Balanced Development Patterns (2001)
For more information, e-mail Anne Catlin or contact her by phone at (541) 917-7550.
Project Overview
The Balanced Development Patterns project (BDP) looked at past trends, projected needs and assessed how they relate to our available land and transportation system capacity and managing growth over the next 20 years. Projections indicate that there may be 13,000 more residents living in Albany by the year 2020. They would live in almost 6,000 new homes and work at more than 6,000 new jobs. With a fixed amount of land, how will we accommodate this much growth while continuing to build better neighborhoods and a livable city center? As Albany continues to grow, the demands of a larger population create potential threats to our quality of life: threats such as eroding livability, declining mobility, and rising transportation costs. Without careful planning designed to manage this new growth, these threats could become reality.
Participants talked through the following questions:
- Given past trends, where will development most likely occur in the next five, ten and twenty years?
- Have recent patterns of development made the best use of land?
- How do different patterns of development impact the transportation network (streets) and other utilities (water and sewer)?
- Is there enough land zoned to accommodate future land uses?
- Is vacant land properly zoned?
- Are zoning districts located where they should be?
This project was partially funded by a grant form the Transportation and Growth Management (TGM) Program, a joint program of the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development. This TGM grant was financed, in part, by federal Transportation Equity Act for the 21 st Century (TEA-21), local government, and the State of Oregon funds.
Go to Frequently Asked Questions for more information.
Project Summary
In the first phase of this project, in a series of community workshops in the spring of 2001, participants identified what types of residential, commercial and mixed-use developments they want in Albany and where these developments should be located, based on jobs and housing projections. The result is a city-wide map showing a new "development pattern" that uses small village centers with mixed use and urban residential surrounding the centers and employment centers close to major transportation routes (Interstate-5, US Highway 20, and State Route 99E).
In a series of workshops in May, 2001, participants applied the new development "pattern" to create a more detailed map of the area of Albany east of Interstate-5.
In the last phase, the City applied for additional grant funds to proceed with a more detailed plan using the Balanced Development Patterns principles for North Albany. The North Albany workshops were held in the spring of 2002. (See the North Albany Refinement Plan webpages for more information.)
After several public hearings in 2002, the City adopted a revised Comprehensive Plan map incorporating the village center development pattern recommended by the Balanced Development Patterns project January of 2003, and in March a new village center zoning district, Mixed Use Commercial (MUC), was applied in North Albany and East Albany.
