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LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
City planners, in Mid-Multnomah County and elsewhere, have often been vilified as people long on arrogance and short on knowledge and common sense that arbitrarily try to make communities conform to preconceived ideas, regardless of consequences.
When planner Barry Manning finished giving his findings of his bureau’s East Portland Review to the Portland Planning Commission last month, the audience of community activists gave him a hearty round of applause. In the testimony that followed, they said that he had listened closely to them and accurately presented what he’d been told.
What Manning’s findings showed was that Mid-county has long been abused and deprived — and has the scars to show for it.
The area in question is east of Northeast and Southeast 82nd Avenue, plus the communities of Cully and Brentwood-Darlington to the west. All were annexed to the city of Portland fairly recently, often with promises of civic improvements that have yet to be made.
They have been the subjects of planning studies before. There were Multnomah County plans in the late 1970s, the Cully-Parkrose Plan of 1986, the Cully Neighborhood Plan in 1992, the Metro regional 2040 Plan, and the Outer Southeast Community Plan in 1996. A 2005 survey showed a more negative attitude in east Portland toward planning — and the development it has helped produce — than in the city as a whole.
The problems aren’t limited to attitudes. “The area is growing at a faster rate than the city as a whole,” Manning said, “and is forecast to grow faster in the future.” In the last 10 years, there have been more than 13,000 new units built in the study — 38 percent of all new development in the city in just 26 percent of its land area. Most of the units are either multi-family or row houses. The population is becoming more ethnically diverse — it is now 24 percent non-white compared to 22 percent for the city as a whole — and has a higher concentration of children and people over 65. “Median incomes are not keeping pace with Portland,” Manning said.
The ten specific issue areas he identified were as follows:
1. Infill development in single-family zones. Often, he said, the style of new development is “disturbing to many neighborhoods.” In addition, development on flag lots, skinny lots, plus other devices allowed by the zoning code means, “there are places where development is thrice the zoning density. There is concern about transportation access to single-family neighborhoods.”
2. Apartment and row house development. In some cases the styles and lack of amenities are problems. The development occurred “pretty much where we expected it, but also along [parts of] Southeast 122nd Avenue, where there are issues.
3. The transportation system. Some streets, such as Southeast Powell Boulevard and 136th Avenue, lack sidewalks. “Even when there are sidewalks, such as Southeast Division Street, they are far from ideal,” Manning said. “Arterials carry high volumes of traffic, which is a function of a lack of connectivity. Transit is pretty good going east and west, but fairly limited going north and south. This makes it hard for people to get to job centers in the north of the area. Frequent service routes are even more limited.”
4. Community safety. “There is concern about crime and public safety,” Manning said. “East Precinct has the largest service area [of Portland police precincts] and the largest number of calls for service.”
5. Population growth and change — impacts on community services. At a time when the Portland School District is declining, Mid-Multnomah County’s districts are growing — by 26 percent in the last 10 years for David Douglas, 19 percent for Centennial and 11 percent for Parkrose. They are also getting a different, and needier, student body; 47 percent of Cully’s Rigler School students come from homes where English isn’t spoken, and a majority of students in all three of the smaller districts qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.
6. Loss of trees, especially large ones such as Douglas firs and sequoias. There is also dissatisfaction with the quality and amount of landscaping developers provide.
7. Parks and open space. When the area was annexed, the city “inherited a system of undeveloped parkland,” Manning said. The city is currently trying to fill the gaps through funds from Systems Development Charges and bond measures.
8. Environment and watershed health. There are environmental zones concentrated in the southern end of the area, near the Johnson Creek watershed and Powell Butte. The level of new development has put pressure on these areas, and has contributed to slope instability and stormwater runoff issues.
9. Commercial areas. A number of areas are underserved, and residents must drive long distances to shop “because the zoning doesn’t allow commercial development or makes it challenging,” Manning said. In some cases scarce commercial parcels are developed as housing instead.
10. Employment opportunities. There has been some improvement here, with a gain of about 6,000 jobs in 10 years, but most of these are in the Columbia South Shore. “There are limited opportunities for commercial development, and many of these are under-utilized,” Manning said. The challenges in commercial development create a barrier for adding jobs. Referring to Metro’s goal of creating 99,000 jobs in the area by 2030 he said, “We have a long way to go.”
To address all this, the Planning Bureau is gearing up to create an action plan in cooperation with other bureaus. They hope to assemble a community-based steering committee by the fall.
Noting the applause, commission member Don Hanson said, “That’s a good sign.”
Community leaders Arlene Kimura and Linda Robinson of Hazelwood, Bonny McKnight of Russell, Alesia Reese of Woodland Park and Jim Chasse of Powellhurst-Gilbert all supported Manning’s report and added other issues. (Ross Monn of Wilkes attended but did not testify.)
Robinson said that since much of Hazelwood’s development is affordable housing, and since this is exempt from paying System Development Charges, “We’re falling behind rather than catching up” in park development. Kimura said that too many developers do “the absolute minimum allowed” in providing amenities and good design. McKnight called her neighborhood “an affordable suburb,” but said that there has been “a rapid erosion of things you can’t replace. More development without resources is not good planning.”
Andrea Watson of the Reynolds School District, which serves Mid-county and points east, said, “We’re [the school district] forced into a position where we need to treat whole families, and we don’t have the facilities to accommodate them. There’s no community center. Thousands of kids have no afternoon supervision. We have kids walking to school on streets with no sidewalks where the average speed is 45, and [drivers] don’t always slow down near schools. One in three students lives in a home where English is not spoken, and the poverty rate is 65 percent.” She said the district is only notified of new housing developments if they are large.
Parent Jim Bruet said his children go to a school “so overcrowded they’re using a closet for teaching.” With no alternative, children play in the streets. “We’re building blocks with no trees, no landscaping, buildings built right to the sidewalk — future slums,” he said.
Mill Park Neighborhood Association Chair Rosemary Opp called for an opening of the Urban Growth Boundary and creation of satellite cities as an alternative to increased urban density. She also called for better tree preservation.
In contrast, developer Mark Dane said that trees preserved in new subdivisions die and that the city would do better to demand that more be planted. He supported better design regulations, but called solar access regulations ridiculous. The city should require access easements for pedestrians and bikes rather than cars, he said. He called the subdivision code “a headless monster with no oversight.”
Commission Chair Paul Schlesinger said, “I was quite pleased to hear the parallel comments from the public — it shows we’re back on track. It would be nice to get money...for sidewalks, open space and the tree canopy. Thank you [Manning] for a job well done, and the public for time well spent.”
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