Business View Civil and Municipal | September 2022

90 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 9 D allas, Oregon knows exactly what it wants to be. The semi-urban city of 17,000, located just 15 miles west of the state capitol of Salem, has been carefully laying the groundwork for its future development, ensuring that it maintains its own character and becomes an ideal place for its residents and businesses alike. “We’re trying hard not to become a bedroom community to the state capitol,” says Charlie Mitchell, Dallas’s Economic & Community Development Director. “We are trying to maintain our own identity and have our own employment centers, have our own places of commerce, those sorts of things. So we’re trying to prevent that daily commute from Dallas into Salem.” The city itself is growing rapidly, with more than 500 new homes added to the landscape over the last three years. And there’s no real sign of that slowing down any time soon. “There’s abundant, properly- zoned land to allow for quite a bit of future residential development,” Mitchell says. “It’s occurring organically, but our focus is really on managing that growth.” Located on the western edge of the Willamette Valley, the Dallas area is