Expected growth has Woodland officials looking to update the city’s comprehensive plan map, which was last updated in 2005.
The city’s planning commission has spent the last few months looking at the map and is considering six growth scenarios it could recommend to the city council. The commissioners will discuss the options at their next meeting, 7 p.m. Thursday in council chambers, 200 E. Scott Ave. City councilors are expected to make a decision on any recommendations sometime around March.
Travis Goddard, Woodland’s community development director, said Woodland is in a tricky spot because of how many drivers get off Interstate 5 at Woodland exits to continue heading north.
“A large part of the city is landlocked between I-5, the Lewis River and the Columbia River,” he said. “Exit 21 and 22 on (I-5) are the lifeblood for the city of Woodland. They’re also the lifeblood for the Hayes Road bridge and southern Cowlitz County. While they’re experiencing moderate growth, we’re subject to a large impact of growth. All of these impacts are affecting us, and we have no influence over the decisions that are made impacting those areas.”
Now city officials are looking at just how much they want the city to grow, if at all. Eight applicants have requested changes to the comprehensive plan map to expand the urban growth boundary. Seven of the requests include land to be zoned for residential construction.
“The city has a significant supply of vacant industrial and commercial land,” Goddard said. “There is a shortage of residential land.”
The planning commission is looking at six growth plans:
• No growth or changes at all.
• internal growth, where all growth will be accommodated through comprehensive plan designation changes for land already within the city limits.
• Partial applicant accommodation, where the city could choose to add some of the land requested into its urban growth boundary.
• Full applicant accommodation, where all applications are included in the urban growth boundary.
• City proposed boundary expansion, where the city will look at urban growth area expansion using “logical and practical approaches to eliminate boundary peculiarities,” according to information from the city.
• Woodland Bottoms planning, where the city will look at the practical implication of growth within the bottomlands, including planning for growth impacts that occur in Cowlitz County.
One of the eight applicants who wants to see the urban growth boundary expanded is Gary Loomis, who requested the city add 56.71 acres of land located north of the city between Green Mountain Road and I-5. Loomis has owned the land since 1977, and said city water service doesn’t reach the property.
“It would be a real good place to increase the city limits and make it possible for more people,” he said. “It would definitely help me. Someday, I’ll sell those pieces of property. Having city water would be better. It would be a good direction for them to expand into.”
Loomis said others near him have drilled wells for water, but aren’t able to get much out of them.
“The people are moving in,” he said. “The people are living there. It’s a poor area for wells.”
The largest request came from Aho Construction, which asked for a 605.5-acre expansion of Woodland’s urban growth boundary. The Vancouver-based homebuilder is asking about land located on south of the city between the railroad tracks and the Lewis River. Houston Aho, head of land development and acquisitions for the company, declined to speak for this article, saying it’s not company policy to discuss potential projects.
Goddard said that a “majority of the residential land is south of the city between the train tracks and the Lewis River and between train tracks and I-5.”
According to 2036 projections from the city, Woodland is expected to grow by another 3,400 residents and add another 1,300 homes. Currently, the city has a population of about 6,100 with roughly 2,200 homes, Goddard said.
“Part of what I’m trying to do is figure out if the city can include a residential component that can allow some of those workers to purchase homes in Woodland and live, as well as work, in Woodland,” he said. “Currently, these jobs are held by people who have to commute. The commuting is putting pressure on our existing facilities.”
All that growth will also mean added impacts for Woodland Public Schools. Superintendent Mike Green said if the urban growth boundary is expanded, the district could have to expand the capacity at the district’s already-packed elementary schools or add a fourth elementary school. The district announced recently that it will reconfigure a few schools for the start of the 2019-2020 school year to make all elementary schools K-4 buildings.
“We’re out of space. The elementary schools are full currently,” Green said. “What (the reconfiguring) will do, hopefully, is allow us to adjust for growth more easily as it occurs.”
Woodland Primary School, which is currently a K-1 school, had 355 students at last count in a building with a capacity of 399. Woodland Intermediate School, currently a 2-4 building, has a capacity of 441 students, and had 513 as of October. Yale Elementary School, already a K-4 building, had 44 students as of October in a building with a capacity of 63.
Woodland Middle School, which houses fifth- through eighth-graders, has a capacity of 790 students and had 728 in October. Woodland High School has the most room left, housing 695 students in October in a building that can hold 866.
Green also said growth projects for the district have increase from the projections done in 2015.
“If we add a fourth elementary school, it should take some pressure off the nearly-at-capacity middle school,” Green said. “We’d then probably shift fifth grade from middle school to elementary schools. We have to see what the city does, and then in turn what the developers do and what the economy does. There’s such a huge need for single-family affordable homes. The primary developer has said their plans are to have housing that is more affordable than areas south of us, so we could see a lot of growth.”
