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Mayoral candidate Hales: 'I can and will get it done.'

Editor's note: The 2012 elections are a watershed moment in city politics. For the first time in decades, with the mayor declining to run for re-election, Randy Leonard retiring from his council seat and incumbent commissioner Amanda Fritz facing a serious challenge, there will be at least two, if not three new faces at City council. Veteran beat reporter Lee Perlman interviewed the major mayoral and city council candidates. Beginning with this issue and in upcoming editions, we publish the interviews; first up, former city Council member Charlie Hales.

LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

Former Portland City Council member Charlie Hales is running for mayor.
COURTESY ALAN S. WEINER
Although the filing deadline has not yet arrived, it is safe to say no candidate for mayor this year will be able to match the local political experience of Charlie Hales. Unlike his opponents, Hales has a record in city government - subject to scrutiny and viewed through the often-accurate lens of hindsight - to run on.

Hales served on the Portland City Council from 1992 to 2002 and, during this time, made his mark in many ways. “Any candidate can paint a pretty picture of what should be,” he told the Memo, “but I would put my record of getting things done against anyone.” On behalf of Portland Parks and Recreation, he oversaw creation of the East Portland and Gabriel Park community centers and improvements to John Luby Park, among others. On behalf of the (then) Office of Transportation he added miles of new bike routes, and claims credit for the MAX light rail Yellow and Red lines development. Although Mayor Vera Katz was the main driving force here, Hales was an important contributor.

His Blueprint 2000 initiative created the Bureau of Development Services' consolidation of development-related functions into a single bureau with streamlined processes.

Part of Hales' work on the Red Line was the conception of Cascade Station, a 120-acre tract east of Portland International Airport that was conceived as an urban village. It is indeed a bustling place now, but it took several years, and significant changes in the original plans, for this to happen. Some of these changes were clearly unforeseeable - 9/11 occurred the day after the opening of the MAX Red Line - but some were predictable. Hales said that Cascade Station would be a place for air passengers to go “between connecting flights;” ignoring the fact that Portland is not now, and never will be, a “hub” for transfers like the Chicago, Minneapolis or Denver airports. He envisioned it as a place surrounding a central greenway where people would arrive by MAX. However, the Portland Planning Commission correctly predicted that more than 90 percent of visitors would arrive by car and use the acres of surface parking lots. Commission member Rick Michaelson called it “a suburban mall with urban features.”

However, not everyone sees Hales' record as rosy and issue free. There was his abrupt removal of Bob Stacey (Director of the Bureau of Planning), Rachel Jacky (Director of the Office of Neighborhood Associations, as it was then called), and Jean DeMaster as a member of the Portland Planning Commission. There was his rejection of the findings of two citizen commissions, one appointed by him, on the future of the East Bank Freeway and transportation in the Central East Side. Then there was the Southwest Community Plan - this battle of wills between City Hall and the Southwest Portland community was concluded after Katz took it over and appointed new staff. It was five years late, more than $1 million over budget, and resulted in “Impeach Charlie Hales” signs sprouting on lawns in southwest Portland.

Might one conclude from this that Hales does not work well with people who disagree with him, or do all real leaders risk unpopularity?

“I would ask you to ask some of those people,” Hales responds, and he cites a list of activists that includes Steve Fosler and John Sherman (Northwest Portland), Arnold Rochlin (Forest Park), Kay Durtschi (Southwest), Betsy Radigan (Piedmont), and Arlene Kimura (Hazelwood). “These are people I didn't always agree with, but worked with on difficult issues, and we were able to get things accomplished,” he says.

Specifically regarding the Southwest Community Plan Hales initially asked forgiveness based on the fact that at the time he was just 35 years old, and has learned since. In a later interview, he claims the problem was that he was listening to planners who were pushing an agenda of increased density. “The premise was that we should take our medicine and accept much greater density,” Hales says. “There are ways to create more housing in ways that improve the neighborhoods, rather than cram it in. There's a lot of land that we can develop; we don't have to put snout houses into neighborhoods.” He adds that his bureaus enacted design regulations to make infill development more compatible with its neighbors.

Mid-Multnomah County lags behind the rest of the city in terms of essential infrastructure and facilities such as paved streets, sidewalks and parks. How can the City close the gap at a time when economic problems make it difficult to maintain existing resources and services?

“We've started progress there, but we have a lot more to do,” Hales says. “There has been little progress in the last ten years.” Referring to recent appropriations by Mayor Sam Adams he says, “I give Sam credit for starting to work on sidewalks. But to be realistic, it will take many years to fill in the missing pieces. We will have to be very disciplined with how we spend money.”

On the plus side, he said a possible source of relief is securing federal grants, “which is something I'm good at, and I have a good relationship with our federal delegation.”

The Gateway urban renewal district has been faced with a conundrum. There has been relatively little development there, especially in the former industrial area in Gateway known as Prunedale bounded by I-205, Northeast Glisan and Southeast Stark streets, and 102nd Avenue; it includes many under-utilized and derelict properties zoned EXD, a designation that allows a broad range of potential uses at a fairly high density. Experts, such as the consultants of Parametrix, say that for Gateway to attract large-scale development it is necessary to make the area more attractive and provide basic infrastructure such as paved streets. Yet, with little increase in property values, there is little tax increment funding for such improvements.

Hales says that, among other things, the City could encourage private entrepreneurial efforts. He cited Milepost 5, a project by developers Ted Gilbert and Brad Malsin. The pair have converted the former Baptist Manor nursing home into an “artists' community” that provides both affordable housing and a work place for artists.

A complicating factor, in Gateway and elsewhere, is the use of urban renewal funds for what critics call “pet projects” with little apparent connection to the mission of the district.

“There are a lot of instances, and not just in urban renewal districts, when Portlanders have been rightly concerned about the use of their money,” Hales says. “There's been some loss of confidence in how we've been handling people's money.” Under his administration, he says, “We'll practice transparency and follow the rules. Changing the focus of (the Portland Development Commission) to smaller-scale neighborhood projects is the right path. We're looking at smaller urban renewal areas based on community plans.” (These are the Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative districts described in last month's Memo.)

In response to the lack of the sort of street grid found elsewhere in Portland, City planners have developed a Master Street Plan that calls for property owners to cede land for new streets as large parcels are subdivided for redevelopment. Critics have said that this could discourage development.

Hales has long been a champion of connectivity, using a full street grid to provide the most direct routes between destinations and reduce the amount of traffic using major streets; he does not favor the use of cul-de-sacs or diverters to wall off traffic. “Having a connected street grid is not negotiable,” he told the Memo. Early plans for what is now the South Waterfront called for “a gated subdivision,” he says, “and I called a halt to that.” The developer “threatened to sue me personally, but I won.”

However, he adds, the street built “doesn't have to be right out of the traffic engineer's manual”; smaller streets or even pedestrian paths can be used where appropriate. “I would rely on the neighborhoods for what they want to see there,” he says.

City plans call for more bike paths in east Portland. Proponents call this long overdue and needed. Critics call them a frivolous waste of money needed for more urgent projects.

Hales says he has “had a lot of success in giving people more transportation choices,” citing again the Yellow and Red MAX lines and the Springwater Corridor. He would seek more such improvements, he says.

For many Portlanders, “public schools” means the Portland School District, ignoring the five smaller districts serving east and outer east Portland. How would Hales deal with these entities?

Hales cites a land swap he initiated with the David Douglas district that provided the site for the East Portland Community Center.

Hales says that the same sort of regulation used to curb some of the worst features of “snout houses” is needed to ensure better housing development in Mid-County. “If we build bad housing, it will ultimately be a bad bargain for everyone,” he says. “We have more work to do.”

He regards the East Portland Action Plan as “a guide for what the community needs. We should be guided more by neighborhood plans than by cosmic visions in City Hall. We've done this before and we can do it again. My job is to be the idea finder and implementer.” He cautions, “I won't necessarily agree with every part of every plan that comes along."
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