Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. I call the June 10th, 2026 Planning Commission meeting to order at 6 p.m. Can I get a roll call, please?

Chair Yana Simonova. Jeff Sundell.

Here.

Nicole Hendricks.

Here.

Matt Constantine. Rob Candrian.

Here.

Andrew Carr.

Here. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you. And please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. All right. For citizen input, this is the time the citizens have the opportunity to address the planning commission regarding any item that is not already scheduled for a formal public hearing tonight. Therefore, if any member of the audience would like to speak about any work session item or any other matter of concern, please raise your hand so we hear from you now.

I do not have anybody online.

Okay. Is this for now? I do have Cynthia Russell.

Hello, my name is Cynthia Russell. My address is on the contact card on file. I just want to say I was on the task force, the building height waiver task force committee. It's a long one. And I think we had a lot of good discussion. And by the end of it, I think we came to a lot of, we agreed on a lot of things. So I'm just excited to see your guys' discussion, where it goes with it and Thank you to everyone that put together all the materials. There was a lot in all the time stamps and everything, so there was a lot of work that went into it. So I just wanted to say thanks for everyone's effort on it.

Thank you so much, and thank you for being on the task force. Okay. Next on the agenda is the work session for Wilsonville Industrial Land Readiness for Basalt Creek Master Plan. This work session is a chance for Planning Commission to get additional understanding of and provide guidance on ongoing legislative projects prior to a public hearing. So at this time, I call for the city staff to present information they have prepared for the work session. Will the city staff please present?

Good evening chair, commissioners. Appreciate your time this evening. You know, so tonight's kind of a cool night for us. This is actually a kind of a milestone moment in the Basalt Creek master plan process that we've been involved in. It's been over two years and tonight really begins Tonight's work session begins a five-month adoption process as we move toward finishing up this project. So it's a pretty cool night for us in the planning department. We're pretty excited. So before I get too far into it, tonight with me I have Lauren Scott from MIG, one of our consulting firms, Alex Dupey as well, also from MIG. And joining us at some point in time will be Jenna Bogert from DKS who does our transportation analysis. So we should have her online. So keep an eye out for her. She'll be perfect. So let's see, a couple things here. Where was I? I lost my notes. So again, over the past several years, the city, the community, our consulting firms, developers, property owners, we've been involved in what was at one time known as the WILSONVILLE INDUSTRIAL LAND READINESS PROJECT, RIGHT? WE'VE SORT OF MORPHED IT NOW. THE BESALT CREEK MASTER PLAN IS THE OUTCOME OF THAT PROJECT AND OF THE WEST RAILROAD STUDY, AND SO HERE WE ARE STARTING THIS PROCESS. BESALT CREEK REPRESENTS ONE OF THE LARGEST REMAINING EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY AREAS IN WILSONVILLE, AND IT REALLY PROVIDES US A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO LOOK FORWARD FOR FUTURE INDUSTRIAL EMPLOYMENT GROWTH. and to do so in a coordinated manner, right? So through this process, we've been able to examine transportation needs, environmental resources, infrastructure requirements, economic development opportunities, and really doing so in a framework that will help us guide future development in this area for decades to come. So it's a pretty cool and big deal. So as we get into this, looks like we are, do you advance? You probably have to advance, thank you. So tonight's discussion we're gonna focus on three main components of the draft master plan. The actual master plan itself, the document. There are some comprehensive plan amendments in your packet that I'll have some slides for as well. And then looking at the transportation analysis that was performed by Jenna at DKS. And ultimately our goal is to receive your feedback about any of those components that you feel you would like to offer feedback on. One more slide please. But before we get too deep into it, I realize that sometimes as planners and people who live in this world, we get a little bit ahead of ourselves and forget that not everyone knows what we're talking about or why we're doing what we do. So we're just going to take a moment and talk about what is a master plan and really just think of it this way, that it's the way we establish the long-term vision for an area that we want to be developed. This is where we set the ground rules and the framework. We can coordinate infrastructure investments. Instead of piecemeal infrastructure spending, we can do it in a coordinated, more effective and efficient fashion. This is where we identify long-range transportation needs. What do we as a city, what will we need as this moves forward? And we can really think about that in a long-term fashion. We can also look at protecting our environmental resources that we all care so much about. This is where we establish what we wanna protect in the future so that when we get to that future, we already have that framework set up that we have decided to protect that. It also helps us guide future development patterns. What kind of development do we want? CURRENT CODES DON'T DO THAT. THEY IMPLEMENT THAT. BUT THIS IS WHERE WE DECIDE WHAT WE WANT. AND THEN THIS IS ALSO A SPACE WHERE WE CREATE CERTAINTY FOR PROPERTY OWNERS AND INVESTORS. WHAT CAN A PROPERTY OWNER DO OR NOT DO ON THEIR PROPERTY GOING INTO THE FUTURE? SO THAT'S REALLY WHAT A MASTER PLAN KIND OF IN A NUTSHELL. NEXT SLIDE. SO THEN WHY DOES BASALT CREEK MATTER? WELL, BASALT CREEK REPRESENTS ONE OF THE CITY'S, AS I SAID, LARGEST REMAINING EMPLOYMENT GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES. It's a key component of Wilsonville's long-term economic strategy, right? Lots of employment is what we're hoping for. It's a major industrial and employment center within the Portland metropolitan region. And it's also, again, an opportunity for us to coordinate growth before development happens, to do it in a concerned and a thoughtful manner. So the Basalt Creek vision, we have some guiding principles that we've sort of been operating under. Employment-focused development, transportation connectivity, environmental stewardship. These all kind of apply. You'll hear these themes coming up. Flexible industrial opportunities, efficient infrastructure investment, and long-term economic vitality. Thank you. So next steps. On July 8th, we will be back for a second work session here at the Planning Commission. That's where we're going to look at draft code amendments. So you'll actually get to see some really exciting code. These are usually where the rubber hits the road, if you will. Those draft code amendments are going to help implement some of the stuff that we're working on. You'll see the final draft master plan with hopefully only a few little tweaks here and there that you might want. And then there will be some more technical appendices as well, stormwater, sewer, water lines, things like that. So those technical appendices will come through as well in the second session. Oh, and now, I forgot the blank slide was my cue. And now, actually, Lauren is going to walk you through the actual draft master plan, and then she'll kick it back to me for some good comp plan amendment talk. So, Lauren, take it away.

Thanks, Chris. And good evening, commissioners. It's good to see you all again. Like Chris said, I'll be spending some time just briefly walking through the structure of the document, some key components, reviewing some of the placeholders. You may have noticed a bit of red text in several chapters, just to give you an idea of what's coming in work session number two. So the plan starts off with the introduction, providing the foundation for the master plan. It's introducing the Basalt Creek planning area, explaining how this document builds upon the Basalt Creek concept plan and describing the role or the role this area plays in Wilsonville's long-term employment and industrial growth strategy. And this chapter also spends a bit of time connecting this plan and this work to the city's recently adopted economic opportunities analysis and economic development strategy, both of which spend a bit of time and effort talking about Basalt Creek and what should happen out there. Chapter two reviews a lot of the information, a lot of technical analysis and reports went into this. I think there's a long list of appendices. We're adding more to that with the upcoming infrastructure analysis. So this chapter walks through that. It includes the original Basalt Creek concept plan guiding principles. It includes the guiding principles that were adapted for this specific process. It talks about the comprehensive plan policies, those areas of special concern that affected this planning work, and then listing the technical studies as well as some of the key themes from the stakeholder outreach and work that the city has done. And then chapter three reviews a lot of that information, summarizing it at a very high level. It's looking at the economic conditions, summarizing the industrial land readiness, talking about those contractor establishments and the role they play in that area's future development potential. Talks about transportation, a light touch on infrastructure with more to come, and then natural resources as well. Uh, I think Chris said this earlier, but the key takeaway is that the salt Creek really remains one of Wilsonville's most important long-term employment areas, but there are challenges bringing infrastructure, uh, bringing transportation, the fragmented ownership and contractor establishments and making that work. Chapter four, we're really building out the master plan. So we have these layers. That's how the chapter is organized. I'll spend a little bit of time talking about each. We have our natural resources section, the updated natural resources inventory, which is included as an appendix, identified the wetlands, the riparian corridors, upland tree groves, the streams, and wildlife habitat areas throughout the Basalt Creek planning area. And these resources, as we talked about a lot for West Railroad, helped shape those land use considerations. They affect where the roads will go. And they also affected the bike and pedestrian trail concepts, the habitat restoration that could occur in the environmental stewardship as well. And then getting into the land use framework, this builds upon the vision in the 2019 concept plan while we're finding some of the land use expectations and of course including West Railroad as an area that has a land use identified for it. And this framework includes the high-tech employment, light industrial, craft industrial, and west railroad districts. Each district is intended to support different employment and industrial opportunities based on the site characteristics, infrastructure availability, and market conditions. And then I'll just briefly cover transportation. I know that Chris and DKS are planning a deeper dive into that. We talked about this at the previous work session for West Railroad. This work integrates that and then includes a full concept and framework plan for transportation and basically talking about what projects and key intersections will be needed. In terms of the bike and pedestrian framework, that also carries through a lot of the concepts identified in the 2019 plan. This is emphasizing connections between employment areas, future transit service, natural resources, and those regional trail systems that run through it. That includes the Basalt Creek Canyon Trail and the Ice Age Tonkin Trail, as well as some future pathways and improved crossings at certain locations. And then infrastructure, more to come on this one. It remains one of the most important implementation considerations for the planning area. The draft plan builds upon the previous utility planning and will identify infrastructure readiness, utility coordination, and phased investment. We do have a bit of information about that in the plan now, but obviously recommendations, graphics will be forthcoming in work session number two, and we'll have more information about that. And then chapter five is our implementation and phasing chapter. It organizes the plan's recommendations into different buckets. Those are further exploration, planning, funding, and investments. And the intent here is to create a practical implementation framework rather than some list of isolated projects. This chapter also includes a phasing strategy that recognizes that implementation will occur over many years and will depend a lot on infrastructure funding, market demand, redevelopment opportunities, and those partnerships as well. And so just a high-level overview of the phasing strategy. It's three buckets, near-term actions, medium-term actions, and long-term actions. Those near-term actions are really focused on planning, coordination, policy updates, building a strong foundation for the future implementation. MEDIUM-TERM ACTIONS ARE FOCUSED MORE ON INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING, THOSE FUNDING STRATEGIES THAT ARE IDENTIFIED IN THE PLAN, WORKING TO IMPLEMENT THOSE, CREATING AND FORMING THOSE PARTNERSHIPS AND ADDRESSING REDEVELOPMENT READINESS. AND THEN LONG-TERM ACTIONS ARE FOCUSED ON CONTINUED INVESTMENT. IT'S ENVISIONING THE INFRASTRUCTURE BUILDOUT, THAT REDEVELOPMENT ACTUALLY OCCURRING. and then the longer range implementation. You'll notice that many of the recommendations span multiple phases just because implementation might expect to start within the next year, but would actually finally be completed in, you know, year 15, year 20 for some of those longer planning items. Oh, and then covering just the placeholder analysis that we've noted, the plan will become just a little bit longer with the graphics and text covering infrastructure. We've noted placeholders for now, but hopefully that was clear what's to come. Like Chris said, it's the water system analysis, the sanitary sewer analysis, stormwater, those zoning code refinements, which will be a large focus of work session two, will also maybe affect some of the recommendations as well as phasing in chapter five and build out some of the development district descriptions in chapter four and then of course just all the maps and figures that go along with those pieces as well will be finalized and it will include hopefully a nice summary graphic of what this master plan is in chapter four. And with that I think I'm passing it back to Chris.

All right, lots of slides for you guys tonight. Sorry about that. Kinda is what it is sometimes. All right, so the next component is our proposed comprehensive plan amendments, right? These are, you know, essentially the point here, the purpose is updating our comp plan language that'll reflect more of today's current economic conditions. I believe we brought to you the economic opportunities analysis and the economic development strategy. That must have been two or three months ago at this point. So we need to implement those. And also updating the language helps us to support future industrial and employment growth. And then align our policies with the Basalt Creek master plan. You really can't have a comp plan and a master plan that are in conflict with one another. They need to align. So we're in that process. So the existing language, much of our comp plan language is written in the 1990s and early 2000s. So we need to update to reflect more of today. We have some proposed changes in employment forecasts, recognizing Wilsonville as a major regional employment center, and incorporate the findings from the economic opportunities analysis and the economic development strategy as well. And ultimately, the bottom bullet there, modernize our economic development policies, kind of get up to date a little bit. So we've highlighted a few things in the comp plan amendments. The projected job growth is an important piece to Wilsonville's future over the next 20 or more years. Also recognizing our role in manufacturing and logistics, technology, professional services, health-related industries. So our breadth of industries, we needed to sort of get some of that written up into the comprehensive plan as well. So next slide. Modernizing our industrial development policies. Economic resilience, one of the things that we need to make sure that we have here in Wilsonville. And we have more opportunity than many jurisdictions do with the Basalt Creek planning area. It's a real advantage for our community. Preparing and making sure we have employment land readiness. Strategic infrastructure investment, as I talked about. Coordinated, efficient, and strategic infrastructure. And then long-term competitiveness for Wilsonville to be both an employment area and a place that people want to be. There we go. So some new implementation measures. Development-ready employment land. You'll hear some themes throughout all these work sessions, right? And that's a big one for us, a development-ready employment land. Multiple building types and tenants. Not leaning on just one thing to get us through to the next several generations. Interconnected street networks. Connectivity has been expressed as a very important piece of what the city of Wilsonville and the community would like. improving but also ensuring positive freight mobility, bicycle and pedestrian circulation, even in industrial areas, transit supportive design, want smart to be able to run, get people to their jobs, and infrastructure readiness. These are all represented as parts of the comp plan amendments that we've written up. SUPPORTING INNOVATION AND ECONOMIC DIVERSITY. SO SOME NEW INDUSTRIAL TYPES THAT WE HAVEN'T HAD IN THE COMP PLAN PREVIOUSLY. CRAFT INDUSTRIAL BUSINESSES, MAKERSPACES, ARTISAN MANUFACTURING, BREWERIES AND DISTILLERIES, SMALL BUSINESS ENTREPRENEURSHIP. THOSE ARE NOW REPRESENTED IN THE COMP PLAN AND THEY WEREN'T BEFORE. ULTIMATELY THE GOAL, AS WE'VE KIND OF CHATTED ABOUT, DIVERSITY EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES. encourage innovation and support some of those emerging industries. And that's my pause on the comp plan stuff. I know we're just flying through slides tonight, sorry. I have one more, I have five more slides on transportation. Are we filling up for it or do you want to stop for a question or two? Power through, let's do it, all right. These are a little more text heavy, my apologies. I didn't edit them very well. So Jenna, who I believe is online right now for DKS and Associates, she performed a transportation analysis of the Basal Creek Planning Area and the West Railroad Area. And this was essentially, as you can see, evaluating the transportation impacts associated with the future build-out of those areas. What will happen when those areas develop? Hey, there's Jenna. Hey, Jenna. She assessed roadway, freight, bicycle, ped, and trail connections, identified needed transportation improvements that will support that future development, and then, of course, ensured that whatever we're going to do is consistent with the state's transportation planning rule. Next slide, please. That's a lot. Existing transportation conditions. So, you know, some existing challenges. The West Railroad area currently has limited access. There is some significant environmental constraints, wetlands and such. The railroad corridor does limit connectivity. We all know that that's a little too shallow for trucks to go under, and that creates a bit of a conflict. Incomplete pedestrian and bicycle facilities. And, of course, there is some existing congestion at Graham's Ferry and Day. right now, but some of the assets, Basalt Creek Parkway, Graham's Ferry Road, Tonkin Road, good regional freight access, and the planned Ice Age Tonkin Trail. So then the access strategy, and Jenna can speak to this after we get through these slides. I'm sure she'll need to correct me a couple of times. You know, the future development, sorry, the planned access strategy, the future development is anticipated to be served by the northern access via the Tonkin Road, via Tonkin Road, southern access via Gramps Ferry, and then the internal local street network. And in a lot of cases, well, at least in the West Railroad area, that's generally going to be decided by the type of development that we have. We'll still have code requirements, but the location we won't necessarily have in the West Railroad. Additional opportunities are potential future public railroad crossing at Cahalan Road, the Ice Age Tonkin Trail connection, and future pedestrian and bicycle network improvements. I think this might be my last one here. Oh, no, it's not. Existing conditions. So most study intersections, the good news, currently meet mobility standards. Gramps Ferry and Day Road is the primary existing deficiency at this time. Anyone who's been around there probably understands that. So future conditions, so about 20 years out, the analysis assumes completion of the planned transportation system, system planned projects, which include Basalt Creek Parkway extension, Grants Ferry Road improvements, day road widening, and Garden Acres Road intersection reconstruction. Next slide, please. So the key recommendations were to continue or are to continue implementation of the transportation system plan projects that we have now. Advance Ice Age Tonkin Trail connections. Preserve opportunities for future railroad crossing discussion. Those are ongoing discussions. They're difficult, complex, and expensive. Yay. Preserve opportunity. Oops, sorry. Coordinate transportation improvements with future development. We talked earlier about that, trying to be efficient with our looking forward to development and how we spend infrastructure and transportation dollars. And it continues to be a theme. The conclusion is that the Basalt Creek planning area and the West Railroad area can be developed with planned network and currently identified transportation improvements. We don't need any additional major transportation capacity projects that we don't have on the list now to support that future build out. So that's all good news for the most part. We recognize it. The projects are in there. We just need to keep moving forward on those projects. Next slide, please. So the overall next steps for where we're at, we'll be back here in a month-ish, July 8th, for our second work session. On August 3rd, we'll be at city council for their only work session on this project. And then on September 9th, we'll be back here for a public hearing, looking for recommendations from the commission to council. And then we'll start the council's public hearing process in October. So we've got about five months As I said, this is step one in a six step process. So that might be my last slide. Oh, my question slide, that's right. So these were the questions that I prompted that we have in the staff report. But again, your questions do not have to follow this pattern. These were just discussion questions to think about. But we are done with slides and we would like to hear any and all feedback that you may have. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you. All right. Members of the commission, do you have any questions for staff? Any comments or discussions you want to have?

First of all, thanks so much, great presentation. It was really interesting to dive into the plan as it exists so far, so great work on this. A lot of the really burning questions that I have had to do with the transportation system plan. One of the things that I was trying to make sense of as I was looking at the studies and what they might mean is how do we reconcile the local traffic needs of this area with the through traffic needs? So like on Graham Road and Day Road, and on Boone's Ferry Road that leads toward the freeway. My observation as a non-professional here is that almost all of that traffic is through traffic and it's not really servicing the local businesses that operate there or the local industry. How do we reconcile, as we make a change to extending the Salt Creek, how that may affect how much day road actually gets used? How much of that through traffic moves north and day road maybe doesn't need to be widened? How do we think about that? I know we've got professionals here, so how should we be thinking about that as a planning commission? And how can we maybe, I guess a lot of this is coming from the standpoint of how do we avoid maybe

Creating such capacity that we end up inducing more through traffic demand in the area so That's a good question, and it's one of those moments where I'm so happy that we have a transportation expert here to do stuff like that Jenna I'm hoping you heard that question

It did. Yes. Yeah. Thanks for that question. It's a good one to consider in this area, right? You're totally right on. There's so much regional and local traffic happening there at the interchange. We've definitely seen an uptick since the 124th extension was built in, what, 2018, 2019, of that kind of regional traffic moving through the area. These transportation system plan projects that Chris covered in his presentation that the city has in their TSP, they're also in the Metro TSP, so the greater Portland area acknowledges that a lot of these improvements are needed for regional purposes, right, for this kind of cross-city travel access to the I-5 interchange. Yeah, it's tough. There's definitely... kind of a chicken and egg situation, right? Where if you build these improvements, traffic will come. But this area specifically just has so much potential for development. I think we'll find that these improvements are needed and that will probably quickly fill up. If we look at the next 20 years, a lot of that traffic growth will be consisting of a Salt Creek and just the job growth that we're expecting to see out here. I wouldn't say that I'm concerned about regional traffic eating up all of that capacity. And there's certainly partners in these projects between City of Wilsonville, City of Tualatin, Washington County, and Metro that are keeping their eye on things out here as well. And everyone's kind of doing their part to claim their piece of the issues out here. Yeah, does that kind of help answer your question?

Yeah, I think that's helpful. I wonder if there are other materials that also help to kind of explain how this fits into, or maybe even just for my benefit, but if it would help the public understand also how these transportation system plans fit into the broader regional system plans. Because one of the other questions that came into my mind as I was reading the packet was, When we look at the non-car traffic that we expect, and specifically the more human scale transportation modes like walking and biking, how do we determine where to put those? Is it right to really build out a huge non-protected bicycle lane infrastructure the major car thoroughfare, car and truck thoroughfare? Or is that going to create an environment that's so hostile to bikes that no bike is ever actually going to ride on it? And would it be better to maybe think about putting the bikes somewhere else, for instance, creating something that's more amenable to biking and pedestrian infrastructure? And maybe this is too early to get into that level of detail. I know the plan is kind of a little bit higher level. But one of the things that popped in my head is we're thinking about, we're measuring current pedestrian and we're measuring current bicycle traffic and it's zero right now. And it's not hard to imagine why. It's such a very hostile environment for a person on foot or on bike. rather than kind of continuing to build the infrastructure there and assuming like, well, this is day road. This is where we should put all of our traffic. Well, maybe not. Maybe bikes and pedestrians can be somewhere adjacent to it or orthogonal to that main car thoroughfare.

Yeah.

So I, Commissioner Zundel, I can reply to a few of those items and then maybe Jenna might have a few things to add as well in terms of how we model and design the system. But I would note some additional documentation around the transportation planning in this area that has happened over a number of years. So the first was actually the adoption of the Basalt Creek Transportation Refinement Plan in 2014. That actually predated the concept plan between the cities of Wilsonville and Tualatin. And that was because the Basalt Creek planning area that's in both cities was brought into the metro urban growth boundary for the purposes of serving regional industrial need. And there was a recognition that transportation system in the South County industrial area was needed in order to support the industrial area growth of land that was brought in in Tualatin, Wilsonville, and in Sherwood. So that plan was adopted and it essentially modeled and accounted for the regional traffic that would be coming through that South County area and connecting all three of those industrial areas as well as what would be the traffic generated by the local growth that is planned for in this area. And so there was Kind of this split of trips and anybody who was around during the Basalt Creek concept planning might remember we talked about trip caps and internal trip rates. And that was a part of the discussion to ensure that we were being cognizant of the land uses we were planning for in relationship to the transportation system that's being planned regionally. And so you see things like the Basalt Creek Parkway, which is an investment by the county. The majority of that money coming from the county or from the feds, federal money they're able to obtain to help to build that. framework project it's really a project that will be necessary to serve all the industrial areas in this kind of South County what we call the South County area so in addition to that project there was actually a South County infrastructure project that followed it was happening basically during the Basalt Creek planning project that was to help the county to prioritize specific projects for them to help allocate their TDT to. And one of the main projects there was improvements to Day Road, understanding that the parallel improvements to Day Road along with the Salt Creek Parkway are both needed in order for the area to function well and efficiently. So we can definitely share both of those planning documents with you. And I would just note that that is something that we consistently model and work with in our own transportation modeling as developments are approved. That is we have our traffic analysis that goes with every development project. So we're able to continually track how is the growth and the development actually like Happening in comparison to what we planned for and so then we better understand whether pivots need to be made Adjustments need to be made if things are developing different than what our assumptions were during these long-range Planning projects I would also know on the last comment about kind of the multimodal We look at that during the planning process to think about what would be the best placement for things in the basalt creek planning area we looked at the trails that would potentially go and off kind of network. We have the Ice Age Tonkin Trail throughout West Railroad. We then have the hopefully Ridge Trail that will happen up in the Basalt Creek area, just north of Day Road. And then we look at bicycle infrastructure differently than we used to in the past. So if you have been on Garden Acres Road, you'll note that our latest industrial road project has a buffered bike lane actually separated by a, curb so we are working on infrastructure for bike and pedestrian movement that is more friendly less hostile more buffered some of the infrastructure we don't control so there are some roads out there currently that are in like Washington County ownership at this time until they transfer to the city in the future during that time period it will things get built to Washington County standards And so that kind of, there could be differences there in terms of how they'll build a cross-section versus once it becomes urbanized and the city has control and we have different cross-section standards. So I hope that answered all the points I think I heard you made, all the questions you had, but if I missed anything, please let me know.

Thank you. I think that's great, actually. And maybe I can follow up separately to get more of those resources from Benefit in Education. Thank you.

Commissioner Kandian.

Just to kind of follow up with what Jeff said too, especially like talking about the through traffic, and I know from my time on the DRB that when we do traffic studies, we're not allowed to look at I-5, but that's always the elephant in the room, right, is that If I-5 works, we don't have as much through traffic, to your point. But if I-5 is always a bottleneck, then people are always going to be trying to save that one minute because Waze or Google Maps told them that if they exited early and went through the neighborhood, they could save a little bit of time. So has that been factored into this at all about how much does success from the transportation side depend upon a Boone Bridge replacement?

Yeah, Jenna, do you want to jump on that question, please?

Yeah.

Thank you.

The traffic forecasts we... Traffic forecasts that we use from Metro, from the Metro model, do not include the Boone Bridge replacement. It's an unconstrained project rate, so it's not funded. It's not on their financially constrained list. That's kind of on their ability to priority right now. So... So that project is not kind of baked into those traffic forecasts that were used for this analysis. That's kind of standard practice to not include those unfunded long-range projects and to only include those projects that are funded. But yeah, I know that some changes to... The interchange ramps in the last few years have kind of made it more difficult for folks to make those types of movements. You used to be able to take the southbound off ramp and just keep on gliding on through the interchange and get back onto I-5. That ability has been kind of removed up at the North Ellison Interchange. Yeah, I guess the travel models and travel forecasts account for those constraints, right? The I-5 pinch points, the congestion at the off ramps and through the corridor between 205 on I-5 and the boom bridge. So, yeah. Those have been considered. Those are included in those traffic assumptions and the growth rates. And we look at those peak hour conditions and some days, especially in this area are, And so when incidents happen, they feel really catastrophic, but those are not the average days. And so we really try to capture that kind of typical average day. And so I see most of that kind of significant detour happening when there's accidents on I-5, when there's those road closures on I-5. And so, yeah, I'm... Yeah, I hope that answers your question. There's only, yeah, the modeling accounts for a lot of that as much as it can, you know, the congestion and the pinch points in the street network, so.

Yeah, obviously it's difficult with it not being funded. But I mean, like in theory, like the funding timeframe would account for this if this goes out to like 2046. And then I kind of had a follow-up question, again, still transportation related, but also, with the overall development, what type of coordination do we do with Tualatin and Sherwood as well as how this looks compared to like what they're planning to build, what they're planning to do? I mean, I know there's a lot of housing kind of going up like next to Horizon Christian, which could feed in, you know, to possible employment opportunities for people in that area. But is there like what type of collaboration do we have with neighboring jurisdictions on these types of plans?

Yeah, that's a good question. Actually, and I think she already knows, I'm going to look toward Planning Director Bateshell over here since she's been here quite a bit longer than I have. We have done quite a bit of coordination, but I'll let Miranda speak to that.

Yeah, thank you for the question, Commissioner Kandrian. During the concept planning process, we worked very closely with the City of Tualatin. As I mentioned earlier, this land was brought into the Urban Growth Boundary by Metro, and it was intended to be split. SO ESSENTIALLY DURING THAT ENTIRE PROCESS THERE WERE JOINT COUNCIL MEETINGS, THERE WERE NUMEROUS, I THINK IT WAS EVERY COUPLE WEEKS, STAFF WERE MEETING TO WORK ON THE PLAN, THE CONCEPT PLAN. SO THROUGH THAT PROCESS IS WHERE YOU HAVE THOSE GUIDING PRINCIPLES THAT CAME FROM AND A CONCEPT FOR THE GROWTH IN THIS AREA, WHAT LAND USES WOULD BE THERE, AND THAT WAS BUILT UPON THAT TRANSPORTATION REFINEMENT PLAN I TALKED ABOUT. THAT TRANSPORTATION REFINEMENT PLAN WAS DONE IN JOINT PARTNERSHIP WITH THE COUNTY, METRO, TWALTON, AND WILSONVILLE. SO BOTH OF THOSE PLANS WERE DONE WITH A HIGH LEVEL OF COORDINATION. ONCE WE GOT THROUGH THAT PROCESS, THERE WAS CONTINUED COORDINATION WHEN WE DID OUR COMPREHENSIVE PLAN AMENDMENTS BECAUSE WE DID ESSENTIALLY THE TRANSPORTATION MODELING TOGETHER WITH THOSE FINDINGS FOR THE TRANSPORTATION, THE TPR FINDINGS, TRANSPORTATION Planning rule, thank you. How easily I can forget simple words. So we had to do those findings for the state, and so we did all of that work together. At this point, where we're doing kind of master planning, which turns into our own code and the details of implementation, that's where there's less coordination that occurs, because it's really about how we want the look and feel to be, what types of kind of the details that go into the land uses, the site design, the transportation design, the public realm design. Those are all things that kind of happen at that more local level and there's less coordination at that point. But things like the trail, I know Tualatin has, we know what that alignment is generally going to be and where it will connect underneath the parkway. And so then we know at that point how it'll be designed. North and south can happen. independently, but we often will coordinate to ensure that like if they've created a design, well, what are they doing? What are they talking about doing? So we can look at how that might be embedded within the trail design we have to the south where it takes into consideration our own standards, but also would coordinate. So there's continued coordination where kind of the elements in place need further coordination. And then we do track, the other piece of it is we do track their development. They invite us to their pre-app meetings. So if we want to connect with them, one of the key concerns that came out through the concept planning is that most of the stormwater will eventually make its way into our system. and down into our wetlands. And so one of the key things that we tend to coordinate with them on is the transportation system and the stormwater when we're participating in that process. We don't really get into the weeds on anything because they're following the concept plan through their own zoning code and comprehensive plan regulations. But we do participate just to make sure we don't have any concerns. And they will be invited to do the same when we SEE DEVELOPMENT IN OUR AREA OF THE PLANNING AREA.

Maybe before we move off of transportation, I don't know if, Alex, you look like you're about to speak, but before we move off of transportation, I had a kind of curiosity around, in the packet I saw a kind of open question that some of these intersections as we build them will be roundabouts, some of them will be signal, and we don't really know yet, right? Is that an accurate interpretation of that?

I think so.

Yeah. Well, I guess I was just kind of curious, what are the criteria for, especially in an industrial zone where we may see heavier vehicles, larger vehicles, are there different criteria that we use for determining when something can be a roundabout, considering maybe a big semi-truck needs to be able to move through it, versus a signaled intersection?

Jenna, would you like to take that one?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, there's a couple of things we look at. There's an analysis we'll do called an intersection control evaluation at the time when it's time to decide what needs to be constructed. And that looks at a lot of things, the capacity, the delay, kind of those mobility metrics. But it also looks at the impacts from right-of-way, cost, stormwater, it's kind of a whole slew. Truck and freight movement is another big one. So those are definitely considerations when we look at it. Heavy freight and truck movement through an intersection does not disqualify a roundabout from being an option and staying on the table. If there's enough right of way and ability to make a roundabout the right size and give it the right design, freight and truck can navigate those well and safely. And so there's kind of a detailed list of criteria that we'll kind of work our way through when the time comes. But yeah, a lot of times, there's just that kind of multifaceted approach. You have to look at all the variables and weigh the pros and cons of each of those and kind of to get a comprehensive picture of which option signal or roundabout is going to be most appropriate and preferred. So yeah, there's definitely benefits and challenges with roundabouts and freight and traffic. So it will definitely be a consideration.

Thank you.

I have a couple, I guess, for transportation related. On the West Railroad area, how dependent will traffic flow be on a potential new railroad crossing?

You want me to take that one, Chris?

Yeah, please.

We analyzed the traffic for the West Railroad area and found that we can serve the area via two access points, one to the north on Tonquin Road and one to the south on Grims Ferry Road. without the connection to Cahalan across the railroad. That is not necessary to serve that area under full development assumptions. Of course, if that is an opportunity that we can take advantage of and coordinate with railroad to get some kind of public crossing at Cahalan over the railroad there, that would be all the much better. But those two access points, north to Tonkawin and south to Gramps Ferry, will be adequate to serve that area.

Okay, so a follow-up question then. anticipated expense of the south access being Graham's Ferry, the overpass, I guess you would call it, the railroad crossing, is that a near-term, short-term, near-term, short-term, or future consideration?

Commissioner, are you referring to the under-crossing? The under-crossing. Okay, yeah, yeah. I actually don't know where that slates out on a timeline.

Commissioner Carr, at this point, that project is a long-term investment. As you know, we currently have our Coffee Creek industrial area and the urban renewal plan that's helping to finance infrastructure projects in that area that has an infrastructure project list that's incorporated into our CIP. Until we have a sense of when this area might come online, we wouldn't WE WOULD BE LOOKING AT THAT POINT AND TRYING TO FIGURE OUT, OKAY, HOW DO WE MAKE THAT PROJECT WORK? AS WE'VE ALREADY EXPLORED, THE COST IS HIGH. IT LIKELY WILL NEED SOME KIND OF CITY INVESTMENT, LIKELY URBAN RENEWAL, AND WE'RE DOING THAT ADDITIONAL ANALYSIS NOW TO SEE IF IT WAS INTEGRATED AND WHAT IMPACT DOES THAT HAVE ON OUR INITIAL ESTIMATES FOR POTENTIALLY EXPANDING URBAN RENEWAL INTO BASALT CREEK. KIND OF UNDERSTANDING WHAT THAT MIGHT DO BASED ON THE REVENUE WE MIGHT GENERATE WILL FEED AT LEAST SOME INPUTS FOR FUTURE DECISIONS. BUT THERE WILL BE FUTURE DECISIONS ESSENTIALLY ON THAT PROJECT. WE'RE IDENTIFYING IT NOW AS WE NEED TO HAVE A NORTH. WE NEED TO HAVE TWO ACCESS POINTS GETTING IN AND OUT. WE LIKELY NEED THAT SOUTH ONE REGARDLESS EVEN WITHOUT CAHALAN TO GET THE CONNECTIVITY THAT WE NEED THE THROUGH TRAFFIC CONNECTIVITY. And that improvement has already been identified, not just for West Road. If you remember when we were here discussing with you last time, it's also to help citywide that improvement. So we essentially, that project is, it's not in the CIP now. It's probably not in the next update to it. It might be two or three out because there's a lot of other improvements that need to be made first in order to then get that improvement moving forward.

Knowing that both... The railroad crossing and the undercrossing require coordination with a railroad and or, well, I guess they're both through a railroad. How much of a delay is that coordination, would that coordination result in? And how long of a decision point do they have?

I DON'T THINK THAT WE COULD PROVIDE THAT INFORMATION TO YOU DEFINITIVELY. EVERY SITUATION IS GOING TO LOOK DIFFERENT. BUT I DO KNOW THAT LIKE THE FIFTH TO KINSMAN PROJECT HAD, IT TOOK A LONG TIME TO DO SOME WORK WITH THE ROAD ROAD.

I THINK THAT'S MY CONCERN IS THE TWO, OUR TWO Our two access points, the only one that's really viable currently is the one that we're talking about on the north, which isn't there yet. So we've got the two access points that we would, well, the one access point that we need on the south and the one that we would like, the new railroad crossing are both constrained by someone else. They're both in somebody else's control. So it's gonna limit our ability to do So at what point do we say we have to get the ball rolling before we can kind of approve a master plan?

Well, I would pivot that maybe slightly, Commissioner Carr, and say that we create a master plan to then be able to put in motion those decisions. Because if we know that that is... This area the Planning Commission City Council want developed out in a certain way And we have that framework adopted into our comprehensive plan and into a master plan Then staff have the guidance to be able to go out and do that work in order to initiate those conversations in order to and we you know we wouldn't initiate conversations with the railroad after we've figured out a whole bunch of stuff for the right we would go out and we would initiate those conversations earlier as we're doing those other analyses and doing the other plans to try to get these projects in motion.

So do we emphasize the new railroad crossing to give you the legs to go to the railroad and say this is what we want?

So both currently right now, as we were talking about West Railroad, the Cahalan Crossing was listed, I believe, as an opportunity. And I know there's been some preliminary conversation with the railroads just to see Is it a hard no? Is it a maybe? What that starts to look like. And so as Miranda was mentioning, identifying that within a plan as a potential future connection is direction enough to be able to at least start to look at that. You know, the undercrossing, railroads will always look for least kind of impact to their systems. And so they do take a long time when you start to coordinate with them. But that like really those connections, however that comes to be in the future, will be essential for that future development. And so I think showing both within the plan gives some flexibility in how that starts to come for West Railroad specifically. But as Miranda mentioned, the undercrossing is a broader question that that project that engineering is looking at is trying to address as well. So it's not just about West Railroad area, there's other kind of benefits that that project would provide, even if it's a long-term project.

And just to tack one more thing on, Alex touched on it, but our economic, the city's economic development manager has reached out and been having a couple conversations with the railroad already, and they were actually far more positive than we might have expected. Obviously, it'll still take a very long time, but those conversations have started, so yeah.

Switching gears completely, the BPA easements, have we done any kind of negotiations with them so that we can take advantage of the real estate under their easement for trails, stormwater, parking, et cetera? And how long does that process take?

Time, time, always time, right? Well, yeah, as far as building structures and whatnot, that's obviously not something they're going to let you do, but I believe we're allowed to do things that are gravel and trails and whatnot. I don't know if Miranda's been in those past conversations, so I couldn't speak to how much time it takes, but that's something we've dealt with in the past.

Yeah, I could note, Commissioner Carr, that during the Frog Pond East planning, we did have conversations with BPA to understand what could or could not go in or adjacent to the easement as we were discussing things like the adjacency of the park and the desire to make that regional trail connection. And essentially our discussions at that point with them were essentially what you just heard from the team, which is that you can have things like trails, but there's a lot of things you can't have. So things that have any height, pretty much, so no trees, no metal, And you also risk if they need to go in there to access their facility in any way shape or form that what is there could be disturbed And so there is some ability to have improvements in that area But it can be hard to really count on its permanency and the cost of replacement could be on not on BPA it's typically how they negotiate those things in the easement and AND SO A LOT OF TIMES WHAT WE SEE IS LIKE WITH FROG POND EAST, WE'LL WORK ON HAVING THAT REGIONAL TRAIL. WE'LL PARTNER TO TRY TO GET THE RIGHTS TO BE ABLE TO HAVE THAT REGIONAL TRAIL THERE AND UNDERSTAND THE IMPROVEMENTS MIGHT HAVE TO BE DONE OVER TIME. BUT THINGS LIKE, YOU KNOW, MAYBE PARKING THAT WOULD BE PART OF A WHAT THE DEVELOPER MAY OR MAY NOT WANT. A LOT OF THOSE NEGOTIATIONS MIGHT BE THEN WITH THE PROPERTY OWNER, DEPENDING UPON HOW THEY MAY OR MAY NOT WANT TO COORDINATE WITH BPA ON ACCESSING THAT EASEMENT.

I JUST SPEAK BECAUSE THERE'S A BPA EASEMENT RIGHT BY MY HOUSE AND THEY JUST STRIP MINE EVERYTHING THAT'S UNDER THEIR LINES. SO I WOULDN'T WANT US TO DO ANY KIND OF IMPROVEMENTS THAT WOULD BE altered. Shifting gears even more, so your question here is does the master plan reflect the long-term vision? I think it does. I think adding the economic opportunity analysis and the economic development strategy JUST FURTHER HITS ON I THINK THE NINE GUIDING PRINCIPLES THAT WE GOT FROM THE CONCEPT PLAN. AND I APPRECIATE THE WORK THAT WENT INTO GIVING US THE DIFFERENT CONCEPTS AND THEN TAKING A COUPLE OF THE CONCEPT PLANS AND MELDING THEM TOGETHER. I THINK THAT DID A GREAT JOB I THINK AGAIN OF HITTING THOSE GUIDING PRINCIPLES TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION. DO THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN AMENDMENTS HIT? I THINK YES. THE KEY ELEMENTS THAT WE HAD WERE THE LAND USE AND DEVELOPMENT, TRANSPORTATION PARKS AND NATURAL RESOURCES AND UTILITIES. I THINK ALL OF THOSE WERE COVERED WELL AGAIN UNDER THE PLAN AMENDMENT. SO, YEAH, I APPRECIATE THE WORK THERE. WHAT DO I WANT YOU TO WORK ON? I DO HAVE CONCERNS OVER THE FRAGMENTED OWNERSHIP AND EXISTING USES. I THINK WE'VE TALKED ABOUT THIS AD NAUSEAM. I HAVE A CONCERN THAT WITHOUT SOME PROACTIVE INTERVENTION BY THE CITY, IF WE If we wait for them to do something, nothing will happen. I think the city is going to need to do something proactively. I don't know if that has to be built into the master plan or if that's more of an implementation. But I do have a concern that especially the construction spaces, unless we ask them nicely to move, they won't. And that's a concern. I also am a strong proponent of urban renewal, and I want to make sure that that is utilized effectively in this area, whether it's an expansion of the current Copy Creek one, or whether it's a new one. I don't know what's the best way to do that, but I think there should be an emphasis on using that at least to fund the infrastructure and then i think we've covered traffic and and wildlife mitigation i might need a little bit more work on that myself but uh otherwise i i love the work that's been done here great thank you appreciate the comments

I'LL JUST ADD A COUPLE THINGS TO ECHO THE MAJOR MILESTONE, AND IT IS REALLY NEAT TO SEE THE CULMINATION OF ALL OF OUR CONVERSATIONS OVER, YEAH, A LONG WHILE COME TOGETHER INTO ONE DOCUMENT, AND SO THAT'S REALLY NEAT TO SEE, AND I DO THINK IT REFLECTS where we landed in the conversations we had. So I appreciate that. And then the one area that surprised me was just seeing kind of the implementation phasing is like that first column is like the five, within five years. And most of the boxes are checked for first five years. So I immediately think of just, yeah, capacity to explore those things. And also just the challenges that like these, some of these things are really dependent on other partners and things like that. So I'm just keeping that in mind, but they're good goals to set and One thing on the comprehensive plan. So I think, yeah, those were great updates. And yeah, some of the older language kind of surprised me just around the I think it mentioned like the need for just like one industrial type. Right. And we've gone we've kind of swung the other way. So it's just interesting to see that change over time. And then a curiosity I had was there's a section in here on economic development that looks like it was added. And then the flow after that felt a little weird. Some of the paragraphs felt just a little redundant. Or I don't know if there could just be some cleaning up. And that was on the packet page 167 and 168. It felt a little disconnected. And so if there's opportunity to just take a look at that and see if there's some refinement that can happen there, I think that would be a lot clearer. And I think that's all the comments I had.

No, I appreciate that feedback. Thank you.

Thank you for your hard work that went into this. Um, I'll answer some of the questions, uh, about the draft materials. I don't, I didn't, I think all the great questions have been asked by our brilliant commissioners here. Uh, it's hard to follow, but, uh, I was curious, um, With the coming analysis in the future for the infrastructure, right, for the utilities and the capacity, will that include the comparison of what this master plan, how it feeds into the master plan for the entire city as well in terms of that capacity? Because we have growth happening, planning here and planning there and how it all fits together and what that's going to mean for the citizens of the city. and how it will impact them and what is being served now and what is forecasted to be served in the future and what kind of improvements the utilities will need to build out. Will all that be included in the next work session?

So the infrastructure analysis is pretty specific to the Basalt Creek planning area itself. We haven't looked beyond that for the master plan specifically, no.

That's what will be helpful for me to see the big impact when you put it all together.

Well, maybe I'm not understanding that question either. So the Basalt Creek Master Plan infrastructure analysis, we're looking at within that area, within that 847-acre area, what infrastructure is needed for future development.

Right, water, sewer, electric.

Exactly, storm water, sewer, exactly. Roadway build-outs, roadway widths, sidewalks, all of the infrastructure necessary. And then what are the associated costs of that?

Right.

And then trying to do so in an organized fashion, right? But it doesn't include, say, Frog Pond. So is that kind of what you're asking?

Yeah, but there's going to be this also additional demand coming from all these other developments, right? And so I'm curious how that all fits together and whether the entire system is going to be enough.

How does that affect our water master plan and our sewer master plan?

Yeah, commissioners, we can make sure that engineering staff is planning to attend the next meeting alongside any of the technical... THE CONSULTANTS THAT WE'RE WORKING WITH TO DO THE TECHNICAL ANALYSIS. SO WE CAN MAKE SURE THEY'RE PREPARED TO DISCUSS THAT. EVEN THOUGH WE'RE PLANNING FOR WHAT WILL THIS SYSTEM IN THIS AREA LOOK LIKE AND BE DESIGNED LIKE, IT IS TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION HOW DOES THAT THEN FIT INTO THE BROADER MASTER PLANS FOR OUR WATER AND SEWER AND EVEN TRANSPORTATION AS I DISCUSSED EARLIER WHEN WE'RE LOOKING AT THE MODELING. WE DON'T LOOK AT JUST THE MODEL IN ISOLATION OF THIS AREA. BUT THEN AT THE SAME TIME WE'RE ONLY PRESENTING HERE ARE THE TRANSPORTATION PROJECTS FOR THIS AREA BECAUSE The rest of the TSP covers everything else, if that makes sense. So we will talk about, there will be probably some discussion about any potential downstream impacts and then how this is sized in relationship to the rest of the system. So sometimes you'll have like oversized pipes because it's needed to serve the rest of the system.

That would be really helpful if we could cover that in the next work session. Absolutely. Like where I was leading to.

Yeah, we can definitely make sure engineering is prepared to discuss that. Okay. 100%.

Thank you. And I do think it reflects the vision. I think it's really fantastic work, yeah. And I look forward to seeing it continue to grow and develop. Absolutely.

Excellent, appreciate that.

I did want to make a comment about roundabouts. Just something to consider. I know there's a way to build them to allow for freight traffic, but I just worry about just because this is where I work, the PGE yard, and not getting them gridlocked in the roundabouts with pole trailers. Because that's something that they've experienced with cities in development and putting a roundabout and all of a sudden you can't maneuver it with pole trailers and you're trying to go restore outages or build things. Just something to consider.

Yes, it's a really big roundabout.

Which I don't know. Yeah, it could be difficult. Excellent. We have some, yeah, go ahead.

So this may have been answered a couple years ago. I didn't see it in any of the materials. But the guiding principles, two of them mention housing. but there's no housing here, although some of the area butts up to housing from Tualatin. Is there a reason why we were just like, eh, for housing?

Can you clarify what you mean by, eh?

There's no housing, right? There's no housing in this version of the plan. Correct. And I mean, right now there's a few residential areas there, so it's not like it's completely industrial right now. And the new Tualatin development really abuts or is adjacent. Butts up to you. I don't know the correct term. Where we have, I think, you know, like high-tech employment district off of like Boone's Ferry. So I just wondered if there's a reason why there's no housing suggested in any of this.

Yeah, thank you, Commissioner Kandrian. So when the area was brought into Metro's urban growth boundary, it was brought in for the purposes of industrial development. During that time, there was a discussion by representatives from the city of Tualatin, wanting to have some additional residential at the northern portion of the planning area in order to create a better buffer with the existing residential neighborhood. So when it came into the urban growth boundary, the ordinance that passed it had a map attached, which essentially stated that there would be residential in the northern portion of the planning area adjacent to the city of Tualatin, but the rest of the area was brought in for the purposes of industrial and employment growth. Throughout the entire planning process with our city council, the city council maintained their desire for this area to be essentially solely, and maybe I shouldn't use the term solely, but to be industrial and employment land. As we've discussed, like with the craft industrial, there might be appropriate times where you have either a business-related dwelling unit or a live-work unit, Those might be feasible in the craft industrial area, but primarily the whole entire point for us was this was an employment industrial area, and we wanted to maintain that. It really builds off of the Coffee Creek industrial area. We have that, which is going to front onto Day Road. We have the form-based code there that's creating this kind of business district, and the council wanted to see that mirrored. on the north side of day row up to our boundary. It also didn't make much sense to the council to create an isolated neighborhood out there in Wilsonville for us to serve in more of a residential manner versus adjacent to our existing residential areas.

You didn't want like Charbonneau North?

Okay.

That's fair. I just wondered because it's called out in the guiding principles, but then we don't have anything addressed.

It was primarily in those guiding principles because of the city of Tualatin and the fact that there would be housing in their portion of the planning area.

I think it also, if I could add to that, is how if you look at the map, how we've got certain areas designated as certain industry classifications, we kind of structured it such that the high-tech and the craft would be closer to the homes. And we did more of the industrial a little bit off of that. And I think that was by design. But the guiding principles are the concept plan, which includes the Toll and the Wilsonville area. So, yeah.

Yeah, when Commissioner Carr was speaking, it triggered a question in my head around when you were talking about lot sizes. I wonder if there's a sweet spot for the different kinds of development that we want to see in each of these areas. And is it different for the industrial area versus the craft area? And would that help us kind of inform any action that we do take proactively as a city to try to MAYBE AGGREGATE LAND OR FACILITATE PROPERTY OWNERS ADJUSTING THEIR LOT SIZES, WHETHER IT'S CONSOLIDATING OR SPLITTING. THAT MIGHT BE INTERESTING TO SEE. YEAH. AND THAT DOVETAIL WITH ANOTHER QUESTION THAT I HAD WHEN WE WERE TALKING ABOUT THE NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE COFFEE LAKE CREEK AREAS, I THINK PRETTY HIGH VISIBILITY, I THINK MOST PEOPLE that spend any time in the area are pretty aware of it. But the Tapman Creek is pretty invisible to I think most people, even if you're up on Day Road and looking for it, it's pretty nondescript.

It's hard to find.

Yeah, is that an area that would need to be restored in order for it to be a functioning riparian area? Or is it actively functioning that way right now? How much is, I guess the question beyond the question too is just trying to understand a little bit of how that OVERLAYS WITH THE CRAFT ZONE. ON THE MAP IT LOOKS LIKE THAT TAPMAN CREEK NATURAL RESOURCES AREA OVERLAYS WITH ALMOST ALL OF THE CRAFT ZONE. SO I'M KIND OF CURIOUS, HOW DO WE INTERPRET THE CRAFT ZONE WITH THAT TAPMAN CREEK?

I'M HAPPY TO TAKE THIS ONE BECAUSE I'M PROBABLY THE ONLY PERSON IN THIS ROOM WHO'S ACTUALLY BEEN DOWN TO THE CREEK. SO DURING THE CONCEPT PLANNING I WAS INVITED BY PROPERTY OWNERS IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO GO AND SEE TAPMAN CREEK AND TO experience what it's like at different seasons. And so it does actually function as a thriving wetland. Most of those property owners, their property runs from Boone's Ferry all the way across, which is why you see that craft designation. We don't really anticipate, if you start overlaying all the layers we have within the plan, we don't anticipate development within that area. That area will end up being part of our significant resource overlay zone. will be protect that creek and the slope will be protected so the development really will only be on the front end adjacent to boone's ferry but when you do zoning you have to zone an entire property a zoning designation even if you then have an sroz overlay so all of that information is is within the plan itself but i have been down there most of those property owners can't even access the back side of their property It has to be like the driest of the driest year for them to be able to kind of cross or to use like a canoe or a kayak to cross. And it's a pretty, like if you get into that area, it turns into pure nature really quick. And they've seen lots of different wildlife out there. There's I think only one property owner who has some kind of access to the backside of that property, but that's it. It is an area that will take and does take significant stormwater runoff as well, which is one of our concerns or things we want to make sure we're managing properly.

Some of the properties is basically the front half of it is developable and then just kind of plummets, I guess, drops off.

Yeah, there's a steep slope. There's a lot of areas where you can actually openly see the basalt, which is also really cool. I mean, that sorry, that area was, you know, a part of like the Missoula floods. And there's a lot of really cool just features in this whole kind of area of the region. where you can see like the results of that. And in a lot of areas, our basalt is buried. But in this area, the name reflects it. You will have some basalt that's 100 feet down and then literally 50 feet over, it could be like five to 10 feet down. So that will also create some interesting development challenges, but it is something that we did look at when we were doing the concept planning.

Yeah, and is that, if I remember correctly, that informs some of the reason maybe why the Tonkin Ice Age Trail goes maybe near those natural features. Yeah. Yeah, very cool.

Yeah, and our consultant that's working on the stormwater analysis, you'll see, we just met with them a couple times this week, you'll see some of their, you will see their work at work session two, Tapman Creek and those flows and where that's going is all part of that work. So in the packet, you'll get to preview that and then they'll be here and available to talk a little bit more about it too.

Cool. And thank you for all that. And just emphasizing the first, I packed a lot into that, but I'd love to see more information about what's the sweet spot for lot sizes for the expected development, maybe in the future work session as well.

Okay. I've got a note for it.

All right. No other comments? We're good? Questions? All right. Well, thank you so much.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you for your time. We appreciate it. We'll see you in a month. Thank you.

All right. Chair Seminova, I just wanted to, we were conversing back and forth. We do not believe, did we address the minutes?

No, I was thinking dinner afterwards. Okay, perfect. Yes, I did. I just wanted to make sure. I do know that I went straight to business.

That's okay, that's okay.

Thank you. Yeah, but thank you. Is that right? We were so moving forward, I didn't even know.

Didn't even face us. Didn't even face us.

What's that? I could be sly this time. You know, try to keep you guys on your toes.

We can just do that work session again, right?

Yeah, we'll just start over. All right. Our next... Do you want to switch back?

Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you take care of the minutes while I get the...

Okay. All right. Sounds good. Consideration of the minutes. Where's my... script to make sure do we um the what was that date may 13th 2026 um minutes were previously distributed are there any corrections to the minutes no

Can I make an observation about the minutes? And I don't know that this needs to be corrected, but I know that there were a lot of people in attendance that commented during the citizen input about the later work session that we did. But the minutes, I don't think, really capture how much we, I think, made a really strong effort to directly address a lot of the comments that we had heard in the citizen input. It might be helpful to, maybe we need to revise the minutes here. I don't want to be prescriptive, but I think it would be helpful for the citizens who maybe didn't stick around to see the whole session to maybe have some record that we really did make an effort to address a lot of their comments directly.

I'LL JUST MAKE A NOTE. SO THE WAY THAT OUR MINUTES ARE STRUCTURED ARE BASED ON UPDATES TO THE OREGON PUBLIC MEETINGS LAW. ALL OF OUR RECORDINGS ARE AVAILABLE FOR THE PUBLIC TO VIEW. AND YOU ONLY HAVE TO DO EITHER OR. WE DO BOTH. SO IT IS AVAILABLE FOR PEOPLE TO SEE THE PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING ONLINE AS WELL.

MAYBE THAT'S SUFFICIENT THEN.

Thank you. That's a really good observation. All right. So there's no corrections that I needed otherwise. Okay. Uh, here in a corrections, the minutes are approved as distributed. The next agenda topic, uh, is a work session on the town center building height waiver. The work session is a chance for the Planning Commission to gain additional understanding of and provide guidance on ongoing legislative projects prior to a public hearing. Well, we took public comment. I don't think we need to do that again, right? We don't have any, but I can say as a courtesy, the planning commission will as time permits allow for a limited public comment on this topic after staff have presented their report for the commission's purpose for continuing to understand the project. However, it should be noted that this is not a public hearing and any participants are encouraged to participate in future public hearings for legal standing purposes. So at this time I do call for city staff to present the information they've prepared for the work session.

Thank you, Chair Seminova. Amanda Geil-Hinman, City Attorney. So tonight we are continuing our discussion around the Town Center Building Height Waiver Project. So as an agenda for tonight's work session, I'm going to start with a project update. Basically, where have we been? Where are we now? Then I will provide a review of the updated and new options for the waiver, for potential updates to the waiver as reflected in your packet materials. Then we'll go over the task force feedback and recommendations, particularly around the preferred alternative for the building height waiver update. the discussion around elimination of the waiver to increase building height altogether versus that preferred alternative, and then the menu items that are reflected in the waiver language. And then we'll end with the questions for planning commission that are reflected in the staff report. So as a project update, at council's direction, staff formed a task force to look at updates to the town center building height waiver provision. We've had three task force meetings. That was all that was planned for the task force, and absent additional direction from council, we don't believe there will be another task force meeting. So at this point, we're treating it as concluded. We had a planning commission work session last month on May 13th, and then a city council work session followed up on May 18th. From those two work sessions was the last task force meeting on May 19th, where the task force discussed the options and made its recommendation. So where are we now? This is the second work session with planning commission tonight, and then we're having our second work session with council on Monday, where we are presenting to each body the task force's recommendation. One item I will just note as we go through the task force recommendations, just as the planning commission's role to city council, the task force role for the planning commission is to provide, is to inform the decision that you all are making, which is your recommendation to city council. That doesn't mean you necessarily have to accept exactly what the task force decided. If you believe that there's reasons for revisions to it, that's totally fine. I think the most important thing is to the extent you either are supportive of the task force recommendation or want to make changes, it's clear to the council what is leading to that consideration. So it can further weigh in on its decision making. So just again to orient you all, and this is going to be helpful particularly as we talk about the different options and as the task force discuss them, is really looking at the sub-districts that are at play in Town Center. So there's an overall Town Center zone, and within the Town Center zone there's the four sub-districts. CMU or commercial mixed use is the one that is closest to I-5. It is the area where there's the outright allowed building height of two to five stories. MU or mixed use basically straddles the Main Street District, and it allows for two to four stories. The Main Street District, which runs through kind of the middle of town center, allows also for two to four stories. And then neighborhood mixed use, which is essentially adjacent to the current residential area, only allows for two to three stories. The building height waiver provision only applies to mixed use and commercial mixed use sub-districts. So what's not at play are the Main Street District or the neighborhood mixed use. So getting to the options that the task force looked at is basically there was of the four initial options that they looked at, we brought back two of them, option two and three, with refinement, and then we also added option five and option six. Where option five and option six arose out of really was option five came from a discussion from one of the small groups of the task force, and then option six was essentially a further refinement by staff kind of taking inspiration from both option five and option two, kind of combining them together. So we brought these four options together. For option two and option three, the main updates was to further, so the way the building height waiver is written right now, essentially what it says is a waiver can be sought regarding floor, excuse me, building floor plate and or building height. is how it's phrased. And so one of the things that we wanted to clarify in particular for all the options, but particularly for these updated options, is the expansion of the floor plate is really contemplated if the building height is going down. So if you're going down to one story, you can go wider. I don't think anybody was anticipating you could go both wider and taller. So we clarified kind of breaking those out that the wider footprint really only applies if you're decreasing, not if you're increasing. So that update was made to all the options essentially. And then a second item that was added as kind of in brackets for both option two and three was separating out, and this is relevant also for option five and six, is separating out how the mixed use area closer to I-5 is treated versus the mixed use area closer to the residential area is treated. So those are in brackets for options two and three. What option five did is, I don't think I put this on the graphic. So what option five did is, I'm gonna go back to the sub-districts as a reference, is all the area, the CMU and the MU that is closest to I-5, what option five does is it allows a building height to go up, it doesn't allow it to go down. So it can't go down to one story in the option five. And then on the mixed use area closer to the residential, it can only go down, it can't go up. So basically it does the exact opposite on each side. One goes down, one goes up. WHAT OPTION 6 DOES IS IT ALLOWS ONLY A DECREASE IN BUILDING HEIGHT, KEEPS THAT ONLY ALLOWING THE DECREASE IN BUILDING HEIGHT FOR THE MIXED USE AREA CLOSER TO THE RESIDENTIAL AREA. BUT WHAT IT ALSO DOES IS IT ESSENTIALLY CAPS THE COMMERCIAL MIXED USE HEIGHT INCREASE. SO ESSENTIALLY ALLOWING ONLY FIVE STORIES IN COMMERCIAL MIXED USE EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF A BONUS FLOOR FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING WHICH ISN'T PART OF THE WAIVER PROCESS. So essentially, option six is kind of the most limiting of all the options that were contemplated at this point. So this chart is basically taken out of the staff report. So it's a further reflection of what I just described and the options as they're narrated in the attachment. So what we did that we'll come back to this for discussion purposes when you all are talking about the options. So the task force feedback on the preferred alternative for the waiver is first and foremost, they eliminated option three from consideration. Feeling like option three, if I go back to this chart, you can kind of see it has the most flexibility of the remaining options. in that there can be the potential for six stories. So they ended up for both, potentially both for a waiver or a bonus floor. So they eliminated option three from consideration. Then what we had them do is we had them do a dot exercise with the remaining three options. OPTION TWO, FIVE AND SIX. WE GAVE THEM TWO DOTS. ONE IS THEIR NUMBER ONE OPTION AND THE SECOND DOT WAS THEIR NUMBER TWO OPTION. IT'S LAID OUT IN THE STAFF REPORT HOW THOSE KIND OF PLAYED OUT. FOR OPTION TWO, TWO PEOPLE PUT TWO OF THE TASK FORCE MEMBERS PUT IT AS THEIR NUMBER ONE OPTION. NOBODY PUT IT AS THEIR SECOND OPTION. For option five, it got the most number one options at five and got one as the second favorite for one of the task force members. And then option six got one number one and seven number twos. So from that discussion, you know, the feedback that was portrayed from that was, okay, option five seems to have the most, it was people's most, the number one. So there was some discussion then around people's number one options. The other thing that we had them do in the dot exercise is Put a dot next to your number one and your number two. And if there's something that you would still make changes to that option, write it next to your dot. So that way we can document what change you want. So what's important is that for option five, one of the people who put that as their number one, they wrote in that they believe that the mixed use area closest to the neighborhood should not be allowed to increase at all. It should only stay at four stories. The two people who put option two as their number one had that same comment. So of the eight people who were having this discussion, three indicated that for the mixed use area closest to the neighborhood, they would want to see that area just capped at four regardless. Now what that means is that actually goes A BIT BEYOND THE SCOPE OF THIS PROJECT BECAUSE THAT THEN TALKS ABOUT THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING BONUS FLOOR, BUT WE DID INCLUDE THAT INFORMATION IN THE PLANNING COMMISSION PACKET BECAUSE IF THAT IS THE ULTIMATE RECOMMENDATION, THAT IS INFORMATION THAT WE WOULD WANT TO SHARE WITH COUNCIL ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT THEY'RE INTERESTED IN LOOKING AT ADDRESSING THE BONUS FLOOR, THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING BONUS FLOOR. BASICALLY WHEN WE GOT INTO THE DISCUSSION AROUND OPTION 5 AND WHETHER OR NOT TO DO THIS LIMIT ON THE MIXED USE, CAPTING THE MIXED USE AREA NEAR THE RESIDENTIAL AREA AT ALL, FOUR OF THE TASK FORCE MEMBERS WANTED TO KEEP OPTION 5 AS IS. DO THAT CAP. THREE WANTED IT LIMITED, SO TO JUST THE FOUR STORIES, AND THEN ONE TASK FORCE MEMBER WAS SUPPORTIVE OF OPTION FIVE, HAD OPTION FIVE AS THEIR NUMBER ONE, BUT WAS UNDECIDED WHETHER OR NOT TO LIMIT THE BUILDING HEIGHT ON THE EASTERN MIXED USE AREA. So I would say, so the outcome really was that option five was the number one option, but this discussion around what to do with the mixed use area closest to the neighborhood, there's still, I mean it's very clear, there's not a majority consensus around that. So then we got into a discussion around whether or not this preferred alternative, this option five, whether there was a preference for that versus getting rid of the ability to increase building height at all under a waiver. And the vote was six to two to recommend the option five as opposed to eliminating the increase to the building height altogether. And really the conversation focused around flexibility and basically not being able to, this being a long-term 40-year plan, not wanting to limit the options that might be available. under the waiver process. But there was a really good discussion around this preferred alternative versus the elimination of the waiver to increase building height altogether. So out of the task force, basically the recommendations that are now before you is that option five was the preferred alternative. It is also the preferred alternative EVEN COMPARED TO ELIMINATING THE WAIVER TO INCREASE BUILDING HEIGHT ALTOGETHER, THERE IS STILL AN OPEN QUESTION AMONGST THE TASK FORCE MEMBERS AROUND WHETHER OR NOT THE MIXED USE AREA SUBDISTRICT CLOSEST TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD SHOULD BE CAPPED AT FOUR STORIES, PERIOD. OKAY. SO THEN WE GET INTO THE MENU ITEMS. AND AS A REFRESHER, BASICALLY THESE MENU ITEMS, IF A DEVELOPER IS SEEKING TO OBTAIN THE WAIVER, THEY HAVE TO do one item from each of two menus that are provided in the code. One of the menus focuses on providing a community benefit and the other menu focuses on mitigating building impacts. So there was a lot of discussion in the prior task force meeting back in April about wanting to look at these menu items, feeling like they don't go far enough to they don't go far enough in requiring development to do something for the benefit of getting this waiver. And so you'll see in your packet, we put forward the same list of categories of menu items under those two broader concepts. And then I also added in the feedback that we had received from, if there was a particular menu item where there was feedback given, that's provided in the staff report. But one of the interesting conversations that we had, so I would say the recommendation from the task force was definitely move forward with updating the menu items. And what they really focused on were menu items where either there's permanence tied to it or it really is furthering THE BENEFIT FOR TOWN CENTER, NOT ESSENTIALLY A COMMUNITY WIDE BENEFIT. THEY REALLY WANTED IT TO BE, YOU'RE MAKING TOWN CENTER BETTER. SO FOR EXAMPLE, ONE OF THE EXAMPLES WAS AROUND LOCAL HIRING. THAT MIGHT BE A GOOD GOAL OR A GOOD THING TO OCCUR, BUT THAT DOESN'T NECESSARILY MAKE TOWN CENTER BETTER, WHICH THE IDEA BEING THAT THE WAIVER MIGHT IMPACT HOW THE FEEL OF TOWN CENTER, AND SO WE WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT THEY'RE DOING SOMETHING IN RELATION TO MAKING THAT TO MITIGATING THAT. SO ONE OF THE INTERESTING CONCEPTS THAT CAME OUT TO BASICALLY UNDERSTAND development doing enough was you know some of these menu items one of one of the task force members was talking about that basically some of these menu items they don't they don't have equal costs and so what that drives development to do is they're going to choose the items that are the least cost the easiest to do and so are you really truly getting a community benefit and are you truly getting mitigation of building impacts if they're not somehow equal or proportionate. And so they started talking about this idea of either developers paying a fee in lieu of doing one of these, choosing from these menu items, and that fee in lieu being tied to the value of the development. So for example, when developers pull their building permits, we do an assessment of the value of the development. It ties into some of the fees they pay. So we talked about as a concept, we could use that dollar figure as a way to figure out like a fee in lieu. And that fee could also then be the basis to say you either pay the fee or your value adds have to equal that cost. So either way, essentially, you're getting at the same cost, whether it's cash to the city or doing these value adds. And one of the things we also talked about is that cash then could be put into a fund for these projects that are envisioned for town centers. So you think of something like a parking structure that is one of the implementation or parking solutions generally, but we've talked about a parking structure potentially as an option. If you put money into a fund, if development is putting money into a fund, that then the city can utilize to find consolidated parking solutions or work on some of the transportation improvements that we legally cannot require developers to build, that might be a good way of making sure that we have like developments also still paying for those improvements. So it was an interesting conversation, again, not something that we had thought through, like that wasn't a concept that staff came up, that was generated from the task force. So it was a really interesting concept and one that I think ALSO WAS GOOD AT LEAST TO TALK ABOUT THIS SORT OF PROPORTIONATE, MAKING SURE THAT COSTS ARE PROPORTIONATE FOR THE VALUE THAT A DEVELOPER MIGHT GET IF THEY'RE UTILIZING THE WAIVER AND MAKING SURE THAT THEY'RE BASICALLY DOING THEIR PART AS A RESULT OF GETTING THAT WAIVER THAT MIGHT IMPACT THE EXPERIENCE IN TOWN CENTER. So with that, a few questions for the Planning Commission is, first, if Planning Commission has further questions or clarifications regarding the four waiver options, and really, I mean, unless a Planning Commissioner feels like a burning desire for option three to be considered, I'd maybe say at least of the remaining three. WHETHER THE PLANNING COMMISSION IS SUPPORTIVE OF MOVING FORWARD WITH A RECOMMENDATION TO CITY COUNCIL, AND IF SO, WHICH OPTION THE PLANNING COMMISSION IS INTERESTED IN OR IF THE PLANNING COMMISSION IS INTERESTED IN HAVING COUNCIL FURTHER CONSIDER GETTING RID OF THE BUILDING HEIGHT WAIVER FOR INCREASING BUILDING HEIGHT, DESPITE THAT NOT BEING THE RECOMMENDATION OF THE TASK FORCE. And then any thoughts about the recommendations on updating the menu items and some of the concepts that the task force particularly thought around that? And then what I'll just note as next steps is while the task force has made its official recommendation, you all aren't making your official recommendation tonight. This is really just to get some feedback and some indications maybe where planning commissioners are are falling so that way we can give that feedback to the city council for its work sessions work session but the ultimate um recommendation decision won't happen until your a public hearing that we are currently planning to occur in august where not this is beyond the scope of this conversation but background information where did we come up with the five story two to five in the cmu Miranda, do you want to cover that?

Because there's not a city around us that goes up to five stories. I checked.

Okay. Thanks, Commissioner Carr. So there was a lot of discussion during the original town center planning project about what kind of buildings do we want and how tall do we want those buildings to be. And I would say it was a combination of a lot of feedback and a lot of discussions. So we had some folks who wanted eight to 10 story buildings. We had some folks who wanted to keep it to like three story buildings. There was discussion about, well, if we're going to have some taller buildings for some of the market economics, we'd rather have those be closer to I-5. There was discussion about the types of projects because we did not just visioning and discussions with people to understand what they wanted, but we also did the market analyses that helped inform some of the task force's input into those decisions around building height as well in terms of the types of uses we want to see. and what they need in order to actually pencil out a building and develop it. Like what is feasible for those types of uses to locate in our town center. And then having that discussion about, okay, so is that still what you want? Because this is what it would likely look like. So it was a lot of feedback of the visual preference surveys that we had both online and in person. The design workshop where we had folks actually TAKING BUILDING BLOCKS AND PUTTING THEM ON MAPS AND SAYING HERE'S WHERE WE WANT CERTAIN USES AND WE'RE STACKING THE BLOCKS. I STILL HAVE THEM BACK THERE. I SEE A FUTURE USE SOMEWHERE. BUT BEING ABLE TO STACK THEM TO SAY WE MIGHT WANT TWO STORY BUILDINGS HERE VERSUS FOUR OR FIVE STORY BUILDINGS HERE. THAT EXERCISE WAS DONE, PUBLIC DESIGN WORKSHOP, THAT EXERCISE WAS DONE AT VARIOUS EVENTS IN THE CITY. WE TOOK THOSE BUILDING BLOCKS to all those summer events where we did the visual survey results, studies as well. We also did that with the task force. Sometimes the task force was the one, as we're hearing now, it's like they're hearing input from the community, they're participating in those, and then they're kind of trying to help compromise the different things that they're hearing and make space for the different uses and types of buildings that people want to see. So the two to five in some ways was a compromise of a lot of the different things that we heard. It was also related to the uses people want to see and how that pencils out, allowing things potentially in the commercial mixed use that are more commercial in nature who need like a fifth story in order to make their project work. So envisioning that if you have a hotel or if you have a, office building, you might need that fifth story in order to really make it pencil and to work for what it is that you're trying to do. Because if you have an office, you're probably going to have to have some underground parking or surface parking as opposed to sometimes when you have like an apartment building, you can do like a donut where the parking's inside and tuck under. So there's different economics for different types of buildings. And so that fed into the discussion as well. Final recommendation as you, well, not even just final recommendation, but through that whole process, things were going to the planning commission and city council too to ensure support that that was the vision that was being met and that that was the consensus that we ended up with.

Can we be... Can we...

be specific in what building types can exceed or get a waiver?

In other words, can we say a hotel can go up to six stories, but an office building can only go to four?

You can make whatever recommendation you want for a building height as far as the building height waiver goes.

But does that make sense?

Well, and I think what I would say is not, I mean... the planning commission should make the recommendation that it thinks is best for the community and for the implementation of the vision of the town center plan. Um, that being said, the waiver really, I mean, it did come out of a discussion about making sure there's flexibility for development, but where it started was around anchor retail tenants. Um, So not to say that it, I mean, anybody can apply for it currently. Um, but what I would say is, um, if anything, it's, that's what it was. That's at least what initiated the discussion was around anchor retail tenants versus, versus say, let's say office space as far as the waivers concerned versus what Miranda saying about the outright allowed building Heights.

Cause I think if, If I look around, like Oswego, Westland, Canby, Sherwood, Tualatin, pretty much all three stories about the closest they have. We have one group of four stories in cementographic Siemens, right? Everything else is lower. Everything else is three-story. And so now we're going...

I would mention that the Vuela project that was recently constructed is five stories. What's the building height on that? I, OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD, I DON'T KNOW THE EXACT HEIGHT. I DO KNOW THE GROUND FLOOR HAS A HIGHER CEILING HEIGHT TO ACCOMMODATE THE COMMERCIAL AND GROUND FLOOR USES THAN THE RESIDENTIAL UNITS HAVE. I COULD GIVE YOU THAT INFORMATION. BUT IT IS A FIVE-STORY BUILDING. AND I WOULD SAY THAT ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE'RE LOOKING AT HERE IS LIKE A 40-YEAR PLAN IN TERMS OF PROVIDING CAPACITY FOR 40 YEARS. It is quite possible that the five-story or even the commercial mixed use might not be a short-term development and that maybe your five-story buildings aren't the things that you see in years one through 15, but it's providing that 40-year planning horizon interest and capacity for what people want to see.

Well, then that gets to the point we made where it was, okay, do we not give variances for the first 20 years?

So a pause isn't an option. A pause is not an option in land use.

Just to interject real quick, you wouldn't be pausing building. You would be pausing the granting of waivers, which would be a different thing because a waiver is you already want special treatment.

So under Oregon land use law, if you have something in your code that people are allowed to do, you have to let them have the ability to do that. The only other option is either a moratorium, which we cannot, I don't think we could legally justify here, or you remove it. And you can remove it and say, TIP 5, 10, 15 years, we'll come back and decide whether or not it's something we should add back in.

So in 20 years, we could come back and have the same discussion and allow for... You could come back and have this discussion in a year.

Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Now, I would say that it's not necessarily just in that horizon because the first approval that we have is five stories.

Five stories. I understand.

So I would say that really the reason for that outright allow and use is because that's what we heard support for. If we had heard support for ending at three stories, that's the information that would have moved forward.

Well, but when you did all this public discussion, did you add a sixth floor to those buildings and have them do the stack ranking that way? Were you already considering the variance when you were doing that, or were you doing the two to five?

The variance, as we've previously described, the variance came at the very end. It was not a part of the public discussion. Okay. THE PUBLIC DISCUSSION WAS JUST ABOUT LIKE WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE IN TOWN CENTER AND HERE ARE DIFFERENT BUILDINGS, HERE ARE DIFFERENT HEIGHTS, LIKE WHAT ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WITH AND THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE LANDED WITHIN WHAT YOU SEE ENDED UP IN THE PLAN IN TERMS OF THE RANGE OF HEIGHTS THAT ARE OUTRIGHT ALLOWED IN EACH OF THE SUBDISTRICTS. THE WAIVER REALLY WAS DESIGNED FOR SHORTER, bigger footprint, retail specifically. That is technically what it was, the discussion as we've shared with you came from. It was actually not designed to go up. That wasn't the initial intent of the discussion. How it got written, especially as we were modifying things during public hearings, which is never great, the language didn't end up being as specific to the lowered building height.

And I do just want to note that I think, just to be clear, is that when Miranda says it wasn't part of the public discussion, she's talking about the outreach. This absolutely was part of a public process. Yes. Yeah.

It wasn't part of the workshop to talk about a waiver because at that point we were not at that specific part of code. But all of the discussion did happen during public meetings.

And Miranda's right. If you look back at those time stamps from the Planning Commission, it started in August of 2018 with a particular commissioner talking about being concerned about... What we were talking about was It was actually about floor plate and whether it should be 30,000 square feet or 40,000 square feet or 50,000 square feet. And what the commissioner was concerned about is once we put this number down, that's the number, right? What happens if we have this great anchor retail tenant that wants to come in, but they're not going to do 30,000 square feet? They need 35,000 square feet. They need 40,000 square feet. And so that's what started the conversation around the waiver. And as Miranda pointed out, really the language, the technical language was written kind of at the end. And I think that's why we're undertaking this process is we recognize there's refinement that's needed there.

Okay, so I don't know why I decided to do this, but I did watch the task force meeting, although I watched it after it was done, so I could watch it on one and a half times speed. So I was a little bit disappointed in watching it because I felt like some of the things that we addressed were not accurately portrayed to the task force during the meeting, specifically the discussions we had about maybe changing the Sherry sub-district because that was explained to us as one of the reasons why we had to allow for five is because we already did. And that seemed to be just very cursory, like had a cursory discussion but not much. The second was on kind of this, hiatus moratorium piece, which again, it was kind of like, well, you know, we just can't do that. And then there wasn't also much discussion from what I saw again at one and a half times speed on what we talked about even with like building down instead of up. So just from my perspective, I think I mean, I would recommend one or two things. One is that it seems that people are either very passionate about not going up or they're ambivalent. I personally am ambivalent. Like, I don't care if a building's taller. But I know a lot of people are passionate like they do not want that at all And it seems like everybody else is just kind of like I like whatever I haven't heard Anyone who's like we need ten-story buildings or else this plan is not gonna work so I would suggest again to kind of what Commissioner Carl was saying then if if the case is that we either have to allow waivers or don't allow waivers then we start off without allowing waivers and see if they're is a push in five, six, seven years where there's some developer who's like, hey, I really wanna come here, but I have to have that six story for some reason. Again, that's just my thinking on it. Alternatively, if we are going to allow for waivers, I think the menu items are still very subjective and they need to be very objective so that, you know, I mean, not to be like, too silly, but one of the menu items was, I think, what was the one? Promoting environmental stewardship. Someone could be like, well, I put out some pamphlets in the foyer that said, here's how you can be a good environmental steward. And you're like, well, in theory, someone could say that met the standard. So I would like to see, if we move forward with the waivers, that those are very specific as to what each category means and what we'd like to see from them. I think the fee idea is interesting. I wonder if, that would cause some of the same problems that we're running into with the discussion about urban renewal, where there is the discussion that, hey, we need to put this infrastructure in place because the builders aren't going to want to pay for it. But we're like, but if you want to build an extra floor, you can pay us more money that we'll put into this pot. That almost seems to kind of defeat the purpose of us saying, you need urban renewal to do this. Because if you're going to pay all this extra money, Maybe you could use it for different things. So while I think the fee idea is interesting, I wonder if that would just have the effect of either be looked upon by some people as like pay to play. So if a very rich developer is like, oh, well, sure, I'll chip in a million bucks. And then someone else who's like operating on more of a shoestring, especially when it comes to something like affordable housing. And they're like, well, we can't build up. We can't afford to chip in. I think that could look problematic, even though I like it. I don't want to say I like fees. But in this instance, I like the building, the people who are developing, contributing to what they're developing to. So those would just be the couple things that I saw, is either we say, because of the passion from some people, let's just not do waivers for a while and see if that works. Or if we are going to do the waivers, I definitely think we need to have them better defined with the menu items. And it's not a... It's not one of the five options, but again, per my understanding from our meeting last time, the reason why the MU needed to go up to five stories was because of Sherry's. I would like to see the Sherry's moved over to the CMU, and then the other ones could stay at four stories.

So, okay, I'll answer. First off, I probably should have clarified this with the menu items. The list there are categories. They are not what would be described in code. Also though, you do want to be careful about not having what we call clear and objective standards in discretionary criteria, because then you basically negate the ability to have discretion. So while it won't say promote environmental stewardship, that is the concept of one of the ideas. Because right now, like one of the waiver, one of the menu items talks about getting LEED certified or Earth Advantage, getting the Earth Advantage certification. And one of the things we talked about is basically under Oregon Energy Code right now, you can basically get it with just meeting code. So what that, for example, that category, what we would look at is if that's a category people are interested in is going and finding what are the programs that actually require them to do more than what our building code is and put that in as the language. So a certain level of a certification, something like that. Um, and then I will just say, so part of this also is kind of is informed somewhat from the task force discussion is informed also by the council discussion that happened on the 18th, the day before. One of the things that we discussed with council is so we are, um, the prompt from council is look at the waiver provision. And in discussing with council about the Sherry site in particular, that will require other legislative processes that go beyond this. And also what we talked with council about is if you think the waiver is bad policy the way it's written, it doesn't matter that somebody has already gotten it, then it should just be changed. And council was... generally I think supportive of that. And that's why what was brought forward to the task force was, should the waiver for building height increase just go away? A moratorium is not a mechanism that can be used. And if it is, at least at this juncture, something that we don't think that the policymakers think is not in the best interest of the community and for town center, then the decision should be get rid of the building height increase. And then kind of like with our industrial form-based code, have staff come back in five years and present on whether or not it's something that should be reconsidered to bring back in.

I appreciate the clarification. I think that's good. Yeah.

I DON'T KNOW.

DID I? OKAY. I APPRECIATE THE QUESTIONS FROM THE FELLOW COMMISSIONERS AND THE RESPONSES AND CLARIFICATIONS. I THINK ONE OF THE THINGS THAT IS ONE OF THE THINGS THAT COMMONLY COMES UP IS WHETHER WILSONVILLE IS DOING SOMETHING THAT IS ABNORMAL FOR A CITY LIKE OURS. WHEN WE HAVE A PLAN THAT SAYS WE CAN BUILD BUILDINGS UP TO FIVE STORIES ARE WE AN OUTLIER? I don't think we are. When I look around at cities like Tualatin, Happy Valley, I think Tigard and Oregon City also, these are the cities that developers are also looking at to build developments, right, alongside Wilsonville. So if Wilsonville's looking for a developer to come in and build in our town center, We're competing against other cities like that. All of those cities have plans on the books, if I understand correctly, that also allow for buildings up to five stories or greater. So I don't think we're an outlier in this regard. I don't think that the core of the plan, especially in the highest concentration zone that we have, is an outlier. I think we're in good company with the cities that are around us. It doesn't mean that we mean, it doesn't.

I'd like that validated because my research found that was not the case. Three stories was the highest and I think like us, we go ahead four.

Let's look into it. It'd be interesting because it's just cursory search on my part.

That does make sense.

And not what exists today. If you go around and look today at what exists in a lot of these cities, you're going to see three and four stories are common or the maximum in some cases. And I think that's where we're at right now. But we're looking 20, 30, 40 years in the future. And I think it'd be interesting to... for staff to help with this narrative a little bit about is Wilsonville doing something that's abnormal here? Or is this very much in line with how development is headed in our region. And I think we've heard a little bit of it. I think Director Basile, you've said this a couple times where I've heard that the sweet spot has changed. It used to be a four over one was the sweet spot and it's shifted. And it'd be interesting to understand why has it shifted? Is it that Those developers need to build, they're considering economies of scale and as costs go up, they need to build bigger in order for it to be worth their while. Is it something else? Is there a different factor at play here? I think that would help with framing the conversation so that we can understand, we as the commission, but also as the public can understand why the building heights were recommended at what they are and not solely based on maybe the arbitrary public input of six or seven years ago. Is there something more concrete that we're using to base these building height targets at? I think that would be helpful. But then when it comes to waivers, one of the other things I think would be helpful for us to remember is that this is a discretionary process. We're saying the target is one to four or two to five. And that's what we're expecting developers to build here. And if they can come to us with a good argument for why there is exceptional circumstances for them to go above that, then we can consider that. And we being the city, our planning director or the city council are the ones that are making that discretionary call based on qualitative guidelines. So this isn't meant to be an objective standard. The objective standard is baked into the non-waiver process. And it's only if somebody needs to, for some exceptional circumstances, to increase the height. I think that's where the waiver process comes into play. Am I understanding that correctly?

Yes, exactly. We have essentially our objective criteria, which is the outright allowed building heights, and then the waiver is the discretion. And one of the things that is not necessarily unique to Wilsonville in its waiver process, but we have what's called essentially a better meet standard that basically says if you're asking for a waiver, in our discretion, we have to determine that you better meet the policy objectives of whatever that outright allowed use is trying to get at, that you better meet that through your waiver, which is why we also call out these menu items to say, okay, you need to better meet, and also how we want you to better meet is by benefit to the community and mitigating your building impact by getting a height waiver, essentially.

Yeah, so I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to use those menu items as a higher bar for making sure that whatever the qualitative discretionary decision that goes into granting or considering a waiver is guided by a very high bar for what those menu items are. Rather than it being, I think the task force, I think, hit on something really valuable that if the menu items are cheap, then developers will see that as a loophole to go through if they're trying to abuse the waiver process or game it. So can we protect the waiver process, protect the qualitative and discretionary nature of the waiver process by establishing menu items that are reflective of the high bar that we expect developers to meet if they're gonna even ask for an exception?

Can I continue on with that?

Yeah. And I think that's why the fee in lieu option was interesting to me at first. And then I think about that high bar of like, okay, what are specific things we want to see? And if we just say, oh, you can pay a fee. I don't know if that really gets at what we're trying to achieve. So that's why, yeah, my first reaction was I'm not so sure about the fee in lieu for this case. I do think where the task force landed overall with the option five seems appropriate. I think the one thing that I'm struggling with a little bit is the there is a section in there with the cmu option of so six stories it's the waiver or a bonus floor and i'm really struggling realistically with like in what case would a developer choose a bonus floor like financially when does that how are we gonna incentivize them to choose in my mind is like affordable housing or an extra story based on like meeting those menu items and so that part I think is where I kind of lean more towards, I think option six in the CMU, it just says only bonus floor. So you can only get that six story, right?

Yes.

If it's affordable, because if you give them the option of the waiver or the bonus floor, I don't see why they would choose the bonus floor. And maybe that's a policy discussion for council is how much are we really wanting to push affordable housing opportunities? Because if they really want that as an opportunity, then I don't think you should give... the choice. So that's just something for additional discussion. But I'm supportive overall of that option five. And then so just to get into specifics, so attachment C for the code draft language, I'm wondering if there should be an asterisk, is that how you say an asterisk? A little, yeah, sure, sure, not quite, sorry. So on the building story height row, the maximum, so for CMU, it says five, but really should that little note say, well, it could be six if you meet a certain, just to note it in that table that's in there, just for clarity, because then you'd have to go in and kind of read through to understand that, like, oh, actually, it could be, six in certain situations. So there just might be opportunity depending on how conversations go for clarity on that table.

Are you talking specifically about the affordable housing bonus floor or?

Just generally for that table, when I look at it, I see like maximum story fee for CMU says five, but it could be six, right?

Yeah, we do have a note four. Oh, it's just not on the same page.

I see. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I missed that. So that, let me just read it really quick. Yep, that makes sense.

And that is one of the items that we talked about. Again, talking about scope of the project. staff has tried to make it clear throughout that talking about the bonus floor isn't within the waiver, but if you're truly going to talk about what is a building height that may occur, you have to talk about both. You have to talk about the outright allowed use, you have to talk about the bonus floor where it's allowed, and you have to talk about the waiver. it's basically out of full transparency. And what that did lead to is the task force having some discussion around should there be places where it's only bonus floor or in places like some of the staff task force members saying in the mixed use area closest to the neighborhood mixed use, you shouldn't get a bonus floor or the waiver to increase building height. That was all discussion that was had around the bonus floor in particular. And I would say, like I said, that's kind of an open question still.

Okay. And then shifting kind of to the menu of options. So there were a lot of comments in the task force conversation around kind of trying to maintain a small town feel. in the sense that the higher the buildings go, we lose. The sentiment I get is that the higher the building, the more of that small town feel we lose. And so I'm wondering if there's a way in the menu items to get really specific about a bar set of are there certain design elements or ways to encourage a small town feel and require that, or somehow kind of incorporate that feedback into the menu of options. And I'm not, yeah, I don't know how that, would look specifically, but.

Like maybe even a different set of menu options for the different zones, maybe too, to kind of reinforce the idea about like there being a slope, if that's something that we end up wanting to go with.

Could be, yep.

Yeah, I'm having flashbacks to the planning commission discussion where it was all around, how do we make it feel cozy?

Yeah.

I don't know how cozy works into a development code, but we'll try our best.

Well, and yeah, I mean, there are certain ways, like you think about like, I don't know, your little pocket parks, or I think there was conversations about just even outdoor seating or covered areas, like certain opportunities to run into people and have conversations and know each other. And that's what creates, people create the small town feel, right? So- the cozy feel, sorry. Okay, I'm done. So yeah, that was just a thought. And then, so I guess I'm unclear then for the conversation around the MU East, right? So closer to the neighborhoods and the four story conversation. So that's something that's not within the scope of the work that we're doing, or is that something that we can say, yeah, we want to talk about it more later down the line.

So we have got, so the, the affordable housing bonus floor is not part of the waiver provision that is directed for that council directed staff to look at through this process. That being said, we staff in our last work session with council did flag that this BONUS FLOOR IS PART OF THE CONVERSATION, AND SO WE'VE CONTINUED TO TALK ABOUT IT, AND SO WE FLAGGED FOR THE TASK FORCE THAT IT WAS OUTSIDE THE SCOPE, BUT ALSO WANTED THE TASK FORCE FEEDBACK, BECAUSE IF THE FEEDBACK REALLY IS, HEY, WE UNDERSTAND IT'S OUTSIDE THE SCOPE, BUT COUNCIL, WE REALLY THINK YOU NEED TO LOOK AT THIS IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE WAIVER, THEN THAT'S THE FEEDBACK WE'RE GOING TO TELL COUNCIL. AND SO THAT'S WHERE THE DISCUSSION AROUND MAYBE NO Increases allowed either through a bonus floor, which would change the table note Or the waiver was something that was discussed within the task force And so it's part of the Planning Commission discussion and will be part of the City Council discussion as well So if people have particular thoughts about that I'm happy to report those to the council so it's the what's the purpose or definition of a bonus floor I So if I remember right, so the purpose, I mean the purpose was to promote affordable housing. I mean that's the purpose behind the bonus floor.

But we're using those two as, counter proposals. You're saying you can have a bonus floor but not or you can do variable or affordable housing but not a bonus floor so you can't we can't use affordable housing as a definition of a bonus.

So in all of the in all of the options that were presented to the task force the bonus floor is not being removed because it's not part of the waiver provision. And the bonus floor is only tied to providing 25% of affordable housing for the number of units that would equate to that bonus floor. So if you think about a residential complex that has 12 units on each floor and they want a bonus floor, they can put in additional 12 units, but four units need to be affordable housing. And those four units could be spread. They don't necessarily have to be on the top floor. They can be spread throughout. So that's how that concept would work. That is part of the table for what's outright allowed. And then this waiver allows for building heights to change up or down. And so what some of the task force members talked about was discomfort in... you know, this idea of if the taller buildings are supposed to be closer to I-5 and it's supposed to taper down as you get closer to the residential area, does a five story building that is five stories because of the bonus floor, not because of a waiver. But is five stories because of a bonus floor? Like, even if we limit the waiver and don't allow an increase of building height because of the waiver, there's still the opportunity for a five-story building. And is that something that we want to see that close to the residential area? And it was split. I mean, it was basically four were fine with option five leaving in that bonus floor, three were not, and one was undecided. So we didn't have a majority, you know, which would be five. We didn't have a majority consensus coming out of the task force about what to do with, I mean, if you just think about it in number of floors for the mixed use area on the Eastern side, should it be four? Should it be, or should it be five essentially? And four is what's outright allowed.

And if we say four, then we can't be prescriptive that 25% has to be affordable housing.

Correct. That's what's outright allowed right now, regardless of affordable housing.

So the two to four that's outright allowed has nothing to do with, has no clause for affordable housing? Correct.

And are we allowed to require more affordable housing to get the bonus level?

If that is feedback that Planning Commission would like me to take to Council, I can take that.

I mean, because it seems kind of, I don't know, it seems almost like a cheap out. Again, if you're like, well, if there's 12, 12, 12, oh, now on this one, you get eight full rent and you get four. I mean, that's kind of... That doesn't really seem fair to me to be like, I would say the whole floor would have to be affordable. And then you're like, OK, cool, you can have an extra floor. I mean, maybe they wouldn't want to do the whole floor, but it seems there should be more. 12 out of 48 units would be. as opposed to just four out of 48.

When, again, coming back to that idea of let's make sure that the bar is high. For people that want to exceed what our vision is, they need to meet a very high bar. And it is meant to discourage people from just on a whim, wanting to exceed the vision that we set.

Yeah, I mean, I guess that was my point on the waiver items, right, is if they're not more prescriptive, then that can set the bar pretty low and people can try to find loopholes. Same thing with the housing, affordable housing bonus floor is like if it's only four units, I would assume most developers would want to do it because they're getting eight more, you get an extra four, you get an extra two-thirds to rent out. So I would like to see that to be higher if it's something we consider. And then...

Yeah.

I mean, just in that the phrasing of the question of it's, it's kind of a choice of four or five for the, the East area. In my mind, it's still the policy question of like, how much do we want to push affordable housing or not? Like, That is kind of the direction I would want from council is if you're really passionate about getting more affordable housing, you would allow for this bonus floor, so the five-story option. And if you're not, then it would be four. That's how my mind's working right now.

But then would you make it 25% of the total building?

Well, and this goes back to the question earlier that I mentioned of, like, if they have options, I feel like, and I don't know all of the... financials around this but i imagine the reason that we would offer the option of a waiver or bonus floor for the other area is because like the affordable housing probably doesn't make a lot of sense financially for these folks so if it's a smaller barrier just to get at least four more affordable housing i would rather have that than none right so but i don't know i don't know what the demand or i i guess i need more information on like what that looks like

Yeah, I mean, I think they would still be able to qualify for some of the tax incentives, even if they were going up to four stories, right?

Or I meant like four units or whatever we were talking about.

But if we suggested that there were no bonus floors, that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be affordable housing, right? Because there's still a lot of tax incentives for affordable housing to be built. It would just mean that it wouldn't go above... four levels in certain areas.

Yeah, I just question how much incentive there is generally. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think balancing that against the apparent will of the people of Willisville, too. There's the incentive for the developers to come in and build, and we want to get affordable housing, but we also have a very loud group of the population, a substantial group of the population that seems to be really... strongly opinionated, as Councilor Kendrian said. A lot of people seem to be kind of like, meh, ambivalent.

I think it's either ambivalent or passionate about not going too high. I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone is super passionate about we have to go higher. So that's kind of, like I said, to me, if someone wanted to come build the Burj Khalifa Wilsonville, and they were going to finance it, I'd be like, I mean, cool, I guess. But I'm probably in the minority on that opinion. It just seems to me most people are either ambivalent or against going too high. So if that's the case, we have a lot of options to make most people somewhat happy, right? Because the ambivalent people are just going, oh, whatever. But the people who are very passionate are going to be like, oh. thank you, we get that extra 10 minutes of sunshine because of how the rays will hit the street or something.

That's real. Yeah, and I would say, If anything, at least from some of the task force members, how they talked about it was not necessarily about height, but around flexibility. That being said, I go back to the point about where this whole language even arose from the prior planning commission was around flexibility. flexibility for anchor retail tenants was how that discussion started back then. That's not to say it can't be different than that, but that's really where, I mean, if you think about where this originated from was from that flexibility discussion around anchor retail tenants.

And then I would suggest if that was kind of the genesis of this is to have the flexibility to have a larger footprint if needed, right, for a specific waiver for specific reasons as opposed to going up, like if you want to go out if that was the genesis, then that seems like that makes more people happy or less upset than, well, if you're gonna go out, you have to also be able to let them go up.

I wanna make sure we're clear because I think I heard Amanda earlier say we wouldn't allow out and up together. So, that is not a consideration. I think that probably the discussion point we're talking about is that when we put in building footprint or height, you could get a waiver for that. The idea was to be able to go out shorter and wider. We just failed at saying you could get a height waiver to reduce. We didn't really anticipate the situation of somebody asking for a height waiver to go taller at the time that it was written. But what's proposed is not out and up together. I just want to make sure that was clear.

Yeah, no, I just meant that if the original genesis of this was that people could go out, and then because of how it was written, you could go out or up. But really, the point was that you could go out, then maybe not having up waivers. We allow out, but not up. Yeah, we would allow out, but not up. And then it can be revisited if in five, six, seven years.

And allowed down, then.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

So option seven is option six, but limit the CM to five, limit the MU to four.

I don't know if everyone has expressed what their thoughts are in terms of,

I was just stating another option.

Yeah. So what you're saying is option seven is essentially the conversation that was had around eliminating building. So the discussion that once the task force got to its preferred alternative, they then discussed eliminate the building height waiver to increase height, not eliminate it altogether. Your option seven. Yes. That's my option seven. Yes. Yes. And this was their vote. Yes. It was, it was six two, but again, that's, that's to inform the planning commission, you know, about, about how you want to then inform council.

Does everybody want to kind of state what their recommendation is?

Just for clarification, just to be super clear, that vote was saying that of the task force participants, it was a 6-2 vote in favor of keeping a waiver for increasing.

Correct. Where there was... not a clear consensus. So option five was the consensus. What was not a consensus was whether or not in mixed use east should there be no ability to increase building height. But option five was the preferred over eliminating the ability to increase building height altogether.

Yeah, thank you. Which option seven would be option five, but limit the ability to go up. Yes.

Yes. If it helps, maybe where we start is kind of how we started with the task force of Do people have a preference? If you had to choose between, we'll save option seven, if you had to choose between two, five, and six, is there a consensus around preference on that? And it doesn't even have to be a consensus. I can literally report to council one person like this one, one person like this one, so on and so forth.

Yeah, I don't know if we're going to have consensus. That's OK. But that's what I was saying is that maybe we do, you know, kind of state what we recommend.

I do. I like option five. Of these four options presented, I like option five. Yeah, I agree. But I like option seven better.

We'll get to that one.

We'll get there. Yeah, I guess I think, well, I guess actually I would prefer option six. just because I don't think the waiver up to six stories, I think if we're going to have it larger, there should be some community benefit. And I think that the affordable housing would be something that would be a good community benefit. So I guess I would go with option six, but I'm also with Commissioner Carr in that I feel the community is more pushing towards an option seven option. And so I guess I would lean towards that.

Yeah, I mean, the only reason I lean more toward five, because I see what you mean, and I really agree with the sentiment there. The only reason I tend to lean more toward five is, well, I guess there's two. One is that they seem to be the one that was a little bit more favored in the task force. But the main one personally why I lean more toward that is just the flexibility that it affords. Because we don't know what's going to come down the pipe five or 10 or 15 years from now. Allowing for that waiver in the CMU gives us a little bit more flexibility. And it's still a discretionary process, so we have to trust that the bar is high enough and will be respected. But I think that flexibility gives us, it leaves the door open for us to be able to accept more options when it comes to developers.

I would agree with that. And then I'm also thinking almost reversely of we can start with these option five, the waiver or the bonus floor, but if it's really, if the waiver is not panning out the way that we had intended it to, then it's like, well, maybe we need to reevaluate if we need to remove the waiver or not, right? And I think yours was kind of the opposite of like, don't start with the waiver, and then we can evaluate and see if we need it later, right? Is that what you were suggesting?

Well, yeah, because I think, right, if like using kind of Sherry's almost as an example, one of the reasons we said we have to go to five now is because we already just kind of like let a building go to five. And so if we're saying, so, you know, so say someone comes in, they build a six story building and for whatever reason, like there's like pitchforks in the streets and like riots because that was like the worst thing ever. But now we've already allowed a six floor, six store, six floor, six story building to be built. Right. So then it's hard to put the genie kind of back in the box there where, I'm kind of saying, OK, again, my personal opinion aside on how tall the building should be, if we say, well, let's see what happens over the next five, six, seven years. Is four stories maybe a fifth working for people? Are we getting development? Are we having people come in? We have all these projects lined up. Then maybe it's almost like a moot point, right? But if people are like, hey, it just does not work at all unless I have six floors. you know, then maybe we can revisit that. But I think if we allow it to start, then you're kind of setting the precedent that like, hey, you know, we already let people do it at this height. So then you're going to kind of have a harder time saying, we're not going to let anyone else. And then you have like this one albatross building, you know, the white whale of Wilsonville.

Well, except for to the point earlier from Amanda, I think we can always take the waiver away. Just because there is a building that has met some previous standard doesn't mean we always have to have that standard. I think that where I would agree with you though is that once a building is built, it's built and it's there. And so it might disrupt the, if we do decide in the future to say actually we want our building to be lower, and we've already got a six-story building, then now we've got a unicorn, and it changes the feel of the whole area. So, yeah, we commit to it. Once we get a building built, that's cement in the ground that's not going to go away for a long time.

But that also gets to your point, is what are the surrounding cities? What's our competition allowing, so to speak?

Yeah.

Right? What are the cities around us allowing as far as... Because if you drive down the I-5 corridor, right, the tallest buildings you're going to see is four I don't see any five-story until you start getting into downtown, right? But all along the corridor, there's nothing. I mean, I work in a building that's right by I-5. It's a four-story building. It's in Lake Grove, Lake Oswego. It looks just like Mentor Graphics Building or CMU's building.

Yeah, and I think that's where, I think it's good to be aware of kind of what are the surrounding cities like us? What do they have planned? What are they doing? What does the landscape look like if we're trying to attract development? What are we competing against, so to speak? That's probably not quite the right language to use in planning circles. But then also, we also don't want to go too far down that road. We don't want to compromise our values as a city in order to win development at all costs. So there is a threshold that we need to establish and respect as far as, and I think that's kind of what's communicated a lot of times in the sentiment of the Wilsonville feel, or the feel of the city. So there's a balance between the two, because we need to anticipate growth, we need to attract the kind of growth that we want, we also need to kind of, the whole purpose of a plan is to put shape around it so that we can guide what kind of development comes in. But if we put too much shape around it, then the developers will go somewhere easier. If we say you can't build above two or three or four stories, but it's not economically viable to build anything lower than five, then we get no developers unless we change our format drastically, as I understand it. So I think the idea of option five and option six, both of them are appealing to me, even if I'm leaning a little bit more toward option five or option seven, maybe eventually, is just the flexibility. It leaves the door a little bit more open for us to be able to navigate what may be a really shifting environment over the next decade or more.

Since it's come up quite a bit, I would like to address for the commission that Wilsonville's plan was really guided by Wilsonville. And so I think it is important to some degree to acknowledge that, to acknowledge our neighbors, but maybe also not put too much weight on our neighbors because Wilsonville is Wilsonville. And if there's one thing I've learned being here, Wilsonville is Wilsonville. And we don't compromise our way related to what our neighbors are necessarily doing. That being said, we do want to be cognizant of it and understand it for the very reasons that you all are talking about it. I can offer a few things. I haven't been studying up on my neighbors exclusively. I've been pretty busy here. But I can say I'm pretty sure the Tiger Triangle has, and maybe somebody else in the room can help me, but I believe the height limit there is like 75 feet. So allows six and seven story buildings and is planning for that. I know that Beaverton, I believe that down in there like the round in downtown also allows five story buildings. I can't remember if the building that's in the round is four or five, but it's around the same height as the buildings that we're talking about in our town center. Lake Oswego, I don't know the limit, but I know that the buildings right now that were redeveloped were four stories, but I think it's also four stories over a parking garage. So the height there might be a little bit taller than a standard four-story. So I think from my perspective, a lot of what we're doing and planning for is consistent with the types of plans that we're seeing throughout the region. Hillsboro definitely allows five-story buildings. They may even allow taller in certain areas, including their downtown and downtown. believe Amber Glen might even allow up to seven or eight which is another town center area of theirs so Gresham I don't remember but it probably also is around five stories so kind of what we're doing here in terms of our town center is comparable to other town centers in the region but also a lot of what's in the plan is unique to what we heard from this community which I also think is valuable

The other thing, too, that I would note, and I think this is understood, is there's a difference between what has already been built and may have been built many years ago when the economics were different versus what is allowed or what has been. I mean, if you drove around Town Center right now, you'd think we don't allow anything over two stories or maybe three stories, right? But we do. And so it's that built environment versus what is on the books. And the other thing that, what was the other thing that I was going to note? If I remember it, I'll say it.

It's already 8.30, so my brain's a little fried. Okay.

Did you want to say something else?

Okay. So, okay, I have three commissioners at least on the option, and Commissioner Hendricks, previously you went back and forth between five and six, so I'm wondering if you...

I'm still in the middle. Okay, middle of five and six. Which is not helpful.

Maybe this is helpful. Chair Seminova, are you a firm option two person? Can I at least tell council we've narrowed it down to maybe five and six, or are you a firm option? You can say that.

I don't have a strong preference between five and six, but a part of me does want to keep the waiver for going down, but stop the waiver from going up until we get more defined criteria on what that waiver criteria is. that needs to be met to set those high standards. I think everybody's in, like the renderings showed two, three story buildings, the coziness, and then everybody with these waivers are envisioning all these six story buildings popping up everywhere and where do you draw that line? And then on the mixed use ease, Like in Villabal, we already have, I think, some four-story buildings going up right now. And I drove by today just to specifically see how that feels. And it's a lot. That little area all of a sudden becomes really closed in. And like one more story, and the sky falls out of your peripheral vision. So that ambience, that feeling really gets impacted. if you're surrounded by anything above four stories.

So I would know, oh, go ahead. Just for folks to know that with the waiver, I can't remember if it's with the waiver or if it's four stories and above, there's a required step back. And that's an important design aspect from an urban design element in order to help that light and air to still be able to permeate an area. So, for example, the Sherry's building would have required a step back. I think it was either between floors three and four or between four and five. they ended up opting to do it lower between the first and second floor, which actually is even better. And so I just wanted to kind of provide that information that where we do even call for some of our taller buildings, there is a requirement for a step back in order to help offset some of that height.

Can you go through? maybe of the difference between five and six?

So the main difference between five and six is on the CMU. So in the CMU for option five, it can go up to six stories either through a waiver or through that bonus floor that's allowed for affordable housing. In option six, CMU can only go to six stories, can get that additional floor for affordable housing. It can't get the waiver to go up.

And the waiver you... For the CMU. So the waiver would apply the items.

The menu items. Correct. The menu items. Correct.

Yes. The option six would not allow for any of the menu items. It would only allow it for affordable housing.

For CMU. For CMU.

Right. And then the other MU West and MU East are the same for option five?

Between option five and six, they're the same. So the main discussion or the main, so option six was developed by staff after we developed option five. So option five arose out of the task force discussion. And then as we were talking about this discussion, okay, what was coming out of it is option five allows for six stories potentially. in CMU, that's the area closest to I-5, either through a waiver or a bonus floor. And so one of the things that we talked about as an additional, because we just love providing options, as an additional consideration is, well, everywhere else, the max is five stories. So then what we talked about was maybe what we offer is essentially the max will be everywhere, five stories, and the only exception would be if you're providing affordable housing. In CMU. In CMU, where it could go up to six. So option six is more restrictive than option five because of the CMU. Otherwise, it's all the same. Yeah.

And even then, even within CMU, you can't do that right next to I-5, if I understand correctly, right? Yeah.

I thought it had to be right next to I-5.

Well, it's on the close side of I-5. Correct.

But that was something that I think needs to be defined, right? Because it says adjacent to I-5, and I think adjacent was never defined as to what we were describing as adjacent.

Yeah. It's a pretty narrow strip that would ever allow for a sixth floor, even with all these restrictions.

So with that definition, I'm probably more on option six than five, but more so option seven.

Okay, so I think I have good enough notes to talk about the options with council. So maybe from planning commission and to be respectful of time, let's get to the option seven, eliminating the waiver to increase. Again, you're not making your recommendation now. This is feedback. And generally, I think what I would say is if you think that this is a worthwhile discussion about eliminating the waiver to increase, If you think that's a worthwhile discussion that should go to council, that is feedback that we can give them, is that however many, either a consensus or however many of the planning commission at least felt like this option of looking at eliminating the waiver to increase building height altogether should be further explored.

My dot number one is seven. My dot number two is six.

Okay.

And I'll concur from the standpoint of, I think that's the most likely option to get the public support needed to get it funded. Again, because I just feel like the passions on the lower side outweigh, I haven't seen any passion for the high side. So I would go saying seven and then six.

I think there is a lot of passion for lower building heights. I do think there is passion in the community for higher building heights, but they're rather quiet lately and for whatever reason. But I think regardless, I think that it's worth respecting the people who are being very vocal right now and the sentiment that seems to be pervasive in the community. I think it's very important to recognize that and respect it. And so for that reason I would totally agree with you.

Um, yeah, I just, does that mean you would prefer, sorry, does that mean you would, I just want to make sure we're clear for our recommendation. Are you preferring, um, that the height be removed altogether? That would be your first choice. And then option five would be your second choice or the reverse.

I GUESS I'M A LITTLE BIT CONFUSED ABOUT WHAT THE TASK FORCE IS SAYING ON THIS SLIDE STILL. BECAUSE IT FEELS LIKE WHAT THIS SLIDE IS SAYING IS THAT WHEN YOU ASK THE TASK FORCE IF THEY WANT TO REMOVE THE ABILITY TO INCREASE, THEY SAID NO. THERE'S A 62 VOTE SAYING WE SHOULD KEEP THE ABILITY TO INCREASE. SO I WOULD NOT GO AGAINST THE TASK FORCE ON THAT. SO THAT WOULD BE MORE IN SUPPORT OF FIVE, RIGHT? IF I'M UNDERSTANDING THAT CORRECTLY. SO I'D REMAIN MORE ALIGNED WITH FIVE.

And I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I want to make sure that I'm being accurate in how I talk to council on Monday, is more supportive of option five, open to consideration of the option seven that we're talking about.

Yeah, recognizing that maybe option seven wasn't offered as a... as an explicit option to task force, but it seemed to be reflected in their notes, right? Is that what I'm hearing?

This item was specifically discussed. That was specifically discussed. We didn't call it an option. We didn't call it option seven, but we specifically asked, do you want If there was an option, because that wasn't the option that we were given really from council, the direction originally given to council, but we heard some people saying, I don't want any height increase. So essentially, we specifically asked them to go through that, the option voting. But then after that said, would you rather have an option where we eliminate the waiver altogether to increase building height? or stick with the option you voted for, essentially, options one through six. And they said, six of them said, I would stick to my top choice in the options one through six. And two of them said, I would rather have us get rid of the waiver to increase. So they didn't call option seven, but Commissioner Carr has kind of coined it option seven.

It wouldn't be forever. It's until we define the waiver criteria. I'm assuming there's going to be a study for each of these buildings that get approved as to what the impact is to the community services, all the things that the citizens are concerned about. Is it going to put a strain on the police, the fire, the school, whatever? and how is that gonna be mitigated? Putting more defined criteria on the waiver and the study of the approval of each building.

I mean, my understanding is that we would be updating the waiver menu during this process, not at a later date.

Yeah, so the direction, so two items that really weren't contemplated, well, several items weren't really contemplated when we started all of this. One was looking at the menu items. I mean, it's part of the waiver language, but originally when we were talking with council about this, the menu items weren't something we were discussing. That arose out of the task force. Planning commission said, yes, We want that looked at. Council said, yes, we want that looked at. So that has now been incorporated into this project, even though it initially wasn't. And refined language would come before you if the waiver, I mean, well, the waiver will stay in place. I mean, the waiver is going to stay in place in some capacity, at least to go down and out. So those menu items will be refined. as part of this process. And then the bonus floor also got incorporated. And then this discussion about eliminating the increase altogether came out of the council work session on May 18th, that they wanted the task force to weigh in on that question. What we did do, what we talked with council about, and this is why we did the process of choose your preferred alternative and then do the elimination discussion is because if ultimately the decision is eliminate the building height increase and then three years, five years, staff comes back and says, actually, this waiver is needed, then we have a preferred alternative already documented as a recommendation from the task force. And so that was the impetus behind why we had them go through the exercise of the two, three, five, six, and then say, okay, now that we have that, how does that compare to an elimination of the increase altogether? And essentially, that's what we're doing with you all now, too, is that same discussion. Because then we have that documented for the record, if ultimately the decision is to get rid of the increase, that we have that for the record if we ever come back to it.

So I guess what I'm trying to reconcile is the notes on the dots for option five and six were specifically saying that they would want to remove any increase allowances for East, for MU East. But then later they were asked, would you be in favor of removing the waiver altogether across the board or having a preferred alternative? So they weren't really given like an, am I correct in understanding? Yeah, is there... Or would 7 just be like, let's acknowledge the notes that we heard and say, let's remove the building waiver altogether in the building allowances altogether for MU East, but keep them for... Yeah. Yes.

So that was to your, yes, you are absolutely correct that there was not a consensus one way or another around that discussion from the task force. They did not come to a consensus around that. So that is what, so of the three people who made that note, two of the three are the no, are the two in the six to two. So one of the people voted for option five over the elimination of the waiver. That is also the same person who put option five as their number one, but with the note. So the two people who voted no were the two people who put option two as their number one. So for context.

Were those the task force people that were in the public for our discussion? Because I believe there were either two or three task force people here that spoke on the topic and told us they only want four floors.

Yes. Okay.

Do you have recommendations from everybody? I think I have. Well, okay. So the only thing is about option seven. I think I still need to hear. I think I still need to hear. Well, chair Seminova, I think you're, I'd like to hear from both chair Seminova and commissioner Hendricks, where you two land between eliminating the waiver to increase altogether versus option five, option six. Go ahead.

I think where I'm leaning is towards where the task force votes kind of landed, which would not be option seven, right? because that would eliminate the waiver. Sorry, my brain's getting foggy now because it's getting a little lighter. So yeah, I would prefer to kind of lean where the task force landed. However, I think it's worth the council to say, like what I'm hearing here, I think it's worth for council to discuss. I think that makes sense.

Yeah. Obviously it's not clear, right? Like there's no consensus. Like everyone's kind of like, So that's why council makes the big bucks.

Right.

Those dinners at the council meeting.

And chair, where are you? I'm leaning more towards option seven, for reasons stated, but if it, the goal is more affordable, how is like, what are the priorities? If it is more affordable housing for the council, then that's going to have higher weight. So you're going to have to go through, you know, value mapping in a way they should as to like, what is the higher priority? But I do worry about having these waivers and then having a town that doesn't feel like Wilsonville and being different from what we see in renderings versus what ends up being built.

Cozy. Okay. Cozy. I was feeling the cozy. I feel like I have good guidance for our discussion with council on Monday. And I'm also very aware we are well beyond the time that was allocated for this discussion item. But I'm happy if there's any other feedback that planning commission wants to make sure is conveyed to city council, I'm happy to take any final. I think we got through all the questions that were the prompts. So.

I think the menu items, I'm still a little concerned with going with Rob about the They're not prescriptive enough, but they're designed not to be prescriptive. So that's a little hard for me to say these are valid menu items when I don't know what the menu items really mean. It's like, here's a big bucket. Do you like this? Do you like the red bucket or the yellow bucket? Well, I don't know what's in them, right? So I need more clarity around that.

Yeah, that's fair. Depending so we do need to draft language around the menu items and I think unless anybody So I'll I'll just run through them really quick So these are the categories that we would use to inform how we write the code language Is that what we heard from the task force? So this is basically tell me if you disagree is don't do a menu option for local hiring for development and do include an option for a plaza with some programmed improvements. So it's basically active space that can be utilized like that. They were not in favor of a public rooftop amenity, mainly because they felt like that would be exorbitantly expensive and highly unlikely to occur. essentially why include it. Currently, public art is something identified. At the time that the menu items were written, our Arts, Culture, and Heritage Commission did not exist. So what we put as an option is to further refine that to say that the public art would be approved through our Arts, Culture, and Heritage Commission. We talked about inclusive design, and in particular, this was... This was motivated by what we're seeing our parks department do in that they don't just make a park meet ADA standards. They make inclusive design for all abilities and ages to engage in our parks. And so what we talked about there was looking at some design elements that would be inclusive beyond what is required by ADA. So they were generally supportive of that, particularly if it was paired with an active open space. So where the supporting existing local business and town center came from is, so one of the items that we hear all the time is that people want restaurants. Well, tenant space needs to be built a certain way to be able to support food preparation and cooking. And so one of the items that we put here was that the development would either have to construct their tenant improvements to allow for those types of uses, or that they would provide a subsidy for tenant improvements to occur. Because that is a very high cost barrier for tenants to go into commercial space.

Was that the same for like child use? CARE ESTABLISHMENTS?

THAT'S OUR NEXT CATEGORY. SO THE NEXT BULLET POINT WAS ELIMINATED BECAUSE THE TASK FORCE DIDN'T MOVE FORWARD WITH OPTION 3. SO ON MITIGATING BUILDING IMPACT, WE TALKED ABOUT BEST PRACTICES FOR GROUND FLOOR DESIGN FOR PEDESTRIAN EXPERIENCE. Best practices on building form to create more light and air. So those would be, again, getting to design standards. Those are more design standard type of elements. Creating a community gathering space internal to the building. One of the things that we particularly talked about was that would need to be structured in a way to make sure that that stays in place and is available to the whole community. So essentially, it's like, don't have a community room that only the people in the building can use.

Like an atrium that's accessible by everyone.

Yeah. Promoting environmental stewardship, I already highlighted this, is basically change the language that talks about have a LEED certification or Earth Advantage. Look at the actual categories and get to list out probably the highest category that you can achieve and put that in as the standard. And then to your point, Commissioner Carr, is building tenant-ready spaces for desired businesses, particularly restaurants, smaller spaces for local businesses that can't afford a larger footprint, and then child care facilities. So... I think everyone was supportive of the things that we talked about in the mitigating the building impact. There was just some things that got eliminated from the community benefit one. So that is where we would write code language around. Now, to your point, we don't have another work session currently planned for the planning commission. So it may be, you know, if it makes sense that what we may do is instead of having a public hearing at your August meeting, is that... Depending on the direction from council, it may be that that turns into a work session to talk about the menu item language, and then the public hearing gets pushed to September.

And I don't mean to restart any debate. Just putting it out there. But a comment maybe for council, or maybe it doesn't work. But the first one that was eliminated was hiring local people, which would probably be pretty hard to enforce, right? Because if you can't hire somebody, you're going to go out of business. On the flip side, could there be a requirement or a waiver for renting apartments, not low income, but to people who are teaching at the high school, people who are on the police force here, people who are on the fire department here, so that it makes them more part of our community as opposed to having to live farther away and commute in. And then that also solves some of the congestion problem. Is there something where they could put in preferential leasing to people who are employed in Wilsonville in the public sector?

I'd probably have to look into that because that might run afoul with the Fair Housing Act, but it's something we can look at.

I think one of the One thing I'd like to throw out there around the rooftop bar, while I agree that that's probably pretty unlikely to be selected as an option because it's prohibitively expensive, I would suggest that we should be looking at raising the bar for the minimum of our menu options and not negotiating against ourselves for the maximums. So I wouldn't remove that from a menu option if a developer comes along and they just really like rooftop bars and they want to build one even if it's exorbitantly more expensive than the other options. Awesome. Cool. Why would we remove that from a menu option unless we don't want rooftop bars in Wilsonville? I don't think I would recommend removing menu items on the basis of us speculating that a developer wouldn't want to choose it because it's too expensive. I think we should be looking the other direction and elevating our menu options that are maybe a loophole for a developer to exploit.

So, and just to be clear, so we would talk more about menu of options and like this kind of discussion only if, I'm trying to figure out. Yeah, but if we move forward with option seven, then we wouldn't need to have that conversation?

I think that if the direction coming out of council is what they want to advance is language that eliminates the increase for building height, the other question would be, do you want us to still adjust the menu items or not? Okay. Because I think a lot of these items really do contemplate a taller building. Looking into the windows of the neighboring building. So it would be a question for council. And I guess I'm trying not to repeat the mistakes of the past and then give the planning commission the language that may need some adjustments during a public hearing that we're trying to address on the fly. So that's where I say, if we need to further refine menu item language, that we may need to push back the actual public hearing so there can be dialogue around that. It is very challenging to write code in the middle of a public hearing.

Sounds good. So it sounds like we've had our discussion.

I think so. There's one little clerical recommendation I'd make is between options five and six, if the MU West like the verbiage is different, but the meaning is the same. So if they're meant to be the same, can we make sure that the verbiage actually matches between the two?

Sure. Will do, definitely.

Any other comments or questions? Okay. All right. Hearing no further discussion, thank you so much. That concludes our work session. Thank you. Okay. Next we have informational item on our agenda, and that's City Council Action Meetings. There's no staff presentation on this one. Does anybody have any questions or discussion about the council meeting? No? No? Okay. All right. In the 2026 PC Work Program, Planning Commission Work Program. Is it good?

Yep.

Yeah, it looks good to me. All right. Then I motion to adjourn our meeting. Thank you.