A fork in the path.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Treating the Eugene-Springfield metropolitan area as a single region makes so much sense that joint land-use planning has survived frequently chilly relations between the two cities. But now the partners have reached a fork in the path. Both cities would suffer as a result of a parting of the ways. Though officials will try to make it look like a no-fault divorce, Eugene would bear primary responsibility for a breakup and has the best chance of bringing about a reconciliation.

Eugene and Springfield are encircled by a single urban growth boundary - a line beyond which urban services may not be extended. State planning laws require cities to maintain a 20-year supply of land within the boundary. If a city has an insufficient inventory of land available for development, the growth boundary can be expanded with the approval of both cities and Lane County.

The Springfield City Council has voted unanimously to study the amount of residential, commercial and industrial land available within its portion of the urban growth boundary. The Eugene City Council voted 4-4 last month on a proposal for a similar study, with Mayor Kitty Piercy casting a tie-breaking vote in opposition.

Shortly after the Eugene council's vote, state Rep. Terry Beyer, D-Springfield, said she would introduce a bill breaking the Eugene-Springfield urban growth boundary in two, giving each city power over its own expansions.

Beyer is preparing her legislation with the assistance of the Oregon Home Builders' Association, whose Lane County chapter has long maintained that the Eugene-Springfield area is running short of buildable land. The association went so far as to oppose Eugene's bond measure for parks and open space last November on grounds that it would curtail the land supply. The association will pay half the cost of Springfield's land inventory.

Signs of a land shortage are easy to find. The biggest residential developments in Lane County are rising outside the Eugene-Springfield area in Veneta, Junction City and elsewhere. Lot prices in Eugene and Springfield have risen, and new houses are sprouting on lots that are steep or otherwise hard to develop. The last residential land survey, completed in 1999, showed an inventory that would last until 2015. A 20-year supply wasn't available eight years ago, and the supply has surely grown tighter since. Industrial land, in particular, also shows signs of scarcity.

Eugene's approach to these matters is guided by its Growth Management Policy, which strongly favors compact development and redevelopment rather than the addition of vacant land on the outskirts of the city. Yet a survey of developable lands could strengthen that policy by quantifying the acreage available for high-density or redevelopment projects. And it would complement Springfield's inventory, particularly if some land classifications were scarce in one city but plentiful in the other.

Instead, Springfield will seek answers to the question of land availability, while Eugene will proceed as though the questions aren't important. Springfield may learn that it needs to expand its urban growth boundary, in which case Beyer's legislation would come into play. With a unilateral expansion, Springfield would move forward as though Eugene didn't exist, without regard for the supply of land to the west of Interstate 5. Eugene will have caused this result by leaving Springfield to act in a vacuum.

It's self-defeating to pretend that Eugene and Springfield are islands, unaffected by each others' decisions. A split urban growth boundary would not mean the end of all regional planning, but the loss of metropolitan cooperation on issues of land supply would not advance either city's interest in efficient and orderly growth.

The best way for Eugene to deflect Beyer's bill and repair the partnership would be to support a land inventory parallel to Springfield's. The Eugene City Council should acknowledge the widespread feelings of urgency, in Springfield and elsewhere, around the land-supply question - and it should not be afraid of the answers a survey would provide.