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Staff outlines Buildable Lands Inventory methodology and new size thresholds
Summary
City staff reviewed the Buildable Lands Inventory (BLI) methodology, the five lot classification categories, and recent threshold changes to align with Oregon administrative rules (low-density partially-vacant threshold lowered from 1.0 to 0.5 acre; industrial threshold lowered from 10 to 5 acres). Committee members were asked to review the interactive map and flag suspect parcels.
City planning staff presented an updated methodology for the Buildable Lands Inventory (BLI) at the July 16 Etech meeting, explaining how lots inside Eugene's urban growth boundary are classified and how the model estimates residential capacity. "Our model quantifies the supply of buildable land within Eugene's urban growth boundary by classifying each lot into 5 distinct categories," said Thea Evans, senior GIS analyst with the planning division.
Evans walked the group through the classification rules and the criteria used to label lots as committed, constrained, developed, partially vacant or undeveloped. She said the current inventory covers the 2026'2046 horizon and has an effective date of 01/01/2026; it must be adopted by December 2027. Staff explained they rely on assessor data (improvement value, address points, building footprints) and manual review for conflicting cases.
One substantive change staff flagged is alignment with new Oregon administrative rules: the threshold for considering low-density residential lots as partially vacant was lowered from 1.0 to 0.5 acre, and the industrial threshold was reduced from 10 to 5 acres. "We moved it from 1 acre to 0.5 an acre, and that is in line with a new safe harbor," Evans said. Staff also noted that partially-vacant and undeveloped lots have minimum buildable-area thresholds (for example, 9,000 sq. ft. for low-density partially vacant capacity; 4,500 sq. ft. for undeveloped low-density lots) used to avoid counting small, unlikely-to-develop parcels as phantom capacity.
Committee members repeatedly asked for parcel-level transparency and the ability to flag parcels that appear misclassified. Heather (speaker 1) asked members to send tax-lot numbers and a short note when they see suspect parcels so staff can take a closer look. The presentation and the map will inform further manual review before finalizing the BLI.
