Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Yeah, way to come in. I'd like to call to order the August 19th, 2026 Planning Commission meeting. Oh, then the gavel. Risa, please proceed with the roll call.

Thank you. Chair Thompson?

Here.

Vice Chair Wimmer?

Absent.

Commissioner Kuhn? Present. Commissioner Paranchini? Commissioner Lindsay?

Here.

And Commissioner Nick Nevin here. And I do have Commissioner Ledeck as absent as well.

Okay. We have a quorum present this evening, so proceed with our agenda items. Thank you for all being here. Announcements and planning communications. First on the agenda is announcements and planning communications. Commissioners, do you have any announcements or communications you would like to share?

Okay.

All right. All right. So we'll move on to the approval of minutes consideration of the June 17th, 2026 planning commission minutes. Do any commissioners have any corrections or wish to discuss these minutes? Randy had a correction he wanted to put in there. It said, I don't know exactly what he said, but he would like it to be read as page five. Commissioner Ledeck asked if the number of discretionary modification approvals would be calculated based on each facade alone or in combination with all sides of the building. And he would like that correction made. Does anybody have, is everybody okay with that correction? And any other corrections?

Yes, okay with that, because the sentence currently reads, Commissioner Ledeck asked if each facade or in total discretionary pointed resolved on the side.

Okay.

Which is what the trouble was. I also had that note.

So he corrected it. Okay, perfect. Do I have a motion to approve with that correction?

Motion.

Okay. Seconded. And seconded. Perfect. Okay. I have a motion from Commissioner Ledeck.

What's your last name?

Nick Nevin. And second by Kuhn. Commissioner Kuhn to approve the June 17th Planning Commission minutes. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Nope. And we have some asks. No absentees or abstentions. And the motion carries. Okay. Communication from the public, non-agenda items. You're here from the public, I assume? Just observer. Yes.

Okay, very cool.

Okay, perfect. Okay, so that's on the some of that's on the agenda. Yeah, thanks for being here. Anybody online? I don't see anybody online. Okay. So action items. The first action item on the agenda is a staff presentation report on the initial findings of the Tualatin contextualized housing need as part of the housing capacity analysis process project.

Thank you chair Thompson. Good evening commissioners. My name is Erin Engman. I'm the senior planner here at the city of Tualatin and tonight I am joined by Theresa Maltavo who serves as our planning manager. Excuse me. You may recall that last meeting in July we introduced our housing capacity analysis and today we are here to report on the initial findings of our contextualized housing needs. So with that, we are working with consultants, Mary Chase and Matt Craigie of Ego Northwest, and they are joining us virtually. And I will turn it over. It looks like Matt might be kicking off the presentation.

Yeah, happy to jump right in. Thank you, Erin. Good evening, Commission. Terrific to be with you all again and so soon. The summer does go by so fast, doesn't it? So I'm Matt Grege. I'm a project director with ECHO Northwest and joining me is Mary Chase, project manager. We are going to be jumping into a lot of data this evening. We will have time for discussion and questions. This is going to be a fire hose of data here. So we will get through it and we are happy to pause and to answer any questions that you might have as well. So we're going to throw a lot at you here. um let's see mary are you driving the slides okay terrific okay so here's our agenda for this evening um we're going to be getting into a lot of the data from the chn the contextualized uh housing needs study so you'll remember that this is the companion piece with the housing capacity analysis the chn really looks at a lot of those demand components so understanding uh household income changes in demographics and what that means for demand for housing in Tualatin. It also looks at cost and pricing of housing with Tualatin and explores that relationship to really explain what's going on in the housing market in Tualatin, how folks are able or unable or struggle to access affordable housing. within your community. We're also going to do a little bit of a look ahead here. We're going to talk a little bit about how we're moving into engagement. We hope to have a little bit more engagement findings to discuss with you this evening. We have to move at the pace of getting on people's calendars and making sure that we can sit down with them and have good conversations. So we've got a bunch of meetings scheduled. We're working really hard with staff on that. So we can give you a little preview on that. And then of course, we'll always wrap up with the what's next. Okay, next slide please. Terrific. So here we are in the agenda. We were here a few weeks back where we kicked off the project with your commission and then also with a presentation to the city council. Today is the first opportunity for us to really dig into some of the data here behind the CHN. So we're going to be jumping into that. Like I said, we'll be previewing some of that engagement, that qualitative piece. In the next meeting there later on this fall, we'll be talking about the Buildable Lands Inventory and the DRLI. So those you'll remember are some of the spatial components of the HCA that help us help you understand the nature of lands for development or redevelopment for housing within Tualatin. And then a little bit further off here, is more of some of those pieces where we are getting close to the end of the HCA, so talking about some of the overall findings, drilling down to the RLNA, and then talking about the adoption process. But today, it's that data dump around housing and demographics. Next slide, please. Okay, so here we go. We're going to jump right into it. I think we're going to start by talking about, again, this relationship between what people are able to afford to pay for housing within the community of Tualatin and the cost of housing within your community. So let's start with this chart. And I think we showed this in the first meeting as well. I think we hadn't completely marked it up. But this is a tool that we like to use on a lot of these projects. And so a little bit of orientation to the house graphic. You can kind of start from the top. It's a choose an adventure here. At the top, if your household earns so much and then you follow the color down to how much you could pay in rent or how much you could afford to purchase a home. This is using the 30 percent rule of households are able to spend up to 30 percent on housing costs. The median household income is about $128,000 within the area. And so that translates to a home of a little bit more than $300,000 or a rent a little bit over $3,000. We're going to jump more into this, but one of the headlines here is the median home price in Tualatin is a lot more than that. Median home prices are actually off this chart. The median home price recently is $640,000, which is well above what a median household that has the median income could afford. Interestingly, rent, when we look at rents across the community, rent is about $1,800. That's the median rent. And so that's a much more attainable housing cost for community members in Tualatin. Next slide, please. When we start to take a look at what's happening with incomes, the first thing we can take a look at is changes in income. So this is the chart on the left here. So changes in income over the past 15 years. So if we look at Tualatin there on the left-hand side of the chart, we can see that household incomes grew from about $60,000 to over $100,000 by 2024. Those figures track with Washington County, which is ahead of Oregon numbers. So incomes have risen across all of these comparable geographies, and Tualatin is keeping track with its neighbors there. If we go to the chart on the right, and actually, Mary, I wonder if you'd go to the next slide here, because we've got, yes, thank you, because we highlight part of that chart. As we start to disaggregate household incomes, you can see some interesting patterns emerge here. One pattern, of course, that we're highlighting here is about 30% of households earn at least $150,000 a year. So that mirrors the Portland region, as you can see there in the two different blue bars. However, you look at lower income groupings, and if you kind of tally up everyone that is all the households that are making under $100,000 a year, that's about 48% of households within Tualatin. So you can see the disparity in household incomes here in this chart, where you have a substantial portion that is making over $150,000 a year, And then you have about 50% of the community that is making under $100,000 a year. So that has really strong implications, of course, for what people can afford in the community. Next slide, please. Here, we're taking a look at ownership costs, so costs of purchasing homes in Tualatin. I said previously that the median home price in Tualatin is about $640,000 a year. That's a lot. You're not at Happy Valley or West Linn numbers, so there are more expensive places within the community, as we know, so kind of within your Some of your neighboring cities are in the middle of the pack. They're still quite a bit there for affording a house. The chart on the right shows the change in home prices going back to 2016. The takeaway here, as you can see, is a lot of the time series track each other. Housing prices is a function of macroeconomic trends and a whole bunch of things. And so you can see how all the communities are moving together there. There's something going on there in 2022. I think we all remember those times, which caused some fluctuations in the housing market. Tualatin is right there in the middle. It's the red bar that gets a little bit hidden. So again, tracking with the peers, not the most expensive place to purchase a home within the region, but still it is up there. Next slide, please. This is a fun way to think about the relationship between income and housing cost. So this is a home value to income ratio measure. And so this is how much a home costs in comparison to how much households make. So it's just just some math there comparing the household income to housing cost. So a typical measure for a household can afford to buy a home is 3.5 to four times their income. That's kind of the kind of a more of a happy spot there. As you look across all of the different communities as shown here, and we have data from 2010 and 2024, you can see that most of the communities have ratios that are above that 3.5 and for many of them over 5. Tualatin is at 5.7 in 2010. and six in 2024. So what does that mean? That means that people are really stretching their incomes to afford housing. That means that they are spending quite a bit of their income, more than the average amount on housing costs in Tualatin. Next slide, please. Now to take a look at rental housing costs. Again, interesting dynamic here. So to purchase a home in Tualatin, homes are expensive. But as we look at rents in Tualatin, rents are kind of more affordable, more attainable compared to your peers within the region. You're kind of in the middle of the pack there. So that's good news for housing accessibility and housing affordability for folks within the community. If you look at the chart on the right there, that's showing the trending going from 2018 to 2026. So a pattern that we're seeing, of course, across All sorts of services and goods in our economy here, prices are going up. So that chart is showing the prices for studios, one bedrooms, two bedrooms, the three bedrooms, and how they have grown since 2018. So that's a lot of data there. Let's take a look at household incomes, housing costs, rents within Tualatin. I think I'm going to turn it to Mary now to talk about demographics of the community.

Yeah, thanks, Matt. So I'm going to talk about some specific demographics and the way that they intersect with how we're thinking about housing needs in Tualatin. So we're starting off here with age. Tualatin's median age has stayed a little bit younger than the county or the state in the last decade or so, but If we look specifically at the breakdown by category, that slight change is really reflecting a greater share of older adults aged 60 and over who might have specific housing needs that we want to think about for this assessment, like accessibility features that can support aging in place, smaller units that allow people to downsize. And we'll get a little bit further into what some of the disparities are for these demographic groups a little bit later too. When we look at race and ethnicity in Tualatin, the city has a greater share of people of color than the region and specifically a larger share of the population that identifies as Hispanic or Latino. And one of the reasons that we look at this when we think about housing is to see if there are disparities for residents of color. And here we see that there is, in fact, a disparity with homeownership in particular that we see on this slide that BIPOC, which stands for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color households, Hispanic and Latino households have lower shares of homeownership, tend to be a greater share of renters, and that if we look back to 2010 to 2024, that disparity has actually gotten greater since that time period, and that white non-Hispanic households tend to be much more heavily owner-occupied than renters. Another thing that we think about that's related to income and related to demographics is cost burden. When we say cost burden, we are talking about households that spend 30% or more of their monthly income towards housing. And that can be rent, it can be mortgage payments, it can be other expenses too, like utilities, housing fees, those are all included when we look at income versus what people are paying for their housing. And people who are over the threshold of spending 50% or half of their monthly income towards housing are considered severely cost burdened. So across Tualatin, 35% of households in 2024 for this data were cost burdened. But you can see that when we break that down between homeowners and renters, renters are much more likely to be cost burdened, over half of those households experience. at least cost burden. And then about half of that group is experiencing severe cost burden compared to homeowners that have it a little bit less severe. Household composition can also relate to some housing needs when we think about the size of units, the number of bedrooms that they have, different features that smaller or larger households might need. Here we have data both on household size and type. So we see that Tualatin has a larger share of larger households that have three or more people. And as you might expect, it also has a smaller share compared to the region and the state of smaller household types like single parents, people living alone or with relatives, but not couples or families with children or without children. So that tells us that as we go through the CHN that we might think more about the size of units and what's available and affordable at different levels for family households and larger households. To bring it back to cost burden here for a moment too, by age, we see that both ends of the spectrum here have higher cost burden as renters. So this is specifically pulling out those who rent their units and people who are either 25 or under so young adults or older adults who are 65 and over tend to experience that the most for both of those groups about three quarters of them who are renters are experiencing cost burden so as we think about these demographics and how they intersect with different housing needs it'll lead us to different conclusions in the final chn And Matt, I think this is where I'm passing it back to you to talk about some of those key findings and recap us.

Yeah, terrific. So this is an overview of what we've just covered here. So overview in four slides here and then easy reference to if you have questions, we can come back to these. So here we're looking at some of the key findings of some of the things that I talked about at the beginning of the presentation around housing affordability. Takeaway here being that ownership is becoming unattainable for many folks there with that the housing cost gap. Really going up quite a bit there. A family of four would need roughly 160% of AMI to purchase a home in Tualatin. So that is substantial. And this, of course, comes from the fact that housing prices have risen faster than incomes within the community. Next slide, please. So to cover the renting spaces here, while renting is more accessible than buying, many still face a high cost burden there. So that chart on the right that Mary went through where we talked about cost burdening and with up to 27% of renters being severely cost burdened within the community, that's compared to only 22% of homeowners. And so while you're... medium rental rate within Tualatin is low, a lot of those households are still facing a lot of pressure to afford that housing cost. Next slide. Mary talked about how Tualatin is aging. The population share of folks over the age of 60 has nearly doubled since 2010, rising from 11% to 21%. And on the right, there are 72% of renters age 65 or older experiencing costs burdening. So while your community is getting older, those folks are increasingly having a hard time affording housing within the community. Next slide, please. Taking a look at demographics, Tualatin has a growing Latino, Latina community going from 16% to 23% since 2010. So growing and is growing faster than the Portland region and in Oregon in general. And then there's within that community, there is a disparity in ownership with only 21% of Hispanic households own their homes versus 66% of white households. Next slide, please. So a little bit of a preview here around engagement. Like I said at the end of the presentation, we are working really hard with staff to get some calls and focus groups on the calendar with folks. And so we have a number of those scheduled. We'll be talking with folks soon. These projects come through state laws around housing and housing assessments. The law mandates a focus on equitable housing for low-income residents, people with disabilities, communities of color, and tribes. There's engagement activities with all of those communities that are underway. We do have scheduled dialogues with a number of those different communities. Next slide, please. And I think that brings us to our discussion questions with you all. And so these are the discussion questions that we have that we put together. We're really interested to hear your feedback about these things. So we can jump into these. But before we do that, I want to pause and see if there's any questions from your commission about the presentation and the data that we presented tonight. And again, I understand it's quite a bit. So I open it up to you all, and then we can move into these questions.

I guess I have one quick question. I'm already on, thank you though. So it looks like you got it mostly from the census data, but wasn't the census done in like 2020? How does that relate? I mean, how do you make up for that to be to 2026?

Sure. Yeah. No, thank you. Most of our data does come from the census, and the census has a number of different tools that they use actually on a rolling basis. And so there's the Dicennial Census, which happens every 10 years, which gets all sorts of things and is really comprehensive a number of different ways. We also use what's called the American Community Survey, the ACS. which does some kind of smaller surveys and has a formula for estimating things between the decennial census years. And so it's common practice to use some of those numbers that aren't just 2010, 2020. And so you'll see this in a lot of our work and work of our colleagues and other folks in our industry where you're pulling out kind of odd years through that data that the U.S. Census compiles on an ongoing basis.

Okay, so that means that it should be fairly current according to all those. Yes, yeah. Okay.

Yeah, thank you, Commissioner. We're trying to always get the most current data. It usually lags, you know, you'll see a lot of 2024s in our presentations because that's, it usually lags by a little bit. Unfortunately, it has slowed down also in the publishing of some of those data, but we are always trying to use the most up-to-date data.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions?

Yeah, I had a question when comparing the median rent along with the median price and housing, if there could be more of a breakdown and comparing like comparable type units. So typically homeownership, since majority of homes in Tualatin is single family homes, Could we get a breakdown comparing the rent then, median rent for single family homes to rent, single family homes to own? And then same with comparing rent on apartment units as opposed to home ownership or for condos or smaller units so that we're kind of comparing two bedrooms or two bedrooms, three bedrooms or three bedrooms and vice versa. So on those costs.

Sure. That's a great question. More of an apples to apples of are we looking at a 3000 square foot home compared to a studio? What is you know, how do we compare those things? So I think we do have some of those data. And so, Mary, let's let's take note of that and see if we can come back to the commission next time with some more of that data aligned by unit type. Great question.

On that same tangent as Justin, many of the houses owned in Tualatin are being rented rather than occupied by their owner, I think is maybe what we're getting at there. And that the ability for renting a home It should be equivocal as owning a home, but they're being treated the same, although they're not. And renting a home that's three bedrooms is not, whatever it said there, $22,000 a month. It's just not. But renting an apartment that's three bedrooms could be. And regardless, at that point, I think whatever it was, five or six slides in, then it turns into the people who are able to rent a home rather than an apartment. turn into the same as the people who are cost burdened renting the apartments for that same size is where I think we were going with that. Maybe I don't want to put words in your mouth, Justin, but that's all.

Great. It's a good question to get more granular about this data and try to align it by unit type. And so we, like I said, I think we do have some of those data and we'll see if we can, I can see like putting up together a table where you have unit type and rental costs and housing costs. We'll see if we can pull that together.

That sounds great.

Yeah, I mean, ideally, at the end of the day, I think the intent is that the housing built in Tualatin is occupied by the people who are in Tualatin, not in California, renting it out to someone here so that we can then continue to be in town and have our kids in town and our parents in town and whatnot, which is separate from this, I understand. But if the intent is that, we would try to work toward getting that availability.

Terrific.

Yeah. Any other comments or questions?

Yes. The other question I had was figuring out the rent burden and the home ownership burden for that rates. What is factored in with the home ownership as far as costs? Is it just looking strictly at mortgage costs or things like that? Or is it also factoring in that So the cost of maintenance on a house, basically, are all those added things. If you're owning a house for over 30 years, then you have all the additional costs that usually are rolled into a rent. But with homeownership, that's definitely not rolled into your mortgage there.

Mary, I see you ready to jump in there.

I can speak to this because I did some double checking when we were pulling together this chart, but it includes recurring monthly expenses as an estimate. So it includes things like utilities, HOA fees, which might encompass some of those maintenance costs if you're paying an HOA fee. But for the most part, it doesn't account for things that you maybe do like once every five or 10 years. So it doesn't really fully account for some of those maintenance costs, but it does account for recurring monthly costs that are steady for those households.

OK, I think that would be a big thing to highlight because those are one of the major concerns with aging housing stock is that the maintenance costs on single family homes greatly increases as it goes up. It really puts an additional burden. So if you have homeowners that are getting into properties that are barely able to afford that mortgage five to 10 years, 15 years, 20 years down the road, the maintenance costs alone may kind of price them out of being able to continue to afford that.

Yeah. And in our extended data dump that is much longer than this, we do have information about the age of housing in there. The thing that is hard to get at is those maintenance costs because they can be so sporadic and, I mean, unpredictable for homeowners themselves too. But I think we'll try to get at that more qualitatively too through the focus groups that we're doing and just hearing from folks in the community what's a challenge.

That would be great. Yeah. If we could get some of those maintenance costs kind of figured out on, on what it is. I mean, typically home, uh, replacing roofs every 30 years, 25 years, depending on what type of roof you put in there. Average furnace these days, last 20 years, air conditioners, uh, different things like that. Dishwashers, just a lot of those with, with all that stuff, the costs for all that rising dramatically, um, roofing costs alone have, have risen probably in 10%, 15%, uh, in the last five years. Thanks a lot. Perfect.

So I have a question. You guys went through and explained a lot of different marginalized demographic information, but there wasn't any information shared on people living with disabilities in the Tualatin area. Is there a reason for that?

I think we have some of that data in the kind of extended data collections that you will get once we have a draft of the CHN. So we previewed some of the data here, especially focusing on that relationship between income and housing, and then also demographics broadly, we have this appendix of much more data that I think does cover folks with disabilities. And it is a required component of this as well. So that's something that will be within the package of the CHN when you get the draft.

Okay, I think it's just important to share because there is a wide variety across different minority groups and aging population that sharing that would be really important. Yeah.

Or I guess if it's being brought into part of the conversation at the end, I understand you're doing the contextual analysis now that'll lead to what kind of housing later that the what kind of housing would possibly include in theory. something that's paired together with those older ones and their kids or grandkids, or if they're able to do something when they're unable at some point, hopefully not to no longer own their house and reside in place, I believe is maybe the thought.

Yeah. Additionally, demographics on multi-generational housing, houses and families within the Tualatin area. Yeah. as that is on a rise more socially and enables aging population to have more independence longer, having that information would be great.

I appreciate the efforts to have all of this data right up front. And then just while we're looking at it all right up front, remember the end goal.

I'd like to see a little bit more breakdown of the Latino population as to age and income. I had not realized that there had been that kind of increase in the Latino population of Tualatin in the last few years. And it makes me wonder, where are the demographics within that population?

Great. That is something we can also pull.

Any more comments here? I see Zach online. Zach, would you like to, do you have any comments or questions you would like to add?

Actually, the aging in place and multi-generational were the two questions I was going to raise and you guys got it. I'm sorry that I got in late. I was held up at work and didn't want to share what may be an incipient cold with you guys. So I will. Thank you. Stay on this side of the screen, but thank you very much.

Right. Okay. Do you want us to go through your questions you have here and discuss those?

Yeah, thank you. I think we've done a terrific job actually of answering questions two and three. So two being, is there anything that isn't being captured within the initial scan? I think we've got a number of terrific pieces here talking about aging in place, multigenerational, more of a breakdown of the Latino population by age and income. taking a look at aligning housing units by rents and ownership. So we're doing some apples to apples there. And then digging a little bit deeper and being clear about the rent burden ownership costs, especially as it comes to not just reoccurring costs like HOAs, but replacing roofs. So those are my notes there. Is there anything else? So looking at that question too, is there anything else that isn't being captured here beyond the terrific examples that you all had here that you'd like to add?

One I wanted to ask about, you guys mentioned several times, cost of living and the Sorry, relative income here in Tualatin, how those compare to other communities. And you gave them in terms of percentage of AMI, which is great. I don't recall off the top of my head what the AMI rate is. And I also did wonder if there was any sort of data that was available, and this may not be available through the census, but regarding the kinds of jobs available in Tualatin and sort of the average that those jobs are paying so that we can get some sort of idea of a measure of how affordable Tualatin is to people who might be able to work in Tualatin.

Mm-hmm.

That would be really interesting to see, especially as we are looking at industrial developments and the downtown project. And we're going to be asking a lot of questions about what kind of businesses we want to encourage. Having an idea of what level of income those jobs that are going to be coming in that we're going to be trying to foster can provide to allow people to afford to live here in town would be great.

That's great. Terrific question there, Commissioner. And actually, I think we can start to answer this. Mary, would you slide back to slide five where we've got that housing graphic? So in this graphic, one of the things that we add, and I think that we can do it here as well, is so we have incomes at the top and then rents that they can afford or a housing cost that they can afford. On some of these projects, we also add in jobs, jobs that kind of fall within that income range. So if you're a tradesperson, if you're an accountant, if you're a teacher, where do you kind of fall within that range? Our firm, we also just worked with the city on doing an economic landscape analysis. So we have a pretty up-to-date understanding of the industries within Tualatin. So I think we could do some alignment there, Commissioner, around the types of jobs and the emerging industries that we're seeing within the community and how that kind of maps to this chart here.

And I think you guys might've been pretty close because on slide eight, where we were middle of the pack on how much a house cost being 640 versus 610 or 780. If you put that on that slide next with the bars, it's harder to realize, but if we're the middle of the pack, and we're only at 6%, and Wes Lynn is wildly different, but they can afford that much money easier than we can, is what this graph says. And I don't know that that's as clear to regular people as... looking at it on the bar graph on 8 is when you describe it that way. The 640 is way harder to get than 780, even though 780 is so much more. And that's circling back to comparing apples to apples with what you have and where you are.

Great. Terrific observation.

Thank you for highlighting that slide. I think I may have come in slightly after that portion of the presentation. This is all good.

All good. Oh, and on that slide, Commissioner, there was an AMI, but there was median household income, which is a similar metric, which is about $128,000 a year. So that's the data point I think you were looking for.

Right. 128 is not what my kids are making and not what my mother is making either. So on those big points of the graph that are 60% of the graph, that's not it.

Yeah, I'd say I'm just a little surprised that the rent came in. Maybe it's affordable as it did, but I'm feeling like it's probably because our apartments are aging in Tualatin. And so I don't know if maybe that's something to be a little bit considered in this because it feels like if they're aging, I know the new ones are coming in much higher than that. And as they age out, like that turnover or the redo of the apartments could cause that to change quite a bit, just something to consider as we move forward on all this.

So, well, I can say as a renter here in Tualatin who has lives in an older complex that has been renovated, my rent is still off the charts of what you guys have.

Yeah. You've seen, yeah, definitely really high rents, but you must've taken an account for the, I mean, it must've been average. So it just, it surprised me that it was that number. So yeah. Yeah. Okay. Any other comments? Thank you for taking all those notes on our comments and all our insights. You did a great job.

Well, terrific, of course. We want to hear from you. Yeah, great. So I think we've done a great job here going through these questions. Thank you very much. Let's move to the next slide here, Mary, for a preview of what's next, or next slide here. So we'll be back with you in October, right before Halloween there. In that meeting, we are going to be talking about the BLI, the Buildable Lands Inventory, and that's where we are doing some map work. We're taking a look at all of the properties, all of the land in Tualatin, and starting to kind of cross out places that are already developed or cross out places that are constrained. So our wetlands have slopes and things and saying, okay, it's developed, it's constrained. We can't have new housing there. And then really starting to highlight where there are opportunities for redevelopment or new development for housing. So much more on that. With that, we'll also be talking about that methodology. I know that there was a commissioner that had some question about how the BLI methodology has changed. So we'll come back with that along with feedback from these questions. Thank you very much that you've the input that you have provided here today and we'll have some findings from engagement at that point as well. You'll see we meet with the city council there in mid September. And then we're going to be talking with them also about the BLI in November there. So, yeah, so that's what we're covering in the next meeting. And I think that's what we have for you this evening. So thank you very much. And before we kind of close it out and disappear, you know, maybe a last chance there for any reflections or comments here on all of the data that we provided this evening. Anything that we missed or any last comments that you'd like to provide?

I just appreciate you guys taking the time to take us serious when we ask the wild question, you know, can you go get this crazy data that we don't even know if it exists, bring it to us, and you always do it.

Great, great. Well, get ready for that draft when you get it, because the appendix D, I know Mary's gone through it, and I think it took her a day to QAQC that whole thing. So there's a lot of data in there. I think you'll enjoy it.

Yeah, okay.

Well, with that, thank you very much. Appreciate the conversation this evening. We'll see you again in October.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, we'll move on to our second action item on the agenda. It's a city initiated code amendment pursuant to TDC 32.0102E. The Planning Commission is being asked to provide a recommendation to the City Council on a City-initiated Code Amendment that will establish food cart pod regulations under PTEA 26-0002. Staff, will you please present your reports?

Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. Again, for the record, my name is Erin Engman. I'm the senior planner here at the City of Tualatin. And as you mentioned, we're here to discuss PTA 26-0002 and the establishment of food cart pod regulations. And... We figure out how to drive. So for tonight's agenda, we'll cover the project background, kind of do a recap of where we've been. The purpose of this project, we'll review our code amendments that we workshopped at the work session last month. We'll look at our public noticing and engagement efforts to date and review the approval criteria. And then we'll close with questions of staff, public testimony, and we'll ask the Planning Commission to recommend a motion to City Council on this project. My slides on my computer are not catching up. So there are a few factors that led to this project. Tualatin's current regulations largely prohibit food carts from operating in our commercial zones. And where they are permitted, only one is allowed to be present at a site at any one time. And provisions for a food cart pod are limited to one development in our Basalt Creek employment area. As such, the Council 2030 vision identified an action item to revisit the food cart policy. And we found that this was further supported through community outreach conducted as part of the downtown identity study. The community shared overwhelming interest in a food cart pod located downtown near our parks. So in response, staff began a conversation with city council last year and we reviewed Tualatin's current regulations. We came back this spring to council and we presented common best practices in the area food cart pods. Council then directed staff to update the food cart pod regulations to permit food cart pods in Tualatin's commercial zones, including downtown. And they also wanted us to encourage quality destination development. So the project will support an increasingly popular business model that provides community gathering space. It will support an economic development incentive to activize underutilized commercial property. And the purpose of the proposed code amendments are to establish predictable design standards that support vibrant food cart destinations while promoting public safety, quality design and flexibility for future development. These standards before you tonight include regional best practices and have been workshopped by our engineering, building, economic development divisions, TVF&R, and the fats, oils, and grease program coordinator at Clean Water Services. The proposed code amendments have been included in the packet materials as exhibits two and three if you're interested in the full suite. On this slide, you can see that the code touches many development code chapters. We also have included a companion document that includes corresponding changes to the municipal code as exhibit five. The municipal code changes will be presented outside of the legislative land use process and as a separate ordinance to council. But in summary, the plan text amendment amendments before you tonight will establish a food cart and food cart pod definition. And application process standards regulations for signage for food carts how we classify food carts as a use and then how we apply that used to zoning regulations in our various zoning chapters. So to look at where we would allow individual food carts, largely they would be able to continue to operate in our industrial zones. You see that we also allow them in our medical commercial zone and our commercial recreation zone. I've included some wayfinding for you. The yellow areas are some landmarks. The white bubbles show some of the main streets and our yellow star shows where we are located today. I don't know if we have any questions about this slide. I'll advance to the next. This slide shows where we would permit food cart pods, so it includes most of our commercial zones. Again, we have some landmarks highlighted for your wayfinding. Are there any questions about this slide?

I'm sure you're going to get to it. Did we decide? Right.

Thank you.

I'm sure you're going to get to it. Did we decide the difference between a cart and a pod?

The pods, the grouping of the carts, right? It's like the 20 carts.

The 20?

Well, we could go up to 20.

It was more than one less than we checked. Yeah. So by definition in our proposed amendments, a food cart pod would be two or more food carts with supporting amenities. Okay. And then large food cart pod would be 20 or more.

Okay.

Just checking.

Cool.

That's all.

So to kind of do a recap of what's in our suite of amendments, again, I mentioned that we would be establishing an application process for food carts. The intent for the three different review types is that they would be scaled proportional to development impacts. So for a type one review that would apply to individual food carts or modifications to a existing food cart pod that do not increase the number of food carts on site. This would be a staff-level decision. No pre-application meeting or notice is required for a Type 1. The next tier is the Type 2 review. This would apply to food cart pods, which again is two or more carts and modifications to an existing food cart pod that increases the number of food carts on a site. The difference with this is that it does require the pre-application meeting and public notice. And then our third and final tier is the conditional use permit. This would apply to large food cart pods that have greater development impacts, and that's 20 or more carts. And this would be decided by the Planning Commission.

I have a question about that.

Yeah.

I was struck by how many food trucks would be allowed in a large pod, 20 or more? that's the standard you have to hit before you have to come to us. It just seems like that's an awful lot of food carts. Wouldn't it make more sense for that level to be 10, for example?

Well, when we met with food cart pod developers and presented our draft proposal, what we found is that starting with what our city council asked of us to do a destination food cart pod or to encourage that feel, they recommended that you would need a minimum of 10 to 12 food carts to really provide that destination experience. And in speaking with them, they felt that maybe larger impacts start accruing after about 15 to 20 pods. So we just decided to kind of err on the 20 side.

This is what the industry said.

Yes.

I thought the city council too was kind of encouraging. Right. They were looking for destination.

Yeah. So maybe to back up what we heard from our city council is that they really wanted to see destination development. Right. And what that meant to them was that it would include a site-built restroom and a covered seating area for weather protection. They also shared that they would want the standards to provide for Maybe a certain level of threshold where food cart pods wouldn't be so permissive that they show up everywhere throughout town. So I think they were looking for the bar to be in a certain middle ground.

If I remember, it was something similar to this when we talked about it in July because there needed to be some path. for a developer to bring in a destination type one that wasn't so gigantic like it is out in Hillsboro that it would need to come to us. That somebody could just go to the people who write all the code and be like, which of the things on the checkboxes can I do to make this work so that city council can be happy? But we're not making it so easy that you could just place one in Bridgeport, one at the high school, and one at the hospital, and all of a sudden there's like 10 of them. And the intent was that... those destination ones were the big hangup, I think is where we ended up and where it's what started this in the first place.

Well, I think part of it was you guys were putting restrictions on the bathrooms, on the covered area and stuff. And so we felt like we wanted to allow a bigger thing to come in by the time we had those restrictions on the ponds, right? That was my feeling, at least from our last meeting.

Yeah. And I would only just add that like this, the 20 cart pod or something in that range is also keeping pace with best practices from the surrounding jurisdictions of what we saw. So they all seem there's a lot of variation, but there is kind of the same type of pace where there's a chunk of them that are allowed administrative approvals with notice. And then once they reach that, for instance, a tiger and I'm kind of. Losing Beaverton's, but they all reach that type three needing to go to a public hearing right around that 20.

You know, there's some variation, but that's what we're trying to kind of keep pace with. And at some point, these things will no longer be occupied by food pods and they need to still be usable as a multi-use space. So the intent was to get it into the code for it to be a multi-use space that could be repurposed, ideally, I thought. Yeah. Sooner or later, there's not going to be 25 food pods. Sometime 20 years from now, it's going to be, I don't know, a mall again, because we'll circle back to malls instead of food pods.

Thank you. Does that answer your question, Alan, on it? Okay.

And I have a slide a little later in our presentation that kind of recaps our conversation with the development community. And you'll see some conversation around the conditional use permit and how that can lend some funding challenges for developers. So also in our code packet are some design standards. And we reviewed this last month, but for a recap, These design standards would establish that we are going to require certain amenities as we discuss the plumbed restroom and permanent structure for weather protection. We're also proposing setbacks. This way we can buffer uses between maybe some conflicting uses like our residential zone where we would include a larger setback and some buffering with fencing or landscaping. We also include some queuing distance between pedestrian and vehicle areas to promote safety. Vehicle clearance requirements for food cart canopies and awnings, which is a common breast practice. We also are going to require that all storage be located entirely within a food cart or an enclosed accessory building so that there's no outdoor storage on site. And then moving on, we also have some circulation standards to address pedestrian safety and emergency access. That way we can separate our amenity areas from the vehicular areas. We have some standards for bike parking, utilities, on-site lighting, for trash and recycling, and signage provisions. That's the general recap. And as I mentioned, staff introduced the Food Cart Pod project to the Planning Commission at the July meeting. We received general acceptance on the policy questions related to zoning allowances, application process, and provisions requiring a site-built restroom. We then had a robust conversation where the Commission asked questions of staff, which I'll cover on these slides. So we had some discussion about In theory, how close could two individual food carts be located to each other without being considered a pod? So if we're looking at our industrial zoning areas where individual food carts are allowed, in theory, there could be a food cart located on adjacent properties. Looking at some of our design requirements, they would be set back from each other by 10 feet of landscape area. So I don't think they would necessarily feel congruent or unified. But for I think some benefit of this conversation, I wanted to include our code definitions of the various like site parcel and lot. And when staff kind of looked at these definitions against the food cart pod definition that we proposed, we thought it made sense to keep the definition as is. So I don't know if you have any feedback along those lines, but just based on those factors, we felt that we were still in a good position with this definition that a food cart pod is a site containing two or more food carts and associated amenities on private property.

Can you remind me again the definition of the food cart as it parked overnight? Was that the bar or it was independently mobile, brought its own power and water and whatnot? There was something about if it was mobile or not.

So our code is a mobile vehicle such as a food truck, trailer or cart from which service of food and or beverages is provided to walk up customers.

So it doesn't matter if it is standalone or gone at the end of the night. I don't want to talk about the Kona truck, but I'm like, you know, it's ice cream. There was, if we put it, trying to remember what it was, because if it was going to stay parked overnight, and they were coming back to service in the morning, then there was a different bar about the parking and about the bathrooms and about the picnic tables than if you just, I don't know, had a macaroni truck or a coffee truck at the hospital. I can't remember what it was. Never mind. I'll think of it. We'll come back to it.

And I think that might tie into some of the state requirements too. So for individual standalone food carts, if seating is provided, then that's when you need to have some garbage and stuff provided as well. So I think there's some factors that tie into some of those permitting efforts.

Okay.

And then we also discussed the covered seating area. And the Planning Commission brought up a good point that maybe we could clarify how we wrote this standard to further enforce it. What we intend is a permanent coverage that provides weather protection. So you'll find in this update that staff proposes a rewrite where we would now require a permanent built structure that provides weather protection for patrons. The structure must be designed as a long-term site improvement that includes a covered seating area, pavilion, or similar facility. Existing structures may be utilized to fulfill this requirement. Temporary portable or readily removable weather protection features may supplement but shall not substitute for the required permanent structure.

And can be paired with the place that they're at. Like if they had food cart pods in the Bushwhackers parking lot and they've got the covered patio in the bathroom, that they can be paired. They don't need to independently own it. It needs to be nearby.

So I think maybe through a combination of the existing structures may be utilized and our definition saying a site, the development site could have an existing building that fulfills the requirement. Cause I know that was, okay. And then we also discussed provisions that would allow a small stage for live music as an accessory use while food cart pause are in operation. So I did some digging into what's allowed by our code right now. And if you look at chapter 39, which is our use categories chapter, it does have some definitions and provisions where an accessory use or activity may be allowed subordinate to the primary use on site. So this would provide the permission to have a small stage. And then I think there is maybe another question about, well, what happens if there's a noise disturbance? And we do have provisions in our municipal code for noise disturbance. So we could also engage in a code enforcement effort if the sound equipment was too loud. And then we also discussed allowing restaurant developments to use their restrooms as the criteria to satisfy our food cart pod requirements. You can tell I'm getting a little tired. So we kind of touched on this just a second ago, but We think through the discretionary review, we could provide conditions on the approval to ensure compliance with the approval criteria and allow that by right.

I do still have a pathway to be able to stick them in the ancestors parking lot.

Okay. And then this slide recaps staff's engagement efforts with the food cart pod development community that I mentioned earlier. A summary of the conversation and feedback was shared at our last meeting, but when we met with them in July, we got some general acceptance for our zoning allowances from the stakeholder community, as well as our application process. They did share that lending can be a challenge when a project is contingent on a conditional use permit, which I did highlight a few minutes ago. Stakeholders agreed that our council direction to encourage destination food cart pod development should require a permanent restroom and covered seating area for weather protection. So they supported council's direction. And we asked about typical hours of operation and found that they're friendly for a community like us. So we didn't feel the need to include a requirement or regulation enforcing certain hours of operation. And legislative noticing is required as part of the amendment under Tualatin Development Code Chapter 32. Since the packet's posting, staff have provided notice to DLCD, affected government agencies, CIO representatives, and we have scheduled for a notice to be published in the Tualatin Times newspaper on September 4th. So we are working towards these efforts to satisfy as part of the legislative process. We also have the project posted on our public-facing website as well as our project page, the planning project page. And a detailed findings and analysis for PTA 26-0002 have been included in your packet as Exhibit 1. These findings demonstrate that the proposal complies with the relevant approval criteria in our development code. And as the next step, the ordinance for this plan text amendment will be considered by Council at a hearing scheduled for September 28. I'm missing a slide. Oh, there we go. So in closing, the 12th and Planning Commission is being asked to provide a recommendation to City Council on the city initiated code amendment to establish food cart pod regulations under PTA 26-0002. Little mouthful. Staff recommend that the Planning Commission review and consider the analysis and findings and their proposed code amendments in making their motion.

you so much aaron going through all of that um any questions or comments what were the noticing requirements for a pod of two or more if that was going to be including cios as a person and if the notice allowed any rebuttal rather than staff review for the type two Because type two, yes, we listened and could be perceived as that was nice, which is not the intent.

Yeah, so it'd be similar to a type two architectural review. So our noticing requirements would align with that. So somebody could submit comments to get standing, but for a potential appeal or something of that nature, they would have to write or direct their comments to approval criteria.

A reason why they didn't meet approval criteria, not that there was affect in the adjacent area. Yeah, or two pods. I don't know why I'm having such a hard time with two pods. Two carts is a pod. Like five sounds like, I don't know, two sounds wild to me. And I understand, I don't think at this point two is an option to be different. One in 20 is fine, but somewhere in between, I don't know. I don't know that two was the number. And it sounded like city council said two was the number is what the five of them decided.

I think we landed on two just for market flexibility. Knowing that we have required structures, we'll probably need more than two food carts to make those structures pencil.

Right.

But I don't think we want it to be so prescriptive that we're like, we're looking for X number to X number. Okay.

Yeah. I think we might want to just open it up.

We'll open it up to comments here in just a second. Okay. No, no problem. No problem. We'll open it up and bring in a comment.

And the only thing I would add to, I think Aaron did a perfect job, but to the concept of the two being a pod, I can definitely see your point. Well, we didn't hear from council make anything over one a pod. What we heard definitively was that they didn't have any direction as anything in between. So we want this destination with this bathroom and this permanent structure. So it was like that's where we're at. So if you can do that and make that pencil with two, then you meet the direction we got from council. It's probably not likely, but we did not hear any appetite to say, let's do a tiered approach where we have five as a pod. And then we allow three just to set up with porta potties or something like that. So that's why we landed on two being the threshold.

HAB-Juliette Boone, Okay, so I think I do hear that city council still has it underneath that the intent is not for individual food.

HAB-Juliette Boone, they're looking they're looking for a big yeah. HAB-Juliette Boone, That was the general sense of what people are looking for and. I have to admit the bigger ones I've seen are more of a destination. Right. And that seems to be the field we're going for. I mean, I think we're trying to stir momentum in the community to go to stuff. And I feel like this represents that. Even though I know it is confusing with the two, but I feel like it does drive the destination. I feel like, which is what we're looking for in the flexibility. Cool. All right. No. Okay. Zach, I know you're online. Do you have any comments?

Uh, no, no, this, this seems to follow pretty closely to what I recall from our last conversation.

Anybody else?

Yes.

Okay.

Justin. I guess one thing I'd like to see is that the other big player in this is Washington County. So how our regulations match up with Washington County regulations on what's required for the food carts themselves at a site. So with every license that they issue for each one of these food carts, because I believe they break it down into a few different categories.

And the OHA, yeah.

Options or like what's considered like four different sections of a cart or something or what different carts are for different variations. So basically, what for a full on food cart, what's Washington County required a site for those? And so to make sure that our code aligns with that. Um, in regards to the number, I definitely feel again, I think I brought this up the last meeting that, um, 20 was, was the, the minimum should definitely be the minimum for trigger and a CU just because the CU is so much more intensive on that. And you really need over 20 cards to pencil out even trying to do a CU. Uh, then the, the whole thing about two carts, you know, the. if we're comparing two carts to five carts or six carts, it really, to hit those requirements for the plumbing, the sewer, and all of those, there's the idea that maybe five carts as a pot or something doesn't really matter because it just won't pencil out unless you're doing at least over 10 carts to make that work. You can't put in restrooms and you can't put in a covered seating area and all that stuff for two to five or seven carts. so unless we were to develop a system that could break it down and say this is a minor pod versus a major pod or a minor medium pod major pod and depending on when you hit this threshold on the number of carts then that's when we're going to kick in these additional things to kind of match what the the cost would really be because when you're saying like two carts have got to meet what 16 carts can do that's that's not going to work you know it's really you're really saying with this code that you have to have at least 10 to 12 to 15 carts to make something work at this so. The city of portland takes a very different approach on it, and so does Multnomah county with it it's kind of. more of let the market, they're really bare minimum, just kind of do whatever. Although the Bureau of Environmental Services kind of jumped in and threw their own requirements down there. I think Multnomah County has some of the most laxed regulations on their pods to an extent. They do require that there's plans for trash and everything like that and stuff, as opposed to the city of Portland does not do that. So it's kind of, hoping that with this code, it is very intensive or incorporating a lot of different things out there to try to make a full pod. Yeah. Okay. I threw a lot out there. Hopefully, I think the big thing I'm looking at is does the code match up everything that Washington County is going to want at a spot provided for a food court? And then

And when you say Washington County, do you mean like the environmental health?

Yeah, you got to have your food cart license or yeah, your license to.

So the way our code is written right now, individual food carts would have to submit their license as part of the application for approval. And then for food cart pods, they would be conditioned to obtain that licensing.

And the licensing does require, it's the ones for like the prepackaged food, the semi prepared and the full prepared. And the, if you're just passing prepackaged brownies out the window, it's still a food court. You still have to do stuff to get a license, still have to figure out what to do with the other things, but a full prepared one. I think I heard you say you had the fats and oils guy in there about how they're going to deal with that garbage or not on site or a lot or parcel. Okay. Okay.

The only thing I would just offer to the ongoing like two cart pod thing. And I agree that like with you, Justin, that, you know, there's a certain threshold, be it 10 to 15 to make it pencil out where there could be opportunities for the smaller, like two or three is what we talked about before. Is that being in concert with a building? And seating. So there is that potential to have a smaller pod, but it needs to be on a site with an existing perhaps restaurant that has its own restroom and it's covered seat outdoor seating. And then, so it could be built in that fashion. So there is some measure of ability ability to do that.

Yeah.

um okay are you guys okay if i take some comments from the public okay all right you you're asking about the if we've heard from any of the restaurants correct um and have you guys talked at chamber or anything have they been involved in any of this as you guys have gone forward

So we didn't get specific council directions to talk to the chamber. They were included in the noticing that we just sent out this week. But because we just noticed them, we haven't received comment yet.

But you will or potentially might before city council is it? And I know it's been in the newspapers. It's been all over the place. Everybody's talking about it. I know Chamber had issues many years ago, but I feel like the environment has changed a great deal since then.

And I did take a summary twice to the different CIO meetings that I attend. So I did give summaries of what we were doing at that, that format too. So, okay.

That's great. Do you have any other comments or questions? Okay. Right there. Yes. Yeah. Come on up. Yeah. And just push, there's a little tap to speak button and give us your name and address if you don't mind. Okay. Yeah. I've seen you before. Yes.

Thank you, Chair Thompson, Commissioners. My name is Robert Kellogg. I am a Tualatin resident and I also own a business here. I've been involved in the food cart discussions in this town for about a decade, including when I was on city council. And then recently this year, I was going to become a food cart owner. I'd done the pro formas, had a letter of intent ready and came to the council with the one request to get rid of the one cart per legal lot standard. What that turned into is what's before you tonight.

OK, and that's all good and great.

I'm 100 percent in support of good regulations for food carts. What we have in front of you tonight, and I take this from the language of the proposed ordinance, new chapter 33, 130-1, that food carts provide opportunities for small-scale entrepreneurship and encourage the use of underutilized parking areas. Food cart pods provide unique eating and drinking options that serve as community gathering spaces. That sounds great, doesn't it? Right? Aaron, could you do me a favor and go to slide four, which is entitled Project Purpose?

Oh, sorry. I'm navigating the wrong thing. Thanks.

Perfect. Now, isn't that cute? Wouldn't you like that food cart pod in a place near you? What you see there wouldn't be allowed under the regulations we're talking about today. There's no permanent covered structure. There's no permanent bathrooms in sight. There's no evidence of a centralized grease strip. So why not? Well, a cart like that to be developed is going to cost the developer a certain amount, and they're going to cost a certain rent to pay the folks who are going to then pass that on to customers and what they charge people. For a small investment like that, you're going to get a nice community gathering space where people can get relatively cheap food and enjoy their community, right? You're not going to get that by the requirements that are in front of you today. The idea that two carts equals a pod and requires a centralized grease trap and at least a minimum thousand square foot covered structure and a permanently plumbed bathroom. Commissioner Lindley is exactly correct. That is that's never going to develop. Right. And OK, so maybe you want a 25 cart food pod and that'd be great. Right. But think of all the congestion that's going to cause and think of the competition that There's one of these going in just on Tualatin Sherwood Road right by the DEQ in a couple of months in Sherwood. So what's the chances that one of these Taj Mahal food carts develops in Tualatin? Probably not good. But as you've seen from all the public comment and all the Facebook, the next door, people really want food cart pods. And did they say, it's got to be 25 food cart pods with every cuisine from A to Z? Or did they say, just give me a chance to find some cheap food in a community gathering space? So what I'm getting at is I think the regulations in front of you, while well-intended, are foreclosing a lot of potentially good economic activity, small micro-entrepreneurship creation of community gathering spaces. And I know the pressure feels on that a hearing's been scheduled and, you know, you really need to make a decision tonight, but you don't. You really don't. And... The idea of city council wants only one cart to be individualized and two to be a pod and have all these regulations, that expression is being divined from a single meeting they had where a few councilors said a few things. If you really want to know what city council's intent is, Take a pause and ask them and say, do you want tiered regulations? Does that make better sense than what's before you now? Instead of passing something tonight, go in there. Maybe it gets sent back to you. A lot of resources wasted. So I would just take a pause, think about the tiered regulations, consult with counsel or have staff consult with counsel, and then come back and pass a consensus motion on this ordinance.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Oh, one other thing I wanted to say. So in researching the food cart pots, I went to pretty much everyone in the local area and something that's missing from all the regulations is parking requirements. I love going to the garages out in Willamette, or on Willamette Drive, but if I can't find a place to park within six blocks of there, I'm leaving. Oregon City, parking under the railroad tracks, no thank you, right? The one in Hillsboro, terrible parking, right? But 28 carts for a thousand people, but no place to park. So I would give that some consideration. And then one other thing, they were talking about other local regulations. So Tigard and Happy Valley both allow for a certain number of carts to operate without the food cart pod moniker. Right. So, for example. West, no, Happy Valley says if you are four carts or less, you don't have to have a bathroom. You can have a portable toilet and a hand washing station, but you don't have to, right? Tigard says if you have three carts or less, you don't have to have a centralized grease trap. You know, you have to have a trap on your drain and it has to be pumped out by DEQ certified people. So there are examples out there of allowing smaller scale pods with lighter touch regulation. And the comment made that, you know, a restaurant, you might, you know, that's the opportunity to set up. Most restaurants don't want food cart pods in their parking lot because they sell food. Right. And everybody they're selling to is taking a dollar out of their pocket. So. I just don't think that's going to work. But anyway, I've said enough. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. As far as the parking, I believe that's a state regulation that we can't put any parking requirements on the food cart pots. Yes, I do understand that it is very hard when you can't park, but yeah, we have no control over that at all. Okay. With that, would people like to discuss any more about that? Thank you for sharing. I mean, it sounds like that's where we're stuck at is It is sort of a big or very small situation that we put together, right?

Just one or gigantic on purpose. Currently. Not that it couldn't come back for something less than that.

I do think if we did do something to your desk, kind of going back quite a bit on the drawing board, try to redo some sort of situation because I don't think you could allow it to just happen without some sort of regulation on that. It would need some sort of bathroom facilities of some sort. And then we have to decide how we feel about that. Like, I don't even know if we have any place where we, in the code, allow something to be built and then put on porta potties or something. Like, I don't know if we have anything like that in town right now.

well that's temporary so i'm thinking you know like the regatta for god's sake is always temporary correct well that circled back to my first question was did the do the carts need to leave at night or well that was i think that's the old i'll jump right in really quick um so if you attended some awesome football games at the uh high school you know we're one of very few stadiums i think in all of oregon that um

still rock the portable toilets out there constantly for all of it. We are finally getting some bathrooms out in that area. That's fantastic. But, uh, I do believe there's gotta be some ways there to still allow the portable toilets in some form or fashion, um, on it. The city of Portland is still going that same way too, to just say portable toilets are fine with that router coming to options. And there are, um, Other options as far as smaller, not site-built toilets out there, but things that can come in on shipping containers that are kind of plumbed into a site. So you have to already put in full plumbing and have those connections there or water. You can kind of still get something that's in the middle. There's also the option for trailers that go out that provide those services to be on there. And that is something that food cart operators in Portland wanted to do. push more for those just because it's far cheaper. But if you're looking at a food cart pod as being an option for a site temporarily, what's going to be developed, this is the main reason that Portland's still sticking with very lax regulations on the food carts, is because the more money you put into that site, you've got to take out a huge loan to do that. a lot of money. So once you put that investment into it, the likelihood that you're going to redevelop that in 10 years is not there. A benefit about putting a very low investment into an area is to make sure that this pencil's out. So does somebody want to invest a few hundred thousand dollars in developing a site for food cart pods or $5 million in developing a site for food cart pods to see if that works or not in that area, especially with the competition coming in? Like, Mr. Kellogg had brought up, we've got food cart pods coming in from Sherwood. There was just an article in the Sherwood's, oh, I think, or the Valley Times or something about a church, an old church there in downtown Sherwood that's going to be developing as a food cart pod in this next year. So it can be pretty, a lot of competition there. And if we set the bar too high to develop food carts here, we might not be able to do that. So I would not be opposed at all to taking this back to council to see what their direction would be on a tiered system or tiered options.

Maybe a point of clarification too when we were talking about restrooms. Last time we spoke to council in April, they provided clear direction that they wanted a site-built restroom and that they wanted porta-potties to be prohibited for this use.

Right, they just didn't want to see porta-potties. And I think, yeah, which I understand both sides of this. I understand like both allowing the port-a-potties, but then at the same time in town, that is a new thing for us, I feel like. And so perhaps that's why they're a little hesitant to do that because I mean, there is the temporary events and I do understand the high school too. Obviously we're trying to fix that now. But I feel like it is new and we haven't touched that yet. in the city. So I guess the question going forward is, do we want to try to move it as is, or do you want to try to wait? And I think we'd have to look at it. If we are going to allow, we'd have to look at it for a little bit, because I think if we, we couldn't just come up with something tonight, if we were to allow port-a-potties, that would be something that would be more involved. I think like that. Zach?

I think that I would, So when I brought up the question last week about, you know, at what point does one food cart parking too close to another food cart suddenly become a pod? You know, that idea that that line could be crossed where all of this infrastructure would be required and that that was going to be, you know, potentially quite chilling for people coming into the area or finding spaces where they can set up. I think I really do see the point made by our public commenter that this is a whole lot of infrastructure required. It does require either a huge project or not at all. And I do not know if it is realistic to expect that kind of development to come up here when there are competitive areas. So if we want to see food cart pods actually, actually materialize here in Tualatin, I think I agree that having some sort of tiered optionality that doesn't require all of that, I would really like to have that conversation continue. Um, so I, I would be in favor of, of, you know, asking more of those questions, talking about some of those other options because, you know, the idea of having to put in permanent plumbing for a set of, of three pods, you're right. That's, that's going to completely prohibit any, any sort of development sub 20, at which point it's, it's, it's, it just feels like we're, we're, we're asking it to go from zero to 60 or nothing. Really, really here. And so I would love for this conversation to be bounced back to council and to discuss a little bit more rather than passing something that theoretically opens the door to this development, but functionally makes it infeasible.

When you guys spoke to the investors, they came back and seemed interested at that level that you guys had suggested, correct? Because it seems like you had interested parties you were talking to and everything, correct?

Correct. So I believe our economic development group has probably spoken to about five or seven food cart developers. And then we took that list and sought this feedback group and engagement that we got in July. Two in particular shared that they think a destination food cart would be eight to 10 or more food carts, and that they also agreed that a restroom and covered seating area should support that destination feel. So that made staff feel like we were aligning our code with council's goals that we heard and got direction from. But we also wanted to provide some flexibility, which is where the two food carts could be a pod and maybe supplement an existing business like a brewery that may not want to have a restaurant, but because of OLCC, you need to serve food.

Right. And it seemed like it was economically feasible for talking to them.

We didn't get into the specifics of the smaller and if there's an existing facility on site, but I believe because the infrastructure is existing that in theory it could be feasible.

Westland has that food pod. that is, it has permanent structures, it has all of that going on, fire, and everything. It's like six pods, I mean, six carts or something, I think is what it is. It's not enormous. I think maybe it has a brewery or something associated with it, doesn't it, in there? But it is making, there is the competition that's going on, obviously. But I do understand the bathrooms. I do feel like that's a, I feel like that is sort of the hinging point of the whole thing. Like, do we start allowing the earth bodies or not? And it feels like if we want to have that discussion is a whole nother discussion to add those to the level. I don't think we can say for sure it's going to take 20 pods to pencil it out because I think there have been others that are making it. I definitely think it's more than two for sure. I think it's quite a few. And then you're right about the competition and the difficulty of that. And I do understand wanting, people want the pot, like they want the food carts, they want the pods, like there is a demand in the city for this to happen. And so we don't want to pass something that's not going to happen, especially after all the discussion. So what's the general feel from everyone? Do people want to move forward with what we have? Test the waters? If nothing happened, we could come back. It'd be a ton of work, but we could come back at some point. Or do we want to test city council and see if they're willing to move on their bathroom plans?

If I could maybe just suggest some options, perhaps. And I'm just thinking this through at the moment. But yeah, certainly, obviously, if you feel comfortable with what we've proposed to you today, you could recommend that with the caveat that in... a certain amount of time, we come back once we have regulations in place to explore an option for a smaller pod, if you will, with less standards. I do think there is some value of at least getting something on the books. And once they're there, it isn't quite as heavy of a lift to then say, okay, we've got these bones in place and now we want to make this smaller thing and allow that to happen. It's sustainable. So that's an option. If you're going to recommend a continuance and you feel like you can't make support that today, I would suggest you identify certain things that you think still need to be fleshed out, whether that's the portable restroom item, whether that's a tiered approach, and therefore you can't recommend support at this time. I like that, Teresa.

Be specific. Okay. Okay. So with that, I think everybody needs to decide where they stand on going forward. So we have something on the books with, we could also put in their contingency telling city council, like, look, we feel like there could be some demand for this smaller section, recognizing that it would need to have porta potties or some other services provided, um, either to be looked at soon or, um, if it needs to be included, you know, right away, if they want to go back and add some of that, um, I feel like I could go forward with something like that saying, let's get this on the books. Let's put that contingency saying we're recognizing that we're missing pieces in there for these smaller pods to actually happen. And that we have concerns about that because I think it is real. I think it's a real concern. Like they would struggle to do that.

I think it's important to give somewhere to start.

Yeah.

What the community is calling for.

I think so. I think an inaction after a long time would be not great too. Alan, any thoughts or comments?

I could vote for this for this proposal, although I reluctantly I could vote for it. I think sending this back to city council is asking for a whole lot of delay. The community is is is rightfully understood to be in favor of this, then I would say that we move this forward and if it turns out that it's not workable, come back to it later.

Okay. So you're sort of filling in that same situation. I mean, I think that's kind of where I feel is moving something forward, but recognizing that we have a hole that we are not addressing and we can put that in our motion. Yeah. Okay.

I would add, so I would like to say that if we're asking us to go back to council to get further clarification or add additional items that we want to look at, that we're not putting this on hold. What we're doing is we're continuing this to get more information and do a more thorough approach at looking at some other options here or to see some things that could work. The code that we do have to say, like, we need to get something on the books so somebody can take action on it, it's not going to happen. we'll say after the last meeting that we had on this, when I go out here, it's a great code. It is, if you have the demand there. I made the comment that like, We do not have the demand in Tualatin to make that pencil out or to make that happen. It's not in the downtown core, not in that area. Possibly by Bridgeport is the closest area where you're going to see that, but you're not going to see it here. There was a comment made about, like, would we have food carts by the high school? Not with this code. It's not possible to do. You cannot pencil out there and do a type of development there. I hear demand about a tiered approach or that idea. I think that's really worth going to council and doing. And when you're developing a code, you wanna do it right and you wanna catch everything that you can with that. And so if council is open to that and saying like, okay, well, we're not, porta potties isn't really the big thing that we're stuck on or something. Maybe there's some other issues there, um, or, or some different approaches to do. But I think that taking this back and like looking at what are the basings that you have to have by regulations from other places, does clean water services say, we don't want you to ever have a pod anywhere that doesn't have sewer connections. Cause that's a huge sticking point because, uh, Some places say that some places don't. The city of Portland does require that, although Multnomah County does not. So if Clean Water Services is the one that's, you know, signing off on these things, I believe that right with. Has a lot of input on it, or can we say, no, we don't want to require sewer connections.

So I think there's state requirements for self-contained food cart pods. And maybe you can help me recall what the council discussion was, but I thought that there was some indication or direction that our food carts should include connections to city utilities. And that was further support for the site-built restrooms to have site-ready infrastructure for the use.

Yeah, it is not Clean Water Services saying thou shalt connect to permanent utilities. So there is an option that you could have a 10 cart pod, theoretically, with self-contained units where they haul it on and off every night. And that was broached in our work sessions with council. And that was part of their sense of destination and permanence being that we do want these connected to utilities. So, the connections will be there, the food carts may come and go and be pulled on and off, but they will each new cart that comes on would connect them to those permanent utilities. And they're looking at it more as a site. Rather than pop ups, if you will.

Yeah. So, I think it's worth pushing back to council to see. what their appetite would be then to say, like, can we do a tiered approach to say that up to a certain amount of cards, up to five cards, four cards, whatever on a site to say that, like, they won't pencil out for permanent. It's not even just toilets plumbed in. It literally is putting in those sewer connections. That's also very expensive to do. Water connection, not too bad. Electrical, definitely not very cheap. But those... Plumbing is very expensive to do.

Plumbing is very expensive. And that centralized drain grease management is also expensive to set up. I think I'm with you on that one. I would really like to push this one back to council and see if they are so adamant that it has to be a highly developed destination set up before they will allow it in any amount other than just, you know, an extraordinarily temporary one-off part. I feel like there has to be some middle ground there.

Okay, so Zach and Justin, you guys are feeling like don't approve the motion at all. Simply send it back. Tell them we would like to see a team approach if they're willing to have some movement on their permanent structures.

Yeah, I think I agree with Justin on this one.

may i ask a question yeah um just as while you continue to deliberate if if there is a a scale that you think is appropriate in that tiered approach i think we might oh yeah understanding we would still need to come back if council so elects to have us go back and study that but that might put some bookends um and save some time if if oh if we gave you what we feel what is appropriate about if and we can see if that keeps pace with perhaps your time i don't i don't know that there's going to be a lot of there could be a lot of kind of circular discussion if the pc says uh we think there should be a tiered approach and then council says what should that approach that tier be and so i think if if you're so willing tonight to say like we think it's four or something come up with a number you might not you might want us to go back and do some homework on our end too and which is fine but if you have something in mind um as a starting point i think that would be good to let us know okay do you get justin you seem to know a lot i would say uh four carts four cars we're looking at a tier approach yeah one to four carts to not trigger

Anything.

I really want to know what Multnomah County says, or I'm sorry, Washington County says. So if they're going to give somebody a food cart license to do it and they say, you need to have these things on site, I'd like to know what that is. Even though we're two different jurisdictions and stuff with it, we wouldn't want to say, well, you can come here, but Multnomah. Washington County is saying you need to have these things on site. So if we can get that clarification added in, other than just saying you got to have your license through them, let's make sure that our regulations do match what the bare minimum is for Washington County. And then this is my assumption, just looking at a lot of pods in Portland, where again, it was like the Wild West food cart pods, and that has gone through decades now of development of trial and error with things. And they do, they're trying to keep it a low barrier for cost because I do know people in the restaurant industry too, that have started out in food carts and go, and it is a very, very tough business. And there are a lot of carts out there. that are not mom and pop carts or anything like that. These are the chain carts basically that are popping up. So these big odds right now that charge higher rents, they're being paid by not individual cart owners. These are like chain businesses now putting these same type of cards, same way you go to a food cart pod in the mall and everything, it's all the same restaurants. This is the same thing that's happened at food cart pods, it's commercialization. So if you wanna keep it to that part where these are like unique little ones and it's cheap, it's affordable to people that are low income, then you got to keep the infrastructure costs down.

Okay, so my question would be, do you put two to four, meaning you have to have some sort of port-a-potty on site? Because we'd have to address that as well. Because I don't think you could do, I mean, one, I don't think you need a port-a-potty.

Port-a-potty is very affordable, yeah.

Yeah, but is there other regulations you need around a port-a-potty? Like I said, we haven't touched that before, right? It's going to be a hand washing station.

One of the other regulations would be a hand washing station with the provision that includes cold and hot running water. So there would be some element of plumbing on the site.

Okay. But that would still require some plumbing if we did something like that. Okay. So how do you guys feel about that? Two to four carts requires that sort of a standard, water potty, hot and cold running water. Do we feel good about that? That is still some plumbing. And then after four, you would be required to meet the permanent standard.

I mean, four is what I brought up, but I mean, I really think it's good to look at what the, anybody that's operating in a cart out there with five or six, it was five, a better number of six. But I personally, I think four is good to that point. It gives people that approach to say, I got four carts on here. This is working. I want to develop further and go. So now it's time to put in permanent stuff.

Yeah. Well, and by bouncing it back, even if we just suggest, hey, we're thinking, you know, can we take a look at this with the mid-level we suggest for, that opens up space for people that do have experience in in the market, people who have tried to set up pods, people who have done more research to then have another, you know, bite at the apple to make comment to, to say, you know, well, we, we heard this from the planning commission. They're interested in opening it up and, and having this conversation. I think that this would be a reasonable amount and here's why, you know,

Okay. How does everybody feel about that? We motion it, but with the condition that we add the two to, I keep saying two to four because I feel like we need to put the portion of there of the porta potties and the running water, the washing stations. we bounce that back. We approve everything else because I feel like you guys did a great job of capturing everything we said last time. I feel like we said, you guys did a great job of capturing every question and everything we said from the last time. And I feel like this is sort of new that we're bouncing this to you. But how do you guys feel about that? Adding that two to four regulation that wouldn't require the permanent structures, but does require some sort of bathrooms and hand washing station and do we want some sort of picnic table with that or do we not like no what do you expect no they're not supposed to stay so just the port-a-potty and then we're not staying there everybody's leaving at this point it's not a destination i want you to recognize that by the time you're doing that it's not this so

You're giving the control back to the market to decide on it.

But they could put in a picnic table.

They could put in a picnic table if they want to do that. They can put in covered seating if they want to do that. But it's not going to be required of them. Okay.

And I think that's in that chapter 31060, which is the definition of the food cart pod. And if the definition of the food cart pod had tiers rather than just anything more than one, That's what we're kicking back to them. We're like, yes, this is fine to say food cart pod is more than one. However, in food cart pod, we would like to see some tiers and if it's more than food cart pod if it's what do they call it large food cart pod uh large food cart pod uh which is what you're intending that makes sense and if it's food cart pod over 10 or 12 it'll solve itself without having to go to planning commission but if it's not over 10 or 12 there's still a very limited vein for somebody to be able to have one or two or five And it may or may not at the moment have to be stuck going through a special event or a semi-permanent use or a seasonal use and trying to find a way around it just because we've made it so impossible, which was the point of the standard to make it so that there was a standard that you could just say, hey, council, hey, city, I want to go do this. We've made it so that they can't. So say that the definition of the food cart pod is. needs to be added to have tiers and that the modifications of the requirements of the approval for the food cart pod in 33-135 may come back if it turns out that we're experiencing violations or trouble or complaints or whatever thing we have since the provisions of the TDC in 34-800 are currently where all those limitations are in there for meeting all the things.

Could you pull up the slide, like what type of review it is, like type one? I feel like that's what you're hitting on. Right, right, right. Yes. Because I think that that is another point, like what type of review would you have for this smaller situation, right?

Because it was individual, was allowed by city staff.

It was pod. There you go, pod. So they right now, a food cart pod of two or more is a type to review. So that would be covered in there, right? Even the smaller food cart pod of two to four would be a type to review, which would still require staff level pre-application meeting and notice. Mm-hmm. Um, and we would just have the, so it would still be within that reasonable framework. Right. Right. Um, so, and then if they modified it. That goes to that type review as well. So does everybody feel okay about that? Yes. That obviously doesn't come to us or anything, but that helps them be able to build it.

Because that includes five to eight to whatever. Yes. Okay. Yeah. It's less than five to eight or whatever. It still has that type two review and all the same approval criteria. The approval criteria are what's going to end up, I think, turning into the issue in 33.135. If there's not a, what's the word differentiation of food cart pod, because food cart pod at five can do all the stuff that you're asking. Maybe food cart pod at eight definitely can food cart pod at two can't. So the, the approval criteria is where I think we're going to get hung up if it's less than whatever makes sense.

So, yeah, that's what we're saying, though. Yeah, that's what we're saying.

Changing the restroom requirements, changing... Yeah, so we would make its own classification. We're basically just creating a separate tier in there, right? That's what we're talking about, is adding that on.

Yeah, I think we're just trying to open up a smaller ecological niche where things can thrive.

To give these guys... to carry forward the council. So we're moving something on. I think that's what we need to be doing. Do we have to have a motion? Yes, I think we do have to have a motion of some sort. Can I quickly summarize what I think I... Who's going to write it? Yeah, well, I've got it. We're going to try to.

Teresa's going to help us. And this might not be, but I think I heard an option that through a type two, there would be a tier that's for pods that are between two and four carts. It would still be a type 2. We recognize we might have to look at some other components in the code to make sure everything goes together. And then we'd have another type 2, which would be the tier 5 to 20. Yes. As a type 2, kind of aligning with everything else that's been brought to you and drafted. And then we would have the type 3 at 20 or more. Yes. I think that's exactly right.

So we just create a separate type 2 for the 2 to 4, but include... We want to include at least port-a-potties on it.

Port-a-potties and no required seating is what I thought I heard.

You guys don't want any seating? No. But they could do seating. I think we allow them to do seating.

I think the gist that we're looking for is it's clear to us that council really, really wants the development of some kind of development of destination food cart. And I get the vibe that they're going for. I think there's some concern that that's going to stifle development in a, in a sort of organic way and the possibility of smaller ones enter. And so I really do think that this is a good one. I like your suggestion of multiple tiers that don't trigger it, that, you know, they can still develop if people, if there's a drive for it and there's enough demand to support 20 food carts and, you know, an open walled restaurant sort of set up, but that doesn't, doesn't demand that. So I like that suggestion.

I agree. I like the fact it's somewhat specific.

I recommend looking at Multnomah County's pod code there because they're basically kind of, they keep things very minimal, but it's kind of like, you got to have a plan for trash. You have to have, I think trash disposal is important. Yeah, that's true. You're going to have briars out there. So where they're keeping that. And then it's also the the plan because they're not required to plumb. So every cart's got to be self-contained or plumbed into the system. So if you're not going to plumb into the system, then you're self-contained. So then you have to have a plan for disposal. So how often is your disposal coming? Then there's a rodent plan to address spills, smells, stuff like that. So it's

Which is part of the bigger plan that we went over last year.

Yeah. So that would be a good option when you're saying we're going to have this smaller number. So then you have things to deal with because when you have that larger number and you got everything hard plumbed in and all these other facilities, well, you're less likely you're going to have to deal with that because you have all that physical infrastructure there.

And so we say to offset the risk of that developing, you have to show us how that's not going to be a problem.

Yeah, yeah. Multnomah County's got some good examples of it.

Well, they've been running it for long enough that we can learn from their mistakes and their victories.

Okay, so to carry this forward, because yes, we do have to make a motion on this. So what we can do is we can motion to approve the existing, I'm just worrying this out, I'll hold it in a minute. The motion to approve the existing criteria, everything we put into this so far, but with the addition... that we would like to see between two to four food cart pods allowed not to do the permanent structures, permanent bathrooms, but that they should be getting at least portable bathrooms, hand washing facilities. And then knowing that you guys will also do some research to make sure that that meets acceptable standards. And you guys have heard so much from us, but I feel like you guys know generally what we're looking for. on that. Does everybody feel okay moving that forward? And then the city council can say, no, we don't want to do that, right? Like they have the option to disagree with our addendum to that. But that does provide a path forward for at least some smaller pods. And we can also, I mean, I can go if we need to and talk to them and explain that we just were concerned about the smaller groups not happening. And we feel like there's enough drive for food carts into Walton that we think we can do that to support that as well. Everybody feeling good about that situation?

I can vote for that. And they're like spacing and stuff like that because those are fire code requirements.

Yeah, I think keeping basically almost all the standards, it's the permanent structures I think that we're worried about, right?

Permanent structures and the plumbing requirements, yeah.

Okay. So I'm going to try to word this out. I didn't write this down. Okay.

So I'll prove it with the existing criteria with the addition of two to four and five or more to include bathrooms and garbages still under the type two review of the food cart pots. Okay.

But what about the five and more? That's what's confusing me. Okay.

So I'll just say two to four. Two to four.

Okay. Okay. So motion to recommend the city council adopt PTA 26002 to mend the Tualatin development code and to adopt food cart pod regulations that supported Tualatin's 2030 vision with the added criteria that we're going to have the addition of two to four carts equaling a pod, it will have bathroom and garbage facilities, not permanent, under a type to review for food cart pods. Please. Motion to approve. Does that cover everything that you guys think you'll need? Okay, perfect. Okay. Motion to approve.

Motion.

Second. Okay. Those in favor, say aye. Alan? No. You're a no. Okay. Okay. So that's four, five eyes with Zach online, five eyes and Alan on a no going forward. Okay, so I think that goes forward with a yay. Let me know if you need me to come to city council with you guys to talk through this.

Thank you.

Is that kind of a little more intense? Yes. So we'll move forward with this. And then, like I said, I can come with you to city council and we can bring it back and let you guys know what we hear. I do feel like you guys did a great job capturing everything we had said previously. And we feel like we threw new stuff, but you guys did a great job. And we will try to hopefully incorporate in some smaller podcasts things but I think you're you are right there's needs to be availability for that and I think there's demand for that too um okay so do we need to take a little break before our third action item or are people okay to keep going what is the action let's just go it's it's the uh it's the city city center stuff oh the reason it's the reason where this is or isn't allowed okay all right sounds like we're moving forward are you guys okay to move forward too okay

Let's go.

Third action item on the agenda is a staff presentation provide an overview of the downtown revitalization project staff, will you please present your report. Thank you, Robert. No problem get re situated so you had to sit through everything.

switch and rolls. Right. Chair Thompson, members of the Planning Commission, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. My name is Quinn Bruner, and I am a policy analyst on our Urban Renewal and Economic Development team. In the audience here is Sid Sin, who is our Urban Renewal and Economic Development manager. So Sid kicked off our downtown revitalization project about in April of 2025, and he gave a presentation to you all in May of 2025, kind of outlining this three-stage downtown revitalization project. Today, we're providing an overview of the work we've completed in the last year, and also previewing the phase three of our downtown revitalization project, which will include substantial planning commission engagement. So I think I mentioned to some of you, but you're gonna be seeing a lot of Sid and I in the next year here. So this is our kind of our first touch point. I've got 16 slides and about a 20 minute presentation, and we can have some discussion at the end. There's no recommended action.

So let me just get this out of the way.

All right, so a quick overview of our project. Last April, we launched this three-phased approach aimed at putting downtown in the best possible position to attract investment and redevelopment. We organized it into the three phases you see on the screen there. The first phase, beginning with extensive community engagement. I know many of you participated in a walking tour, in a community survey, in focus groups, and this culminated in a project both a clear sense of kind of how residents perceive downtown today, as well as an aspirational written identity of what we're hoping to build through the downtown revitalization work. Our second phase was aimed at translating this written narrative into some visuals. So we had some shared reference points to react to. We also began diving deep into some of the development challenges that our most impactful on downtown redevelopment. So we worked with the Sustainable City Year program and hundreds of students from the University of Oregon to develop eight recommendations which we'll get into or eight recommendation reports and studies which we'll get into a little bit later. And then this third phase we are about to begin this fall and this will involve creating an urban design framework New downtown design standards, as well as a consolidated batch of recommendations capturing all these great ideas from the first two phases. And so this is work that, as I mentioned, is going to be highly, we're gonna have a lot of touch points with the planning commission through phase three. So, so far, our work has been guided by a 14-member community advisory committee. It's chaired by the mayor, includes Council President Pratt, as well as Councilor Sacco. You can see some of our excellent community advisory committee members there. It has representatives from a whole bunch of different community groups, including our Parks Advisory Board, the Chamber of Commerce, the Idea Committee, the Arts Advisory Committee. We've got two youth members. We have some downtown business owners, nearby neighborhood associations, It's really an excellent group representative of a lot of different segments of Tarleton's community, and they provided tremendous guidance and inputs over the last year. So I'm going to dive into a little bit of what we found through phase one here first. So I mentioned that we began with extensive community engagement. We had over 200 responses to a bilingual community survey, had a downtown identity workshop, which was well attended. That's the picture in the Juanita Poll Center down there, second from the left. And then we were tabling regularly at events like the Pumpkin Regatta, Viva Tualatin, and Concerts in the Park. From this, we had a whole bunch of different takes on what downtown is and what downtown should be. But we worked with Seville's consultants to summarize all this input into our downtown identity study, a link to which is included in your packet. But this is a really good foundational document for kind of understanding current and aspirational sentiments for downtown. Um, one of the things that I found most striking from the findings of this report is that residents didn't feel negatively about downtown. It's not a place that people avoid or feel unsafe in, but it's also not a place that people feel particularly positively about either. I think a common refrain is what, what is the downtown that you're talking about or where is it found? Right. And that is, um, to some extent disheartening, right. And that we want to have a downtown that we're proud of and that's distinct. Um, but it's also an opportunity that we're not trying to dig ourselves out of a hole. We're not trying to coach folks away from a deeply entrenched negative feeling. Another key finding from this study is that the physical story of downtown Tualatin is not aligned with what people intuitively understand to be a downtown. Right. And so it highlights the report, highlights a series of very specific examples that subliminally communicate that we are a car centric suburb as opposed to being a people oriented mixed use district. And so some of the most striking examples include like our large monument signs along 12th and Sherwood and Boone's Ferry Road, the sea of surface parking, as well as just the lack of concentrations of people. It also, though, turns the corner. It's not just a critical report, right? It also starts pointing towards some of the key elements that need to be aligned in successful downtowns. And so you see there on the left that we need to have 18 hours of activity, active ground floor uses, and a critical mass of buildings all built next to each other. And this also kind of... The report gets more granular, outlining specific elements of the built environment that need to be aligned, which is there on the right, which include things like roads, sidewalk, parking, art, signage, and marketing. Drawing on this report, our community advisory committee synthesized kind of the community sentiments about what we want our downtown to be into these five primary evaluation criteria. Perhaps unsurprisingly, The downtown that we aim to build is one that is vibrant and mixed-use, active 18 hours a day. It is distinct and magnetic, so when you're there, you know you're in Tualatin and not just some place, right? It's environmentally sustainable and connected to nature. That's something we heard again and again, that a defining aspect of Tualatin is our connections to the river, our incredible parks, and our love for being outdoors, as well as our stewardship of the wetlands that run straight through the heart of our community. I wanted to be navigable and safe and not just for cars. Right. There was a real interest in making downtown a district where people feel comfortable. And then we also wanted to be supportive of businesses and particularly our small businesses, which really make up the fabric of a unique district. So our group formed these like synthesizing all of this input from phase one, coalesced around these five criteria, which we then use to evaluate and provide feedback on recommendations that were generated through phase one as well as phase two. So. turning into phase two, kind of, I want you to pin these five because they're relevant throughout the next set of work that we do. This is where we launched this partnership with this University of Oregon Sustainable City Year Program. So this partnership here was focused on, I guess I'd say the Phase one was really focused on understanding current community sentiment and sketching kind of the rough contours of our aspirational downtown identity. But in phase two is where we began really starting to kind of color in those lines and start diving a bit deeper. So here we have, I guess those are some pictures, sorry, of the students through all these different presentations event and events who brought tremendous energy and creativity to this project. And they really helped us extend our thinking and explore what's possible. They worked with us on eight different classes. And so I will share maybe two sentences on each just to give you a little bit of context. I have all eight reports also linked in the staff report. So you can dive as deep as you want to here. But I think we can kind of get a high level. So for that urban design study, we had graduate students in the Masters of Community and Regional Planning course look at how the built environment shapes walkability, economic development, and the cultivation of an age-friendly community. And so they generated 21 recommendations focused on focused on those aspects, primarily focused in the northern segment of the downtown. The multimodal transportation study was a course of maybe 30 undergrads who came together in groups to develop 13 strategies looking at bike and pedestrian movement, vehicle movement and parking. Then that was downtown wide. The downtown market study was particularly cool in that we had these four students from the Oregon Consulting Group who conducted over 550 minutes of interviews with downtown business owners, community leaders, and experts across the state in downtown vitality. And they produced a market study that identified gaps in our current retail and dining landscape. They outlined activation strategies for downtown, and they provided a mechanism that we could use to evaluate prospective uses against our community's desires. The Riverfront Park Design Study, we had a group from OSU and U of O working together to sketch out some preliminary site designs, which was led by our parks department and is providing a great foundation for them as they begin the park design process here in the coming months. They also built some wood structures to kind of show us how their design concepts could be borne out. The architecture design studio was maybe the kind of the crown jewel of this eight-course series in that these 14 students looked at four sites across the center of downtown, and they created renderings of potential buildings that could help us realize the values of phase one or identified through phase one. And so those renderings have provided kind of a shared set of visual reference points for the community advisory committee to respond to and react to. So rather than asking folks, what do you want downtown to look like? We're able to put a picture in front of them and say, do you want downtown to look like this? And what parts of it do you like and which parts do you not? And so we found that to be a really useful exercise and helped us kind of further refine our thinking about the visual elements of downtown that are central. Those last three there were done by PSU engineering students, and they produced a great analysis of our current floodplain conditions, potential stormwater management strategies along Hedges Creek that could help increase development capacity in the downtown core by increasing stormwater retention upstream. And then the Boone's Ferry Road Walkability Study looks at that corridor between the Riverfront Park and the commercial area, because we know a core part of that Riverfront Park development is going to be thinking about how we further connect people, all the folks using the 33-acre park system, down to our commercial shopping district. So all of that work was really, really high quality and really energizing. And through it, students produced, I think, 66 recommendations and 14 renderings, which community advisory committee members have since processed using that engagement framework or the evaluation criteria that I shared with you earlier, providing detailed feedback and reaction saying this will work. This idea is a great idea. We want to see this move forward. This idea would only work if we do X, Y, Z, or we should put this idea away and never consider it again. And so that's been a really useful starting point for us. Um, all right. There's just some more pictures of everybody, um, of some of the many, many students who worked on these projects. Um, and then I guess I will offer the framing that I conceptualize phase one as a lot of the community advisory committee, like hearing information from the community more generally, more broadly, um, phase two has been us responding to it and beginning to, um, to provide some reactions and start to clarify our thinking. And this work that we're about to begin in phase three is really synthesizing and stitching it all together. And so no decisions have been made yet. This has been a really kind of a chance for us to start finding directions that we can make the most of the work that we're about to begin here. So I'm going to provide a real brief overview of kind of phase three. But I want to kind of put the asterisk on this that Sid and I will be back in about two months with an urban design firm. We're currently working through contracting right now. And as part of that, we're refining our scope and timeline. So I just don't want to give you too many details and then come back and tell you they've all changed. But I can give you the kind of the high level of the work that we're about to do. So phase three involves three primary deliverables, involves the creation of an urban design framework or a blueprint for downtown. It involves updated downtown design standards, which will align our code with this project. framework for how we should develop. It ensures that all private development contributes to a unified look and feel so that we're creating a district. It also provides certainty for developers and reduces risk so that they know if they're going to put a lot of money into a project that the development that happens next door is going to be held to a similar standard. And then this third piece, the consolidated recommendation report. We've already heard tons of terrific ideas about how we activate downtown programming that we should do and things that aren't development related, but are very important to creating a vital community. And so we're making sure that doesn't get lost here by having the standalone kind of third deliverable. That's we'll be we'll make sure we capture all these other ideas that aren't integrated into those first two. So the work is being fully funded through a Metro 2040 grant, and we are currently contracting with an urban design team. And so a few highlights from this work, in addition to producing those two big deliverables up top, is we're also gonna be doing additional bilingual engagement, a full parking study, a real estate market study, and then target engagement with downtown property owners, as well as the development community. We are looking at a study area here of about 300 acres. And so that kind of block that we can think of around the Lake of the Common is about 70 acres. We're expanding in every direction so that we can also consider properties with medium-term redevelopment potential, as well as potential connections between sub-areas. We want to make sure that the work that we do today remains relevant for the next couple of decades, and we're laying a foundation for future redevelopment. So that's kind of the rationale for this larger scope here. Adoption of the urban design framework and updated downtown design standards will both come through the planning commission. And so we will be regularly seeking your input here as we advance this. And so we expect you to be providing like incremental feedback, not just seeing a cooked product in a year. And so then the last thing I'll share here is we've got this draft schedule, which will just kind of provide some key benchmarks for you. We expect to have a design framework alternatives in front of you next spring. The way it's currently scoped is we developed three different alternatives, gather feedback on all of them. and then reconcile them into a preferred alternative. We anticipate then having a complete framework report sometime in mid-summer and then pivoting into the design standards work with those being close to adoption at the end of 2027, although the city council meetings may stretch into the beginning of 2028. So that's what we're looking at here. I am grateful for your time. I'm really looking forward to working with all of you over the next year on this project. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. It's a chance to dream big and to lay out a really, I think, amazing opportunity and amazing pathway for our community to keep moving forward. But I'll leave it there, and I'm happy to take any questions from you.

I know there's a lot of enthusiasm around this project, and people are very excited about seeing kind of what comes of the redevelopment down there. And thank you for getting all the public comment and getting the groups together. And I think you guys are doing a great job so far of like collecting everything that I've heard from people kind of wanting to give their input as to like getting an identity and wanting to have a real feel down there of a destination too. So appreciate that.

Thank you.

Any other questions about moving forward? So the next phase that you guys will come, it was the next year we're hoping to get to a conclusion of,

some sort of some policies to help this become reality correct yes yeah i and i think the when we are completed with phase three we will have an adoption ready urban design framework and a new set of updated downtown design standards and so that is the end goal for this phase of work okay specific policies for it yeah that sounds great yeah and it sounds like a great time frame too

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, A question, Quinn, how much are you guys working with the other study being done on the fault and Sherwood and Ben's very, very, very, very closely.

Very close. Yes.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Yes. And also working with the development.

Yes. Yeah. Yes. Amanda is on our technical advisory committee. Who's our sustainability manager and sit is on the project advisory committee for the 12th and Sherwood road project. And we all also sit really close to each other with the city engineering department. So we make sure that we just stay in the loop. And the riverfront park project, it was the other one. Thank you everybody.

Thank you so much for bringing us the report. We're looking forward to seeing more. Okay um so with that there's doesn't sound like there's any further public comment um communications from city staff sounds like there's none and this if there's no further business the planning commission can be adjourned if someone motions to adjourn. Thank you all right thank you guys.