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LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
Editor’s note: The following is veteran beat reporter Lee Perlman’s compendium of news items from the Gateway and Parkrose neighborhoods.
In October’s compendium, Perlman reports on the 122nd Avenue study as it rolls along and a panel discussion on Portland’s neighborhood association system to be held in October.
Perlman also reports on Hazelwood Neighborhood Association’s plans to seek a federal grant; the Gateway Urban Renewal Committee meeting held last month and the first step towards the construction of a new public swimming pool in East Portland that starts construction in 2006.
And Perlman’s got more information on Columbia Knoll.
122nd Avenue study advances
The city’s 122nd Avenue study is moving forward on several fronts, project manager Barry Manning reports. Staff is working on some adjustments to the zoning code to implement the study’s recommendations, and possibly some zone changes for the study area between Northeast Weidler and Southeast Washington streets. On tap are a hearing before the Portland Planning Commission on Nov. 22, another hearing before the Portland Design Commission that same month, and possibly a public open house some time this month. For more information call 823-7965.
League sponsors forum on neighborhoods
The Portland League of Women Voters is sponsoring a panel discussion on Portland’s neighborhood association system at 7 p.m. Oct. 11 at Smith Center, Portland State University. The panelists will include East Portland activist Bonny McKnight, chair of the Citywide Land Use Committee, co-chair of the Russell Neighborhood Association and for East County Coordinating Committee. Other panelists will include former City Commissioner Gretchen Kafoury, Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods Executive Director John Canda, and former Neighbors West/Northwest Director Joleen Classen. The forum is part of a yearlong study of the Portland neighborhood system by the League, inspired in part by Mayor Tom Potter’s examination of citizen involvement.
Hazelwood seeks crime prevention grant
The Hazelwood Neighborhood Association is seeking a federal Weed and Seed crime prevention grant. If the grant is secured, it will help fund activities in the area bounded by the Interstate 205, Northeast Glisan Street, Southeast Powell Boulevard, and 160th Avenue.
The Weed and Seed program provides resources to both attack crime problems directly and to strengthen community institutions that can deal with the causes of crime. Hazelwood tried unsuccessfully last year to secure such a grant in cooperation with the Montavilla neighborhood to the west.
“This time we’re going to apply for an area where the statistics show help is needed,” Hazelwood Neighborhood Association Chairwoman Arlene Kimura said at a meeting last month.
Most observers agree the need is genuine enough. According to Portland Police Bureau Officer Michael Gallagher, Patrol District 950 in the Hazelwood neighborhood is the busiest in the city. Crime Prevention Specialist Katherine Anderson told the association, “The crime statistics for Hazelwood are greater than for all of Southwest Portland combined.”
A representative of the Gateway Area Business Association said there are “an extraordinary number” of business property vacancies in the area. These are due to economics rather than crime “we’re not in a war zone here” but the perception of the area as a haven for crime could accelerate the trend, he said. One contributing factor is crime prevention efforts in places like Gresham’s Rockwood neighborhood that displace criminal activity to other communities, he said.
“We won’t get help from downtown or anywhere else to take care of this, so we’ll have to get our own,” Kimura said.
Office of Neighborhood Involvement Director Jimmy Brown, who attended the meeting, said that a key to obtaining the grant is to have a strategy in place to implement it. “You have to be able to say, ‘If you do this, we’ll do that,’” he said. “It has to be a community effort.”
He added, “You haven’t lost this community.”
Prunedale to be studied
The Portland Development Commission is undertaking a study of the Prunedale area, staffer Sara King told the Opportunity Gateway Program Advisory Committee last month. The area, bounded by the Interstate 205, Northeast Glisan and Southeast Stark streets, and 102nd Avenue, includes many under-utilized and derelict properties. It is zoned EXD, a designation that allows a broad range of potential uses at a fairly high-density.
“It’s a fairly blighted part of Gateway, and we’re getting calls from people who want to move in,” King says. “It seems clear it’s going to be redeveloped, and we need to decide what we want to see there. The (Gateway Urban Renewal) Plan is vague about that.”
Among other things, she says, the PAC should decide if it wants to retain the Prunedale name.
One feature of the Gateway Urban Renewal district’s regulations is a requirement that as major properties are redeveloped, owners provide for creation of new streets. This issue was also discussed at the PAC meeting.
These are needed, city planners say, to provide for more convenient access to new development, and to keep the existing street system from being overloaded.
However, city officials do recognize that new streets are a financial burden for developers. “The expectation was that tax increment funds (from the Gateway Urban Renewal District) would be available to offset the cost of creating local streets,” says King. “Some, like Gordon Jones, have come to PDC for help. We hope we’ll have the funds to do it someday, but we just don’t have it now.”
Jones expressed his frustration to the Opportunity Gateway Program Advisory Committee last month. PAC member Dick Cooley reminded Jones that developers have had to bear such expenses, without assistance in other parts of Portland.
Community Center seeks pool input
The Portland Parks & Recreation is seeking input on the sort of pool that should be installed in the East Portland Community Center, Debbie Hamada of the center told the Hazelwood Neighborhood Association last month. Right now they are looking at building two pools: a lap pool for people seeking serious exercise, and a recreation pool, with warmer temperatures, for those seeking more passive use. The pool, on which the bureau hopes to break ground in mid-2006, will be the first such city facility east of I-205.
Columbia Knoll celebrates with cruise
Shelter Resources of Washington and other backers of the Columbia Knoll development came down from their hill last month to celebrate. Backers of the 335-unit mixed-age housing development at Northeast Sandy Boulevard and 82nd Avenue took their staff and about 60 supporters on an evening Willamette River cruise aboard the sternwheeler Portland Rose.
The company has completed, and begun moving tenants into, some of the multi-family structures facing Sandy Boulevard and 82nd Avenue that comprise The Terrace. The Heights, a three-story senior residence at the top of the hill, should be completed by the end of the year.
Len Brannon, one of the principal owners of the enterprise, told his guests that he wanted to be a part of their community. “We’ve been at this six years,” he said. “We’re trying to make a signature contribution to an area that needs all the help it can get.”
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