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Opportunity Gateway leaders don’t want urban renewal funds used
LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
The Opportunity Gateway Program Advisory Committee (PAC) “supports” a new rail line along the I-205 right of way - but not under any conditions.
In particular, they do not want to have to pay for it. Metro, in cooperation with Tri-Met, the City of Portland and other jurisdictions, is pursuing new rail lines into Clackamas County. Phase I is a $350 million line that would run from the current Gateway station along the I-205 right of way to Clackamas Town Center; inbound trains would continue along the existing MAX line into downtown Portland. Future plans call for a rail line along the Southwest Fifth and Sixth Avenue transit mall, across either the Hawthorne or a new Carruthers bridge, then southward through inner southeast Portland to Milwaukie.
The I-205 alignment was selected as the first phase, despite heavy lobbying by inner southeast neighborhoods, because it is cheaper to build, requires little private property acquisition, and travels through areas that have a high potential for new development. With regard to Gateway, particularly, the project represents a chance to leverage federal funds for some of the infrastructure the area has long sought.
Indeed, the Opportunity Gateway PAC sees the opportunity the line represents, and wants to see that it is done right. Details of how the line would be financed are still being considered, but urban renewal funds have been listed as one possible source. In a March 18 letter to Mayor Vera Katz, PAC chair Dick Cooley wrote, “The Gateway PAC supports the recommended I-205 alignment as the next to be constructed. However, it feels that it cannot support financing the alignment with tax increment dollars from the Gateway URA.”
While recognizing the positive effect of light rail and associated improvements on Gateway, the letter said, “Light rail alone does not stimulate new development . . .Urban renewal funds are critical to producing the local infrastructure to support this envisioned regional center. These funds also leverage private development. We fear that spending these dollars on light rail may come at the expense of other projects that build the regional center.”
All the city’s urban renewal districts have been negatively affected by the Shilo Inn case, a challenge to the way that such taxes are collected. In newer districts such as Gateway the effect is proportionately greater because tax increment dollars are relatively scarce during the critical early years, before increased land values produce the new taxes diverted to tax increment.
For Gateway, however, the issue is a particularly sore one. Before its first budget could even be drafted, city commissioner and former Multnomah county commissioner Dan Saltzman asked that $2.2 million be diverted to the county Children’s Receiving Center, a social service facility that seemed to have little to do with local community revitalization goals. (Cooley eventually bargained the amount down to just under $1 million.)
Station locations and bathrooms
The PAC had other concerns as well. Some members, including Arlene Kimura of Hazelwood, had felt that Southeast Stark or Washington streets were better locations for a station than Southeast Main Street, where Metro and Tri-Met planners propose to put it. Planners say that with a station already operating in the heart of Gateway, a Main station could add to the potential area served by the line, especially Portland Adventist Hospital. They also say that a Stark-Washington station would be located in the middle of the freeway, making it a poor location in terms of both safety and potential development; Metro spokesperson Gina Whitehill told the Memo that such concerns had been raised by residents in public forums.
However, in a February 1 letter to Metro, Cooley made this point: “Design should not preclude a future station at (Southeast Stark and Washington) should such a station become viable. This station could be incorporated into a building, mitigating the grade separation between station and street.”
The PAC also called for sound walls, public restrooms, and public participation in the design of the stations early in the process as part of the project.
Tri-Met’s Phil Selinger and Metro’s Ross Roberts addressed the issues at the PAC’s April meeting. Selinger said the issues were “all good,” but provided little in the way of specific responses. With regard to rest rooms he said, “We hear about that a lot.”
Roberts said the locations of the stations are “set in cement, but it hasn’t hardened yet.”
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