Hillsboro’s 1,800-Acre Land Grab: Billions in Corporate Giveaways, Decades to Break Even
A confidential Hillsboro proposal seeks to add 1,800 acres of farmland to the Urban Growth Boundary and deliver the most aggressive corporate tax breaks in Oregon history — even as tech jobs vanish and utility bills soar.
Hillsboro has long been Oregon’s fastest-growing city — outward, at least. Urban Growth Boundary expansions, data centers, and industrial projects have marched across former farmland faster than anywhere else in the state. Yet beneath the boom, the region’s identity is fracturing. Tech layoffs have erased thousands of jobs, electricity rates have doubled, and trust in City Hall is running on empty.
Now, during a period of social unrest and economic anxiety, The Hillsboro Herald has learned that Mayor Beach Pace and the city’s Economic Development team are advancing a new, largely privately promoted initiative to push the city’s borders again — this time more aggressively than ever before.
A detailed report titled “Potential Semiconductor Campus Expansion – State and Local Impacts” was delivered recently to a Portland lobbying firm. The Herald has reviewed portions of the document and related materials. Although the city has not yet announced any public hearings, the proposal appears to be designed to secure state support for a comprehensive new expansion package.
The plan identifies roughly 1,800 acres of prime high-value farmland — land currently protected inside the rural reserve system for farming, not for potential annexation. It is the same land that Senator Janeen Sollman and others sought to add in previous years, only to be rejected by the Governor’s office and by hundreds of local residents who testified against it.
State and Local Impacts – A report. The areas in Dark Blue are the expansion areas.
And in those areas, some visual ideas of what they could look like.
Potential Semiconductor Campus Expansion- State and Local Impacts The document plan opens with this:
The City of Hillsboro has conducted preliminary planning to inform potential UGB expansion into this area. This Planning will create a roadmap that will bring together public and private sectors to diversify and strengthen the regional and state economy for decades to come.
See the Plan Here – Economic Development Bid Draft Outline Hillsboro
That language leaves little doubt about intent. This is not a feasibility study; it is a sales pitch. To date, no public meetings or disclosures have been held regarding a project of this scale. For residents already skeptical of closed-door decision-making, this approach looks uncomfortably familiar — another example of growth being decided before the public is invited to the table.
As one longtime farmer near the proposed site put it, “They keep saying ‘public-private partnership,’ but the public part always comes last.”
The plan is presumptive that this expansion is needed, warranted, and that Hillsboro and the State of Oregon can not live without it. It makes an aspirational statement that it will “bring together public and private sectors,” yet the plan is already well underway, with economic modeling and financial returns being promoted. The plan makes conclusions. To date, we have found no record of public meetings regarding such an aggressive plan. The general public’s sentiments are not in favor of this type of expansion. Trust with the public in general is waning, and these sorts of efforts and visioning without a complete public process smacks of behind-the-closed-doors land deals and special interests pulling the puppet strings. That was proven in 2024, as landowners in the proposed expansion zones at that time lined up donations to the decision-makers in a quid pro quo move.
The people pushing for this were told NO over the past few years by the State of Oregon, the governor, and hundreds of locals who testified. But this feels like a petulant child who has been told “no” to a new toy is stomping its feet and refusing to relent.
A Push for Billions in Corporate Giveaways
Accompanying the growth plan is a legislative draft labeled “Economic Development Bill Draft Outline.”
It outlines an unprecedented array of incentives for semiconductor, biotech, and “advanced manufacturing” employers. Among them:
Fast-tracking Urban Growth Boundary amendments for projects with “strong employment benefits.”
Expanding Oregon’s R&D tax credit.
Authorizing local governments to suspend or reduce property taxes on capital equipment.
Expanding Enterprise Zone programs for job creation and retention.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT BILL DRAFT OUTLINE
Hillsboro Growth Expansion Plans DRAFT HTPS Economic Impacts V3_03042024 Outline Hillsboro
Objective: Develop a legislative package to maintain and accelerate the growth of
advanced manufacturing jobs (semiconductors, biotech, clean tech) in Oregon. Our
state is facing significant revenue and budget challenges, which means cuts to essential
services for Oregonians. We need to refocus our strategy to grow Oregon’s tax base.
High-wage jobs are needed to grow Oregon’s tax base to sustain essential services. We
need to make investments now because they take time to manifest. We cannot afford to
delay. Additionally, traded sector employers create an ecosystem of suppliers and main-
street small businesses.
The document argues that Oregon must “make investments now” to grow its tax base, even as the state faces budget shortfalls. Yet, as the numbers show, the arithmetic doesn’t favor taxpayers.
Sidebar: The Math of a Giveaway
| Scenario | Total Incentives | Annual Public Revenue | Break-Even Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| New $3B Semiconductor Fab (3,000 jobs @ $70k avg.) | $692.6 million in property and income-tax breaks | $20.1 million/year combined local + state | 34–35 years |
Source: Hillsboro Herald / AI-assisted fiscal modeling
That means taxpayers would give up roughly $34 in corporate tax relief for every $1 of annual public revenue, waiting more than three decades to break even — long after many of today’s workers and families have moved on.
Closing Thoughts – The Disconnect
The Disconnect
This is an opinion column, and here’s my take.
There are now two Hillsboros.
One is the city most of us live in — the neighborhoods and households where people are trying to keep the lights on, navigate rising bills, and cope with uncertainty.
The other Hillsboro operates behind closed doors — in the private offices of City Hall, the boardrooms of corporations, and the polished conference tables of consultants and lobbyists.
When people ask, “How did this happen?” — this is how:
Plans are drafted, deals are floated, and visions are sold before the community ever gets to speak.
The Hillsboro we deserve listens first, plans later, and measures success not by acres annexed but by trust rebuilt.
Suppose this new proposal truly represents the city’s future. In that case, the public deserves full transparency and a genuine say — not another backroom bargain traded for promises that won’t pay off for 34 years.
Your analysis is obviously clear and certain. I agree. What next? How do we stop this?
It is not focused on jobs just data centers. Thanks Democrats
Dems aren’t the ones who want to give tax breaks to these big corporations.
You are an idiot. Data centers are owned by republican CEOs.
The city’s way of saying that they did all of that work planning for SB4 and got nothing and certain landowners’ way of saying “we paid you folks good money for nothing.” The problem is that only Hillsboro would read the current economic indicators—and fears around the government investment in Intel, the AI bubble, and other wobbles in the tech economy—and say “that’s where we should be shoving all of our chips.”
Any reasonable human being would hear Salem continue its rallying cry around housing, its call for thousands more housing units to meet demands, and the reduction in federal expenditures for homeless programs and see it as a sign that maybe, just maybe, a whole bunch of flat acreage directly connected to North Hillsboro neighborhoods with multiple clear paths downtown should be the site of some new housing and amenities—perhaps an even more logical site than south of cargo rail lines and an orphan highway. There’s an appetite for it both politically and economically, but Johnny Utah doesn’t want to rip up his maps and pretty renderings.
Backing up onto these fields, it’s clear the investors are never going to plant anything more valuable than fescue here and won’t stop until they’re able to flip it for value. I said it throughout SB4’s miserable failure and I’ll say it again here: Everyone can get what they want by making that acreage residential. That was the North Hillsboro Alliance’s original plan (for a “walkable neighborhood,” no less), and it remains their best.
They haven’t realized that the backdoor industrial planning that everyone knows about—and that you reported on nearly four years ago, Dirk—is exactly what turns people against these projects. If they want less troublesome, vocal resistance, they need to start actually listening to the people up here on all sides of the issue. There are landowners east of Jackson who want into the UGB, and I 100% understand their position. There are landowners behind me who at least want the opportunity to keep farming, and I understand that, too.
But every time they talk about chopping down the rural reserve for an “emergency,” it’s for a sector that would expose a city to more immediate risk in the hopes of extracting reward decades down the line. Housing would have more immediate benefits and impact, and would serve as connective tissue to the existing neighborhoods and amenities to the south. If you told me THAT was the actual emergency we were addressing, I’d be 100% more likely to entertain ideas for the land they so desperately want to take from under me and my neighbors.
You addressed every key point, 100% agree. Even if they do commercially develop that land or part of it for tech, the payoff period should be much lower, 5-10 years which implies lower breaks if any at all. Politician’s favorite move is to kick the can down the road for any potential negative consequences.
AOC opposed and organized against the tax breaks NYC was going to give to Amazon for their HQ2 and got railed in the media by Republicans and Democrats at the time. How dare someone oppose corporate welfare. Turns out Amazon built it anyway after the city did not produce the incentives so NYC got all the benefit and no cost. This should be the template.