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Regional Industrial Site Readiness Project

Planning and conservation  ›  Regional planning and policy  ›  Urban growth boundary  ›  Industrial and Employment Land  ›  Industrial Site Readiness Project

The region has many places where high-paying traded sector jobs can be located, but there are challenges to making these places ready to support these jobs.

Metro supports the creation and development of good jobs by ensuring that there is a diverse and adequate supply of land to support businesses of all sizes and types. But there is a shortage of large, development-ready industrial sites, especially those of 25 acres in size or larger, that are needed to sustain manufacturing and other traded-sector employers that help grow our economy.

In 2011, Metro, Business Oregon, the Oregon chapter of NAIOP, the Port of Portland, and Portland Business Alliance began a comprehensive review of the region’s inventory of large industrial sites of 25 acres or more. The goal of this project was to better understand and identify the challenges to the development of larger industrial sites in our region and the costs necessary to make these sites ready to attract jobs.

Our region has many places where high-paying manufacturing and other traded-sector jobs can grow, but these places often require more investment to make them ready for new employers to develop. These investments can include clean-up of brownfield sites, building new sewer and water pipes, improving or building new roads and providing other essential public structures.

This project identified and evaluated 56 sites across our region that are zoned, planned or designated for future industrial jobs. In the first phase of this project, it was discovered that:

• Only nine of the 56 sites could be development-ready within six months.
• There are few industrial sites of 50 or more acres in the region and only two of those are development-ready within six months.
• Most sites have many constraints to their development and will require significant investments and new policies to make them ready for development.

Download a presentation on the initial findings of the Regional Industrial Site Readiness Project

Review the inventory of the region’s large industrial land sites (25 acres or more)

The second phase of this project involved analyses of 12 strategically important industrial sites. These analyses include further evaluation of the market opportunities for these sites along with more detailed lists of actions, requirements and costs necessary to overcome the barriers to developing these sites for different types of industrial employers.

Download a copy of the report’s executive summary (8 pages)

Download a copy of Volume 1 of the report (analysis and findings, 66 pages)

Download a copy of Volume 2 of the report (site results, 103 pages)

Download a copy of Volume 3 of the report (technical appendices, 340 pages)

Next steps

Ensuring our region can provide development-ready lands for new and growing companies is a responsibility of many partners: local and state governments, Metro and the private sector. This project’s report provides some recommendations that these partners should consider and act on to strengthen our region’s economy. A few of those recommendations include:

• Maintaining and expanding existing state infrastructure funding and technical assistance programs while exploring additional opportunities to improve state support.
• Streamlining and improving predictability of state and local regulatory and permitting processes to reduce risk and increase private sector investment.
• Exploring opportunities for regional and state funding for “patient developer entities,” either public or private, that can invest in due diligence and site preparation without requiring a market-driven return on investment.

 

Visit the partner websites

Business Oregon
NAIOP Oregon Chapter
Port of Portland
Portland Business Alliance

Related documents

• Presentation on the initial findings of the Regional Industrial Site Readiness Project 403K Adobe Acrobat PDF | Published September 11, 2012
• Inventory of sites, 25 acres or larger 60K Adobe Acrobat PDF | Published September 11, 2012
• Executive summary (8 pages) 520K Adobe Acrobat PDF | Published September 11, 2012
• Volume 1 (analysis and findings, 66 pages) 2.2M Adobe Acrobat PDF | Published September 11, 2012
• Volume 2 (site results, 103 pages) 19.3M Adobe Acrobat PDF | Published September 11, 2012
• Volume 3 (technical appendices, 340 pages) 22.1M Adobe Acrobat PDF | Published September 11, 2012