FEATURE ARTICLES Memo Calendar Memo Pad Business Memo's Loaves & Fishes Letters Home
Tidings of Comfort and Joy expressed at The Grotto’s 15th Annual Festival of Lights
Neighborhood system a resource for positive change
Adventist Hospital presents master plan for future expansion
Mid-County restaurateur puts up his dukes and does it for the kids and the community
Urban Renewal funding idea floated

About the MEMO
MEMO Archives
MEMO Advertising
MEMO Web Neighbors
MEMO Staff

© 2002, Mid-county MEMO
Terms & Conditions
Adventist Hospital presents master plan for future expansion

Hazelwood residents seek return of promised pedestrian pathway

LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

Portland Adventist Hospital is working on a ten-year development plan that includes four new buildings, additions to six existing buildings, and two new parking structures. Fine, Hazelwood residents say, just give us our pedestrian path back.

Hospital representatives Tom Russell and Steve Colberg met with neighbors to discuss the new plans. They call for hundreds of thousands of square feet of new floor area and hundreds of additional parking spaces. The path, linking the Cherry Park area with Mall 205 and “temporarily” removed to make way for a parking lot, generated more comments than any other item.

As the two enumerated, the development will be done in two phases. In the first phase, the hospital proposes a new outpatient services building, an addition to their physical plant, a new parking structure and an addition to their acute and intensive care unit building. In the second phase they will build a child care-building, additions to their patient tower, dining room and nursing school, a two-story addition to their north wing, two new medical office buildings, and a second and larger parking structure. The new buildings will be three to four stories high.

The hospital may make minor modifications to this plan, but will submit it for city review “no later than the first week in December,” Colberg said. “We may do all these things and then again we may not,” Colberg asserted. The second phase, in particular, “depends on demand and the financial aspect of the hospital,” he said.

It didn’t take those present long to get around to asking about the missing path. Russell said it should be improved “to full city pedestrian standards” within 18 months, but Bonny McKnight of the Russell Neighborhood Association said that its completion is a required part of the hospital’s existing plan. “What’s currently required is a bark dust path eight feet wide,” Russell said. “What’s in, meets or exceeds those requirements.” McKnight argued that it was important enough to be given a higher priority. “People from Cherry Park want to be able to walk safely to Mall 205 without going four or five blocks out of their way. We’ve been hearing about this for 10 years and our only leverage for making it happen is the master plan process. I can’t believe it takes 18 months.” Russell promised to investigate what was promised and where the easement is supposed to go. “This is my first pass at this,” he said.

Another major issue is a potential light rail station. Although an alignment for a new north-south light rail line has not yet been selected, a route along I-205 is in the running. If it is selected, there will probably be a station at Southeast Main Street, within walking distance of the hospital. This would be a transportation benefit in itself but McKnight and others warned, it raises the issue that riders will use hospital-parking structures as park-and-ride facilities. “You’d better address that,” one resident told Russell and Colberg. “People will be parking in your structure to ride the train, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Barbara Stickley said, “Even Tri-Met agrees now it was a real boo-boo not to have more parking at Gateway.” McKnight, a persistent critic of Tri-Met, said, “Tri-Met decided long ago that if you don’t put in parking people will use transit to get to MAX.”
Memo Calendar | Memo Pad | Business Memo's | Loaves & Fishes | Letters | About the MEMO
MEMO Advertising | MEMO Archives | MEMO Web Neighbors | MEMO Staff | Home