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SIX - Heppner Gazette-Times, Heppner, Oregon Wednesday, March 8, 2023 Lexington has room to grow but hurdles to overcome, according to buildable lands assessment By Andrea Di Salvo At a town hall meeting Feb. 14, Lexington com- munity members learned that business has room to grow in the small town, but that planning is needed to overcome hurdles and take advantage of opportunities. Points Consulting, a firm based in Moscow, ID, held town hall meetings in all three South Morrow County cities last month as part of a Goal 9 assessment for the Willow Creek Val- ley. Brian Points of Points Consulting said they are about three quarters of the way done with the project, and should have reports for all three cities done by the end of April. Goal 9 refers to an Or- egon Statewide Planning Goal. The Oregon State- wide Planning Program has 17 planning goals, 14 of which apply east of the Cascades. Goal 9 is a goal for economic development. To meet Goal 9 bench- marks, cities need to have economic development strategies and, among other requirements, should have a 20-year supply of employ- ment lands. Employment lands are places people work, either commercial or industrial property. “Do you have enough plans for businesses where people would work?” ex- plained Morrow County Planning Director Tamra Mabbott, who was present at the meeting. “The ideal model is, you live and work and play in your communi- ty. Not that there’s anything bad about living in one place a commuting, but the model is really providing all of those opportunities for the people who are in the state.” Points said they’ve al- ready done a lot of work on the demand side, though they have a few more pieces to do. “The businesses in Lexington and where they think they’re going to be in the next 20 years. That’s the last piece of demand we need to look at,” he said. They’ve also looked at supply, which is the lands that exist. “You want those things to be lined up,” said Points. “If you have enough de- mand and not enough sup- ply, you can imagine what bad things happen from that. People start taking their businesses outside of that town, or they just don’t start them, or they pack too many people in too close of a space, or they start working out of residential zones instead of commer- cial zones.” “Likewise, if you have too much supply and not enough demand, that’s probably not an optimal use of that space,” he added. Morrow County overall has had strong employment growth, increasing 44 per- cent in an 11-year span. “It has grown faster than any peer competitor that we come up with—Or- egon, Washington, Idaho, California, all of the United States,” said Points. Morrow County as a whole has also experienced significant growth in wag- es, increasing 125 percent in 11 years. The county has grown 45 percent more than the state, 63 percent more than the nation in that span of time. Points said growth in the north end of the county, notably the Columbia River Enterprise Zone (CREZ), has helped boost earnings in Morrow County by a significant degree. “But that absolutely has positive effects on you, as well,” he said. “You can think of some of the con- tributions that the CREZ makes to communities in South Morrow County. You can think of the job oppor- tunities that it creates for people in your community.” However, despite em- ployment increases, the communities in the Willow Creek Valley have strug- gled, particularly at mo- ments when the region was struck by macroeconomic forces. Points said he wanted to emphasize that there wasn’t one single way to be a good community; a community could be a driv- ing economic force, or a satellite community. He suggested that latter was probably the way forward for Lexington. “I don’t suspect that a 300-person food manufac- turing company is going to come knocking on the door tomorrow and say, ‘This is the best place for us,’” Points said. “Probably not. “But if you have that 20 miles down the road, and you have a great quality of life and a lot of ameni- ties, then you start to have people who want to live in that place and commute elsewhere for work—which is going to create other em- ployment opportunities for that town,” he added. Points also said that, while some might consid- er Lexington a bedroom community, they would still need some employment plans to complement that. For instance, that might create the need for more restaurants, retail stores, or services like doctors and child care. “All that stuff that flows down from people having more money and wanting to do more things closer to where they live,” he said. He also said that Mor- row County has seen note- worthy growth in manu- facturing, information and utilities; manufacturing has increased 59 percent since 2010. The informa- tion sector was nonexistent in the county in 2010, but thanks to companies like Amazon Web Services, now employs 600-plus workers and has a 2,400 percent growth rate. When it came to data for Lexington, Points said the numbers were less pre- cise. “The bigger the region, the more data there is to work with, the more pre- cise you can get with the number,” he said. “You can’t necessarily come to the same conclusions with small communities like this, because we’re just out on those skinny branches.” However, even with a margin for error, he said it was obvious that employ- ment had gone down from 2010 to 2020, decreasing by about 50 percent in the last 10 years. Median income has also declined. “Those two things don’t always go hand in hand,” he said, because that is income per household, not total community in- come, but he added that the average household income has decreased by about 30 percent. He said that could come from several different factors such as people mov- ing away or people retiring. He also clarified that employment didn’t refer to the jobs held by people who live in Lexington, but rather the jobs that exist within Lexington. In terms of commer- cial, industrial and public lands withing Lexington, Lexington has about 40 acres of commercial land. About half of those are va- cant, which could be a good thing in terms of supply. For industrial zone, Lexington has around 70 acres, but only 8 of them are vacant. In the public sector, there are around 25 acres, none of which are vacant. “Some of those lands are already being used,” Points said. “There’s al- ready a business, an or- ganization, a government agency that’s putting it to use. They’ve improved the land, they’ve built some- thing on it. That’s what we call developed.” On the other hand, there are also places within those zones that are not being used and that are either vacant or re-develop- able. Vacant lots are just as they sound. Re-developable means there may be a build- ing on the parcel, but it’s not worth a significant amount. Points said it was important to realize the distinction. “If we’re thinking about that long-term equa- tion over the next 20 years, we want to think about, maybe it’s not being used perfectly right now, but it could be. You could put a lot more on it,” he said. He also touched on the old mill site at Heppner. Most of the site of the for- mer Kinzua mill has long been unusable because of being on a flood plain, but Kim Cutsforth had touched on progress in reclaiming a large part of the land during a meeting the previous night in Heppner. “That’s a huge deal,” said Points. “Its close enough that it’s going to have an impact on both the City of Heppner and the Town of Lexington.” Points then asked for input and questions from the gathering. “I think Lexington has a lot of potential,” said Lexington Recorder Ve- ronica Ferguson. “With our downtown improve- ment grant, and with a lot of improvements to our sewer and water that we’re currently going through and in the future, there’s a lot in Lexington.” Lexington Councilor Katie Imes mentioned the flood plain, which also affects Lexington. “I think that’s one of our significant challenges that we would need to work on,” she said. She also pointed out that there were several properties throughout Lex- ington that could be con- sidered re-developable, but those might require both property owners willing to sell and buyers who would develop them. “A lot of times we run into an issue of the land- owners being willing to do anything with it,” said Lex- ington Mayor Juli Kennedy. “There’s stuff in Lexington, in residential areas, that’s been vacant for years. Peo- ple will not let go of it. It’s almost a feeling of being land-locked because of the people who own it. That’s always a challenge.” Lexington Councilor Bobbi Gordon mentioned septic as a hurdle to devel- opment. “You’ve got to put in a septic anywhere you put anything, and depend- ing on the size of the land or where it is—if it’s any- where near that flood zone, don’t ask to put a septic in,” she said. “We’re working on that, though,” added Imes. Mabbott asked if, for instance, the private owner of the old Lexington school might be willing to devel- op that if there were grant money available. Several council members said they thought so, as the own- er had wanted to develop the building but had been stopped by the prohibitive cost of a fire suppression system. Points also added that, from a landowner perspec- tive, “Nobody is excited to just sit on a building and do nothing with it. It starts to wear you down.” “It takes the right offer, the right vision, the right incentive package. Those old buildings can be really tricky with those costs,” he added. Points asked for input on other concerns or trends from Lexington residents. As with Heppner respon- dents, housing came up as an issue. Kennedy men- tioned that she works for Morrow County Health District, and housing has been a hurdle to recruiting for available jobs. “It would be interesting for me to know how many people in this area do travel out of town for jobs that, if something was built here in that industrial area, would at least keep them closer to home,” Kennedy added. “There are a lot of people who travel out.” Mabbott asked if com- munity members thought public transit would be helpful for drawing resi- dents who worked in other communities. The question had been raised in Hep- pner but without much positive response. Kennedy responded that part of the issue was that people who worked out of town also took care of other errands out of town. “So they want to drive themselves,” she said. “Grocery shopping here is challenging. There are some services that we just don’t have.” Points asked where community members saw Lexington 10 years down the road, and if they wanted to grow or stay the same. Imes said the town is work- ing on sewer and water solutions, and it would be nice to see more housing. After that, she thought com- mercial growth here and there would be welcome. “Most people that I talk to that live here, love living here,” Imes said. “It’s quiet. It’s rural. It’s peaceful for the most part. “The restaurant’s just opening. Everybody’s very excited about that,” she added. “Amenities that make your community liv- able and enjoyable. I mean, walk down the street and say hi to so-and-so who has a book store, or stop in at the restaurant or the coffee shop, or things like that are really what people are craving and wanting here.” WWW.HEPPNER.NET Submit News, Advertising & Announcements Letters To The Editor Send Us Photos Start A New Subscription