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Bulldozer Developers and land speculators are pushing to explode Eugene's urban growth boundary (UGB) to cash in on urban sprawl. "The top agenda item for the local and state right wing is expanding the urban growth boundary," says Eugene City Councilor Bonny Bettman. Last month, the developer bulldozer for sprawl gained traction when the Eugene city council majority voted to meet with the Lane Metro Partnership business group to discuss allowing city development to spill into rural areas. Jack Roberts, who has lobbied for UGB expansion as director of the Metro Partnership, urged the City Council on July 14 to move to expand the UGB by conducting a study of the need for more land for development. Roberts cited a pair of 2001 Eugene Chamber of Commerce studies and lobbying by local housing developers as evidence of the need for moving to expand the growth boundary. "This is something that should be done," he said. The Chamber study of industrial lands concluded that the city needed to add up to 2,000 acres of industrial land to the urban growth boundary within the next 20 years. That's enough land for more than 1,500 football fields. A companion Chamber study concluded that the city needed to add up to 800 more acres of commercial lands to the UGB. That would sprawl strip mall and box store development over the equivalent of about another 600 football fields of rural farm and forest land. Lauri Segel, Lane County planning advocate for 1000 Friends of Oregon, says the Chamber studies' calls for huge UGB expansions are laughably biased. "It's just hilarious." "They're embellished," Segel says. "Those types of numbers are not based on the needs analysis that state law requires." Bettman agrees the studies are "biased" and were "arbitrary" in not considering the many developable or redevelopable sites with the existing UGB. If the growth boundary is expanded based on the Chamber studies, "there's no incentive to redevelop the existing property within the urban growth boundary," she says. "That's the exact recipe for sprawl." Councilor David Kelly also voiced skepticism of the Chamber studies. "I'm very far from convinced." Councilors pointed out that the need for expanding the UGB is usually considered by taking into account the land supply in the entire metropolitan area, including Springfield, rather than just one city. "I thought we were one UGB," said Councilor Gary Papé at the council meeting last month.
Dramatic Departure The Chamber studies are a dramatic departure from previous city studies of the need for more developable land. In 1993, the city found that the supply of industrial land within the UGB exceeded the projected 20-year demand by between 650 and 1,172 acres. In 1992, the city found that the commercial land supply would exceeded the 2010 demand by 170 acres. A more recent 1998 study found that the 20 year supply of residential land within the urban growth boundary still exceeded demand by 1,415 acres. "There's no established basis currently for saying we don't have enough industrial, commercial or residential land," Segel says. Historically, Eugene has had a fairly loose UGB because planners in the 1970s set the boundary far out, anticipating that rapid growth in the 1970s would continue. Instead, the 1980s recession in the area left much of the land undeveloped. Today, many large industrial sites listed by planners in 1989 remain vacant, including the Greenhill Industrial Park and sites on Chad Drive in north Eugene. The difficulty in selling such vacant industrial lands has lead to complaints from developers in The Register-Guard that adding yet more land to the UGB would devalue their existing industrial sites. "There's a lack of demand for some of the industrial land, even the shovel ready industrial land," Bettman says, citing the recently vacated Sony factory in Springfield. But the Chamber and Roberts insist that the earlier studies still need to be updated. Roberts told the City Council that "generous use" could be made of the Chamber studies to save money and that his group could raise private money to contract for and help fund studies that would meet state requirements for growth boundary expansions. Segel says it would be "egregious" to use the biased Chamber studies as the basis for a new study of UGB expansion. A study funded and designed by a special interest group "is not going to have any legal basis," Segel says. Bettman says, "it's up to the city to fund a study that is neutral as opposed to generated by political entities." Segel says the city has already fallen behind in meeting state requirements that it update environmental studies and a study of natural resource land for possible protection. State law doesn't require that the city update it's UGB studies for another 10 to 15 years, she says. "It would be horrendous" to fund the developer studies while continuing to delay environmental protection studies, she says.
Kelly says that the city has also fallen behind on land use code updates and nodal development planning work, and questions whether the developers should take top priority for the city's dwindling planning staff and money. "The broader question is what are our planning and development priorities?" Given the city's lack of money and planners, private financing of the UGB studies "would be a way to go," Kelly says. But he says it's a "serious question" how the study could then maintain its independence. "I don't think an update of the Chamber study is going to do it." Although state law doesn't require that Eugene update its UGB studies now, that could change. Gov. Ted Kulongoski has argued that the state needs more "shovel ready" industrial land to lure big companies and create jobs. A taskforce the governor appointed, Jack Roberts is a member, has drafted a recommendation that the state require Eugene and other cities to update their land supply studies to expand UGBs every five years. "It's an unfunded mandate," Bettman says. In addition to having to pay for the costly studies, Bettman says city taxpayers would have to fund expensive roads, sewers, schools, fire stations and other infrastructure and services to serve the resulting urban sprawl. Taxpayers are forced to either pay more to cover the costs of sprawl or suffer reduced city services and infrastructure as limited city resources are diverted from the central city to serve growth on the edge, Bettman says. "The reason sprawl is bad is it's extremely expensive." That expense and opposition to the ugliness, traffic congestion, pollution, environmental damage and loss of livability and farm and forest land that sprawl creates has made expanding the growth boundary unpopular in Eugene. A comprehensive 1996 Growth Management Study found overwhelming opposition to sprawl and citizens in favor of a "Recycle Eugene" scenario that focused growth within the UGB. In response to public opinion, the council adopted a set of official city growth management policies. Policy 1 states: "Support the existing Eugene urban growth boundary by taking actions to increase density and use existing vacant land and under-used land within the boundary more efficiently."
Obscene Profits While sprawl is expensive for taxpayers, it's highly profitable for developers, Bettman says. "You can make a lot of money if you can externalize the costs of infrastructure on to taxpayers," she says. "There are land speculators out there that will profit obscenely depending on where the UGB is." One such speculator is John Musumeci, the land dealer who made millions off moving PeaceHealth from downtown Eugene to the northern edge of Springfield. Musumeci recently acquired more than 1,000 acres of forest land just outside the UGB in the LCC basin and has recently been advocating on local TV and radio for an expansion of the growth boundary that would allow his land to be developed. Musumeci played a key role in founding and funding the Gang of 9 that ran months of $1,000-a-day cartoons in The Register-Guard attacking anti-sprawl city councilors two years ago. Roberts has allied with Musumeci's Gang in the past praising the anonymous attacks in a R-G opinion piece and in a letter posted on the Gang's web site. "From the beginning, I have appreciated the job you are doing," Roberts wrote in the letter.
Bettman says Roberts and the partnership are funded mostly through local government money and shouldn't be involved in political lobbying. "I have some very serious concerns about the role of the Metro Partnership," Bettman says. "I believe this is advocating policy." The cities of Eugene and Springfield give the partnership $50,000 a year each and the county contributes $170,000. At the council meeting, Roberts said that the partnership expects about $100,000 in private donations next year but has received less than that amount this year. Bettman says city staff didn't respond to her request for a legal opinion on the legality of the city contributing to a group that uses the money to turn around and lobby the city on legislative matters. "I was very disappointed." Kelly, who sits on the Metro Partnership board, says it's legitimate for the group to argue for an expanded UGB. "I have no problem with them telling the local governments that, hey, you don't have enough industrial land." On its 2002 non-profit tax return, the partnership states that it is not involved in lobbying or influencing public opinion on legislative matters. Bettman says lobbying for more land to serve homebuilders and commercial development also goes beyond the partnership's supposed mission of promoting local industrial job creation and retention.
Brownfields Before the city opens up more land to development, it should make sure land already within the UGB is being used, according to Kelly. Bettman agrees, saying "There's a lot of alternatives to consider before we consider opening up the UGB and bringing in 2,500 acres." "There is a significant amount of underutilized industrial land," Kelly says. He says the city could use urban renewal to consolidate parcels or cleanup old industrial sites so they can be redeveloped. Kelly faults the Chamber studies for not fully considering redevelopment opportunities within the existing UGB. The Chamber studies argue that redevelopment can't provide much more land because land buyers view the sites as undesirable in location, appearance and cost to clean up. Councilor Scott Meisner also said at the meeting that he is interested in such brownfield redevelopment. He said it was unfortunate that the council recently voted to give Hynix millions of dollars more in tax breaks rather than using the money to fund clean-ups of old industrial sites for new industry. Meisner said that while the council is requiring higher density commercial and residential development, it should also require industry to build more densly with less surface parking. "Are we squandering the resource?" Meisner asked. "I'm not interested in doing a [land] inventory in isolation." Another alternative approach would be to prevent the ongoing rezoning of industrial land to commercial and residential uses. "It's inappropriate use of industrial land that is the issue not unavailability," Segel says. "We're seeing a whole slew of conversions throughout the metropolitan area." Meisner also says the city has to be careful with rezoning industrial land. "I don't want to just say the supply is 2,000 acres short, add that land, and lose it." The governor's task force draft report also recognized the problem of land owners seeking to rezone their industrial land to make more money. "Residential and commercial land sells for two to 20 times industrial land," the study noted. The Register-Guard company, which is one of the region's largest developers, is now seeking to change zoning rules to allow it to make more money by allowing medical offices on its 47 acres of industrial land along Chad Drive. The City Council is now moving forward with new zoning rules to allow hospitals to be built on industrial land, Segel points out. The city needs to tighten its zoning and protect existing industrial sites instead of allowing commercial development "pretty much wherever anybody wants it," Bettman says. "It's destructive."
Shovel Ready Sprawl supporters say opening up the growth boundary will create jobs when big industry is attracted to build in new "shovel ready" greenfield sites.
But Bettman says that what sprawl supporters are shoveling doesn't smell like jobs. The state and city have pursued a strategy of attracting big industry for the past decade and unemployment has gotten worse, not better, Bettman says. "Those are failed economic development strategies." Kelly and Bettman say the city should focus on existing small businesses. "The vast majority of new jobs created in a community come from local businesses," Kelly says. He points to a recent R-G story reporting that in the local enterprise zones, "the great majority of small tax-break recipients … have prospered, while many of the big tax-break recipients have closed plants or cut jobs." Bettman says rather than giving away big tax breaks and funding urban sprawl, the city should fund good schools, parks and other livable city services "so that people want to live here, want to do business here, and are attracted here." Urban sprawl creates high costs for taxpayers, often low-wage big-box and strip mall jobs and isn't good for the local economy, Bettman says. Segel says sprawl takes away resource lands that are a key part of the state and local economy. "We have an industry in Oregon, it's called farming and forestry" "There's no data connecting the expansion of the urban growth boundary with creating jobs," Bettman says. But a few wobbling council votes may be all that stands in the way of developers cashing in on sprawl at taxpayer expense. A council majority (Meisner, George Poling, Gary Papé, Jennifer Solomon and mayor Jim Torrey) voted to take scarce meeting time for the Metro Partnership's presentation last month on growth boundary expansion. Kelly, as a member of the partnership board, voted for the business group's letter urging the council to study expansion. Kelly said he favors a broad study that includes redevelopment alternatives, but not necessarily UGB expansion. "If the letter had said expand the UGB period, I wouldn't have voted for it." City planning staff often provide key guidance to councilors on such decisions. But the city planning department recently lost its planning director and another veteran planner to retirements and has yet to weigh in on the issue. City planner Kurt Yeiter says launching a UGB expansion study now, "seems just a little premature." An ongoing city natural resource inventory and parks acquisition program could effect the available land supply over the next six months, he said. "We should wait for some of those to wind down so we know what land it is we are measuring." Roberts told the council he has already contacted a private consultant to do the UGB expansion study which he wants to start next month.
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