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.”
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