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Under representation the catalyst for formation of a new Mid-County business association - the first general membership meeting is Tuesday, April 6
LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
There’s a new kid on the block in Mid-Multnomah County, speaking for territory not previously represented, and perhaps some that has. The Midway Business Association will have its “first annual” meeting starting at 11:30 a.m. April 5 at the Pizza Baron, 2604 S.E. 122nd Ave. There, the members will elect their first officers and board members.
Midway’s proposed boundaries are the I-205 Freeway, Southeast 162nd Avenue, and Market and Harold Boulevard. It’s an area “that’s been forgotten about,” Pizza Baron owner Bill Dayton says. He says he is willing to be the group’s first president if requested to be so, or if there isn’t another suitable candidate.
Dayton, together with consultant Nancy Chapin, Donna Dionne of the Love Boutique and a few others, has been working on organizing the area for the last six months. It hasn’t been easy, he says, because there is no immediate crisis that would catalyze people. Still, an association would answer an unmet need, he says.
While a specific agenda should come from the membership an association would “give us an awareness of what’s going on in the community, - the good, the bad, the issues - and a voice so that we can communicate.” The group recently heard from police officers and crime prevention specialists on current public safety issues and what can be done about them. Dayton would also like to see Midway sponsor some activities this summer, possibly in cooperation with other groups. “We have a good relationship with the Parkrose Business Association,” Dayton says.
They have a somewhat more tenuous relationship with the Gateway Area Business Association, or GABA, in part because their proposed boundaries take in part of GABA’s territory - Southeast 122nd and 162nd Avenues, between Southeast Market and Division Streets, bound the area in question. “It would be logical to include this,” Chapin says. “122nd has businesses that relate more to each other than to Stark, Washington or Halsey streets.”
Publicly, representatives have made carefully polite statements. Privately, each side has wondered why, and by what justification, the other wants this particular territory. GABA president Fred Sanchez says of Midway, “Speaking personally, they seem to be marching forward with a good plan.” Of the boundary issue he says, “I haven’t had a chance to understand the boundary issue. We’re talking to previous GABA officers about their reasons for setting the boundaries where they did. I’m sure we can work this out.”
In a March e-mail circulated to the GABA board of directors, board member Scott Hendison put the matter more bluntly. Referring to a Midway presentation to the GABA board in February he said, “They did not walk away from their presentation to us that morning feeling encouraged or supported in any way. Rather than generate pointless animosity by opposing something for the wrong reasons, I think we should try to get along with them.
“I do not consider the neighborhood near Division St. to be the ‘Gateway Area.’ Some of us weren’t even clear exactly where they (representatives of the new Midway Business Assoc.) were talking about until they mentioned some landmarks. Due to population density increases, perhaps it’s time we consider officially changing our boundaries to more accurately reflect what the ‘Gateway Area’ really is.” In the meantime, Dayton says the April meeting, and the turnout for it, “will tell us how far we can go, and how fast.”
At a late March GABA board meeting, although there was no official action, the consensus appeared to be to acquiesce to a friendly boundary overlap.
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