BEND, OR -- Bend Councilors are considering how to accommodate future development needs as the city grows. "We're supposed to be at about 150,000 by the year 2040," says City Manager Eric King.

He tells KBND News Council hopes to get permission to expand the UGB to allow for more affordable housing development, "We are doing what is called a one-time expansion of our Urban Growth Boundary; about 100 acres. There was a law that was recently passed in the legislature that allowed cities a quicker process to add more land to their inventory." The specific location for the expansion has not been determined, "We're going to solicit property owners and developers over the next couple of months, so we'll open it up and see who brings the best proposal. Our focus is affordable housing, so we hope to get multiple proposals from developers and then we will have to pick one."

King says, "The next step is a more traditional Urban Growth Boundary that'll look more comprehensively at where we might want to grow." He adds, "Not just out, but change what the land is used for inside our current Urban Growth Boundary, to accommodate that population forecast. And then long-term, what's a process called 'urban reserves.' Looking at a 50-year plan of land that we might need to accommodate growth and really protecting some of that land around the city, so that as we grow, we can urbanize; we don't have these barriers."
While the Legislature's one-time UGB expansion tool is supposed to allow for  quick approval of proposals focused on affordable housing, King says the larger plan won't happen quickly, "It's really a four to five-year process to put all of that together with the short, medium and long-term milestones."