King City’s 60th Anniversary is this year, and after 60 years, what began as a stronghold of seniors uninterested in Tigard’s annexation boom is now an established, age-inclusive municipality eyeing further development.
In the 1960s, before the incorporation of the King City Adult Community, Washington County was still a relatively fertile stretch of open countryside on the verge of new development.
According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, King City’s closest neighbor, the City of Tigard, “more than doubled” its population by the 1970s and was expanding proportionally through property absorption.
King City’s first mayor, Harold Ennor, was elected to office in June of 1966 and, in 1967, wrote a reflective piece on the city’s then-one-year history, explaining its origins.
“About two years ago in the late fall of 1965, Tigard announced the annexation of a strip of property extending along Highway 99W past King City. This caused a great deal of concern on the part of the few residents of King City and the Tualatin Development Co.,” wrote Ennor, “…petitions were circulated requesting the Washington County Court to set a date for an election to determine if King City wished to incorporate as a municipality.”
The acreage was made up of King City Civic Association members, who overwhelmingly elected to change the neighborhood’s status to city in 1966 and bar any attempt made by the City of Tigard to absorb the area as well as preserve its identity as an “adult community.”
An article written by King City’s second mayor, Lloyd S. Carroll, in 1971 said King City was “incorporated primarily to preserve the purpose and direction of the ‘adult community’ concept, as well as to avoid haphazard possible assimilation by nearby municipalities…”
In 1966, residents approved the incorporation in a vote of 166 to 6, and the city swore in five city councilors who elected to have no city tax base.
“Financing of all the above services and all other needs except for those provided by the service districts and their taxes is accomplished from receipt of State rebates on alcohol, cigarette and highway fuel purchases and utility franchise fees,” wrote Carroll.
“It has been said that the policy of this council is to do as little as possible,” writes Ennor about the council in his 1967 statement. “However, a better way of saying it is that the policy of this council is to do as much as possible without incurring any additional taxes for the residents.”
The city was also founded on a “deed covenant restriction” that required new citizens to be at least 50 years old and stated that “no couple with children is allowed to buy in.”
An excerpt about the city’s history featured on the King City Civic Association website credits the age requirement to real estate developer and longtime King City Lions Club member Lionel Domreis.
“This new city/subdivision would have been for all ages except for Lionel Domreis’ intervention,” reads the article. “Lionel Domreis was in the right place at the right time decades ago, influencing King City developer Ron Sorenson to build a retirement community instead of a conventional subdivision.”
Sorenson, founder of the Tualatin Development Co., and Domreis were largely responsible for establishing the King City Adult Community in 1964, two years before the city was officially established.
Shortly after incorporation, developers such as the Tualatin Development Co. began building hundreds of new apartments toward the tail end of the 1960s.
A 1968 article in the Regal Courier reported that, “With approximately 24 people moving into new homes before the end of the year, the King City population is nearing the 1,000 mark.”
King City continued to add new development throughout the 1970s, opening the King City Plaza grocery outlet in 1972 and approving an eight-page city plan with a hand-drawn map in 1976.
In 1988, the city upped the minimum age of entry to 55 within King City Civic Association boundaries, while eliminating age requirements in new sections of the city.
As King City entered the 21st Century, its delicate dance between a growing population and keeping city government costs low became more complicated as city council members and planning staff designed plans to accommodate more new residents.
In 2018, King City added Kingston Terrace to King City’s urban growth boundary, opening up 528 acres of rural Washington County for development. The Kingston Terrace Subdivision, which will add 4,100 homes to King City’s acreage, as well as the city’s updated transportation system plan, both aim to serve the dramatic increase in size and population expected in the coming years.
In 2020, King City had a population of 5,184, a far cry from the 490 residents living there in 1966. To mark the transformative time the city finds itself in, the current city council has been diligently working to craft a shared vision for the city’s future during a recent Strategic Planning Session overseen by the League of Oregon Cities.
Objectives in the strategic plan included providing fiscally sound municipal services, completing the city’s new transportation system plan, reviewing capital improvement projects and identifying amenities that generate revenue.
As the city grows, old pillars of King City society like the King City Lions Club have less than 20% of the membership they once did, according to longtime Lions Club treasurer Mary Thibert.
“The city has grown a lot. The west King City area, 20 years ago, wasn’t here,” said Thibert. “KCCA was most of King City…When we first started, we had 100 members in the Lions Club. Almost every one of them was in KCCA, and now we’re down to about 15 members.”
Another longtime Lions Club member, Bill Gerkin, also said that King City’s new development, Kingston Terrace, will fundamentally reshape how the city looks, but concluded that big change due to population growth was inevitable.
“They’re just moving ahead with this new development,” Gerkin said. “It’s just growth. It’s gonna happen. All this bare land, if you will, with a few houses, is just gonna get swooped up and added to. Everything is gonna continue to grow.”
