Estacada EDC frames strategic plan around industrial park recruitment, housing and permitting clarity

Estacada’s Economic Development Committee spent the bulk of its meeting discussing a draft strategic plan that centers on recruiting employers to the city’s industrial park, aligning housing supply with likely wages, and resolving recurring permitting conflicts between local staff and fire authorities.

Committee members and city staff said the group will produce measurable targets for 1-, 5- and 10-year timeframes and recommend concrete first-year actions for council review. The work is intended to guide recruitment of “living-wage” jobs, speed permitting for new businesses and clarify infrastructure capacity limits.

Members described an inventory exercise of industrial parcels to separate "ready-to-build" sites from long-term opportunities and suggested using wage slices to estimate what kinds of housing would be affordable to likely employees. Committee member Eric Sale summarized the mismatch between approved housing and the wages produced by typical industrial jobs, saying the community must align housing types with expected incomes rather than assume industrial growth will alone produce higher‑paying households.

City staff and committee members flagged specific infrastructure and process constraints. City staff said Estacada currently has water rights up to about 2.6 million gallons per day (MGD) but can reliably produce roughly 1.9 MGD in peak conditions (practical output closer to 1.7 MGD). The wastewater treatment upgrade is in design ("60% engineering") and was described as a multiyear project; staff estimated additional water‑plant improvements would cost about $13–$15 million and indicated wastewater improvements would likely cost in the tens of millions more.

School capacity was repeatedly mentioned as a limiting factor for large multifamily developments. Michael McElroy said the district is already using temporary classrooms and that a surge of apartment units could overwhelm schools unless the district secures additional capacity.

Committee members raised repeated examples of contradictory technical direction that delay projects. A recurring suggestion was a pre-application (pre-app) meeting that would include the state or county fire marshal, the city planner and the city’s building contractor reviewer (Northwest Code Pros) so that fire, state building code and city code expectations are reconciled early. Assistant City Manager Elena told the group, "The state fire code would supersede the city's code," noting that staff could help applicants route contradictory requirements to the appropriate authority.

The committee requested staff return with baseline metrics, including a proposed definition of living‑wage jobs for Estacada, an inventory of buildable industrial parcels, and a short list of first‑year measurable goals for council consideration. No formal votes or motions were taken.

The committee also discussed permitting timelines as a marketing tool: several members suggested tabling a guaranteed timeline (for example, a 90‑day review commitment) to make Estacada attractive to firms needing fast deliveries. Staff noted some planning reviews already occur in six to eight weeks but recommended a conservative, auditable goal the city can meet before publicizing any guarantee.

Implementation notes and next steps in the discussion included drafting a living-wage definition, mapping infrastructure constraints against proposed developments, convening fire-code and review partners for a joint pre-app process, and preparing the EDC’s work plan for city council review in the coming months.