City, County reach agreement on Children's Receiving Center

Opportunity Gateway begins work on design standards.

By Lee Perlman

THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

At the final accounting, the Gateway Urban Renewal District  will get less than it hoped for from the Children's Receiving Center  project - but also pay less for it.

The city of Portland and Multnomah County have agreed that  just $953,350 of the projected $14 million cost of the new  facility at East Burnside Street and 102nd Avenue will be paid  for with tax increment funds from the Gateway Urban Renewal  District. This is down from a compromise figure of $1.2 million  agreed to in July, and considerably less than the $4.4 million  the county originally asked for earlier in the year.

However, both jurisdictions have also abandoned plans to have  the board room of a large structure on the property be  transferred into the city's hands, for public or private use, as  the original agreement stipulated.

Negotiations over this issue became so strained that Dick  Cooley, chair of the Opportunity Gateway Program Adivsory  Committee, (PAC) withdrew in disgust.

"We started with the details and moved to the general  principles," Cooley told the Memo. It later became clear that  the county was not willing to part with the facility. Given his  state of mind at the end, "It was a good thing that I withdrew,"  Cooley says.

Kenny Asher of the Portland Development Commission says, "In  the end, the county decided that they could not part with the  board room under any circumstances. They saw the Children's Receiving  Center Program expanding, not contracting, and the loss of  potential rent was too great a leap of faith. It was one of  those deals where the more we tried to solve the issues, the  more complicated it got."

Moreover, with Cooley's departure, "PDC became a participant  by circumstance not by choice," Asher says. City Council, where  commissioner Dan Saltzman fought hard to have the urban renewal  money allocated to the project, was in effect a "third wheel,"  he said. "We had staff negotiating positions taken by boards and  commissions," he said. Moreover, "the attitude of the county  toward urban renewal is not the same as the city's."

The Children's Receiving Center will be a place where children  who are declared wards of the court - legally removed from  unsuitable home environments - can be temporarily housed,  assessed, and assigned to a semi-permanent living arrangement.  PDC and the Gateway PAC argued that the facility would not  contribute to the district's goals and should not receive funds  assigned to further those goals. As a compromise, the PAC  proposed to pay for site improvements that would further such  goals. These included purchase of the board room and what is now  an acre of open space on the northwest corner of the property.  Asher told the PDC the agency has "no time to develop  this any time soon." Cooley and other PAC members would like to  see this land developed privately, but some nearby neighbors  would prefer to see it become a park and are "nervous" about  such plans.

Cooley thanked the commission for being "really firm" about  reserving urban renewal funds for appropriate uses.

"This is probably not the last time we'll see this kind of dog  fight," Asher said. However, "We didn't just get angry, we came  up with something creative."

Design workshop draws mixed responses, ideas

Two Opportunity Gateway public workshops drew a variety of  ideas on how new development in the area could be made  compatible with its surroundings.

According to PDC's Sara King and the Portland Planning  Bureau's Ellen Ryker, the Opportunity Gateway PAC is considering creating new design standards for the 135-acre district. The area already has a form of design review, but under the existing  "two-track" process, developers who meet objective standards can proceed with building, and some members of the PAC feel the results are less than satisfactory. They are considering new standards geared to the district to "ramp the process up," in Tyker's words.

Ryker said that the current process is not intended to revisit  past decisions, including the designation of the area as a  regional center and urban renewal district. However, the PAC is  considering the rezoning of the part of the district bounded by  Southeast Stark and East Burnside streets, the I-205 Freeway and  Southeast 102nd Avenue. This area is zoned EG2, a primarily  industrial zone that precludes housing development and tends to  produce "horizontal" projects, Ryker said, although in theory  buildings up to 120 feet tall can be built anywhere in the  district. "We could have a Costco with scads of surface  parking," she said. The PAC is considering rezoning this area to  EXD, which allows a much broader variety of uses.

A weeknight workshop on the subject drew 25 participants,  while a second session the following Saturday drew only five  people. Both groups called for allowed heights to be gradually  lowered on properties nearest abutting residential  neighborhoods. Longtime resident Lois Douglas asked, "Could they  put a 10-story building behind my house?" Told that this would  be permitted under current zoning she said, "I'd like to stay in  the neighborhood, I don't want to move, but who knows what  they'll put behind me?"

Participants had various ideas about what would make good  design - those who came on Saturday favored balconies on taller  buildings and didn't care for older-style vinyl siding - but  there was division over whether the likes and dislikes should be  governed by regulations or encouraged by incentives. Many people  said that the pedestrian experience in Gateway needs to be  improved. "That's a real change," Ryker noted later. "It used to  be 'We don't have walkers here, concentrate on helping the  cars.'"

Some participants at the first workshop complained that the  PAC has discarded input it disagrees with. Ryker said the group  and staff is indeed listening, but certain issues have already  been decided. "This is not a popularity contest," she said. "If  we hear things that are against city policy we can't do them."   Staff hopes to produce draft proposals sometime next spring,  and to have them ennacted by next year.