Efficiency Measures

On the heels of the Comprehensive Plan update, the city undertook a public process to consider land use “efficiency measures”, which are infill tools to help utilize land within the existing UGB more efficiently - to reduce or, perhaps, eliminate the need for a UGB expansion.  The resulting report – the Land Use Efficiency Measures Report - identified 17 strategies the city could implement, ranking them from High to Low in terms of the impact on land need and the level of community support.  While some recommendations of the report were not supported by City Council, the city adopted a number of the strategies as amendments to the Sisters Development Code, including:

  1. Increased the minimum and maximum permitted residential density in the Multi-Family Residential (MFR) Zone District from 7-15 units per acre to 15-50 units per acre (40-50 units per acre requires affordable housing).
  2. Reduced the minimum lot size for a single-family detached dwelling, duplex, triplex and fourplex in the Residential (R) and MFR Zone District. 
  3. Added “Middle Housing” unit types, including triplex and fourplex, to the Residential Zone District to allow for more housing choices for residents and provided design standards for them.
  4. Add zoning incentives allowing for increased density for projects that provide affordable housing.
  5. Removed the requirement for mixed use development in parts of the Downtown Commercial Zone to allow residential only developments. 

Several other amendments to the SDC were considered, but not adopted including increasing the allowed building heights and reducing the number of required parking spaces.

With the code amendments that were adopted, the report concluded that approximately 463-593 of the needed additional housing units could be satisfied within our existing boundary, which would reduce the size of, but not eliminate the need for a UGB Amendment. 

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