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Streetcar supporters, foes battle it out

LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

As part of their Streetcar Systems Plan process, the Portland Office of Transportation and Mayor-Elect Sam Adams set up working groups to look at potential streetcar routes and evaluate them according to a set of criteria that includes the level of community support. In the case of east Portland, the group is made up of both those who strongly support streetcars and those who hate them.

According to group leaders Mark White and Cora Potter, of the Powellhurst-Gilbert and Lents Neighborhood associations, respectively support the idea, the latter category is a group from the Mill Park Neighborhood Association.

“At our third meeting a contingent arrived with an agenda to stop anything from happening, ever,” Potter told the Streetcar System Steering Committee, a citizen committee overseeing the overall process, at a June meeting. Mill Park members now constitute half the working group with four delegates.

Transportation planner Patrick Sweeney commented, “Mill Park is very aggressive, and they won’t stop talking.”

Developer and steering committee member Dick Cooley said that Rosemary Opp has been chair of Mill Park for about 15 years.

Another steering committee member, Hazelwood Neighborhood Association Chair Arlene Kimura, with her usual wryness said, “In east Portland, it’s a rite of passage to be yelled at by her.”

Mill Park members “have a tremendous mistrust of the city due to their forced annexation,” White said. “They say, ‘Why should we pay for streetcars when you don’t even have streets?’”

Carved from the Hazelwood Neighborhood Association (the largest in Portland) over a decade ago, Mill Park’s boundaries are from Southeast Stark to Division streets on the north and south respectively, and on the west from Southeast Cherry Blossom Drive (to 112th), with 130th Avenue as the eastern boundary.

In fact, the two factions may have something close to a common view when it comes to recent new development in Mid-county. “A lot of our land use and zoning is inadequate,” Potter said. “The pattern of the density of zoning in Portland is problematic. We have flag lots, buildings that don’t relate to the street, projects that are poorly designed.”

“Our property values are very low, so we’re a magnet for a certain kind of developer,” White said, “and there’s no commercial services at all to support them. Near Raymond Park there are no sidewalks and no crosswalks. There are a lot of seniors and families with small children. People do 50 or 60 miles an hour (on some roads). It’s truly, truly dangerous.” As to the public perceptions of the area, he said, “Many people think that what’s east of 82nd isn’t even Portland.”

Where the factions differ is how new streetcar routes will affect this. The anti-faction “fears streetcars will exacerbate the problem,” Potter said.

In contrast, White said, “Increased property values (due to the presence of the streetcars) could result in better development. There are so many positive aspects to this that we should be able to convince people that this is a very, very, very good thing.”

“Mill Park is opposed to the streetcar plan, and the high density and congestion it would bring to our neighborhood,” Mill Park Chair Rosemarie Opp told the Memo. “We’ve done our share to provide new housing, and our schools and roads haven’t kept up with (it).” In addition, quoting city literature that the new lines will cost upwards of $13 million per mile to build, Opp said, “The cost, and how it will be paid for, needs to be addressed.”

Partly as a way to obtain a more balanced picture of community attitudes, the working group planned to do a public opinion survey. Group members hope to use senior centers, libraries and the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, among others, to give it wider
The prime potential new streetcar route in east Portland, one that the Hazelwood Neighborhood Association and the Gateway Urban Renewal Program Advisory Committee are backing, is the Gateway Loop, an oval-shaped route between the Gateway Transit Center and Portland Adventist Medical Center. The streetcar working group has also studied routes along 122nd Avenue, Southeast Foster Road and Southeast Holgate Boulevard. The group’s written report said that Lents residents and business owners seem highly supportive of streetcar development. The group added Holgate to the city’s inventory of potential routes because, White said, adjacent properties have “tremendous potential” for positive development. He warned that Foster Road east of 122nd Avenue is a flood plain where intense new development is not viable.

Committee member Tad Savinar told Potter and White, “You’re out in the trenches in a difficult environment. This isn’t like downtown. I really respect you for it.”

Committee Chair Owen Roncalli agreed, “You really have a good story to tell.”
circulation; they also hope to use IRCO to translate it into foreign languages.
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