surprised no one's posted this one yet...
http://www.oregonlive.com/printer/pr...440.xml&coll=7
Suburbs set sights higher
With more people and a limited space, Portland's 'burbs look to the skies
Friday, August 24, 2007ERIC MORTENSON
The Oregonian
Keep an eye on the skyline nearest you: The low-slung profile of Portland's suburbs, where the local hospital used to be the only building popping above the treeline, is moving skyward.
Pressed by population growth, hemmed in by the urban growth boundary and tweaked by changing demographics, the suburbs ringing Portland are gearing up for denser development and eventually much taller buildings than they have now.
Gresham, Hillsboro, Beaverton and Wilsonville are in various stages of constructing, planning or talking about taller buildings. Tigard, Tualatin and Lake Oswego may follow suit.
"If one of the suburbs goes, there will be enough interest that (others) will follow pretty quickly," Wilsonville Mayor Charlotte Lehan said.
The start is modest, with low- and mid-rise buildings first, mainly for housing.
But planners and politicians envision a series of outer urbanized centers that mimic the Pearl or towering South Waterfront districts of Portland. The suburban town centers could become places where people live, work and shop -- and as a result reduce automobile commuting and lend stability by being active 18 hours a day.
At least that's the theory. Whether it develops that way -- along with an anticipated 1 million more people by 2030 in metropolitan Portland -- is unclear.
Joel Garreau, a Virginia-based consultant and author who's written extensively on how cities develop and change, said dense housing is not the first choice for most Americans.
"The market will validate whether building this stuff is a good idea," Garreau said. "The market has a way of showing what, in fact, people prefer to do."
That sentiment accounts for much of what is known as suburban sprawl. Portland, more than Atlanta or Houston, has in recent decades waged a fight against sprawl with its urban growth boundary.
Peter Calthorpe, a Berkeley, Calif.-based designer, architect and planner who founded the Congress of New Urbanism, said: "What you're seeing is the maturation of the suburbs. They're becoming more diverse, which inherently is a good thing."
But a lot depends on shifting demographics.
"There's definitely a market out there," said Portland Metro Planning Director Andy Cotugno. "There's a growing sector of the population that doesn't need a big house with a big yard."
"Wilsonville now has only 22 percent of its households with school-age children," said Wilsonville's Lehan. "We're an older community."
And Janet Young, Gresham's economic development manager, said, "There is a niche of people who want to live in an urban form but not live in downtown Portland."
Garreau underscores a level of privilege that may be a part of suburban growth around Portland. He notes that fewer Americans live in high-rises of seven stories or more than live in trailers.
"It's a lot easier to build density for yuppies than for families or working stiffs," he quipped.
Although downtown Portland will remain a powerful draw, suburbs will grow city centers, some of them hybrids such as the "lifestyle" shopping centers Bridgeport Village in Tigard and Hillsboro's Streets of Tanasbourne, said Portland planning consultant John Fregonese. Part of the change is pushed by congested highways and a lack of public funding to rebuild.
"Hillsboro is farther away from Portland than it was 20 years ago" in terms of travel time, Fregonese said.
The success of suburban centers may not depend on being able to step out of a condo and walk to work. Only 20 percent of car trips are to work, Fregonese said. What's more important is that schools, doctors, and shopping be close by.
"Employment is harder to replicate," Fregonese said. "If you live in Gresham but have a great job at Intel, you won't give that up. But you will not drive to Hillsboro to go to a store."
Lofty visions
The move upward starts with mid-rises of four to seven stories.
Vancouver has clustered offices, stores and more than 400 apartments and condos around downtown's Esther Short Park, with more to come in buildings that will stretch eight stories high.
"We thought of ourselves as a bedroom community of Portland and acted like it; we had no urban development," said Gerald Baugh, Vancouver's economic development services manager. "For us, it's definitely a change, and the skyline is definitely changing."
Hillsboro, 20 minutes west of Portland, has ambitious plans for its OHSU/AmberGlen area south of the Tanasbourne Town Center and an adjacent five-acre parcel at Northwest Cornell Road. The city of 85,000 is talking about development that could result in buildings 25 stories high.
In Beaverton, an eight-story building is expected to be built at The Round, at the Beaverton Central MAX station west of Portland, while the Westgate Theatre property off nearby Hall Boulevard could be home to mixed-use buildings up to 15 stories tall. East of Portland, Gresham developers are clustering four-story condos and apartments with ground floor retail in and around its Civic Neighborhood and historic downtown.
Wilsonville, which straddles Interstate 5 south of Portland, is only in the musing stage. But the city of 17,000 has a history of moving quickly on new ideas, and Mayor Lehan wants to take her city higher -- maybe seven to 10 stories.
Preventing sprawl
Population drives it.
"We have to accommodate (in Washington County) another 400,000 people," said Wink Brooks, retired Hillsboro planning and economic development manager. "We'll have another 50,000 jobs by then, which need a place for people to live. One of the ways for them to live, and that is increasingly acceptable to people, is living in higher density centers."
The area's cities and Metro, the regional government, have agreed to concentrate growth in town centers rather than sprawl outward. That's preferable to developing flag lots -- building houses at the back of existing homes with an access driveway giving the property a flag shape -- or dropping apartments into existing single-family neighborhoods, said Linda Adlard, chief of staff to Beaverton Mayor Rob Drake.
"With the housing influx we've all agreed to put into our cities, we would prefer that it be in our more populated downtown area and preserve our current neighborhoods," Adlard said.
There aren't a whole lot of other options.
Metro can always push out the urban growth boundary, but that's increasingly difficult because of the high cost of providing streets, water and sewer to new areas, Metro Council President David Bragdon said.
Moderate high-rise development, he said, "would be preferable to Portland expanding all the way to Salem, or to Sandy, or to the Coast Range -- and preferable to changes in our single-family neighborhoods."
Access to mass transit is key, planners said. The town centers in Hillsboro, Beaverton and Gresham are all served by the MAX light-rail system. Wilsonville is not, but it will have a station on the commuter train line, now under construction, that will connect it to Beaverton.
"Almost anywhere you have taller buildings, you have reduced need for car travel," Lehan said. "You densify."
Mass transit is especially appealing to retirees, said Adlard, the Beaverton chief of staff.
"If you live on the sixth floor of a building and you don't drive, but there's transit there, then all of a sudden you have a community that allows you to be pretty independent for a much longer period of time," she said.
Metro's planners have tried to spread the high-rise and density gospel by taking local leaders on tours of Vancouver, B.C., a city widely admired for its growth management. Wilsonville's Lehan said the Canadian city, its sprawl checked by ocean and mountains, has high-rises spaced throughout its suburbs.
Gresham now boasts a "vertical housing" tax credit. Developer Mike Rossman said the concept has been slow to take off, however, because suburban land values don't yet support building up instead of out. As land values within the urban growth boundary continue to increase, he said, buildings will shoot up.
Rossman's Beranger project in downtown Gresham is an example. The four-story building, nearing completion, will have 24 condos above 6,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. Condos are priced from $185,000 to $330,000 -- and 30 percent of them are already sold, Rossman said.
The buyers are a combination of young singles and people older than 55, he said. The project is within blocks of a light-rail stop, walking distance from downtown restaurants and shops, and across the street from the site of a future performing arts center, public plaza and farmers market.
Creating urban lifestyles in the suburbs takes more than a wish, however.
"We know that we're on the leading edge of an idea, and bringing the market to that idea is our challenge," said Brooks, of Hillsboro.
Mixed results
Results elsewhere are mixed. Seattle focuses growth within an urban growth boundary, and Redmond and Bellevue have had some success developing "centers that did not exist before, with lots of jobs and lots of housing," said Rick Olson, spokesman for the Puget Sound Regional Council, the equivalent of Metro.
But he is quick to add: "There are also examples of places that have ambitions of job growth within their centers that haven't materialized."
Garreau, the author, wryly added: "I've always been grateful that Portland exists in same way I'm grateful that Las Vegas exists: They're both at the end of bell curve distribution -- at opposite ends -- of what our urban futures will be like.
"I'm glad you're trying this (stuff). Let us know how it turns out."
Eric Mortenson; 503-294-7636;
ericmortenson@news.oregonian.com
©2007 The Oregonian
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