HomeMy WebLinkAboutItem C: Eugene Comprehensive Lands Assessment
ECC
UGENE ITY OUNCIL
AIS
GENDA TEM UMMARY
Work Session: Eugene Comprehensive Lands Assessment
Meeting Date: September 28, 2009 Agenda Item Number: C
Department: Planning and Development Staff Contact: Jason Dedrick
www.eugene-or.gov Contact Telephone Number: 541-682-5451
ISSUE STATEMENT
This work session is an opportunity for the City Council to receive a project update on the Eugene
Comprehensive Lands Assessment (ECLA), in particular the Buildable Lands Inventory.
BACKGROUND
The goal of ECLA is to determine whether Eugene has a sufficient supply of land within the Urban
Growth Boundary (UGB) to meet the projected demand for residential, commercial, industrial, and
public/semi-public land over the next 20 years. This study addresses House Bill 3337, which directed
the City of Eugene to undertake a study of residential lands sufficiency. The scope was expanded by the
City Council to assess all land types, including employment lands (commercial and industrial) and
public/semi-public land needs.
Technical Products
The current work session is an opportunity for the council to review a new product, the Buildable Lands
Inventory (BLI). This is the supply portion of the analysis that indicates how much buildable land is
currently available. The current land supply is determined through an analysis of lands within the UGB
that are currently vacant or otherwise able to accommodate additional growth. A summary of the BLI is
provided in Attachment A.
In late August and early September, the council held work sessions on ECLA to review many of the
assumptions associated with the demand portion of the analysis, or how much land is needed over the
next 20 years. Taken together, these form the baseline assumption that will be the basis for your
discussions the remainder of this year. Although not the focus of this work session, a summary table of
the baseline assumption is provided for reference in Attachment B. Staff and consultants are continuing
to work on variations to this baseline assumption, based on input received from the council and the
Community Advisory Committee, and will present this information at a work session in October. The
shaded variables in Attachment B indicate those for which variations will likely be created.
Process
The provisions of House Bill 3337 indicate that the City will need to determine our 20-year land need by
December 31, 2009. In order to do this, the council needs to review the lands inventory, discuss
variations to the baseline assumptions, and select the set of assumptions that will be used to determine
land need by the end of the year.
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Some community members have raised a concern that the City Council will soon be finalizing ECLA as
an unchangeable, adopted study, without more opportunity for citizen review and feedback. This is not
the case. House Bill 3337 requires that the residential land components of ECLA be “complete” by the
end of 2009. House Bill 3337 does not direct the City Council to adopt any part of ECLA. In fact, the
Eugene City Attorney’s office believes that, based on recent court decisions, the Land Use Board of
Appeals would not allow the City to adopt ECLA at this time, because cities are required to address the
documented land need concurrently with the determination of this need. As such, in December of this
year, staff will present the City Council with a motion that simply recognizes that, through ECLA, the
City of Eugene has met the deadline set by House Bill 3337, requiring the City to complete by
December 31, 2009: an inventory of the supply of buildable residential lands, an analysis of the City’s
housing needs and a determination of the number of residential units and the amount of land needed for
each housing type for the next 20 years.
In the event that this determination indicates an insufficient land supply, options for accommodating the
City’s 20-year residential, commercial and industrial demand will need to be explored. In the context of
those discussions, if it becomes clear that there was an error in the 2009 ECLA assumptions, the council
would have the option, given that ECLA was not formally adopted, to make revisions without the need
for a formal amendment process.
Next Steps
Additional council updates are scheduled to occur in the coming months to discuss variations to the
baseline analysis and to move toward compliance with House Bill 3337 by December 31. An updated
project timeline is included in Attachment C. Below is a tentative list of upcoming work sessions and
the anticipated topics:
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Late September – Review BLI, discuss process for upcoming work sessions
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Mid October – Review and discuss variations to baseline assumption
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Late October – Review and discuss variations to baseline assumption. Select assumption to be
used in determining land need
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Early-Mid December – Review and accept land need determination
Determination and acceptance of 20-year land need will address Eugene’s compliance with House Bill
3337.
RELATED CITY POLICIES
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The City Council has included ECLA as a priority item on the Planning Division Work Program.
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Growth Management Policies are related to ECLA, most notably policies 1, 2, and 5.
Policy 1 – Support the existing Eugene Urban Growth Boundary by taking actions to increase
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density and use existing vacant land and under-used land within the boundary more efficiently.
Policy 2 – Encourage in-fill, mixed-use, redevelopment, and higher density development.
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Policy 5 – Work cooperatively with Metro area partners (Springfield and Lane County) and other
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nearby cities to avoid urban sprawl and preserve the rural character in areas outside the urban
growth boundaries.
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COUNCIL OPTIONS
No formal action is required at this time.
CITY MANAGER’S RECOMMENDATION
No action is required on this item. Therefore, no recommendations are offered by the City Manager at
this time.
SUGGESTED MOTION
No action is required on this item. Therefore, no motions are offered by the City Manager at this time.
ATTACHMENTS
A. Summary of Buildable Lands Inventory
B. Baseline Assumptions
C. Project Timeline
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Staff Contact: Jason Dedrick
Telephone: 541-682-5451
Staff E-Mail: jason.p.dedrick@ci.eugene.or.us
Project Website: www.eugene-or.gov/ECLA
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ATTACHMENT A
Summary of Buildable Lands Inventory
Overview
The Eugene Comprehensive Lands Assessment will determine whether Eugene has a sufficient supply of
land within the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) to meet the projected demand for residential,
commercial, industrial, and public/semi-public land over the next 20 years. This study addresses House
Bill 3337, which directed the City of Eugene to undertake a study of residential lands sufficiency. The
scope was expanded by City Council to assess all land types, including employment lands (commercial
and industrial) and public/semi-public land needs.
A critical component of this analysis is determining the available supply of developable land within the
UGB. This analysis has been accomplished through the Buildable Lands Inventory (BLI). The analysis
involves developing categories of land and then assigning all lands to one of these categories. Once all of
the lands that are considered to be prohibited from development are removed, what remains are the
developable lands. These lands can then be utilized to meet the projected demand for land over the
next 20 years.
Methods
Lane Council of Governments (LCOG) performed the analysis necessary to classify all lands within the
UGB. Base information was derived from a number of datasets from city, state, and federal sources.
The primary building blocks include: tax lots, existing land use, plan designation and information from
the regional tax assessor’s database. The primary unit of aggregation for this analysis, as directed by
statute, is plan designation. As such, all results are expressed as acreage totals by plan designation.
The Community Advisory Committee (CAC) for the project spent several meetings working through the
methods, land classification definitions, and constraints that should be included in the analysis. Once
this work was completed, LCOG applied the methods and definitions to the data. The CAC then reviewed
the data through a series of “map room” sessions where members could review maps and aerial photos
and provide comments on the lots that had been identified as either vacant or developed and on the
constraints identified.
Additional information on characteristics of the land supply and the relevance of the assessor’s database
came from real estate appraisal expert John Brown of Evans, Elder & Brown Inc. Information on the
extent and proper consideration of constraints came from environmental planning expert Steve Gordon.
Both of these individuals also participated in a full review of the vacant and developed lots.
All lands within the UGB are categorized into one of four categories:
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Committed Lands – Public lands and other lands with no development or redevelopment
potential because they are committed to other uses during the planning period. Examples of
these include:
City parks
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School district property
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Utility properties and transmission easements
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Transportation rights-of-way
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ATTACHMENT A
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Protected Lands – Lands reserved to protect natural resources or prevent the impact of natural
hazards. These lands prohibit all development or redevelopment. Examples of these include:
FEMA floodways
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Goal 5 riparian and wetland areas and surrounding protection areas
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West Eugene Wetlands and surrounding protection areas
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Historic and cultural resources
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Developed Lands – Lands which are not classified as developable. In general, these are tax lots
with an assessed value of more than $1,000 that includes structures and paved parking.
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Developable Lands – Tax lots with no significant improvement present (an assessed value of less
than $1,000), identified as vacant and can be developed within the planning period.
Committed and protected lands account for land that is not developed because it is in use or due to
constraints that prohibit development. Some land is classified as developable but has partial
constraints. These partial constraints do not preclude development, but may reduce the overall
development capacity. The BLI identifies land with partial constraints. Partial constraints may include
the following:
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Slope
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100-year floodplains
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Geologic hazards
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Local Wetland Inventory (LWI) wetlands
The purpose of the BLI was to identify vacant, developable land. Subsequent analyses in ECLA estimate
residential redevelopment potential, residential land capacity, and employment site characteristics for
sites 10 acres and larger. These analyses include consideration of the partial constraints listed above.
The results of these analyses will be summarized in separate memoranda and in the final ECLA report.
Results
There are approximately 34,500 acres within the Eugene Urban Growth Boundary. This area is divided
into plan designations in the approximate proportions shown in Figure 1. The first step in determining
how much vacant developable land Eugene has is to remove all lands that are committed or protected
as defined above from Eugene’s total land base. Figure 2 provides a map of all committed and protected
acreage in the study area. These are lands considered to be unavailable for any future development.
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ATTACHMENT A
Figure 1: Land Base Acres by Plan Designation
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ATTACHMENT A
Figure 2: Map of Committed and Protected Lands
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ATTACHMENT A
The next step in the analysis was to identify developed tax lots, which is land that is not protected and
either has a vacant lands use or improvements with an assessed value of more than $1,000 or has a
developed land use. These were identified, leaving land that is considered vacant and developable. A
map of developable lands is provided in Figure 3 and a summary map showing all four land categories is
provided in Figure 4. Figure 5 summarizes the land classification process and the resulting acreages in
each of the four categories. Figure 6 shows how each of these categories is distributed across plan
designations.
Figure 7 shows developable land by plan designation and parcel size. Parcel size is an important
consideration for future development because some types of development can locate on small parcels
(e.g., a convenience store may require a quarter acre of land) and some types of development need
larger parcels (e.g., a hotel may need a site between 2 and 5 acres in size). The availability of
employment land by site size and other characteristics (e.g., location or access to major streets) will be
considered in the analysis of employment land need. For example, there are 939 acres of buildable
industrial land within the study area. It will be important to know, for example, if most of this acreage is
located in small tax lots or that there are few developable tax lots in commercial and industrial plan
designations that are larger than 25 acres. Figure 7 shows the distribution of developable tax lots by size
class. Of note are the shaded numbers, which show that Eugene has 10 tax lots in industrial plan
designations that are larger than 10 acres.
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ATTACHMENT A
Figure 3: Map of Developable Lands
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ATTACHMENT A
Figure 4: Map of Development Status
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ATTACHMENT A
Figure 5: Summary of Lands Classification Process
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ATTACHMENT A
Figure 6: Acres by Plan Designation and Development Status
Development Potential
Non-Buildable Land Buildable Land All Land
Plan Designation Committed Protected Developable Developed Total
Commercial 662 113 89 1,325 2,189
Commercial 532 82 85 1,144 1,843
Major Retail Center 131 30 4 181 346
Airport Reserve 0 0 0 0 0
Industrial 1,913 273 939 2,636 5,761
Light Medium Industrial 897 91 401 1,267 2,656
Heavy Industrial 646 18 181 1,029 1,873
Special Heavy Industrial 21 5 195 17 238
Campus Industrial 349 159 162 323 994
Government and Education 816 6 0 20 841
Government & Education 712 1 0 19 732
University Research 104 5 0 1 109
Residential 5,989 845 1,679 13,642 22,155
Low Density Residential 5,334 669 1,432 12,069 19,503
Medium Density Residential 440 109 180 1,253 1,982
High Density Residential 216 67 67 320 669
Rural Residential 0 0 0 0 0
Mixed Use 131 12 10 145 297
Mixed Use 66 4 5 59 134
Commercial Mixed Use 14 2 4 27 47
Medium Density Res Mixed Use 22 1 1 39 62
High Density Res Mixed Use 29 5 1 19 54
Other 2,488 291 56 367 3,202
Agriculture 21 0 0 1 23
Forest Land 0 0 3 1 4
Natural Resource 160 1 0 0 160
Parks and Open Space 2,267 290 53 365 2,974
Sand and Gravel 40 0 0 1 41
Total 11,999 1,539 2,774 18,135 34,446
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ATTACHMENT A
Figure 7: Number of Developable Tax Lot Subareas by Plan Designation and Size Class
Subarea Size Class
0.1 - 0.25 - 10 - 25 - 50 - = Total
Subarea Plan Designation < 0.1 0.5 - 1 1 - 2.5 2.5 - 5 5 - 10
0.25 0.5 25 50 100 100 Number
Agriculture 3 - 1 - - - - - - - - 4
Campus Industrial 4 1 2 1 5 9 8 4 - - - 34
Commercial 42 46 31 14 15 4 2 - - - - 154
Commercial Mixed Use 3 2 - 1 - 1 - - - - - 7
Forest Land 2 - - - - 1 - - - - - 3
Government & Education 1 1 - - - - - - - - - 2
Heavy Industrial 3 5 7 23 23 5 6 2 1 - - 75
High Density Res Mixed Use 5 2 - - - - - - - - - 7
High Density Residential 41 12 3 4 1 3 3 2 - - - 69
Light Medium Industrial 18 41 24 46 22 17 11 3 2 1 - 185
Low Density Residential 665 1,188 406 160 115 50 14 17 3 2 - 2,620
Major Retail Center - 4 1 - 2 - - - - - - 7
Medium Density Res Mixed 2 4 - - - - - - - - - 6
Medium Density Residential 113 75 20 7 11 8 2 1 2 - - 239
Mixed Use 11 11 1 3 - - - - - - - 26
Parks and Open Space 9 3 - 6 2 1 - 2 - - - 23
Rural Residential 1 - - - - - - - - - - 1
Special Heavy Industrial - - - - - - - - - - 1 1
Total Number 923 1,395 496 265 196 99 46 31 8 3 1 3,463
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ATTACHMENT B
Summary of Baseline Assumptions and Recommended Values
The analysis to establish a baseline for future land need is built upon key assumptions
that are guided by statute and rely on historical trends, recent information and current
policies. Key assumptions used in the land needs analysis are organized into three
categories: employment land needs, residential land needs, and public and semi-public
land needs.
The table on the next page presents a summary of these key assumptions for each of the
three categories. Below are definitions to assist with interpreting this data:
Acronyms and Abbreviations
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PD – plan designation
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EPA – employees per acre
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du/acre – dwelling units per acre
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ac/pkp – acres per thousand people
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PROS – City of Eugene Parks, Recreation and Open Space
Shaded are variables are those
Column 1: Variable – Name of each key assumption.
for which a variation will likely be created.
Column 2: Recommended Value – Current technical recommendation for the baseline
assumption. This is a product of committee comments, staff input and consultant
expertise.
Column 3: Source of Data – In many cases there are multiple sources. For the sake of
brevity, the primary source is shown in this table.
Column 4: Rationale – Reason for the data source or the value shown. In some cases safe
harbor provisions in statute are utilized.
Column 5: Reasonable Range – Statute implies that values utilized for determining land
need to be reasonable and defensible. Where possible, this column shows the potential
range when there are multiple methods that can be utilized or some discretion involved.
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ATTACHMENT B
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
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ATTACHMENT B
Summary of Baseline Assumptions and Recommended Values
VariableRec. ValueSource of DataRationaleReasonable Range
Employment Land Needs
Employment growth1.4%State of OregonSafe harbor0.9% to 2.1%
Share of Emp by TypeState of OregonCurrent mix
Industrial18.2%15.0% - 23.0%
Commercial54.3%46.0% - 55.0%
Retail13.1%13.0% - 15.0%
New Employment in Non-employment PD15%State of OregonCurrent 10% - 20%
New Employment in Existing Built Space10%City of EugeneOther cities5% - 15%
Employment RedevelopmentCity of EugeneOther cities10% to 50%
Industrial10%
Commercial15%
Retail35%
Employment DensityState of OregonCurrent averageVaries
Industrial13 EPA5-20 EPA
Commercial68 EPA30-93 EPA
Retail23 EPA20-37 EPA
Converting net to gross20% (15%)City of EugeneCurrent average15% - 20%
Residential Land Needs
Population Growth0.9%Lane CountyAdopted ForecastNone
Population in Group Quarters5.3%US CensusCurrent average4.4% - 5.5%
Persons per Household2.25US CensusSafe harbor Difficult to estimate
Residential Vacancy Rate5%US CensusRecent data3.5% - 6.5%
Housing mixCity of EugeneHistoric data &
Single-family detached61%recent trends45% - 64%
Single-family attached7%7% - 10%
Two to five units10%6% to 10%
Five or more units22%15% to 22%
Housing Density6.7City of EugeneRecent trendsAverage of
Single-family detached5.46.7-10.0
Single-family attached20.2Dwelling units per
Two to five units7.2
Five or more units17.0
Residential redevelopment11%City of EugeneRecent trends11%
Net to Gross Factor20%City of EugeneCurrent average15% - 20%
Public and Semi-Public Land Needs
Park Land20.0 ac/pkpCity of EugenePROS PlanN/A
Neighborhood Parks1.7 ac/pkp
Community Parks1.5 ac/pkp
Natural Areas10.0 ac/pkp
Other Parks6.8 ac/pkp
SchoolsSchool DistrictsN/A
4J School District0 acres4J
Bethel School District120 acresBethel
Public Operations and Facilities100 acresCity of EugeneHistoric data100 - 230 acres
Semi-public uses50 acresCity of EugeneHistoric data25 - 75 acres
*Shaded variables are those for which a variation will likely be created
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