West Linn Stafford Area Urban Reserve

BACKGROUND

Under Oregon’s land use planning system, Metro maintains the urban growth boundary (UGB) for the Portland metropolitan region. The boundary is a line that separates urban communities from rural lands. In 2007 the Oregon Legislature enacted Senate Bill 1011 which changed the way the UGB is managed, allowing our growing region to consider where to urbanize lands based on a broad set of factors. Under SB 1011, our region was authorized to designate urban and rural reserve areas to provide more certainty about the status of land over a longer time frame.

Rural reserves are intended to protect the most valuable and financially viable farms and commercial forests, and significant natural features like wetlands, rivers, buttes, and floodplains. These areas are off-limits to development for up to 50 years at a minimum.

Urban Reserves are lands that could be used for UGB expansions in the future. Under state law, Metro must consider the residential and employment needs of the region’s residents periodically to ensure a 20-year supply of buildable land, and if expansions are to happen they will occur in urban reserve areas, presuming local cities and property owners are supportive of that direction.

DESIGNATION PROCESS

From 2008 to 2010, Metro and Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties worked with the public to identify urban reserve and rural reserve lands to serve the region for the next 50 years. In February 2010, the Clackamas County Board of County Commissioners approved an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) with Metro to designate 13,750 acres of urban reserves and 70,500 acres of rural reserves in Clackamas County for the next 50 years. Multnomah and Washington counties approved IGAs with Metro the same week, so there was a true regional map. The Stafford area surrounding West Linn was included as an urban reserve.

Since 2010 a series of court cases and state legislation have made relatively minor changes to the regional reserves system but in Clackamas County the reserves map looks fairly similar to that approved in 2010.

For more history on the entire reserves process, including maps, timelines, and many other documents, please refer to the web sites maintained by Metro and Clackamas County.

STAFFORD-SPECIFIC AGREEMENTS

In June 2017 Metro, Clackamas County, and the cities of West Linn, Lake Oswego, and Tualatin signed an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) (known as the “Five-Party IGA”) specifically about the Stafford urban reserve area. The five governments created the IGA to alleviate the concerns of the cities about urban development in Stafford, to make clear that the cities will have control over the planning, process and timing, to ensure that Stafford will not be urbanized before appropriate urban services will be available, and to recognize that the Stafford Hamlet’s agricultural heritage, significant environmental assets, and valued open space should be preserved through any concept planning.

In February 2019 the cities of West Linn, Lake Oswego, and Tualatin signed an additional IGA (known as the “Three-Party IGA”) which further clarified how the cities would work together on any future planning efforts. A key part of this IGA is that widening of I-205 must happen before any development in Stafford takes place, and that no concept planning for areas north of the Tualatin River may be completed before 2029.

THE FUTURE

The Urban Reserve designations and IGAs described here only set the framework for discussions about the future of the Stafford Basin. The City of West Linn is committed to working with our neighbor cities, the Stafford Hamlet and its property owners, Metro, Clackamas County, and many others to discuss and plan for the future of this special place.