Hillsboro's AmberGlen neighborhood buzzing with construction, new apartment buildings, potential MAX stops
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The Orenco neighborhood isn't the only one in Hillsboro where a new skyline is emerging.
Construction is underway on a 352-unit, 10-building apartment complex in Hillsboro's AmberGlen area, and a recently completed 203-unit development is now leasing.
Developer Arbor Custom Homes is behind both projects. The just-completed complex, along the west side of Northwest 206th Avenue between Cornell Road and Amberwood Drive, boasts a pool and is pet-friendly, and the surrounding sidewalks smell of freshly laid mulch. There are studios, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units available.
The incoming complex is farther south, on the northeast corner of 206th and Wilkins Street.
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I hate to say this, but I can't really see developments like this doing much more than working to support pro-sprawl arguments, when it comes down to it. Since the rest of the suburbs is unwalkable, few of these residents will be using transit or riding bikes. Well, maybe some, but at first very few, which means most people will be driving to their jobs at Intel or, worse, the dental office over by Washington Square (in other words, somewhere transit-inaccessible), raising congestion.
It's nauseating to say this, but Steve Buckstein made the point somewhere (a few years ago) that increasing density requirements means that density, to some extent, will appear at the edges of the metro area, where cheap empty land is still available. Which doesn't get you to the goal of dense town centers. I know that Metro's density requirements are higher in town centers, so this is only partly true, but you can easily find higher density developments in transit-unfriendly places like outer Powell or along Murray Blvd. But I don't know what could be done about it. OTOH, density has to start somewhere, right?