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Face of urban renewal smiles at eviction

Gateway Apartments tenants testify at otherwise lackluster Council code hearing

LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

At what was supposed to be a hearing on new Gateway zoning and regulations, City Council instead got a practical lesson on the effects of urban renewal from the Community Alliance of Tenants, or CAT.

There was little drama in the debate last month on the draft Gateway Planning Regulations Project, a set of revisions to zoning, design standards and other regulations governing the area bounded roughly by the I-205 Freeway, Southeast Market and Northeast Halsey Streets and 106th Avenue, plus a corridor between Northeast Glisan and Southeast Stark Streets extending eastward to 162nd Avenue. Most issues had been resolved during months of discussion before and during hearings by the Portland Planning Commission. One of the biggest outstanding debates - whether car dealers and others near light rail stations can display their wares in open parking lots - has been referred to a special study. Another, how high new development should be allowed to be on property abutting the single block on Northeast 103rd Avenue, is still alive, but residents have at least won a reduction of the 120 feet now allowed to a proposed 75 feet.

“The face of urban renewal”
Things heated up, however, when Lianne Cerbulo, an organizer for the Community Alliance of Tenants, led a group of tenants from the Gateway Apartments to the microphone. Sometimes speaking with the aid of an interpreter, they spoke of the lack of repairs and poor maintenance at the 32-unit facility at 811-837 N.E. 102nd Ave. The ultimate offense were the notices they had received April 12 telling them they would have to vacate the premises by May 31. Those notices said the owner was seeking a zone change for the property from RH (high-density housing) to CX (high intensity commercial) in order to build an office and retail complex on the site.

Ted Gilbert, a member of the Opportunity Gateway Program Advisory Committee, or PAC, owns the property. Cerbulo said that CAT had been working with the tenants for five months, dealing with repair issues such as rats, roaches and leaking roofs. Neither CAT nor the tenants had been aware of the urban renewal district or the proposed zone changes until they received the notice.

“We understand that this has been planned for three years,” she told Council. “Mailing notices and posting them in supermarkets is not adequate outreach. The city should have been out there enforcing its housing codes. We have a world-renowned planning process - we can save the salmon - but what about people? No one asked the tenants how they felt. They’re a living vision of the Gateway urban renewal plans.”

One longtime resident said that repairs at the complex had always been “cosmetic” at best. He said he now pays $485 a month, and that comparable rentals in the area are from $30 to $150 more. “Where is the replacement housing?” he asked.

A Hispanic mother of three said the tenants wanted three months to enable them to find other quarters and for their children to finish the school year. “You treat us like animals, you open the gates of the coral, and you tell us to get out,” she said.

Gilbert followed to say that the eviction notices had been rescinded, although he also defended them. “These are market rate, month to month rental agreements that aren’t Section Eight,” he said. “We could evict them on 30 days written notice, and we gave them more than that.” Any new course “will cost us money. That’s okay, it’s a commitment we’ve made,” he said.

The Gateway Apartment structures were moved to the site from the old Vanport wartime workers’ village in North Portland more than 50 years ago, and were “not intended to last this long. It’s been a challenge to keep that place together.” Gilbert, who said he had bought the complex five years ago, said he had inherited the repair problems from the previous owner, who “said to my face, ‘Yes, I’m a slumlord.’”

Gilbert said that most of Northeast 102nd Avenue is zoned CX; “The gap is the Gateway Apartments.” His long-term redevelopment plans include 600 to 800 units of new housing that will be “not only mixed-use but mixed income and mixed-generational. There will be affordable housing there.”

Cerbulo later told the MEMO that “in our experience” repair problems at the complex did not end when Gilbert took over. In one unit a collapsed ceiling and a lack of heat “in the middle of the snow storm” went unrepaired. Informed that the Portland Development Commission is involved in Gilbert’s development plans, she said that CAT might seek to invoke the provisions of the federal Uniform Relocation Act for the tenants. This would require Gilbert not only to pay relocation costs but if tenants couldn’t find comparable housing at the rents they were paying, to subsidize the difference for up to three years.

Council listened respectfully to the testimony. When Gilbert started to defend his conduct, commissioners Jim Francesconi and Randy Leonard, in a jocular way, advised him to leave it alone. “Take it from me, you have to learn when to shut up,” Leonard said.

Afterward commissioner Erik Sten, who presided in the absence of mayor Vera Katz, said that PDC’s involvement means that future development must meet “additional standards.” Francesconi called CAT’s call for outreach to tenants “legitimate. What do we do, what could we do better?”

Planning Bureau director Gil Kelley responded, “We probably could do better. We do provide notice. It may not always reach communities that are out of the mainstream.”

Other issues
Other issues raised about the proposal were:

• Outside display and storage near light rail stations:
Consultant Peter Fry, representing Ron Tonkin dealerships, said that provisions of the recommendations had moved his client “pretty well along toward our goals,” but that they still wanted exterior display to be a permitted use subject to some standards.

Tonkin is helping pay for the exterior storage study. Linda Robinson of the Hazelwood Neighborhood Association, echoing concerns voiced at a meeting two nights before, said that the group feared a study “funded by one major business will be pushed toward recommending what that business wants.”

Under questioning by Leonard, she said a relaxation of the code might be taken advantage of by other businesses. Leonard has been a public supporter of Tonkin, and told Robinson, “Understand, we’re talking 800 jobs here.” However, he zeroed in on the broader issue. “So you’re not necessarily concerned about car dealers, but about other, inferior types of stores?” he asked. “Yes, this would open it up,” Robinson said. “We don’t want this to become another 82nd Avenue.” Former Gateway PAC chair Dick Cooley also spoke against the change. “It would be a breach of faith not to make the station areas compact and high density,” he said. “You’d be taking out values that apply everywhere else in the city, and Tonkin has announced that that’s what they want to do.”

• Structured parking:
Existing zoning regulations limit the amount of parking any new business can have. Opportunity Gateway unsuccessfully asked the Planning Bureau and Commission to make an exception for parking garages. Both Hazelwood Neighborhood Association chair Arlene Kimura and Opportunity Gateway PAC chair Duke Shepard renewed the call for the change. “We don’t want to impede development,” Shepard said. “We don’t want to be so auto-oriented, but we are next to two freeways.” The restriction is “counter-productive and unnecessary,” he said.

•Building height on Northeast 102nd Avenue:
Joe Rinella, a resident of Northeast 103rd Avenue, called for a reduction in allowed height for new structures along adjacent property on Northeast 102nd Avenue. He argued, as he has for the last year, that allowing massive structures to loom over his and his neighbors’ back yards would bring noise and a loss of light, privacy and security. Leonard seemed sympathetic, and inquired if the city could compensate or buy the property of unhappy homeowners. Planners Joe Zehnder and Ellen Ryker said that a building 120 feet tall could be built on 102nd today; the proposal would reduce that to 75 feet. This appeared to be news to Leonard.

• Connectivity:
Cooley called for a requirement that property owners deed street right of way to the city, in accord with a street master plan for the district, whenever they made a significant improvement on their property. “This is necessary if the district is to transform itself into a series of compact, dense, multi-modal developments,” he said. Attorneys Mike Robinson and Steve Abel, respectively representing Portland Adventist Academy and PAC Trust (owner of the Gateway Shopping Center), both testified that earlier concerns had been solved, and they now endorsed the recommendations.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
Council is expected to amend and vote on the document on Wednesday, May 12. In a related development, on the same night as the City Council hearing, PDC officials presented their recommended budget to the Opportunity Gateway PAC. Its members were dismayed to find some changes in what they had proposed.

Hazelwood representative Bob Earnest said that input by him and others “was ignored.” “No, it was not ignored,” a PDC official replied. “Nothing was ignored, nothing.” However, she added, the PAC has only an advisory capacity, and the PDC commission sets priorities. In particular, she said, “PDC wants to put projects on the table that can really be realized.”
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