PUBLIC COMMENT - DAN TERRELL & BILL KLOOS ON BEHALF OF HBA (1-4-17)

Agenda Item 4 - UGB Rulemaking December 3-4, 2015 - LCDC Meeting Page 37 of 56 advocates for this, but the department believes it would probably result in an artificial inflation of land supply and density. The department expects that LCDC will hear testimony on this point. 0130: Adjust Employment BLI to Account for Constrained Lands (Page 17) Sections (1) and (2) provide a method to adjust the inventory of employment land determined under rule 0120, and the capacity of the inventory, to account for constrained lands. The rule provides a list of types of constrained lands, identical to that provided in the residential path. A city is authorized to determine that industrial land with a slope greater than 10 percent is not suitable for industrial use. Some comments have proposed that the constraint threshold for industrial land slope should be instead set at five percent (which is a longstanding standard used in Oregon and in other states). Other comments have suggested it should be set even higher, at 15 percent. Although examples can be found of industrial facilities on slopes greater than five percent, such sites are considered constrained or problematic by site users and economic development professionals (the example provided by a commenter is the Hynix site in Eugene). It should be noted that the standard in the Goal 9 handbook, which has long been used in the traditional method, is 10 percent. As such, there is historical precedent for this standard in the land use program. A more conservative proposal such as 15% may provide a reason for cities to decline to use the new simplified method since many cities do not believe sites of that slope or greater will not be attractive to industrial land developers. 0140: Translate Job forecast to Employment Land Need (Page 18) Sections (1) through (7) provide a way for cities to convert the long term jobs forecast, determined under either the population based or OEA based forecast methods discussed above, into a long term net "employment land need." The method proposes that this be done by directing cities to calculate the current, local "employees per acre" job density of commercial and industrial lands in the city. This current density would be adjusted long term to account for anticipated redevelopment and to account for an anticipated increase in density, especially for commercial land. Accounting for long term redevelopment of both developed and partially vacant land is shown in public draft 3 as an OPTION. This long term redevelopment is proposed to be forecast by increasing the actual density calculated by a stated percentage amount based on city size and the type of land (commercial or industrial). We note that projected redevelopment is proposed to be accounted for in a similar manner as that provided in the residential path, in this case by increasing the employees per acre by a set percentage amount (based on city size). This is an indirect way to account for redevelopment, and was proposed this way for simplicity and in order to maintain consistency with the method used for residential redevelopment. In practice, redevelopment will be a factor for those lots that are shown as developed or (to a lesser extent) partially developed employment land in the BLI. It should be noted that the RAC did not discuss the proposed (optional) redevelopment "factors" provided in this option, although the need for an adjustment for redevelopment was discussed.