State leaders must signoff on these expansions and they like to see greater density than growth that is spread out.

Andy High with the Central Oregon Builders Association says Bend could consider doing what Washignton County did.

"And Washington County had such a hard time.  They went to the legislature saying our neighbors won't allow us to expand, so they wrote a bill. Bend might do that.  It took 16-thousand pages to submit that to the state. That's larger than the Affordable Care Act and just for five thousand acres of buildable land."

Bend has been working on expanding its UGB for the last decade and has chagned its UGB plan to accommodate what state leaders want.

High says during the downturn when buiding stopped,  the expansion wasn't as urgent.  But now that building has started up again -- we could run out of land to build on.