Battle Ground looks for sense of direction

BATTLE GROUND — For many, Battle Ground is a place to live or work. For a few, it’s a place to live and work.

“People assume if you live in Battle Ground, you’re going to have to commute out to support your family,” said Danielle Stone, 46, a former Battle Ground resident who still works in the city.

She said she knows plenty of stay-at-home parents who work part-time jobs in the city to make some extra money, but have spouses who commute somewhere else. Most of her friends who work full time in Battle Ground work for Battle Ground Public Schools, which could be because that’s also where she works. Or, it could be because the school district is the city’s biggest employer and has been as long as anyone can remember.

Ryan King, 42, moved to Battle Ground in 2005 from Parker, Colo., and works for a software company in Portland. He said there’s not much opportunity in his field in Battle Ground, unless he were to start his own company and work from home.

“The people I’ve met — neighbors and friends — very, very few work in Battle Ground,” he said. “For me, it’s a place to live and to raise my family.”

Unlike some of its neighbors, Battle Ground hasn’t had that reputation-defining industry. There was never a mill or factory, and the city hasn’t lured that big tech company.

“You used to drive down Main Street and you’d see all those empty fields,” Stone said.

While those empty fields are filling up with houses, city officials are facing a dilemma: what do residents want from Battle Ground?

“We’re looking for an identity,” said Erin Erdman, the city’s community development director. “What path does the city want to go down? Is there something in the city that we can identify with for future marketing and branding, for future land-use decisions moving forward?”

The city is gearing up to conduct future vision planning for the first time since the early 2000s, when Battle Ground’s population was about half its current size. The city just passed 20,000 residents, and is expected to have more than 39,000 by 2035.

“The city has grown organically quickly,” Erdman said. “We’ve lost that connection a little bit with the community. That’s what we’re looking for, to give that back, to get everybody more involved.”

Many commuters

According to the most recent available Census information, 7.6 percent of Battle Ground residents worked in the city as of 2015. City Manager Jeff Swanson said that statistic has held steady since then.

That’s somewhat comparable to some of Clark County’s other small cities. According to the same Census information, about 6.4 percent of Ridgefield residents worked in town in 2015, although City Manager Steve Stuart said that number is closer to 10 percent right now. Ridgefield has also seen rapid growth in recent years, and the Port of Ridgefield owns about 43 acres of waterfront property, known as Miller’s Landing, that is expected to be developed in the coming years.

Washougal, which was at 9.7 percent local employment in 2015, has continued to develop its downtown, bringing in more than 20 businesses in the last five-plus years. The Port of Camas-Washougal also has 40-plus acres of waterfront property near its offices with plans for a mix of residential and commercial development.

Over in La Center, the city’s finances might be struggling due to declining cardroom sales and the opening of nearby Ilani Casino Resort. However, the city has 152 acres of shovel-ready developable land at the Interstate 5 junction across the freeway from the casino.

Battle Ground has no such port, nor large plots of developable land. At last count, the city had about 160 acres of industrial land and about 700 acres of commercial land available, although those numbers have dropped drastically in the last few years, Erdman said.

While lack of land could make it tough to create more jobs, should residents want to do that, Swanson said Battle Ground has some competitive advantages.

“We have a ready workforce,” he said. “Who wouldn’t love to work closer to home?”

In addition to a shorter commute for residents, more employment could lead to more revenue for the city and more people staying in the city during the day, which could be a boon for local businesses. However, more jobs could also mean less room for housing or rising housing costs, as well as increased traffic.

If the city does want to bring in more jobs, city officials may need to extend the city’s urban growth boundary. Swanson said the most likely place to grow the city would be west along state Highway 502.

More than anything else, if Battle Ground wants to change its status as a bedroom community, it’s going to take time.

“In municipal life, 20 years is a fairly short period of time,” Swanson said. “When you think about the amount of infrastructure you have to build to support the population growth and how long it takes to get it funded, designed and constructed, 20 years is a breakneck pace. You’re planning for people who aren’t even here yet, whether it’s the children of current residents who grew up here and want to stay, or whether it’s people moving in.”

Back to the future

That’s why the city is turning to its residents to ask what they want. City officials sent out a request for a proposal in November asking consultants to submit plans for going to residents on future vision planning. The city received 20 responses and staffers are conducting an initial review, according to Bonnie Gilberti, spokeswoman for the city. She added that the city expects to approve a contract sometime in early March.

The last time the city went to residents for their future visions of Battle Ground, it was lot more broad than what the city hopes to do this time, Erdman said. The results were published in the city’s 50-year vision in January 2002.

Some of the items included in that vision were of a Battle Ground that has a “small-town feel where both local and regional services are within easy reach,” and is “served by a number of transportation options within and around the city.”

“This was done in conjunction with our original comprehensive plan, which then gave us our legacy standards for development and what we want the city to look like in commercial and residential,” Erdman said. “Those design standards are still in place to this day.”

When King moved to Battle Ground in 2005, he heard visions of a town that hasn’t really arrived yet.

“When we first moved there, the understanding for me was that it was a growing town,” he said. “It seemed like Battle Ground had this vision of how it wanted to be this awesome city with cool shops. It seemed like it wanted to be a place people could live and not have to leave.”

King would like to see more things to do in Battle Ground, especially with his two teenage daughters.

“We don’t want to have to go to Vancouver to go to a nice restaurant or do something other than go to a movie,” he said.

He’d also like to see the city add something that draws people, like a town square. One potential issue with that, King said, is he’s not sure how many residents want to see the city grow. He knows plenty who want Battle Ground to remain small.

“It’s going to be difficult if you have a large percentage of the population that is not on board,” he said. “I’m not convinced that everybody is on board for growth. Personally, I’d love to see it.”

For others like Stone, that small-town feel keeps them coming back to Battle Ground even after they move away. Stone lived in the city until about eight years ago, but has remained a special education assistant with Battle Ground Public Schools. This is her 10th year with the district.

Since leaving Battle Ground, she has lived in Camas and Clackamas, Ore. She figured once she moved away from the district, she’d look for work elsewhere, but couldn’t give up the Battle Ground community.

“It’s like a family out there,” she said. “It’s different.”

She’d like to live in Battle Ground again, but settled on Vancouver as her husband works in Portland and he didn’t want to trek from Battle Ground every day.

Plenty of people do, though, which can make leaving Battle Ground treacherous, and not just during the morning commute.

“It’s gotten worse,” Stone said. “Coming out of (Battle Ground) High School, to get past the Lewisville Highway, you’re stuck for three lights. You’re just stuck in this crowd of people.”

Traffic congestion

King commutes from Battle Ground to Portland, where he works for Simple Finance Corporation. His drive is about 40 minutes in the morning but closer to an hour coming home.

The major issue in Battle Ground is the two state highways that run through it: state highways 502 and 503. Their intersection receives about 50,000 travelers on an average weekday, according to the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council’s list of high-volume intersections in the county. The most recent traffic count of that intersection was done in 2015. Swanson said the city is seeing trips on those roads increase.

The city wrapped up the first phase of a congestion relief project late last year, with a second phase slated for 2018-19 and a third in 2020-21.

She would like to see more north county and late-night options for public transportation in the area.

“You can get to Portland from downtown Vancouver at 1 a.m., but you pretty much can’t go any further north, east or west at that point,” she said.

Farmer likes Battle Ground, and is impressed with the cost of living, housing availability and amenities. Still, she sees a divide in who works in Battle Ground.

“A lot of people who have been here most of their life or are teenagers, they tend to work locally,” she said. “My age group and middle-agers, they tend to commute more. This area provides a lot of entry-level jobs for the older and younger crowd. For people focusing on their career path, those opportunities aren’t as prevalent in this area.”