 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
| Vol. 25, No. 3 • Mailed monthly to over 13,500 homes in the Gateway & Parkrose Communities Free • July 2009 | ||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
MEMO BLOG | |
Memo Calendar | Memo Pad | Business Memos | Loaves & Fishes | Letters | Home |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The city is looking at making amendments to the Gateway Master Street Plan. The plan maps out where a complete conventional street grid should be, and requires builders to dedicate land to make the new streets as part of new development. Some builders have complained that the plan is too rigid and onerous, and could interfere with development taking place. An amended version of the plan is less ambitious and more flexible. For instance, the new plan doesn’t call for Northeast and Southeast 101st Avenue to be a continuous, conventional street between Northeast Weidler and Southeast Washington streets as the old one did, by allowing gaps in some places, and pedestrian and bicycle paths in lieu of streets in others.
Summer park activities
There will be a variety of activities in east Portland parks this summer.
RIBBON-CUTTING CEREMONY: Although Senn’s Dairy Park has been a fact of life on Northeast Prescott Street at 112th Avenue for years, the official ribbon-cutting for this community park will be from 10 a.m. to noon July 11, with refreshments, cake and speeches by the likes of Commissioner Nick Fish and Portland Parks Director Zari Santner.
CONCERTS: Thanks to the Hazelwood Neighborhood Association, the Portland Parks Bureau and generous sponsors, there will be free concerts in Ventura Park again this summer. Gypsy-style Krebsic Orchestar will perform on Aug. 19, and urban folk group Po’ Girl on Aug. 26. In both cases the music will be from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., and you can either patronize food vendors or bring something of your own.
MOVIES: As with the concerts, thanks to the Parks Bureau and its partners, there will be free movies in selected parks. The schedule includes the following: Saturday, July 11, “School of Rock” at Lents Park; Thursday, July 30, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” at Argay Park; Saturday, Aug. 1, “Shrek” at Earl Boyles Park; Tuesday, Aug. 4, “Charlotte’s Webb” at Glenfair Park; Saturday, Aug. 15, “Iron Man” at Lents Park and Thursday, Aug. 20, “Monsters vs. Aliens” at Parklane Park. In each case the movies will start when it gets dark. In the meantime, there will be live entertainment of some sort. There will also be vendors with food to sell, but you can also bring your own items (without alcohol) as well as blankets or lawn chairs. Enjoy.
NATIONAL NIGHT OUT: On this date, people are encouraged to have gatherings great and small in public places: parks, streets, public squares. The idea is for the “good guys” to symbolically reclaim these places so that people will feel safe being there. On Tuesday, Aug. 4, the Parkrose Heights Neighborhood Association will hold its annual gathering at Knott Park with music by two bands: the Insomniacs and the Eric Christopher Band. There will also be a hot dog dinner cooked and served by volunteers from the Parkrose United Methodist Church, face painting, clowns and children’s games. On Saturday, Aug. 8, the Parkrose Neighborhood Association will hold a gathering from 1 to 4 p.m. at Senn’s Dairy Park, Northeast 112th Avenue and Prescott Street, with food — beginning at 2 p.m. — and entertainment. Call the East Portland Neighborhood Office at 503-823-4550 and ask about celebrations in your area. If there are none — or none to your liking — you can always organize one of your own, and the neighborhood office can help with this as well. If nothing else, leave your porch light burning this night to help your neighbors get home safely.
Airport futures go critical
The Airport Futures project, a joint venture of the Port of Portland and the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, is reaching some critical decision points. This month they will decide whether — and how — the port and the city should plan for a proposed third runway. Such a runway, if it were built, would send planes off on flight patterns that would take them directly over much of Mid-county, creating a whole new level of noise problems. The port, which once thought the need for this was imminent, now feels it will not be needed until decades in the future, if at all, but they still feel the need to retain the opportunity to install it. The process’s Public Advisory Group will take the matter up the matter at a meeting beginning at 5:30 p.m. July 21.
Gateway Park work in fall
According to Justin Douglas of the Portland Development Commission, the Portland Parks Bureau will begin environmental cleanup work on the southwest corner of the future Gateway Park in late summer or early fall. In this same timeframe, they will remove the old J. J. North’s Restaurant building. PDC was able to acquire the restaurant and an adjacent former bingo parlor last year, giving them a four-acre parcel suitable for a long-sought neighborhood park for this area.
East Portland neighborhood leaders join Lents Park fight at rally
It wasn’t just the people of Lents picketing outside the Mount Scott Community Center last month in protest of a proposal to give over a chunk of Lents Park. The protest centered around the conversion into a new stadium for the Portland Beavers baseball team, paid for in part by $42 million from Lents’ urban renewal district at the expense of local projects. Linda Robinson and members of the East Portland Parks Committee, who were against the idea on principle, joined the picketing group.
One of the 42 people who spoke was Powellhurst-Gilbert Neighborhood Association Chair Mark White, who said he opposed the idea based on common sense. “If the city is not willing to invest in the resources to make this successful, it’s a very reckless proposal. The city needs to step up and pick up the tab.”
Team owner Merritt Paulson also spoke and was roundly booed. Maintaining his composure and thanking the crowd for their careful and passionate examination of baseball in Lents, he made it clear that he would proceed with his plans only if he felt he had community support. “I believe this would be in the best interest of the Lents neighborhood, but it’s important for you to believe it,” he said. “This is your neighborhood, your park and your money.” He later announced that he had abandoned Lents Park as a potential site.
Commissioner Randy Leonard, who often portrays himself as the champion of east Portland and had first proposed Lents Park as a stadium site, was reluctant to give the idea up. He told the crowd that they had mistaken information about the details of the deal. “People are not entitled to change the facts,” he said. The amount of land taken up in Lents Park by the stadium had been distorted in press accounts.
MEMO Advertising | MEMO Archives | MEMO Web Neighbors | MEMO Staff | Home