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LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
Welcome to Perlman’s Potpourri for February. I’m Tim Curran, publisher of the Mid-county Memo. Here’s a selection of highlights of news items from across the Gateway and Parkrose neighborhoods of mid-Multnomah County from veteran Beat Reporter Lee Perlman; something we call Perlman’s Potpourri.
Coming up, remember the kerfuffle over proposed routes for streetcars in east Portland? Well, committee members have come to an agreement on routes to recommend. Stay tuned.
Portland grants money to neighborhood associations, churches and other local groups to increase their capacity and provide outreach to minority groups and other underrepresented communities.
As expected, the Portland Development Commission completed the purchase of four acres of real estate in the heart of Gateway for a park.
Also in the Potpourri, new Mayor Sam Adams has ordered all city bureaus to create cut packages from 2.5 to 5 percent. Perlman reports how services and programs at the Parks & Recreation bureau would be affected.
The Portland City Council voted to expand the scope of its Transit-Oriented Development Tax Abatement program, providing tax breaks for high density housing developments near MAX light rail stations and other major transit corridors.
In a follow-up to a PP&R item from last month, Perlman reports on the meeting held to discuss the design of a pedestrian fence to keep transit riders from bolting across busy 82nd Avenue and creating traffic hazards. Agencies agree, as well as an area business and one neighborhood association, but one group doesn’t.
Later in the Potpourri, the Portland Bureau of Planning has scheduled a new set of open houses to present and get feedback on the recommendations of its Eastside MAX Station Communities Project.
But first, to streetcar routes...
Committee recommends future streetcar routes
Last month, having received reports from citizen working groups from east Portland and elsewhere, the Streetcar System Plan Advisory Committee proposed potential future streetcar routes.
First, the committee discussed a streetcar route’s most important role. It agreed that providing transportation for these routes is less important than being “transformative” — in the words of Northwest Portland activist Chris Smith — by providing incentives for high-intensity development on adjacent lands. The committee also agreed the area needs to be ready for development and capable of helping pay for streetcars. In the words of artist Tad Savinar, they should go in places that are “percolating, but not boiling yet.”
Developer Dick Cooley warned that it wouldn’t be as easy to make a success of the streetcar in outlying areas as it was in the central city. “As you move out from the center, you need longer lines and you have a diminished economic engine,” he said. “If Gateway were six miles farther in, it would take off like the Pearl. The key is getting there. You have to hook it to something.” Cooley formerly served as chair of the Gateway Urban Renewal District Advisory Committee.
Planner Patrick Sweeney noted that Gateway’s assets include light rail and freeways going in all four directions. Others said it is hampered by, among other things, a lack of local streets, sidewalks and other infrastructure, and a poor public image.
Among the routes proposed by the committee were Northeast Sandy Boulevard, between Hollywood and 112th Avenue in Parkrose; the Gateway Loop, circulating between Portland Adventist Hospital and the Gateway Transit Center via Northeast 99th and 102nd avenues; Northeast and Southeast 82nd Avenue; and Southeast Foster Road, between 50th Avenue and Lents Town Center.
The committee adopted these proposals for further study with relatively little discord. More controversial was the proposal to extend a Southeast Foster Road line to 122nd Avenue, with a line on 122nd going north, from Foster to Holgate and possibly Division. Cooley objected vehemently to this last proposal, saying, “The people who live there don’t like the city or the streetcar. Why give them something to chew on?” At one point he called his fellow committee members “small child(ren) playing with the lions.”
Sweeney argued that the streetcar could be transformative and that the sort of development it could bring is desperately sought by the Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood. One committee member asked sarcastically, “Dick, are you afraid this will work?”
Cooley replied that unlike Gateway, which has been “the center of planning for years,” 122nd has “some nodes, but nothing in between.”
East Portland awards neighborhood grants
The East Portland Neighborhood Office and its neighborhood chairs awarded funds last month to 13 neighborhood projects through the latest phase of the Neighborhood Grants program. This program allocates a total of $200,000 through the Portland Office of Neighborhood Involvement to EPNO and six other district neighborhood offices and coalitions. The funds are then awarded to neighborhood associations and other local groups for projects, which increase the capacity of such groups and provide outreach to minority groups and other underrepresented communities.
The grants awarded in this cycle, the third thus far, are as follows:
•Powellhurst-Gilbert Neighborhood Association — One grant for $2,365 to “establish lines of communication with immigrant youth to identify productive approaches to immigrant populations in the area.” A second grant for $1,500 is to create youth intern positions to “participate in community projects and learn something about community organizing.” A third grant for $3,500 will help them stage a National Night Out event at Gilbert Heights Park.
•Parkrose Heights Association of Neighbors — $2,893 to expand their annual National Night Out celebration at Knott Park.
•Parkrose United Methodist Church — $3,500 to create a community garden and use it to “promote relationships with diverse socioeconomic and ethnic communities.”
•Parkrose Farmers’ Market — One grant for $3,300 to establish an Oregon Trail food stamp program at the market to allow low-income residents the means to purchase produce there, and another for $2,200 to give community groups informational booths at the market.
•Friends of Zenger Farm — $2,050 to help low-income residents with access to the Lents Farmers Market.
•Friends of Gateway Green — $1,276 to develop a Web site, brochures and portable displays to help promote the proposed recreational area.
•St. Timothy Lutheran Church — $2,920 to help community members identify common interests.
•Jane’s Park Group — $1,630 to develop an environmental learning station with information on surrounding flora and fauna translated into Russian, Spanish and Thai; it would be in the natural area adjacent to Midland Library and named for the late Jane Baker.
•Portland Fruit Tree Project — $3,366 to organize neighbors in Lents to harvest local fruit trees for food banks and low-income residents, and to organize food preservation workshops.
•Glenfair Neighborhood Association — $3,500 to organize a neighborhood survey, host community conversations, and initiate projects in response to these conversations, culminating in a celebration on National Night Out.
These projects were selected from among 35 applications submitted to EPNO.
This is probably the last edition of the program, at least for the immediate future. Anticipating a major budget shortfall, Mayor Sam Adams has ordered all city bureaus, including ONI, to prepare “cut packages” showing how they would reduce their budgets 2.5 and 5 percent from their current levels. The Neighborhood Grants program is officially not a part of the ONI budget but a one-time appropriation, and as such would be among the first programs to be eliminated in any budget exercise.
Gateway parkland acquired
As expected, the Portland Development Commission has completed purchase of a four-acre future park site on Northeast Halsey Street at 106th Avenue, according to Portland Development Commission Project Manager Justin Douglas. This site is the old bingo parlor and former J. J. North’s Restaurant. There aren’t currently funds to develop the property, but PDC plans to begin mitigation of ground pollution issues shortly. Portland Parks & Recreation should commence a master planning process — a prerequisite for development under any sort of funding — this summer, Douglas said.
Parks cuts
While Portland Parks & Recreation opens new facilities to fulfill its commitment to properly serve east Portland, budget reductions may endanger operation of these facilities.
Mayor Sam Adams has directed all city bureaus to prepare cut packages; these would show how the bureau would reduce its budget by 2.5 and 5 percent from its current level in order to meet major expected shortfalls in city revenues. Parks personnel discussed their plans to meet this directive at a public forum last month. Among the proposals are the following:
•A 50 percent fee increase, from $50 to $75 per season, for use of one of 1,000 Community Garden plots maintained by the bureau for would-be gardeners. Parks would also cut funds for outreach to add new land for the program, which currently has a 1,000-person waiting list, and eliminate a staff function to gather excess food beyond the needs of the gardeners and turn it over to local food banks.
•Elimination of the bureau’s youth basketball program.
•A 50 percent cut in staff positions (from six to three) for parks planning functions.
•A 10 percent reduction in the pass-through funds the bureau regularly contributes to eight district senior centers through Multnomah County.The reduction would cost each center about $8,000 in operating funds.
•Elimination of a Senior Recreation program that pays for classes at senior centers.
Of this last item, bureau personnel say they hope to fold in such activities at Parks community centers such as East Portland, but they have doubts about whether the centers have the capacity to provide all of these activities; they have even greater doubts about whether they can maintain the discounted fees seniors have been paying.
East Portland Community Center Director Abbe L. MacFarlane feels that her facility can fulfill this function better than most because it already provides many senior activities, including Loaves & Fishes lunches, usually found at senior centers.
The cuts to the bureau planning staff will not end the parks planning function, but it may well slow down the rate at which park master plans are produced.
Council expands tax abatement
The Portland City Council voted to expand the scope of its Transit-Oriented Development Tax Abatement program, which provides tax breaks for high-density housing developments near MAX light rail stations and other major transit corridors. The council’s action removes an annual cap of $20 million for tax deferral under this program.
Commissioner Nick Fish, who oversees city housing development activities, said the change would “put more projects in the pipeline.”
Developers Gordon Jones and Andy Kelley, who are working on a new multi-family project on East Burnside Street at 119th Avenue, said the change was necessary to the success of this and other projects. The cap “makes planning (for developers) very difficult,” Jones said. “PDC won’t approve projects far enough in advance to give us the certainty (of financing) we need; abatement (gives) incentives (to) high density. If you don’t know you will have abatement (and) you don’t know financing is available, you tend to do something cheaper.”
Kelley said he was seeking abatements for projects on Northeast 102nd and 148th avenues. “If you don’t know you have abatement, you’ll go with woody walk-ups (wooden frame structures not more than four stories tall) rather than higher density,” he said.
Fish said the program is intended to assist projects that “would not have happened if not for this program.” He noted that council would get to review each abatement project.
Commissioner Randy Leonard responded, “I think for any reasonable critic of affordable housing, Commissioner Fish’s explanation should resolve any reasonable concerns.”
82nd fence divides neighborhoods
“Good fences make good neighbors,” Robert Frost wrote in “Mending Wall,” but even he didn’t mean it. It hasn’t proved to be the case on Northeast 82nd Avenue.
A fence there, proposed jointly by the Portland Police Bureau, the Portland Office of Transportation and the Oregon Department of Transportation, would extend down the middle of the street between Jonesmore and Wasco streets, near the 82nd Avenue MAX light rail line. It is intended to force pedestrians going from MAX to buses, or vice versa, to cross at the signal at Jonesmore rather than, as East Precinct Commander Mike Crebs puts it, running “pell-mell” across the avenue.
“There have been a number of pedestrian accidents, and I’m surprised there haven’t been more,” Crebs said. It is part of a larger effort to address safety issues and lawlessness at the station.
Last month the three agencies held a gathering at Banfield Pet Hospital’s Glenhaven Center to look at possible designs for the fence. It would be made of stamped aluminum and would stand in a base of cast concrete scored to look like stone and designed to protect the fence from car crashes. The agencies have proposed four designs for the fence, two of which incorporate images of roses to invoke 82nd’s theme as the Avenue of Roses. The fence would also have some sort of signage acknowledging both the Madison South and Montavilla neighborhoods. The Madison South Neighborhood Association and the 82nd Avenue Business Association both endorse the fence.
However, the Montavilla Neighborhood Association does not, and last month several members came to protest both the proposal and the process. They argue that commuters would be better served by a mid-block crossing. City and state traffic engineers say this would be dangerous, while another proposal, a pedestrian underpass, would provide an out-of- sight haven for criminal activity.
Montavilla picked up a champion last month in transit activist Jim Howell. There are 10,000 people embarking and disembarking a day at this station, Howell argued, and at least 2,000 of them cross 82nd. These people deserve to be accommodated with a convenient crossing as much as motorists do. He disputed the argument that mid-block crossings are unsafe and said the city recently installed one on Northeast Sandy Boulevard near Hollywood.
Montavilla spokespeople accused government agencies of working behind their backs. Crebs responded that there have been two years of public planning meetings that Montavilla representatives have failed to attend. City officials should have come to Montavilla Associations, came the reply.
Amid all this, the two neighborhood groups — who have collaborated in the past in efforts to deal with prostitution and other issues — avoided any overt criticism of each other. Madison South Chair Dave Smith declared that his association endorsed the fence; with regard to Montavilla, he said, “We’ve agreed to disagree about this.”
New station area meetings set
The Portland Bureau of Planning has scheduled a new set of open houses to present and get feedback on the recommendations of its Eastside MAX Station Communities Project. The goals are to make the light rail stations easier and safer to use, to improve pedestrian and bicycle access to them, and to remove barriers to the sort of high-intensity development in the area around the stations that the stations are intended to encourage. Open houses are scheduled for Feb. 28 for the 60th and 82nd stations, and March 14 for the Parkrose-Sumner, 122nd, 148th and 162nd stations. The sessions for the 60th and 82nd stations will begin at 9 and 10:30 a.m., respectively, at Providence Medical Center, 4805 N.E. Glisan St. The sessions for the four eastern stations will be on March 14 at the East Portland Community Center, 740 S.E. 106th Ave., and are scheduled as follows: 9 a.m. for the Parkrose-Sumner station, 10:30 a.m. for 148th and 162nd, and noon for 122nd.
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