The State of Oregon recently passed a new set of administrative rules as part of its Climate Friendly and Equitable Communities (CFEC) program, which requires jurisdictions throughout the state to remove parking requirements or enact a set of reforms aimed at reducing the impacts of these requirements. Under a contract with the state, Studio Davis is assisting the City of Cornelius (population 15,000) in developing a path to compliance. Based upon our initial outreach and exploratory research, the City elected to pursue compliance via removal of all parking requirements citywide, and to improve the climate resilience of new off-street parking areas via new requirements for tree canopy coverage, charging infrastructure, etc.
Studio Davis is currently working with the City to implement the necessary code changes to accomplish this. Our work on this project entails preparation of a comprehensive report detailing all necessary and recommended code changes, along with the rationale—both from a legal perspective related to CFEC compliance and an analytical perspective related to parking operations—for each recommended change; presenting this analysis to the Cornelius Planning Commission and City Council; and assisting City staff with process elements to ensure the code updates are adopted by the June, 2025 deadline.