Item A: Eugene Comprehensive Lands Assessment

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ECLA: Baseline Assumptions ECONorthwest July 2009 Page 41 ? The supply-side analysis is not required by state law. Its potential value is that it may provide a more detailed tracking of the categories of tax lots that are assumed to be contributing to redevelopment, which could help respond to questions about UGB capacity in the event that some of those tax lots are re- zoned in the future. Ideally, a complete supply-side analysis might create multiple redevelopment rates: rates that might be specific to plan designation, lot size, or other characteristics. Where there may not be agreement among all CAC members and City staff is 30 whether supply-side analysis has benefits that exceed its costs. Depending on the amount of disaggregation desired, generating redevelopment rates for many combinations of zoning and land attributes could take quite a bit of time. More important, even if it were no extra effort, that level of detail creates yet more detail for debate and challenge. We noted at a CAC meeting that this type of analysis is like fractals: turning up the magnification does not reduce complexity or uncertainty. Assume that a good-faith effort was made to describe historical amounts of redevelopment by plan designation (e.g., LDR, MDR) and to compare those amounts to the total theoretical capacity by plan designation. How does that theoretical capacity get estimated? A simple technique would be to multiply all land in a zone (say, LDR) by the maximum allowed capacity. But we know that there are many reasons that much of that land will not develop to its maximum. It may be constrained by slopes, for example: we could bring in a slope layer from the GIS and make some assumptions. It may be constrained by other policy overlays, for example: we could try to identify all those, map them where possible, and from the some assumptions about the impact on capacity. Both of those types of issues are ones we have dealt with for vacant land. But the land may be constrained by parcel configuration, the location and size of the building footprint, or the types and locations of uses in surrounding parcels: we have no easy way to deal with those issues globally—they require parcel-specific analysis. And, finally, it is clear that market conditions affect the likelihood of redevelopment and thus, by definition, the capacity of any developed tax lot to contribute new dwelling units to the housing stock. The concern of City staff and the consultants is that what may start as a relatively simple exercise to estimate capacity in some theoretical aggregated and generalized sense will become, little by little, a complicated exercise to get to a more estimate of capacity, with no clear technical end to the refinedactual legitimate debate and the analysis that could inform it. Given all these points, and after evaluating them in more detail than this summary provides, City staff directed the consultants to proceed as follows regarding redevelopment: We cannot say, because we are writing this memorandum in response to CAC comments, but in advance of 30 having met with the CAC to get its reaction to the points we are making.