used that to the hilt and would make up all kinds of ridiculous statements that would prove quote unquote that the city didn't need to have our urban growth boundary expanded because we have all this land that can be developed. So that's why I'm kind of harping on this. So

any other

I think to to No, no, it's fine. I think to the point, you know, on aside from the the UGB expansion, um both Jake and I chatted with the planning director of Primeville this week and Primeville went through a similar attempt at a UGB expansion, but they were coupling it, combining it with their EOA at the same time, and it got kind of messy and their council decided to actually just withdraw the applications altogether. But with Primeville, if you're familiar, other data centers over there, Meta and Apple have data centers in Primeville and they're buying up swaths of 600 acres maybe. So, if you go up on what they call their upper shelf, I think they call it, Google, you know, it's a large industrial area, but two data centers own all of this land for future development. But it's basically that you could say in this grand scheme of things, you could say that that is developable land, but it's only going to be developed by those data centers. So it's kind of that it's that other thing. It's just it's land that is developable, but it is not available. So I think the re I think the wording is is important and we will definitely take a you know a deep dive into that.

Yeah. Yep. I think all good points. Um, I'm curious, uh, how much would that I mean, is there an could we come up with an estimate of how much it would actually change the the total number of buildable lands? Well, you can kind of see go down from 2011, but how much?

Well, 45 acres. I mean, that's kind of what you're seeing in this table under that kind of gray Google sites. And I will say that that's already been discounted based on there's actually more acres than that, but we discounted it based on the employment density that's typical of Google's um facilities. So um so we'd actually done that previously, but we we maintain that discount. Um so it's kind of got lower capacity than some of the other properties um in the area. But yeah, that would be the change. And again, the way the state thinks about this is that they're looking at what's the capacity for employment. And if a site is not been developed, then even if it's just employment by that company, it still represents capacity for future employment. And so that's why we can't just kind of take it out of the inventory. But I I agree with the comments around kind of the terminology we use and how we describe this. And I think you know we talk about this definitely in that buildable lands inventory the about this issue in particular. So we've we've really tried to kind of acknowledge and document it and I think that's also part of the reason you know we took that site out site needs analysis approach in terms of documenting that as well.

Okay. Uh Carrie,

while we're kind of on the subject, um there was definitely some language in there um discussing how the Gorge Commission is viewing urban areas and taking the regional approach looking at Dallasport as part of our community's essentially outlet for growth. Um and and it it noted that stakeholders felt like that was the appropriate approach from the gorge commission and that has not been the sense that I got have gotten from community conversations in the last few years as that process went through. Um and so I think it would be worth revisiting that language as well um before this these pieces move forward towards adoption because there's a lot I I guess I I feel like there are a lot of challenges with that approach. We don't have control over process in Dallasport. You know, it's a different county, a different state. The communities there aren't it's not incorporated. So there's a significant difference in the kind of infrastructure that's available. um when you're talking about employment land in particular, that gives me a lot of heartburn. Um and so I think it would be that I I would hope that some of that nuance will be reflected in the document that comes forward as well.

Yeah. Yeah. We're happy to take a look at that language. I do want to be clear that none of that land in Dallasport is included in the inventory. So we're not sort of saying, "Oh, this is part of the inventory." But I yeah, happy to take a look at that language and work with staff and come up with it's not part of the inventory and won't be reflected in an, you know, an Oregon UGB conversation, but given that larger context with the Gorge Commission, um, I think it'd be valuable to take a look at the language.

Okay. Yeah, happy to do that. Yeah, the Gorge Commission and the Friends of the Gorge were very um they used to talk about all the potential in Dallasport and how that would benefit the Dallas and therefore reduce the reliance that we had on expanding our growing growth boundary when we had all this land in Dallasport, which I might pointed which I pointed out to them that the city would not get any benefit out of any development over there except maybe people crossing the bridge to shop which doesn't really add to our property tax base. Okay, any other questions or comments? I may add one

and this is this is a little bit for Matt. So, we looked at this um you know this is all just the number the number crunching and there's some some big assumptions that go into it and that is the averages for the square foot per employee. And if you look at for industry, I think it's 600 square f foot per employee. But then you can also look at this from target industries and you can delve into what we set as our target industries and use other numbers for you know we expect this much growth in this target industry and that might not have a 600 square foot per employee. It could have more like a 40,000 square foot per employee which completely changes your expected numbers and necessary. And so that was part of the conversation that we had with Primeville about the their way of looking at doing the um the the inventory because if you look at your Google sites, you know, for the number of employees per acre, it's not 600 per square foot. And so if they're a target industry and we identify that within the the the u the document as target industries and we look through those individually, um we can make some some significant changes. Um, it's going to take some time, but it's something that uh would be the direction of you guys if that's something you want us to look at.

Yeah. Okay. Go ahead, Matt.

Oh, I was just going to say thank you and and we'll go ahead and um move on to kind of the last part of our or almost the last part. We've got like one slide on next steps, but kind of the last piece of this um is to talk about um updates or amendments to your comprehensive plan. Um and so there's kind of three things here. One is to um incorporate narrative that summarizes the results of the the EOA. So, you know, what are we talking about in terms of future employment projections, types of employment, um types of land needs, etc. What's the buildable land supply look like? what's the comparison look like? So, just summarizing that, not in as much detail as in those first couple memos, but we've started to do that um in the third or the last memo, I guess, memo four um or attachment four. So, um we would essentially replace what's in your comp plan now because it's pretty outdated with that updated summary um of this information. Um and then the second piece is updating um the goals and policies um in your comprehensive plan. Um and so there's a variety of new goals and policies and I really want to give um Jake and Josh a lot of credit for drafting a lot of that. Um we want to make sure that you've got policies that reflect what this EOA is saying. Make sure you've got policies that um talk about designating um the an adequate number of employment sites in the right zoning categories, policies that get at providing public facilities and transportation facilities. So, those are just kind of a few things um that we've got. And then your comprehensive plan for each chapter includes goals, policies, and also implementation measures. Um and so the measures are intended to um uh implement those adopted policies. Um we haven't and as part of this process um aren't proposing

to update your plan and zoning map, but we are proposing text amendments um to the comprehensive plan to reflect all the things I just noted above. And I'll say just a little bit more about the updates to the goals and policies and also um a few additional changes that have been noted you know through the last um uh pack meeting that we had. So next one. Uh so again um I'm re I always jump ahead and and say some things before I get to the slide. I feel like it happens every time I do this. Um so again in terms of the um changes to the narrative it's really about kind of updating what we've done updating the narrative to reflect this work that we've done and also adopting the economic opportunities analysis as a supporting document to your comprehensive plan. So that's kind of what that first bullet and those sub bullets are about. Um and then really pretty significant updates to the um to the goals and policies. They've really been um reorganized so that they follow a certain um organization where you've got a goal and policies underneath that and then under the policies you've got implementation measures. So um so we've got now seven goals and then a set of policies and implementation measures under those. I'm not going to I'm going to talk about I think like an example or two but not get too deep into this. Um but it's all in your packet. So seven goals expand and diversify the economic base, grow and attract a skilled workforce, strengthen and activate downtown and community destinations. That might be where we um have some more specific policies around sort of filling some of those vacant spaces and finding ways to help do that. Um, goal four, ensuring economic development readiness and resilience.

Goal five, growing the green economy and technology innovation sector. Six, strengthening regional economic integration and infrastructure. Um, and the point there is not that like you're telling your regional partners what to do, but you're making sure that you've got policies around partnering and coordinating with them. Um, so that's important. And then goal seven is really kind of new to this would be new to your economic um development policies but supporting cultural creative and experiential economy. Um so just kind of a couple of quick examples. So under goal one um expand and diversify the economic base. We've got a policy that says protect and plan for long-term industrial supply. Um and then a number of ways to implement that policy. So preserving key industrial areas such as um port of the Dallas lands um creating policies to avoid conversion of industrial land and non-industrial uses um identifying a way to replace industrial lands that are developed or redeveloped um and increasing the supply of industrial sites um to attract some of those um target industry businesses. So that's just an example under that goal. And I think I've got one more. Um, goal four, um, ensure economic development readiness and resilience. We've got a number of policies here. Um, so one, the policy 4.1 is make it easier to develop in the Dow. So you can do that by streamlining permitting processes, providing pre-development assistance for certain sites that you think of as sort of catalytic sites are going to spur additional growth or development. um and regularly update the city's um uh website, you know, where you've got information about um resources at the city. And then plan for long-term res resilience and adaptability is another policy in there. And we've got a number of um potential measures to implement

that. um addressing hazard mitigation and redundancy with utilities and infrastructure and land use planning, encouraging redevelopment that incorporate, you know, efficiently um laying out infrastructure um monitoring and reporting progress using economic metrics. So those are ways to implement that one. I think um and as I said there were a number of comments. I will say not a ton but a number of good really good comments in terms of um updating both the narrative um I mean actually there were quite a few comments on that one updating the narrative related to summarizing the results of the land needs analysis and the BLI. So, we've got a number of changes and we talked about those really earlier um in the presentation, the types of changes we'd make um to that narrative. Um and then there were some suggested changes to some of the policies um particularly policies uh 1-1 um which is to sort of recognize that healthcare is an important um sector of your economy. We hadn't really previously mentioned that or talked about it in these policies. So adding that and also just you know talking a little bit more about target industries and make sureing you're promoting growth in those sectors of the economy. So those were that's one um change there. Next one again thinking about um health care but also education, recreation, other things that kind of attract um new employers and also help you retain existing employers. Adding some language around those things. um continuing um efforts to relocate the hospital and exploring urban renewal investment in new riverfront amenities. So those were some additional things that um pack members suggested. And then kind of the last one um was adding an implementation measure to policy 4-2

uh to foster partnerships to encourage community gardens to expand locally sourced food supplies. So those were things we heard from the pack already about updating the document that we sent you, you know, in advance of the meeting um to expand on some of those policies and implementation measures. So, uh, I will stop there just see if you have any questions about that piece of it, the comprehensive plan narrative and goals policies. And, and I'll just briefly say I think there are a number of policies and implementation measures. They kind of indirectly get out the comment earlier about um, attracting people into those vacant spaces in existing buildings downtown for instance. Um, uh, so I did kind of peruse um the document. I think there's a few things that get at that, but I think we could potentially say that a little more explicitly. So, I think that's one thing for sure we can kind of go back and take a look at and see if we might have some things to add related to that. So, now I will actually stop and see if you have any comments on this last bit.

Any questions or comments from the last chapter?

I can expand just slightly. Um, I want to give Jake Anderson the credit or the blame if you don't like it of of the restructuring of the comprehensive plan. I think it's a really u productive way to do it like like Matt showed. It's the goals, policies, and implementation members uh u measures, excuse me. If you currently look at our comprehensive plan and the way it's structured, you look into every chapter and we have goals, implementation measures, and policies. and there's really some kind of disorganization with them and that's just really how the comprehensive plan has been for years. So, I think doing it this way is really I I think it really hits it on the head to show us how we're going to be achieving these goals through the different steps through. So, um like I said, I want to give Jake the credit for that to come in with a fresh set of eyes and to the looking at the city's documents and and being able to to to do this and hopefully if the council likes it, this is probably the format of a of a comprehensive plan amendment that I'd probably like to see going forward as well.

Yeah. And I I personally really appreciate it. He did it very quickly, I will add. Like it was really good work um and efficiently done and um just did a great job of kind of nesting things where they made sense. So I will also give um lots of credit to Jake on that one.

On Mad Rod from city council, I want to get back to the mayor's comment. If there are several ways to look at a number about buildable and available lands etc. we should write the comments to our advantage and not the states and preferably not to the advantage of the gorge commission saying we have more available. We have a choice in how things are worded or numbers that are projected. We need to use that to our advantage, not to the Gorge Commission's advantage or anybody else that has to do with us. Yeah, I appreciate the comment. Thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. And uh thank you, Josh um and Matt for your kind words. So the reason that I took this this direction towards it is I wanted to look at it from both the uh business perspective as well as staff's perspective. Um this section goal nine is you are the legislative body. This is your directives. Um and this is where I hope you take what what staff has done and you guys delve into it and really make changes or update it however you see fit. This is your part. Um, and the reason that I wanted to do that with the goals is because I looked at it from the the perspective of a potential business who wants to relocate here and they're going to go through a conditional use permit process. And in order to do that, they have to look at the economic goals and policies and they need to be able to point directly to those goals and policies that are going to support their application. And that's why it's written that way. The implementation side is more for directive. When I when I started, I came in here and I said, "Well, what's my directives?" and we had some documents from 2019, but they never got adopted. And so I've been kind of using those as my guiding principle. But when you look at those implementation measures, that's that's your direction to staff of this is what you're going to go do. And the hope is is that once you you as the legislative body can take this and refine it, then we can move into a full comprehensive economic development strategy that really is is the marching orders for staff to go forward and and do good work. And so that's that's the reason I kind of designed it the way it is. And I would hope that you rip it up, tear it up, make it yours because you are the legislative authority, not not staff. Thank you.

Yeah. So I guess to that end, you know, if you have thoughts um about any changes having looked at it before this evening to pass along, we would love to hear them. If um you want to take a little more time to kind of look at it and dig into it um then you know please do that. Please provide some comments on these goals and policies and implementation measures to to staff and they can communicate that to us and then we can make some changes to that. Um but yeah, any anything you've got to tell us tonight, we'd love to hear it. Anything you have to tell us subsequent to that, we'd love to hear that too. And um I think Josh I I'll try not to steal too much your thunder here but I think we want to take the time to get this right and so you know we don't want to rush adoption of this. Um but and we do want to hear comments from you. This has been I think just the comments so far have been really helpful in terms of some changes that we can make but you know uh if you have individual comments that you want to pass along you know in the next I won't set a deadline for you. I'll let let Josh do it. you know, next couple weeks or something like that, then we can make sure we have things in in really good shape for you hopefully um prior to an adoption process. So, yeah. Anything else you have to say? We'd love to hear it and also happy to hold off. So, that that sound okay, Josh? Anything to add to that?

No, I think that's good. I mean, we've we've really, you know, ultimately targeted this sometime towards by the end of the year, we'd like to move forward with adoption of this. Um, so we will work, you know, I'll I'll circle back with Matt and our team to figure out and, you know, come up with a good timeline or deadline for any additional comments that come in and then we would we would anticipate moving through the adoption process. So, like I said, we wanted this to be a conversation tonight and I think it's been a good conversation. We appreciate everybody's input. Um, and I think it's just, yeah, it's going to make something that's like truly for the Dows and not um, just a check box really. So um we will work in some timelines and reach out to you accordingly and go from there.

So does the does the plan commission formally approve this and does the city council at some point? Yeah. So the steps will be we would we would go through a process. It would go to planning commission first and then we will go to city council who will adopt this. Yeah. So, we had, you know, a tentative timeline of starting this adoption process sometime in September, but we're happy to extend the timeline if council, I guess we can make the decision now if council would like or or even the commission would like to get more comments in on this before we make the changes that we already know we're going to make and then bring it in front of planning commission. So, maybe that's a kind of a consensus for the team on if you'd like a little bit more time to digest the information or whatever you'd like to do. Um,

so we so normal planning commission meetings would be on September 4th and then again on September 18th. Do we feel like one, two, two weeks is enough time for people to submit comments and two weeks enough time to bring something to that September 4th planning commission meeting or

Yeah. No, so what we with adoption process for this any change to your zoning code or your comprehensive plan has to go through a popup process which is a 35day notice before the meeting. So that is something we have to bake into this. So um Yeah, October at the earliest would be if we were to to move forward with the process right after this meeting effectively. So,

yeah, but I'd say if we said, let's say if it was two weeks to get additional comments, then we'd want to have probably a week or two to update the documents, then the 35day notice, and then the first day after the 35day notice that planning commission was going to meet. That'd be the first hearing. That's kind of how the schedule would likely shake out. Okay. But I think you tell us what's a reasonable, you know, deadline to get additional comments to us if you have them. Does everyone seem agreeable that uh September 4th would Yeah, September 4th be a good deadline to have additional comments put in, additional thoughts, just submitted to staff. That's two weeks.

You're talking just plan commission, right? Uh, no. I think this I think this applies to full full discuss like full group full discussion submitted to staff and they can digest it. It would be presented to planning commission and sometime in October after that 35day date. Well, just a heads up but the only thing I just want to see uh that number you know I alluded to Matt um the 2011.6 six what it was what was presented to the city council that number two years ago or three years ago. Yeah, I think we'd be happy to sort of provide you with the the similar table that we document. Yeah, we'll plan to do that as a followup to this

because I think that that'll be helpful and you'll also just kind of see like again how some of the constrained acreage has changed a little bit, right? Yeah. So, we're happy to do that. The other thing we'll make sure we'll do is um you know have a copy of this um presentation available for y'all as well.

One more one more question if I may. Um, this would be an appropriate time during this two-eek period where we can submit ideas to staff about incentives for either available lands like we talked about earlier with the dark window ordinances or um recommending thinking about incentives for private land owners in making their parcel sizes smaller to achieve the small and small medium uh type sizes, right? Yeah. Yeah. Effectively. Okay.

Yeah, it wouldn't be it'll be dependent on, you know, how specific you're going to get. Typically, a comp plan wouldn't be extremely specific to go I don't know um create this incentive for this type of thing, but I think there's probably some language that we could explore that kind of guides the way.

Yeah. And and I'll last thing I'll just mention is I mean I think we want to allow some time to get any additional comments that the things you've already said to us tonight, you know, we'll already plan on addressing. Um, and it's not that you can't make additional changes during the adoption process, you can. Um, but we ideally when we send something out with that 35day notice, you know, we're hoping it's something that's getting pretty close at least. Um, and does reflect the comments that you've made um, up to that point. So, that's kind of our goal is to is to take something into the adoption process that's, you know, as best as we can reflects what we've heard.

Okay. And you're just you're just uh delineating between goals and policy is what you're gonna say. My my thought, you know, what what you were mentioning that would that would be a policy of which um the the city would then look at of incentivizing um the separation of the larger parcels into smaller parcels. And that's something that when an applicant comes in to actually do that job, they can point to the policy and say it's in your policy to support this for economic development. And I see that is an absolutely a great one that that could be recommended that could be recommended. Yes, please do.

And I'm personally if if you get a chance to to go through that um section all those goals and policies I'm I'm happy to meet individually with each one of you um to talk your way through it because we want to make this this is representing you and your thoughts not not just staff. So I'm willing to take all the time necessary to to work your way through it. Okay. Any other comments, suggestions, questions? Does everybody feel we have a road forward that is clear? Okay. All right. Is there any other business to come before this this um group? You want to adjourn the meeting?

I shall. Okay. Meeting adjourned. Thank you all so much. Thank you everyone. Appreciate it. Have a good night. Yeah. Thank you. I also wanted to um I community affairs