Crook, Prineville to revise boundary

Published 5:00 am Wednesday, July 18, 2012

PRINEVILLE — In a move to open more industrial land to development — possibly another data center — the Crook County and Prineville planning commissions Tuesday recommended redrawing the city’s urban growth boundary near the Prineville Airport.

The plan is to add an 80-acre plot into the urban growth boundary while taking out a nearly identical adjacent plot. It’s a relatively minor adjustment, but will make the industrial plot inside the boundary more square in shape and more attractive to potential developers, planning officials said.

Companies looking to build a data center in Prineville have said the industrial plot’s narrow rectangular shape is not conducive to building there, said county assistant planning director Phil Stenbeck.

Some companies have said building on such a rectangular plot would increase infrastructure and utility costs as much as $1 million, compared to building on a more square plot, said Planning Director Bill Zelenka.

The City Council and County Court are scheduled to vote on the recommended boundary adjustment in a joint session Aug. 1. The state Department of Land Conservation and Development will then review the change.

The two plots are just south of the Prineville Airport, between state Highway 126 and Southwest Millican Road. One is owned by Premier West Bank and the other by the state.

If the city and county approve the boundary adjustment, there are plans for the bank and the state to swap land and for the city to annex part of the land. That would leave both the bank and the state with 160-acre plots: the bank’s inside the city limits and the boundary, and the state’s outside both boundaries.

Charles Bauman, a project manager for Premier West CLSO Consulting, said the urban growth boundary adjustment would make the bank’s land more marketable.

Doug Parker, an asset planner with the Oregon Department of State Lands, said he favors the land swap, noting that it would provide highway access for both the state and the bank land.

“I think it’s a win-win situation for all parties involved,” he said.

But not all were satisfied with the adjustment. Jim Waetjen, a Prineville resident and recreational pilot, asked if city and county officials were concerned that the industrial site was just beyond the airport’s secondary runway.

“I don’t oppose this change but I do oppose putting a big, humongous building right there in the flight path of the runway,” he said.

City planning officials said any new building there would not impact flights and would have to comply with Federal Aviation Administration standards on structures near airports.

While the recommended boundary adjustment will maintain the current overall size of the urban growth boundary, the long-term plan is to expand the boundary to incorporate more industrial land, Zelenka said. The state requires cities to maintain a 20-year supply of all kinds of land, but much of Prineville’s remaining industrial land has been used up in recent years as Facebook and Apple have bought hundreds of acres to build data centers, he said.