August 7: Springfield Housing + Design Initiative
Join us to learn about how the Housing + Design Initiative is continuing the work of Springfield’s Housing Strategy, while helping the City also come into compliance with the State’s housing-related statutes and rules. The City will focus particular attention on amending the Springfield Development Code to include clear and objective standards for mixed-use areas. This approach reduces regulatory barriers by allowing more types of housing in commercial and mixed-use areas, and continues the larger, ongoing Development Code Update Project to simplify code language and streamline the development review process.
Haley Campbell, a Senior Planner for the City of Springfield and the project manager for the Housing + Design Initiative project will provide a project update. Her work focuses on the connection between long-range land use planning efforts and how the Development Code makes the long-term direction and goals a reality, which so far have resulted in amendments for stormwater management, income-qualified housing, and annexation requirements.
A Bit About the Housing + Design Initiative
In 2024, the City secured funding from the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development for Cascadia Partners to work with City staff on the Housing + Design Initiative. This multi-year project will produce three key deliverables, each tied to proposed updates to the Springfield Development Code and Springfield’s long-range land use plans, corresponding to each phase: (1) a code and plan audit, (2) code and plan concepts, and (3) code and plan amendments.
Cascadia Partners’ audit was designed to update the City’s Development Code and planning documents in areas outside Springfield’s proposed Climate Friendly Areas (CFAs). These areas, which are outside CFAs, but near to them are currently Gateway/RiverBend, Main Street, and portions of Glenwood and Downtown. The audit provided two lenses:
- A review for statutory compliance (how well Springfield’s Development Code meets State requirements and where it needs to change to do so)
- A strategic approach for a set of recommendations to support the City’s broader goals for increasing housing production and choice.
Looking more broadly, foundational work already completed includes:
- A Community Engagement Plan, which guides the City to meaningfully seek input from the community, build awareness of the project, and solicit early feedback on the code and plan concepts being considered.
- Consideration of market economics to better understand what types of development could realistically occur within mixed-use areas.
This summer, the project team has moved into the concepts phase to determine how the mixed-use sections of the development code could change. At this event, the project team will present some initial concepts for discussion. This fall, the Springfield Planning Commission and City Council will receive an update on the project, which will share highlights from the discussion at City Club and will provide direction on which concepts to incorporate into the proposed plan and code amendments.
More information is available on the project webpage at bit.ly/HousingDesignInitiative. You may view or download the project fact sheet HERE
Before joining the City of Springfield, Haley spent four years with the Satre Group, a local landscape architecture and planning firm, to deliver on land use planning and housing priorities. She also interned for the City of Springfield for two years while in college. She earned a bachelor’s degree in planning, Public Policy, and Nonprofit Management from the University of Oregon in 2016 (Go Ducks!) and participated in several Sustainable City Year projects.
What excites her the most about her work, and the Housing + Design Initiative, is the opportunity to work on projects that directly impact the lives of individuals and the broader community. One of Haley’s proudest accomplishments in affordable housing development came when she worked to establish a partnership between the Satre Group and SquareOne Villages. The Peace Village project created 70 units of permanent affordable housing with residents at 60% of the area median income. This has translated into her passion for creating homeownership opportunities and needed housing.