At their meeting on Feb. 10, Tigard City Councilors were briefed on the status of the city’s long-term “Housing Opportunity Mobility and Enterprise (HOME) project,” which outlined avenues for developmental code and policy changes to satisfy community wants for more amenities.
“Community members identified disconnected sidewalk networks and bike lanes, high car speeds and long distances as barriers preventing them from walking and biking to more destinations,” Tigard Associate City Planner Amber Gomez told councilors at the meeting.
The city website describes the project as an effort to “create vibrant neighborhoods where it’s easy for everyone, regardless of mobility needs, to get to homes, shops and services.”
“With help from community input, expert advice, and proven planning approaches, the City will recommend updates to the Tigard Development Code, which is the set of rules that guide how and where things are built,” reads the description.
The first phase of the city’s HOME project kicked off in the spring of 2025 (excluding a short-lived jumpstart in 2022), after Tigard received $95,000 in grant funds from Metro. Over the last year, Tigard’s Planning Department has hosted 14 community engagement events to try and eyeball what policy/code modifications would provide Tigard neighborhoods with more amenities.
Gomez’s presentation reviewed community desires received from completed engagement. These included ideas such as enhancing “third places,” strengthening neighborhood interconnectivity and improving reliable public transportation.
Gomez told councilors that the upcoming phase of the HOME project would begin in late spring, with continued community engagement and the start of potential code curation to pave the way for more green spaces, protected bike lanes and direct transit connections.
The council approved the direction of continued community outreach while discussing specifics of the plan, such as maintaining parking for residents, the project timeline, and whether adult entertainment stores should be permitted in neighborhoods.
Councilor Heather Robbins said she supported the initiative but wondered whether the process could be expedited given the high level of community engagement already completed.
“Can we kind of move this along a little?” Robbins asked at the meeting. “The timeline I’m seeing here, I’m wondering if those items are mutually exclusive?”
The project had already, in its first and second phases, hosted 14 community engagement events, during which “more than 800” residents were exposed to project ideas, according to Gomez.
Gomez told Tigard Life that the planning commission planned on hosting an additional 20 community engagement events throughout the spring and summer.
Gomez emphasized to the council that she believed there was still room for engagement that would help the department narrow down potential code updates. She also noted that the Metro Grant funding required the city to do additional public engagement in its second phase.
“I will be working on drafting code while doing the community engagements, so they are kind of happening at the same time,” Gomez said. “I think there is more that we can still ask people.”
The piece of policy possibly set in the crosshairs of this move towards more amenities is the city’s developmental code, which would be amended to allow “Indoor Sales and Services” as well as “Mobility Hub” uses in residential districts.
“This is just a starting point,” Councilor Jake Schlack said at the meeting. “We can come back and we can add additional categories that we would want to consider at some point…Since this is sort of just a green light to continue without making any definite commitments, I’m fine with both recommendations as they are.”
Councilors discussed preferred types of commercial use in neighborhoods after Gomez listed every type, including adult entertainment.
“I would not be interested in pursuing adult entertainment in a neighborhood nor car sales or fuel sales,” Robbins said. “It just seems like common sense that we do that.”
Transit Uncertainty
Other councilors said they supported the progress made on the project, while noting possible problems like a lack of parking, which Councilor Jeanette Shaw said she did not want to see traded for pure walkability.
“One of the key takeaways is parking, but it keeps getting dropped off of the amenities list,” Councilor Jeanette Shaw reasoned at the meeting. “If we can ensure that that gets added back on because I know there are a number of community members who want to make sure that they aren’t left out of going to some particular amenities because there isn’t transit.”
Tri-Met’s recent budget issues and line cutbacks have been an ever-present complication looming over the futures of various transportation projects in Tigard and Tualatin, and Gomez told Tigard Life she had received “some comments” about increased parking in the wake of the cutbacks.
“We have received some comments through community engagement so far about public transit service gaps and interest in parking near new shops and services in neighborhoods,” Gomez said in an email to Tigard Life. “These are topics we will continue to gather feedback on and take into consideration when we begin to draft potential policy proposals.”
Unintended Development
Another concern raised by council members at the meeting was developers’ potential disregard for the code’s intentions, with councilor Faraz Ghodussi saying he feared that “developers will sort of do what they want with this.”
Because code changes would potentially allow for more businesses to have access to residential areas by repurposing a residential building for a small business, but also allow for businesses to potentially buy residential property and demolish it, Ghodussi said the city should be mindful of unintentional commercialization maybe allowed by potential changes.
“In one respect, yes,” Gomez responded. “Developers will choose whether or not to build there…We can’t force anyone to do it; they’re private developers, they’ll make their own decisions.”
Tigard City Planner Shuyler Warren, who was also present at the Feb. 10 meeting, said that, while developers’ regard for the incentivisation of the new building codes wasn’t ensured, a total renovation of existing neighborhood properties was “unlikely.”
“It is unlikely, I think, that given the regulations that we’re likely to bring forward that there’ll be much of an incentive to scrape an existing site and do development,” Warren said. “What we’re more likely to see is a home on the corner or something like that where someone who’s an occupant or someone who’s not an occupant opts to open a small business there.”
Gomez concluded that the department will focus on updating building design standards to restrict building developers from disregarding code updates altogether.
“We support the general direction, but we’re not making a firm commitment at this point,” Mayor Yi-Kang Hu told Gomez at the end of her presentation. “We would like to see more information.”
Gomez and Warren plan to meet with Tigard City Councilors with updates in the early summer.
