by Geon, Bryan
Tualatin
Outside this concentration of commercial and medium-density residential developments, single-family homes comprise the bulk of the city’s built-up area. Tualatin’s residential districts generally feature medium-to-large homes on quiet, curving residential streets and culs-de-sac. The predominant housing style is one- or two-story Northwest contemporary or “shed” design; some homes have rather interesting architecture, and most have pleasantly landscaped yards with trees. There are a few older neighborhoods of ranch homes and split-levels; the newest neighborhoods cluster in southwest Tualatin. Some of these homes veer towards the McMansion end of the housing spectrum, with three-car garages and “great rooms.” The real estate crash resulted in a number of completed, but largely unoccupied, developments in this part of the city; now that the market has recovered, and the available inventory has sold, some new developments are edging into the fields. There are also some townhomes and apartment complexes along Boones Ferry Road near Interstate 5; and in East Tualatin near Legacy Meridian Park Hospital. The large planned development of Fox Hill perches above the Tualatin River in the easternmost part of the city. (East Tualatin is in Clackamas County.)
Because of Tualatin’s popularity, housing prices are somewhat higher than in many other Washington County suburbs, although monthly rents are comparable. (Despite the preponderance of single-family homes, nearly half the population lives in rentals.) The city’s main annual celebration is the Tualatin Crawfish Festival, which has survived for more than half a century despite the curse placed upon it by the Voodoo Queen of Acadiana in Louisiana, who felt perhaps overly protective of her region’s claim to lifetime achievement in the field of crawfish. The city has a decent selection of community parks; Browns Ferry Park along the Tualatin River provides a launching point for canoes and kayaks.
The city’s major streets and Interstate 5 are growing increasingly congested, and Tualatin-Sherwood Road is ridiculously slow at certain times of day. Projected continued strong population growth in Sherwood and Wilsonville over the medium-term will continue to affect the traffic situation in Tualatin adversely. It’s a 15-minute drive to downtown Portland at off-hours, but that figure doubles (or triples) at rush hour. Although the city is generally very car-dependent, Tri-Met offers express bus service to Portland, and there is a park-and-ride near Interstate 5. SMART runs buses between Tualatin and Wilsonville, and the WES commuter rail line between Wilsonville and Beaverton serves central Tualatin.
Almost all of Tualatin is part of the Tigard-Tualatin School District (www.ttsdschools.org), and Tualatin High School offers an International Baccalaureate program.
Website: www.tualatinoregon.gov
ZIP Code: 97062
Post Office: Tualatin Post Office, 19190 SW 90th Ave
Police Station: Tualatin Police Department, 8650 SW Tualatin Rd, 503-629-0111 (non-emergency)
Emergency Hospital: Legacy Meridian Park Medical Center, 19300 SW 65th Ave, Tualatin, 503-692-1212, www.legacyhealth.org
Library: Tualatin Public Library, 18878 SW Martinazzi Ave, 503-691-3074
Parks: 9 parks, including Browns Ferry Park, Atfalati Park, and Ibach Park; www.tualatinoregon.gov/recreation
Community Publication: The Tualatin Times, www.tualatintimes.com
Public Transportation: TriMet, 503-238-RIDE, www.trimet.org (bus service between Tualatin and Portland or Lake Oswego); SMART, 503-682-7790, www.ridesmart.com (bus service between Tualatin and Wilsonville); peak-hour commuter rail service (WES) to Wilsonville, Tigard, and Beaverton
Sherwood
Boundaries: North: Unincorporated Washington County; West: Unincorporated Washington County; South: Unincorporated Washington County; East: Tualatin; unincorporated Washington County; Area: 4.3 square miles; Population: 18,500
The outlying community of Sherwood, about 16 miles southwest of downtown Portland, is on the fringe of the metropolitan area, surrounded on three sides by the farms and wooded hills of rural Washington and Yamhill Counties. (The city is far enough out to have its own urban growth boundary.) It is also one of the fastest growing cities in the state. This growth has brought traffic congestion and not-always-sensitive development; many outsiders experience Sherwood only along the two main through roads, Pacific Highway (Highway 99W), which is lined by strip malls, punctuated by the occasional large apartment complex, and Sherwood-Tualatin Road, which is flanked by industrial facilities and office parks and plagued by incessant truck traffic. The perception of the city these streets create is both unfortunate and inaccurate, as most of Sherwood is a quiet, pleasant suburban community with a small-town feel and strong community spirit.
The heart of this hidden city is Old Town Sherwood, a compact old-fashioned downtown where a beautiful new public library and a few new upscale businesses have started a minor revitalization. Old Town also hosts the Sherwood Saturday Market (www.sherwoodmarket.blogspot.com), held Saturday mornings from May through September. The adjacent Smockville neighborhood—Smockville was the original name of the town before its incorporation in 1892—is filled with bungalows and other older homes. Stella Olsen Park, at this neighborhood’s western end, hosts concerts and outdoor movie screenings during the summer. Across the railroad tracks to the southeast stands a mix of generally modest single-family homes ranging in age from early-20th-century cottages to ranches and contemporary-style homes. The hills around Murdock Park, in Southeast Sherwood, are high enough to offer good views of the surrounding countryside; two-story contemporary homes line the short, sometimes steep, streets. Newer tract homes dominate the southern and southwestern parts of the city. The newest developments tend to be large, self-contained and walled-off (although not actually gated) blocks of large single-family homes, some of which have very small yards. The vast majority of Sherwood’s housing stock consists of single-family homes, but some new apartment complexes have sprung up along Pacific Highway in the northern part of the city.
Sherwood
Despite Sherwood’s substantial distance from the metropolitan center, real estate is not exactly cheap: the median home price is comparable to Tigard’s, and quite a bit higher than prices in Beaverton or Hillsboro. The median household income, meanwhile, is higher than in most other metro-area communities. Traffic congestion can be (and usually is) a problem heading out of town toward Tigard or Tualatin; there is frequent (but not necessarily lightning-fast) bus service to Tigard and Portland. A new connector road between Interstate 5 and Highway 99W, which would bypass Tualatin-Sherwood Road, has been proposed to alleviate existing bottlenecks. Sherwood’s biggest municipal festival is the annual Robin Hood Festival, complete with archery contest (but so far no “rob from the rich, give to the poor” event) (robinhoodfestival.org). (The city was named, either directly or indirectly depending on which story you believe, for England’s Sherwood Forest.) The city is a popular choice for households with children, a fact reinforced in 2009 by Family Circle magazine naming Sherwood one of the top ten cities in the country for families. (Caveat: Family Circle’s screening criteria may not match yours.) Most of Sherwood is within the city’s own school district (www.sherwood.k12.or.us); a small part of the northern portion of the city is within the Hillsboro School District (www.hsd.k12.or.us).
Website: www.sherwoodoregon.gov
ZIP Code: 97140
Post Office: Sherwood Post Office, 16300 SW Langer Dr
Police Station: Sherwood Police Department, 20495 SW Borchers Rd, 503-625-5523 (non-emergency)
Emergency Hospital: Legacy Meridian Park Medical Center, 19300 SW 65th Ave, Tualatin, 503-692-1212, www.legacyhealth.org
Library: Sherwood Public Library, 22560 SW Pine St, 503-625-6688, www.sherwoodoregon.gov/library
Parks: 12 public parks and open spaces, including Stella Olsen Park, plus Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge
Community Publication: Sherwood Gazette, www.sherwoodgazette.com
Public Transportation: TriMet, 503-238-RIDE, www.trimet.org; one bus line with frequent serv
ice and one express bus line to Tigard and downtown Portland
Western Washington County
Western Washington County blends the wonders of the modern world with the splendors of the natural environment. The tech employers of booming Hillsboro attract skilled workers from around the world, while just a few miles away you’ll find fog-shrouded forested hills and world-class wineries. It’s not perfect—traffic can be a nightmare, and increasing immigration and other demographic changes have caused growing pains and general strife about tax and land use issues—but western Washington County remains one of the fastest-growing parts of the state and is a major economic engine for the Portland area.
Hillsboro
Boundaries: North: Unincorporated Washington County; West: Unincorporated Washington County; Cornelius; South: Unincorporated Washington County; East: Aloha (unincorporated Washington County), Beaverton; Area: 23.9 square miles; Population: 93,500
Hillsboro is not named for the city’s terrain—the landscape could be described as “rolling” at best—but rather for early pioneer David Hill, who arrived in Oregon in 1842 and settled in this region by 1845. It’s safe to say that Hill would be astonished if he could see what has happened to his old homestead. Over the last three decades or so, Hillsboro has grown from a sleepy agricultural service center and county seat to become the pulsing heart of the so-called Silicon Forest and the sixth largest city in Oregon. Computer-chip giant Intel, the largest private employer in the state, has several facilities in the city; the newest of these, the company’s multi-billion dollar DX1 fab project, is scheduled to come online in 2015. Other technology companies with operations here include Epson, FEI, and Lattice Semiconductor. Most technology facilities are set in large industrial “campuses,” which are heavily concentrated in the northeastern quarter of the city, close to the Sunset Highway. (In addition to “Silicon Forest,” this part of Washington County is sometimes referred to as the Sunset Corridor.) Hillsboro’s economic transition has caused a demographic transition as well: the city’s population is becoming increasingly diverse, with many new Hispanic, East Asian, and South Asian residents (some of whom have come on H-1B visas to work at the region’s tech companies).
Hillsboro
The northeastern part of Hillsboro, besides harboring many industrial campuses and office parks, also has abundant shopping and residential options. The Tanasbourne district, which straddles Cornell Road west of 185th Avenue, includes the Streets of Tanasbourne (www.streetsoftanasbourne.com)—an upscale “lifestyle” mall—and a coterie of nearby retail hangers-on. The surrounding area is bursting with large residential developments, primarily apartment and townhome complexes with names that often follow this formula: Name = [(cutesy or made-up noun) + (general location or geographical feature) + e], e.g., “The Brookfordington at the Pointe.” Most of the development in this area has occurred over the last 20 years, so housing units tend to be fairly new and complexes often have better-than-average amenities. The superabundance of apartments means that it’s usually easy to find a vacancy in the area, and Tanasbourne attracts many newcomers, especially those who plan to work for Hillsboro employers.
Southwest of Tanasbourne is the much-lauded Orenco Station development, named for the Oregon Nursery Company that used to operate farms on the site. Orenco Station was one of the country’s first suburban New Urbanist developments—mixed-use, transit-oriented, and pedestrian-friendly planned communities—with a residential mix including apartments, neo-traditional single-family homes with big front porches, and brick townhomes with Brooklyn-style stoops (but sanitized to avoid Brooklyn-style interactions—you talkin’ to me?). Housing surrounds a “town center” with shops and restaurants. The Orenco “station” is the adjacent stop on the Westside light rail; downtown Portland is 40 minutes away by train. Orenco Station also hosts one of Hillsboro’s three weekly farmers’ markets, held on Sunday mornings during the summer months. Orenco Station has become so successful, in fact, that several other developments in the area have adopted the Orenco name to bask in the reflected glory of the original development; these other Orencos do not necessarily incorporate any elements of New Urbanist design.
West along Cornell Road, across from the Washington County Fairgrounds, Hillsboro Airport is home base for the local fleet of corporate jets, as well as less glamorous aircraft. As a result, airplane noise can be a concern for some residents. The neighborhoods west of the airport, around Hillsboro High School, have a mix of ranch and contemporary homes. The Jones Farm area, near an Intel campus of the same name, features newer two-story houses on culs-de-sac and dead-end streets; the small park at the center of the neighborhood is reserved for the use of residents only. Other parts of Northwest Hillsboro offer mostly two-story contemporary homes from the 1980s and 1990s, as well as some new housing developments on the fringe of the built-up area. This part of Hillsboro is growing in popularity, although it is a bit of slog from other parts of the metro area. Northwest Evergreen Road offers a stark example of the urban growth boundary in action: housing subdivisions spread out to the south, while working agricultural fields occupy the land to the north.
Hillsboro
Downtown Hillsboro is a mix of businesses, apartment complexes, and city and county government buildings, including a modern civic center and the historic county courthouse. This is the western terminus of the Westside MAX line; the trip from here to downtown Portland takes about 50 to 55 minutes. Main Street is lined with small shops and eateries, which stay open late for the Tuesday Market, held on Tuesday evenings from June through August. Downtown also hosts a farmers’ market on Saturday mornings from May through October; see www.hillsboromarkets.org for details. The residential neighborhoods surrounding downtown include some lovely restored bungalows and other older homes, leftovers from Hillsboro as it was when it was simply a county seat and not a major suburb and center of industry. The neighborhoods east of downtown feature ranches in varying states of repair and disrepair, mixed with some new apartment buildings; this area also contains small-scale cul-de-sac developments of newer homes, shoehorned into gaps in existing built-up areas. The areas further east, around Century High School, are mostly traditional suburban neighborhoods, with plenty of two-story, contemporary-style houses on short loops and dead-end streets.
Hillsboro is a demographic grab-bag of singles, families, students, elderly long-time residents, new immigrants from other countries, affluent high-tech workers, and low-paid agricultural laborers. (Farms, plant nurseries, and wineries still operate just beyond the urban growth boundary.) Like Beaverton, Hillsboro contains just about every kind of housing you could imagine, although Hillsboro is less expensive and not as densely populated as Beaverton, and homeowners make up a slightly higher percentage of the population. The Hillsboro School District (www.hsd.k12.or.us) is a mixed bag, with both excellent and mediocre schools. The city operates an extensive network of parks, recreation centers, “linear parks,” and open spaces, including aptly named Noble Woods Park; Shute Park, which includes an aquatic center and library; and Rood Bridge Park, which has a put-in for canoes and kayaks along the Tualatin River. Jackson Bottom Wetlands (www.jacksonbottom.org) is an extensive area of marshland and bird habitat just south of downtown. Hillsboro is also home to the Hops, a minor-league baseball team that plays at Ron Tonkin Field, just south of the Sunset Highway.
Hillsboro has MAX light rail service to Beaverton and Portland, and a decent network of bus lines, but most residents get around by car, and the sprawling nature of development has resulted in significant congestion. The Sunset Highway commute to Portland can be a nightmare, while the slog along Tualatin Valley Highway to Beaverton is usually slow but manageable. People with jobs in or near Hillsboro are more likely to enjoy living here than people who work far away and intend to commute by car.
Website: www.ci.hillsboro.or.us
ZIP Codes: 97006, 97123, 97124
Post Office: Hillsboro Post Office, 125 S 1st Ave
Police Stati
on: Hillsboro Police Department, 250 SE 10th Ave, 503-681-6190 (non-emergency); Tanasbourne Precinct, 20795 NW Cornell Rd, Ste 100, 503-615-6641
Emergency Hospitals: Tuality Community Hospital, 335 SE 8th Ave, Hillsboro, 503-681-1111, www.tuality.org; Kaiser Permanente Westside Medical Center, 2875 NW Stucki Ave, Hillsboro, 971-310-1000, www.kp.org
Libraries: Hillsboro Main Library, 2850 NE Brookwood Pkwy; Shute Park Branch Library, 775 SE 10th Ave; 503-615-6500, hillsboro.plinkit.org
