Community Development Department seeks input from Parkdale residents

With help from The Next Door, Inc., a survey in English and Spanish was mailed to 644 property owners located in and around Parkdale in October to solicit input from community residents.

This was also the focus of a public meeting held Nov. 16 at Parkdale Elementary School. CJ Doxsee, senior planner with MIG, Inc., a consulting firm hired by the county to assist with the project using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, and Eric Walker, county community development director, had planned to give an overview of the project and break into small group discussions for feedback.

But the crowd was so large — approximately 150 — and there were so many audience questions, that the plan was scrapped in favor of a general Q&A session.

“First of all, this is a great turnout,” Doxsee said. “Hood River County asked us to help put together a community plan and from the very get-go, what I’ve seen of the Parkdale community is great — you’ve got a great location, great community, you’ve got coffee shops and a barbecue joint; I’m telling you, and you already know it, there’s a lot of good things going on here, and we’re here to make sure that continues.”

Oregon Statewide Planning Goal 14, which applies to urban land development, requires that counties develop plans for their rural communities and periodically update zoning codes to meet the needs of those communities. Goal 14 also requires that community boundaries be defined.

“An unincorporated community plan is a long-range plan … You’re in an agricultural area, you’re outside the city, it’s very rural here,” Doxsee said. “A lot of this is intended to preserve farmland, preserve the orchards, preserve the forested areas — and part of doing that is to have an area where you can have commercial businesses, where you can have industrial uses, you can have houses a little closer together then we have now.”

It’s a question of “how do we do that, and how do we do that in this small area and meet statewide requirements,” he said.

Establishing Parkdale as a Rural Unincorporated Community (RUC) is not expected to change how existing properties in Parkdale are zoned, but may provide some additional development opportunities, such as smaller residential minimum lot sizes (currently 2 acres), additional housing types (such as accessory dwelling units and multi-family dwellings), and larger commercial and industrial building size limits, said Walker.

Until Parkdale is formally recognized as a RUC, it is required by the county to be treated as rural land, which limits certain development options. The project does not involve incorporating Parkdale into a city, nor will it effect law enforcement coverage — two concerns shared at the meeting.

“What started this process?” asked one audience member. “Because usually there’s an agenda, or something to do with growth or a piece of property.”

“The idea for unincorporated community plans started about 20 years ago,” Doxsee said; at that time, many counties, including Hood River, developed these plans. Hood River’s, however, was never adopted. (See sidebar.)

Though it is a state requirement and “some things are outside the county’s control,” Walker said the benefit to setting the RUC boundary is that “we have the opportunity to comply with the community planning rule, which provides more opportunities” for development.

Another meeting participant asked if the boundary would increase property taxes to cover expanding available services; Doxsee said that analysis suggests that there is capacity for growth and taxes are not expected to go up because the cost of expanding services typically fall to the developer.

Affordable housing was another issue raised, as well as how an increase in housing could change Parkdale’s character. Doxsee said there are developers and nonprofits who specialize in affordable housing, but that decreasing the minimal lot size to increase density could also lower prices — though real estate market factors are always a driver.

He said that the plan will go before the county board of commissioners sometime in 2023, but before that, there will be a review by the planning commission, both of which will involve public meetings to allow for additional commentary. The plan is expected to be ready for adoption around June.

Questions can be directed to Walker at eric.walker@hoodrivercounty.gov. For more information, visit hrccd.hoodrivercounty.gov.

Project history

Formally establishing Parkdale as a RUC has been years in the making. The County Comprehensive Plan was originally adopted in the early 1980s — at that time, Parkdale was identified as an “exception area,” which allowed it to be planned and zoned to accommodate both existing and new commercial, industrial and residential development.

The first of the draft Parkdale Community Plan was developed in 2002 as part of a larger proposal that also included Odell, another “exception area” eligible to become an unincorporated community. But that combined project was put on hold in 2004. Later, in 2008, the Parkdale portion was reactivated and brought before the County Board of Commissioners for consideration, but again was put on hold when it was then learned that Parkdale Sanitary District Wastewater Treatment Facility was out of compliance with DEQ discharge requirements, potentially affecting planned development densities and land uses. Since then, system deficiencies have been corrected.

In 2021, the County Board of Commissioners identified the completion of Parkdale RUC as a priority on the county’s Strategic Planning Action Plan, resulting in the project being taken up once more.