Springfield council endorses staff CFA plan, asks Mohawk be treated as secondary

Chelsea Hartman, senior planner for the City of Springfield, presented staff recommendations for designating climate friendly areas, or CFAs, and told the council the city needs its selections so staff can draft plan and code amendments for adoption later this year. “We are seeking your selection of preferred CFA locations so that we can proceed with drafting the plan and code amendments and bring that back for the adoption process later this year,” Hartman said.

The recommendations call for designating the Glenwood Riverfront and Mohawk areas and for reducing the downtown boundary and making downtown a secondary CFA. Hartman said staff is not recommending Gateway Riverbend as a CFA because of infrastructure and market constraints and because portions of it fall in the floodway.

The nut of the issue is state implementation: Oregon’s Climate-Friendly and Equitable Communities (CFEC) rules require at least one primary CFA that is at least 25 acres and that the city’s CFAs accommodate at least 30% of Springfield’s 20-year housing need. Hartman said meeting that 30% threshold equates to “a little less than 10,000 housing units” under the city’s current housing needs analysis and that the city must complete a new housing analysis using state projections by December 2027.

Staff described the difference between primary and secondary CFAs: primary CFAs have taller allowed heights (about seven stories) and a higher required minimum density (about 25 units per net acre); secondary CFAs allow roughly four stories and a minimum of 15 units per net acre. Hartman said the recommended combination of CFAs would accommodate slightly more than 30% of housing capacity when accounting for forthcoming state projections.

Victor Tran, consultant with Cascadia Partners, said the market study found certain product types were more feasible than others and that entitlements influence what developers build. “The intent of the program is to create more, lockable mixed use districts,” Tran said, and he cautioned that development outcomes depend on entitlements and market economics; for example, mid‑range three‑story apartment buildings were more likely than seven‑story towers in Mohawk.

Councilor Blackwell asked whether a primary CFA designation would restrict the city’s ability to allow other housing types, including homeownership. Hartman and Tran answered that primary CFA minimum densities tend to favor multiunit development, and city staff counsel noted during earlier state rulemaking that they had not seen feasible examples of primary CFA minimum densities being met with single‑family homeownership housing except through condominiums or land‑trust models.

Staff recommended rezoning and other code changes to align existing districts with CFA standards in each area: rezoning parts of Glenwood to a Glenwood residential mixed‑use designation, applying a CFA overlay in downtown while removing a nodal overlay, and replacing nodal development overlays in Mohawk with a CFA overlay. Hartman said the Glenwood Riverfront recommendation would preserve the three‑story limit within the Willamette Greenway area by excluding that strip from the CFA boundary.

Hartman said the staff recommendations were presented to the Planning Commission on Feb. 4, which expressed general support; she also said properties outside city limits that are within proposed CFA boundaries would involve Lane County in the adoption process. Staff noted additional community engagement and a separate March 10 work session to discuss housing tools and tenant supports.

Council members did not take a formal vote at the work session. Instead they signaled consensus to move forward with staff’s recommended approach while asking staff to treat Mohawk as a secondary CFA rather than a primary before drafting final code amendments. Staff will return with draft plan and code amendments, additional community engagement, and a formal adoption process later in the year; if Glenwood proceeds, Lane County bodies will also participate in adoption for areas outside the city limits.

The council’s direction at the work session was procedural rather than a final land‑use decision; formal designation of CFAs and any rezones will occur through the public adoption process that will include hearings and ordinance amendments.