The sun was shining outside of the Forest Grove Community Auditorium on an afternoon late last month, casting a warm glow into the room.
The late afternoon February rays had nothing on the attitude inside.
For two hours, leaders and advocates from the far end of the Tualatin Valley talked optimistically about the growth in their cities, about their plans for the future, about bike lanes and strong economies.
A respected suburban community leader, Pacific University president Lesley Hallick, even drew applause when she said she'd like to see light rail extended west.
The Metro Council's meeting on the western edge of the region last month had no harsh words, no major points of disagreement – a notable change from the prevailing attitudes of only a few years ago.
For all of the tension between regionalism and local control in parts of the Portland region, Forest Grove and Cornelius present a hopeful case study – that tensions settle, that attitudes change, and that everyone benefits in the end.
That's not to say there's unanimous celebration of regional coordination. Disagreements still simmer about the urban growth boundary, about development plans. But it's nothing like it was in the past.
It wasn't long ago that Metro was viewed as the cause of many of Forest Grove's problems. In 2007, residents angrily blamed Metro for a proposal to build townhomes near the city's downtown.
In 2008, incensed that the Metro Council wouldn't grant Cornelius its request to expand the urban growth boundary, then-Mayor Bill Bash, sitting before two Metro councilors at a city council meeting, said that his city was looking at withdrawing from the region.
And in 2009, Sen. Bruce Starr, R-Hillsboro, introduced a bill that would force Metro to look at Cornelius and Forest Grove differently when considering urban growth boundary expansions, declaring them to be a sub-region of the Portland area.
"There wasn't a monolithic, official city position," said former Cornelius city manager Dave Waffle. "Different members of the community had different perspectives, ranging from hostility to indifference to frustration – and short on love and affection and that end of the continuum."
What's unfolded since is a story about time, patience and listening – on both sides – leading to the scene last month in downtown Forest Grove.
Two small towns, miles from the rest
It's easy to understand why Forest Grove and Cornelius felt detached from the rest of the region. It wasn't just that they are suburban communities, wasn't just that there's a mile of farmland between them and the west edge of Hillsboro, the nearest contiguous part of the region.
"It's like 'Hey, do you guys understand what's going on out here?'" – Cornelius Mayor Jef Dalin
It's not even the 26-mile drive from Forest Grove to downtown Portland, more than a third of which is on two-lane country roads.
"We're an extremity of the district, right?" says Cornelius Mayor Jef Dalin. "Being as far out as we are… we're so far away it's like 'Hey, do you guys understand what's going on out here?'"
On the westside, the world has gradually been shifting for decades. Hillsboro's leaders learned to stop worrying and love urbanization, embracing the change from agricultural county seat to booming tech town in the 1990s.
Forest Grove, on the other hand, remained afraid of the change for years. They dreaded Pacific University, one of the city's anchors, moving facilities east to Hillsboro – or worse, Portland.
"There was a little bit of fear that a lot of this stuff was going to be moving away, specifically towards Portland," Forest Grove Mayor Pete Truax says about Pacific, which has more than 3,000 students.
Cornelius was changing as well. "Oregon's Family Town" was 15 percent Latino in 1990. By 2010, its total population had nearly doubled, and more than half of the city's residents were Latino.
The challenges of change drew predictable solutions: Expand the urban growth boundary and allow more development. Focus less on walkability and more on helping people get to distant jobs.
"Most of our citizens are here because they didn't want to be in downtown Portland, and they can't afford to be in Lake Oswego or some of the areas in Clackamas County," Dalin says.
Ironically, the preferred path to deal with the changing world around them was to try to replicate it, to focus on suburbs and subdivisions – not to reinforce the small-town attributes that made them healthy communities in their own right, long before Metro came along.
Collaboration leads the attitude change
Nobody would say that Metro single-handedly brought Forest Grove and Cornelius along the path of improved regional relations. It was a combination of factors – chief among them, collaboration.
Not long ago, a collection of well-meaning groups worked fairly independently to achieve their goals. The cities had some excellent community assets – Centro Cultural, the Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center, the university – but in many respects, they were lone actors, focused on their own missions.
That played out in regional politics, as well. Forest Grove leaders saw efforts to improve transportation elsewhere in Washington County as a threat to their own efforts to raise money. Provincialism reigned.
Metro Councilor Kathryn Harrington knew she was facing an uphill battle in her district when she was first elected to represent northern and western Washington County in 2006.
"Many elected officials just felt their communities weren't understood – nor heard." – Metro Councilor Kathryn Harrington
"When I started, it was a year after a very contentious set of urban growth boundary decisions had been completed," she said. "There were multiple remands, and many elected officials just felt their communities weren't understood – nor heard."
Harrington knew she couldn't make her western constituencies feel like they were being listened to overnight. Confirmation bias alone would lead anyone who feels neglected to focus on the losses and ignore the victories.
But Harrington made it a point to go out four times a year to city council meetings in each of the four cities in her district, for a check-in with the elected officials in the cities she also represents. Sometimes, she brought staff with her; other times, such as the aforementioned 2008 Cornelius City Council meeting, she brought fellow Metro councilors.
"Kathryn Harrington's determination to keep on communicating and smiling and being a positive face for Metro and being willing to listen, I think that's made the biggest difference," Waffle said. "She said she would do that, and she's done that."
Forest Grove's mayor agreed.
"She's shown the courage to come out and talk to us when times have not been good," Truax said.
The increased communication led to an increased awareness on both ends of the region. Metro became more aware of the needs of the two communities. Forest Grove and Cornelius increased their awareness of programs offered by the regional government – and were easier to work with, even in disagreement.
"If you're the kid sitting at the end of the table throwing his food around and getting slop everywhere, people tend not to want to sit at that table," Dalin said.
The Metro Council meeting Tuesday night was filled with examples. Cornelius Mayor Jef Dalin pointed out the construction excise tax grants his city received, one for planning an industrial area, another for planning a residential area southeast of the city.
He thanked the Metro Council for providing $20,000 for consultant Michele Reeves to look at the downtown area and provide ideas on how it might improve. It wasn't long ago that Cornelius didn't even really have a downtown.
Later in the meeting, the Metro Council unanimously approved releasing an easement along a natural area, between Forest Grove and Gales Creek, so Forest Grove can build a trail connecting Highway 47 and the B Street Trail, part of its long-sought Emerald Necklace.
"Look at the support for the Council Creek Regional Trail. Look at the definition of the pedestrian ways and bikeways with the Active Transportation Plan. We're continuing to work on the connectivity of all types," Harrington said.
Relationship is better, but hardly perfect
There's more to be done, of course. The relationship isn't perfect. Some of the old scabs get ripped up, like when Forest Grove's and Cornelius' growth plans became chits in the negotiations for a land use bargain in this year's Legislature.
There isn't close to a universal embrace of the Metro region's planning philosophies. It's more, Dalin says, an acceptance that the path that's been presented is really the only path to take.
"When you're given a menu of chicken and you really want steak, well, looks like you're going to be eating chicken if you want to eat," the Cornelius mayor says. "The Metro directive has been focus on our centers. We understand, that's the program and we need to get in the program."
Dalin says Cornelius is still trying to create family-wage jobs and industrial development on the north side of town, recently getting a 50 acre parcel certified for the state industrial lands inventory. He insists more needs to be done to improve the westside's jobs-housing balance.
"We need to give people places they want to live, so they don't drive from Lake Oswego to work at Intel," Dalin says.
Patience leads to progress
Money alone didn't buy peace on the westside. Listening didn't, either. It took time to truly assuage the concerns of far west leaders that their core pieces were slipping away, time for the new partnerships and relationships and experiments to work out.
It's become clear that Pacific University's growth in Hillsboro hasn't put a damper on its presence in Forest Grove. The university has added new buildings, new dorms and upgraded its athletic facilities near its main campus.
"Pacific University is having a regional face about it, and that's something we not only have come to accept, but come to embrace in Forest Grove," Truax said.
Harrington said she wants to see the communities change for the better, maintaining their small town character instead of fearing that change will be detrimental.
"If you'd asked the community of Cornelius 15 years ago, did they see themselves as having an internationally known coffee shop – Starbucks – they would have said no way. But it's a thriving place!" Harrington says. "Wilco just remodeled. It's a two-story building now. They still provide a marketplace for the adjacent farm and nursery industry. They're doing the things to maintain their small town feel."
That brings us back to February, which was a capstone on the years of change between Metro and the westside. There were no signs of contention as the regional government came and paid a visit to its most distant outposts. In a strange way, Metro's meeting in Forest Grove actually felt reverent, on both sides of the dais.
"It's really a reflection of how successful we've all been at better understanding community visions and how to work together to realize them," Harrington said later. "Doesn't our public demand that?"