Despite Careful Urban Planning, Portland Area Feels Growing Pains

This city for years has been looked to as a model for managing growth in the West, an example of what can happen if you keep new homes and apartments inside a defined urban boundary and protect the bucolic river valleys and forested hills from sprawl.

But Portland’s strict growth plan, if 2000 census figures are any indication, has turned out to be a mixture of wisdom and wishful thinking. Across the entire Pacific Northwest--a region that has gone to great lengths to emphasize clean air, scenic beauty and compact cities--major urban areas saw the creep of suburbanization that has characterized much of American growth this century.

While Portland itself absorbed a substantial 20% population boom during the 1990s, one of the most disconcerting stories is what happened outside the urban growth boundary.

Just across the Columbia River in Washington state, the city of Vancouver tripled in population--with 60,000 people driving across the state line each day to work in Portland.

The small town of Canby, Ore., which describes itself as “a Norman Rockwell town,” grew 42%.

And Molalla, Ore., a lumber mill town 29 miles from Portland in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, sprouted housing tracts, a McDonald’s and a big new Safeway, growing a whopping 55%; Molalla is a full 11 miles outside Portland’s urban growth boundary.

City officials estimate about half of Molalla’s residents commute to jobs in Portland and Salem.

“It’s literally become a bedroom community,” said Mike Burton, director of Portland Metro, the regional planning agency.

During the last decade, Seattle’s suburbs reached outward with intense development in older rural communities--towns such as Monroe and Dupont saw growth rates from 223% to 314%. And small farm towns on the outskirts of Boise, Idaho, towns once known primarily for sugar beets and potatoes, boomed by more than 260%. Idaho became the fifth fastest-growing state in the nation, with Boise itself expanding by 46.7%.

These figures come as no surprise to anyone who has tried to navigate the freeways between Seattle and the Microsoft campus in the eastern suburbs or to hire a carpenter in Boise for less than $25 an hour.

But Portland’s experience in the ‘90s is a lesson in the complexity of managing so wily an antagonist as human expansion.

On the plus side, nearly 98% of Portland’s growth occurred inside the urban boundary, a tribute to careful planning and intense political will. The downtown population grew by 30%, and building density increased--even as many older neighborhoods howled in protest. Nearby communities such as Beaverton and Hillsboro, targeted for urban growth, absorbed a significant share.

But while Oregon’s statewide growth management law requires communities to plan their ultimate boundaries, remote towns such as Molalla have their own growth perimeters that are not necessarily linked to those of other cites. Portland’s metropolitan planning links 24 cities in three counties--but does not extend as far as Molalla.

Even in Portland, there have been some growing pains. Although the city has encouraged the development of townhomes and row houses in architectural styles that blend in with existing old neighborhoods, many residents complain there was no thought given to putting in new roads or more parking.

“Invariably, it takes 15 minutes to half an hour to find a relatively decent parking place,” said Ann Okita, who lives in an area of northwest Portland that is now more densely populated than Queens, N.Y.

Part of the demand for new housing in Vancouver and Molalla, analysts say, is due to the fact that land inside the designated growth area has become so valuable. Like raising the zoning on property, urban growth designation kick-starts land values--and housing prices. And houses have always been cheaper in distant suburbs.

While the average home price in the Portland metro area now is $199,900, it’s just $173,600 across the river in Vancouver. Homes in Molalla’s newest subdivision start at less than $139,000.

One of the weaknesses in Oregon’s growth management law, some analysts say, is its failure to link local planning efforts.

Only the state can make sure there are adequate roads to get workers from Molalla to Portland--or prevent strip malls from springing up along whatever roads are built.

“I wish the state would approach the whole question of growth in a broader sense,” Burton said. “You don’t want the areas to grow into each other. You want to protect the open space between here and there.”

It would be hard to find anyone in Molalla arguing about the building boom--other than those who just moved there to escape Portland.

Most people remember what it was like before the Safeway, when the town that now has blossomed to 5,720 residents was wholly dependent on the fortunes of its three lumber mills.

“It’s the kind of town, when I grew up, everybody wanted to get away from. Now everybody wants to move back,” said Gary Deardorff, a tree farmer and real estate broker.

Deardorff and his wife, Joan, began working to raise money for a community pool 30 years ago, when they were in high school. Only earlier this year, with the influx of new residents, did a pool bond issue pass. The city, whose budget has quadrupled since 1990, has a new library and improved waste-water treatment facilities.

Burger King and Les Schwab Tires are on the way.

To those who would yell “sprawl,” Molallans point out that people are moving to Molalla because they don’t like Portland’s dense growth.

“People want a little elbow room. We don’t like having a house next door to us,” Deardorff said.

On the other hand, some exurbanites are finding Molalla a little too far removed. “This town, it’s very blue-collar. And for doing anything with my kids, for swim lessons, for cultural diversity, I’ve got to go somewhere else,” said Joan Monen, whose new tract home is up for sale.