Steve Madsen
is the governmental affairs director of the Building Industry Association of Clark County.
On April 24, the Clark County Board of Commissioners removed the Urban Holdings designation from more than 1,000 acres of residential and commercial real estate in the Vancouver Urban Growth Area, making room for hundreds of new residences and several new commercial ventures. Releasing this designation makes good on one of the promises the BOCC made in exchange for the Building Industry Association of Clark County’s agreement to dismiss its lawsuit over the 2004 Comprehensive Plan in December of 2004.
The 2004 Comprehensive Plan created the Urban Holdings designation in an effort to limit growth to those Urban Growth Areas that could provide "full urban services." In all UGAs except for Vancouver, annexation is required for development to occur within the UGA. Vancouver is unique in that there has been resistance to annexation in many areas that, nevertheless, are fully urbanized, such as areas of Orchards, Hazel Dell and Salmon Creek. The difficulty is that the former commissioners did not define "full urban services" and created additional requirements for school facilities and emergency services beyond the normal Growth Management Act requirements for development, which are primarily limited to water, sewer and local transportation facilities.
Recently, a consortium of private development interests representing roughly 40 percent of the Vancouver UGA Urban Holdings properties have negotiated an agreement with the county to provide increased transportation and school funding in exchange for lifting the Urban Holdings designation. The consortium funded a detailed traffic study and has agreed to advance a substantial portion of the improvements to three key intersections in the area costing in excess of $12 million. Under the mandatory development agreement between all prospective Vancouver UGA developers and the county, traffic impact fees will be around $384 per daily trip. Concessions by the consortium were also made to the Battle Ground School District to make a portion of the project impact fees available to the district in advance of their legal requirements. The county’s Community Development Department has also raised permitting fees in anticipation of the increased activity.
This "band-aid" solution hints at the challenges Clark County will face in adopting its new comprehensive plan this summer. The new plan includes additional increases to the Vancouver UGA, which the city has opposed and shows no interest in annexing. In an innovative move, the county has proposed a planning area called "Three Creeks." Undoubtedly, a mechanism similar to Urban Holdings will be required to regulate development in this large area which includes Hazel Dell and Salmon Creek. There inevitably will be more specific and more expensive conditions for development. The tradeoff, however, should be a more certain process with far less delay.
Representing a broad array of building industry interests, the BIA has walked a fine line in this process. For those BIA members that are part of the consortium, as well as their subcontractors, we are pleased that development can finally proceed. However, those members who are not part of the consortium or that have other non-Urban Holdings projects in the county will experience significant regulatory cost increases imposed without consideration to their bottom lines or to overall impacts on housing affordability. It is important in our collective approach to these difficult development decisions not to succumb to the Golden Rule: The one with the gold makes the rules.
