Stafford Hamlet Is Zoned for a Future That Keeps Getting Postponed
September 10, 2026
September 10, 2026
Drive out to tour acreage in Stafford Hamlet this month and the first thing you notice won't be a zoning map. It'll be a flagger. Right now, through the end of September, Stafford Road and Johnson Road are closed to through traffic between Pattulo Way and Childs Road, part of a Clackamas County project that has been opening and closing this corridor on a rolling schedule since 2025. You'll be rerouted onto I-205, I-5, Boones Ferry Road, or Country Club Road, and depending on the day, that detour costs you real time on what should be a five-minute drive to see a listing.
That's the visible friction. The invisible one is a phrase buyers keep repeating to themselves after they get home: Stafford Hamlet is "urban reserve" land. It sounds like a countdown. Rural now, subdivided later, and whoever owns it when the clock hits zero gets the payout. That story isn't wrong so much as it's missing the part that actually matters if you're signing paperwork this year: nobody, including the cities that would have to approve it, knows when or whether that clock ever starts.
Metro first designated Stafford urban reserve land in 1995, then tried to fold it directly into the urban growth boundary in 1997. The Oregon Court of Appeals struck that bid down in 2005, finding Metro hadn't correctly applied the state's land use rules. Metro designated Stafford urban reserve a second time in 2010, and the court struck that down too, in 2014, on the same grounds. What survives today is the current urban reserve designation: a statement that the area could, in theory, be pulled inside the growth boundary within the next 50 years. It is not, and has never been, a guarantee that it will.
In 2017, a five-party intergovernmental agreement between Metro, Clackamas County, and the cities of West Linn, Lake Oswego, and Tualatin made the actual barrier explicit: none of those cities can adopt a concept plan or apply to expand the urban growth boundary into Stafford until the state's I-205 widening project is fully designed and funded. A follow-up three-party agreement between the three cities went further for land north of the Tualatin River, setting 2028 as the earliest a concept plan could even be proposed there.
That prerequisite has not moved quickly. As recently as 2021, the Oregon Department of Transportation's own funded first phase of I-205 widening didn't include the Stafford segment at all. And the legal footing under the agreements themselves has already been tested once. A member of the Stafford Land Owners Association challenged the intergovernmental agreements at the Land Conservation and Development Commission, arguing that only Metro, not the cities acting through side agreements, has the authority to make urban growth boundary decisions. The commission dismissed that petition, but in September 2023 the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal and sent the case back for reconsideration, leaving open the question of whether the cities' agreements can bind Metro's timeline at all.
Line up the dates and the pattern is a series of postponements, not a countdown:
Even setting the legal timeline aside, Stafford Hamlet totals more than 6,000 acres, and only a small share of that is considered practically developable. The hills and drainages that make the area feel rural also make it expensive to grade, road, and sewer at urban density. That's part of why the debate has run for three decades without resolving. A rezoning would still leave most of Stafford too steep to subdivide, which caps the payoff some buyers assume is coming even if the legal barriers eventually fall.
While the rezoning question sits in a decades-long stall, Clackamas County is spending real money on the road you'll actually drive. The $18 million Stafford Road project between Pattulo Way and Rosemont Road is adding a roundabout at Childs Road, realigning the skewed Johnson Road intersection, widening the corridor for bike lanes, and replacing the Pecan Creek culvert with a larger, fish-passable one. The county has targeted substantial completion by October 2026 and doesn't currently anticipate further closures after that, but the schedule has already shifted more than once since work began, with full closures rotating through summer and fall of both 2025 and 2026.
That disruption has a name and a number attached to it. Rich Fiala, who owns Fiala Farms along Stafford Road and serves as the Hamlet's vice chair, said the closures cut his farm's sales by 45 percent during what should have been his busiest summer stretch, and that he was counting on October, typically his most important month, to make up ground once the road reopened.
Danielle Weber, the Stafford Hamlet's board chair, put the community's broader posture plainly at a meet and greet with county and city officials at Fiala Farms in September 2025:
"It is important to our board to not have little cities move into the Stafford Hamlet area."
Portland General Electric's Tonquin Project, which involves new high-voltage transmission lines through the area, is a separate concern residents are tracking alongside the road work. Neither project changes the zoning. Both change what living out here feels like for a construction season or two.
If you're comparing Stafford Hamlet acreage to a lot in West Linn or Lake Oswego, the urban reserve label shouldn't be doing much work in your decision either direction. It doesn't mean a subdivision is coming to the property next door soon. The legal path there runs through a highway funding process that has already outlasted several of its own projected timelines, and a 2023 Court of Appeals ruling left unresolved whether the cities' agreements can even bind Metro's timeline. Pricing in a rezoning premium today is pricing in something with no reliable date attached.
What should factor into your decision is the thing with an actual calendar on it: construction season access. If you're touring, closing, or planning to build during a spring or summer between now and whenever the current project fully wraps, budget extra time for detours and confirm which roads are open before you schedule a showing. That's the friction Stafford Hamlet buyers are dealing with in 2026. The rezoning story is still, as it has been for thirty years, a maybe.
For the practical side of buying acreage out here, wells, septic systems, and farm-use zoning included, our guide to buying acreage in Stafford Hamlet walks through the details this piece doesn't.
Will Stafford Road stay closed? Not on the current schedule. Clackamas County has the corridor targeted for substantial completion by October 2026, with no additional closures anticipated once that milestone is reached, though the timeline has shifted before.
Does the urban reserve label mean my land is worth more because it might get rezoned someday? Treat that as speculative. The intergovernmental agreements tie any rezoning to a state highway funding timeline that hasn't moved as fast as originally projected, and a 2023 Court of Appeals ruling left the cities' authority to make those agreements an open legal question.
Can I plan to develop my Stafford Hamlet property down the road? Not on a near-term horizon. Most of the Hamlet remains zoned for exclusive farm use, and the agreements bar even preliminary concept planning for land north of the Tualatin River before 2028 at the earliest, with no guarantee the process moves quickly once that date arrives.
If you're weighing Stafford Hamlet acreage against a homesite closer in, or you just want someone who's been tracking the road project and the zoning history to walk you through what it means for a specific parcel, Monaghan Real Estate Group is glad to help. Let's connect.
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