Preliminary plat approved for Oregon Town Center

        The Oregon Planning Commission recently gave preliminary plat approval for the Oregon Town Center.
        “The preliminary plat approval just allows us to move forward with the final sale of the property,” said City Administrator Mike Beazley. “We’re going to be closing on the sale of the property for multi-family housing, and we’re going to be moving forward with dividing up the single family parcels into lots. The preliminary plat approval is just an essential step to get that done and to move forward with the process.”
        The plat runs between Pickle Road and Dustin Road, he said.
        “That’s the plat we’re focused on,” said Beazley. “It will be along the new road we call Town Center Drive.
        James Gilmore, commissioner of building and zoning, explained at the planning commission that the plat approval only goes before the planning commission.
        “After we get approval here, we will have the individual city departments sign off on it so we can get it recorded and we can issue the permits on those particular projects. When we record it, it creates the lots down at the county. That way, we’ll be able to transfer this lot for the apartments. I believe we have the site plan pretty close to approval.”
               
Variances
        Planning Commission Chairman Rick Orovitz said he noticed there were quite a few variances for setbacks and asked if that was consistent with today’s standards as far construction of this type.
        Mayor Mike Seferian, who has a seat on the commission, said “this is new territory for us.”
        “We knew there was a desirability in the city to have these smaller lot housing developments and this is one of our first. So, we were thinking of adjusting our zoning to reflect this so we could offer this to builders or developers for the future. This is something that we made some changes along the way because we were developing this plan along the way. We were going to different builders and trying to find out what they thought would sell in this style location. So it is new territory. But we knew it would be from the onset. Tell us what we need to do, and we will work through it.”
       
Higher density
        Orovitz asked if it was for individual homes.
        Gilmore said it creates the lot for the apartments going in, which is a large lot. It also creates single family lots. He said he thinks the mayor is correct in that the movement is to a higher density type of housing.
        “We would like to give a zoning designation that would allow higher density,” said Gilmore.
        “I think we saw the same thing with the development off Pickle Road with single family housing,” said Orovitz.
        Seferian said it was similar, but “not to this density.”
        “Closer to this would have been the one on Starr Extension, the Schlachter property, a villa-type property.”
        Orovitz asked if it was what builders were going for and the types of zoning they are leaning towards.
        “They are leaning toward it,” said Gilmore.
        “They are more of a villa-style, which we may call smaller housing. There is a demand for that,” he added.
        The Oregon Town Center development project calls for a mix of retail, entertainment, restaurant, medical/office and residential uses. The city expects commercial uses will be focused closer to Navarre Avenue and the residential uses closer to Pickle Road.