Change is in the air for Clark County’s six rural centers, the little commercial intersections that served farmers and loggers in the north county hills for a century.

A task force of rural residents told county commissioners Tuesday night that Amboy, Brush Prairie, Chelatchie, Dollars Corner, Fargher Lake and Hockinson should be re-imagined as “villages,” with residential lots as small as half an acre in some cases.

They also recommended a series of changes to local zoning laws that could make it easier for businesses such as inns and health clubs to set up shop nearby.

Today, it seems like county codes assume that the only thing anyone would want to do in the country is “sit on a hay bale and sell tractors,” said Bill Doty, owner of the Fargher Lake general store.

“Not everybody who lives up here is a farmer, you know,” Doty said.

The task force’s recommendations on rural centers, part of two years of deliberation over the future of rural zoning, are likely to be taken up by county commissioners at a work session in April, Commissioner Steve Stuart said Wednesday. Many other rural zoning issues are on the table, too.

For more information, visit http://www.clark.wa.gov/long rangeplan/ and click “rural lands review.”

Russ Grattan, an Amboy tree farmer who sits on the rural task force, said he doesn’t want houses to “checkerboard the rural area” as the county’s population grows.

Instead, he said, the task force hopes to focus residential and commercial development in the rural centers.

“So they don’t have to drive 10 or 15 miles into Battle Ground or Brush Prairie or whatever,” Grattan said. “It’s there.”

Today, the need to separate septic fields from drinking wells means that rural lots can’t go below one acre.

But David Halme, a task force member and rural land use consultant who lives near Battle Ground, said the county should write its codes to prepare for new septic technology that would allow lots to shrink to half an acre.

Small public water systems might have the same effect, said Doty.

He’s looked into opening a health club, but says he’s limited by Fargher Lake’s lack of water. Fire sprinklers are required in any building over 5,000 square feet, he said.

Eventually, Doty said, the rural centers might develop into tourist-friendly destinations like Sisters, Ore., or Leavenworth.

Not that Leavenworth’s “Bavarian village” is Doty’s personal cup of tea.

“I promised my wife I’d take her there,” he said with a laugh. “I did. But I didn’t stop driving. Seemed like it’d be expensive.”

Print this article