As residential development surges in Redmond, the city is working on an overdue update to its out-of-date affordable housing plan, written nine years ago.

According to Community Development Department records, 197 residential building permits were issued for new single-family homes last year — the most since 2007. Commercial building permits, with 15 issued for new construction, saw growth for the first time in eight years. And planning permit activity — which speaks to future growth — saw a 500 percent increase from 2014.

“Development is up, and it’s up significantly,” CDD Director Heather Richards said at a City Council work session last week, when she called 2015 “the first full year of development recovery in Redmond” since the recession.

The building permits reflect the economic health and growth of the community, Richards said. Meanwhile, planning permits, which encompass applications like zone change requests, land use variance requests and residential plan reviews, are a good indicator of future growth.

“A lot of (the planning activity) is master plan review that sets the stage for residential development,” Richards said last week. “But there’s also some site and design projects coming through.”

In 2015, according to CDD’s monthly activity reports, a month didn’t go by with fewer than three building permits issued for new construction on single-family dwellings. In January, for instance, three permits were issued — the year’s low point — and in April and December there were 26. Meanwhile two predevelopment applications for housing development master plans were submitted to the city’s planning department last year, along with several predevelopment applications for residential subdivisions.

The Redmond City Council gave its approval to one of the master plans — a 187-unit Hayden Homes housing development called Obsidian Trails — earlier this year. In March it OK’d the city’s annexation of 33 acres — its first annexation since 2009 — in preparation for another 240-unit development.

Even with the growth, the numbers aren’t quite what Richards said the department would like to see. She said she’s aiming for at least 250 building permits issued for new residential construction annually and for commercial permits to double.

“Number of permits and valuation are still considerably lower than those recorded in 2007; however, an upward trend is promising and indicative that vacant commercial and industrial space is being absorbed, starting to create a market for new construction,” work session documents that outline the city’s housing priorities state.

Another priority listed in the work session document is the city’s Affordable Housing Plan.

The plan, written in 2007, lays out Redmond’s needs and objectives for making more housing available to lower-income residents and seniors — as determined nearly a decade ago. Created with an expiration date of 2012, the plan was never meant to go this long without a revision.

“2007 was a different time in Redmond,” said Chelsea Dickens, Redmond’s grant program coordinator who works on affordable housing projects.

The plan — along with any updates it might receive — was derailed when the recession hit, with almost none of its seven priorities completed. These include goals like taking an inventory of existing land to identify potential surplus land for affordable housing, creating incentives for developers to build affordable housing and supporting homeowner education.

“None of these have happened,” said Richards at a February Housing and Community Development Committee meeting. “(The plan’s) first two action items are evaluate staffing need (to implement the objectives) and hire staff if necessary, and 2008 was when we eliminated 70 percent of the staff. So it went to the shelf.”

But now that economy and community growth is on the rebound, the time has come to revisit the plan. Redmond’s Housing and Community Development Committee, which is in charge of drafting the updated plan, has been exploring different sources for new ideas.

At last month’s Housing and Community Development meeting, Bend’s Affordable Housing Manager Jim Long gave a presentation to committee members that outlined tools worth paying attention to as Redmond goes about its update.

“In Central Oregon, we’re kind of an island,” he said last week. “We don’t get a lot of attention from the other side of the hill, so we have to come up with our own solutions.”

Long’s presentation went over affordable housing tools like system development charge exemptions and density bonuses that increase a residential zone’s density rules for affordable housing developers. These ideas and new ones were also tackled by the University of Oregon’s Sustainable Cities program last year — another source the HCDC is tapping into.

Ren Thomas, who taught the program’s housing policy course, said the class split into two groups to provide long- and short-term recommendations to the city. These included forming a regional affordable housing plan that might give Redmond access to federal funding it doesn’t currently have, as well as engaging with local nonprofits, housing developers and the public as it updates its plan.

“In the last plan, a lot of the local people and groups (the students interviewed) hadn’t participated, and they didn’t know about it or about the strategies and how they were going to be implemented,” Thomas said. “Nonprofit housing providers or developers weren’t engaged in the process of writing the plan and didn’t know about the tools the city had available. That also applies to the public — marginalized groups hadn’t always been included.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7829,

awest@bendbulletin.com

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve has again pared its plans for raising interest rates, citing the weakness of the global economy as a reason for greater caution about the prospects for domestic growth.

The Fed’s policymaking committee voted not to raise its benchmark rate at a meeting that ended Wednesday, though an increase this month was widely expected at the beginning of the year. And it pulled back sharply from a December prediction that the rate would rise by 1 percentage point this year. Fed officials now expect to raise rates by just half a percentage point this year.

Janet Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, said the central bank remained relatively optimistic about the domestic economy, which she said has shown no signs of damage from the wobbles of financial markets or the weakness of global growth. But she said that prudence dictated caution.

“What you see here is a virtually unchanged path of economic projections and a slightly more accomodative path” for monetary policy, Yellen said at a news conference.

There was one dissent Wednesday. Esther George, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, voted to raise rates by a quarter-point. A statement did not explain her reasons.

Officials also predicted that the pace of increases would be somewhat slower in coming years. Their median estimate is that the Fed’s benchmark rate will hit 3 percent by the end of 2018.

The plans for a slower climb are not a result of a comparable change in the Fed’s economic outlook. Officials still expect the economy to expand at an annual rate of about 2 percent, and they still expect inflation to rise gradually, remaining below a 2 percent annual pace until 2018.

Rather, the forecasts suggest the Fed sees room to let the economy recoup lost ground. Officials now predict that the unemployment rate will fall to 4.5 percent by the end of 2018, before rebounding to a stable level at 4.8 percent.

After five months of speculation, Redmond Airport officials announced Friday that it will be offering nonstop daily service to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport via American Airlines, beginning June 2.

“It makes us more accessible. I think it provides another connection, another port of call,” said Roger Lee, executive director of Economic Development for Central Oregon.

American Airlines will use a Bombardier CRJ-700 airplane, which seats 67 passengers. The flight will depart daily from Redmond at 12:01 p.m., arriving in Phoenix at 2:20 p.m. Departures will leave Phoenix at 8:15 p.m., and arrive in Redmond at 10:20 p.m.

Zachary Bass, business director for Redmond Airport, said the airport signed a contract to keep the airline here for two years.

“We’re expecting them to stay the whole time,” Bass said.

Tickets will go on sale Sunday, though the price of the tickets was not disclosed Friday.

There has been speculation about a direct flight to Phoenix since Redmond Airport received a grant for $500,000 from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The grant, which was approved by the Redmond City Council in November, came through the federal Small Community Air Service Development Program, designed to help smaller airports attract flights. Redmond was one of 11 successful applicants out of a field of 49, according to the minutes from a Redmond Airport committee meeting in January.

The grant required additional investment from Central Oregon, however. As a condition of the agreement, the Central Oregon Air Service Team, a volunteer collection of local business advocates who work to attract flights to the region, committed to raising $100,000 in matching funds.

Nicole Jurgensen, security manager for Redmond Airport, described this as a standard provision for attracting flights. Grants have also been used to draw existing flights to Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. Lee said the city of Bend has committed to $15,000 in 2016, and the rest of the money will be coming from other local governments and businesses.

“I’m still in fundraising mode,” Lee said.

In 2008, Allegiant airline began offering twice-weekly flights between Redmond and Mesa, Arizona, a suburb southeast of Phoenix. The flights were canceled permanently in 2012, after intermittent suspensions of service, according to The Bulletin’s archives.

However, Lee said he’s confident things will go differently this time around. He said having consistent daily service should help establish the route, and flying into Sky Harbor, the largest airport in Arizona, is a competitive advantage. Jurgensen added that American Airlines has a hub in Phoenix and connects to 81 locations in four countries from the airport.

“There are more connections out of Phoenix on American than out of LAX,” Jurgensen said, referring to Los Angeles International Airport.

To help with establishing a market in metropolitan Phoenix, Central Oregon Visitors Association will be investing a minimum of $50,000 in a marketing effort in the region.

President and CEO Alana Hughson said the marketing campaign will consist of targeted print and online advertising and will be implemented by the beginning of March. She said the spring campaign is designed to target older citizens with a passion for golf, as well as younger Arizonans who could be enticed by Central Oregon’s winter offerings.

“We’re fortunate to live in a day and age where we can target our messaging to very specific demographics,” Hughson said.

— Reporter: 541-617-7818, shamway@bendbulletin.com