Oregon City work session: commissioners map approach to McLaughlin Promenade encroachments and future charter-park designation

The City Commission and staff spent an extended work session reviewing 11 properties along the McLaughlin Promenade, seeking ways to reconcile decades of informal encroachments — decks, stairs, fences, garden landscaping and occasional parking pads — with a desire to preserve the promenade as public parkland and to consider future charter-park status.

Staff summarized prior outreach and a property tour. Of the properties considered, four owners had executed encroachment documents, six had engaged with staff to varying degrees, and several owners had not responded despite repeated contact attempts. Staff recapped options used previously: an encroachment license agreement (allowing private improvements to remain but stating the city could remove them), recorded instruments, or vacating small strips of public land in limited circumstances such as to…