Portland Architecture

Bridge Over Troubled Potter

It's a funny, audacious idea: take the old Sauvie Island Bridge that was recently replaced by a new span, and recycle the structure into a new bike and pedestrian bridge over I-405. It also may be an indication of the risk and reward of Commissioner and mayoral candidate Sam Adams, a proponent of the idea, versus current/outgoing mayor Tom Potter.

The bridge has been discussed for a few years, but originally the idea was to make it a simple, cheap concrete crossing. That's what Mayor Potter still supports, according to an article in today's Oregonian, because it's about $1.5 million cheaper than recycling the Sauvie Island Bridge. But $1.5 million is practically pocket change to a major metropolitan city like Portland, and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who wouldn't choose, money aside, the Sauvie span for its superior aesthetics and the message it sends about Portland's values.

Potter has every right to oppose an extra budget outlay, but when I read that he opposes Adams on this matter, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. Tom Potter is a good man, no question about it. But this is the latest case where, at least when it comes to the built environment, he just doesn't get it. Adams does.

I mean, a long ugly concrete slab in the central city, to save a million and a half? That's like choosing a kiddie burger over a Big Mac to save a nickel.

At the same time, the fact that Adams, as head of the city's transportation department, may be able to push this through, also may show his danger, or at least the irony of this whole thing. The original discussion about a bike/pedestrian bridge was born of talk about the Burnside couplet, which Adams has pushed hard. The bridge itself is just the kind of project that Adams ought to champion, but the couplet is a rogue project that is about much, much more than transportation; a change this big really ought to come as part of a larger central city planning process coming from...city planners. So in other words, I think the bike bridge battle shows Adams at his best, but it's also inextricably tied to a bad idea.

Adams and Potter are like the eager son and the fatigued father. I'd rather have the son leading in this case, but he could perhaps use just a little of the father's restraint. In the case of this proposed bike/pedestrian bridge, though, I think the island is Potter, not Sauvie.

As always, though, I say this as a conversation starter, not an ending. What do the rest of you think?

Point-Counterpoint on PDC's Future Urban Renewal Plans

The opinion section of Sunday's Oregonian offered two opposing views on what the Portland Development Commission should do next with respect to its urban renewal areas: to keep devoting resources to making the central city more dense, or to focus more on outlying areas in need such as Parkrose and Rockwood.

Portland State University urban studies professor Carl Abbott favors declaring victory in the central city and heading eastward to do more good:

"The equation [for urban renewal starting in the 1970s] had two simple parts: Shore up downtown as a center for retailing, employment and culture. Preserve and revitalize older neighborhoods to keep them attractive for the middle class.

It worked. From the slopes of the West Hills to the slopes of Mount Tabor, the city is a success by any comparative standards.

The Portland 'miracle' is yet to work its wonders, however, in the city's far eastern neighborhoods. These are areas with more people in poverty, more immigrants, fewer parks and a lot less creative class buzz."

By contrast, Patricia Garner, land use planning committee chair for the Pearl District Neighborhood Association and a project manager with Chesshir Architecture, says there are still important pockets of land in the central city currently not in urban renewal districts that need to be developed and densified. Namely, the flats of Goose Hollow and the area around Con-way in Northwest:

"If these to areas were developed to their full capacity, the city could see an increase of at least 4,000 new housing units and one million square feet of new office capacity. The more that is built in these urban environments, the less we have to build in other neighborhoods."

Gardner also addresses what urban renewal is and isn't:

"One of the biggest misconceptions about urban renewal financing is that fat cat developers are given money to create their projects for rich people. This is not true....Urban renewal does not work in established, healthy neighborhoods unless there is a desire to fundamentally change the character of that neighborhood toward more density. But it works fabulously in these blank opportunity sites."

I tend to agree more with Patty Gardner on this one. Of course Abbot isn't wrong that poorer neighborhoods would certainly benefit from more investment in services and infrastructure there: libraries, open spaces, schools, transit. But urban renewal money isn't social service money. It's meant to plant seeds in mostly vacant areas and make neighborhoods. It's true that some of the close-in industrial areas in Northwest Portland seem better candidates for high density than neighborhoods like Parkrose and Rockwood that are far from the city center.

If we're going to go very dense outside the city center, however, it should be at key transit intersections, such as Parkrose's next-door neighborhood, Gateway, where Interstates 5, 205 and 84 intersect along with the MAX line to downtown, the airport and eventually Clackamas. But Gateway already is an urban renewal area.

To some extent, pitting low-income outer Portland neighborhoods against the central city for urban renewal dollars feels like an incongruent, apples-to-oranges affair. Even so, we shouldn't abandon our dance partner -- the central urban core -- in the middle of the floor to cut a rug on the fringe of the dance hall.

Can 49 Trump 37?

This November, Oregon voters will decide on a new ballot measure, number 49, designed to take some of the sting out of the horrific, catastrophic Measure 37 that has raped our state's land use laws. Tonight and tomorrow, the environmental nonprofit 1,000 Friends of Oregon will host two campaign-kickoff meetings.

Tonight's, on the East Side, will be held from 6:30 to 8:00pm at the Hollywood Branch Library, 4040 NE Hollywood. Tomorrow's, on the West Side, will be at the same time but held at the Northwest Branch, 2300 NW Thurman.

If you'd like to get involved but can't make either of those meetings, the phone bank is already underway and seeking volunteers at its Lloyd Center headquarters. This Saturday at Colonel Summers Park (SE 17th and Taylor) from 11:00 to 3:00 kicks off canvassing on the issue.

Unless you want rural strip malls to go with the clearcutting and pickup trucks, please consider getting involved. Besides, the activism will be good practice for the real battle: November 2008.

City Council’s Burnside Blitzkrieg Continues

Yesterday the City Council voted unanimously yesterday to begin initial work to convert West Burnside and Northwest Couch into two one-way couplet streets between 2nd and I-405.

Leading the charge on this $80 million endeavor is commissioner Sam Adams and the Department of Transportation. But as Anna Griffin reports in today's Oregonian, city planners and members of the Planning Commission, an advisory group, are against the plan. However, there is also tied to the plan an extension to the streetcar, which most everyone supports.

Steve Duin’s column from today's paper also quotes commissioner Erik Sten saying, “Let’s be blunt. We have a Planning Bureau that’s trying to undermine this project.”

I don’t quite understand. If it’s a major planning decision for the city and it doesn’t originate from the Planning Bureau, isn’t the undermining happening the other way around? If this is best for Portland and the central city in particular, I’d have expected the plan to originate in the Planning Bureau and then be carried out by the Transportation department.

This is just my opinion, of course, but I don’t even find it “blunt” to say that we have a couplet effort that’s undermining the architecture of the city’s planning process.

But where the couplet plan starts is less important than whether it goes through or not. As someone staunchly against the couplet, I can give you some reasons why it shouldn’t happen. And somebody favoring the couplet can give reasons why it’s for the best. But do we want to move forward with a plan that at least half of those weighing in seem to oppose? Is the couplet a plan that those in power should railroad through?

Burnside isn’t a great place for pedestrians. There need to be much better crossings in certain places. However, as the only street in Portland that touches Northwest, Southwest, Northeast and Southeast, I believe it has extra importance as a unifier of the city—a grand boulevard in the tradition of the Champs Elysee.

If Burnside is divided into a couplet with Couch, the dichotomy may allow more room for wide sidewalks and other pedestrian amenities. But one will also be crossing two busy streets instead of one. I think of the places this format exists in Portland—Northeast Broadway and Weidler, Martin Luther King Boulevard and Grand—and I think of islands surrounded by traffic.

If the city council members advocating for the Burnside couplet are so confident about the plan’s viability, why not come to us with a couplet plan not attached to a streetcar extension? I wonder if some supporters are in it for the streetcar and turning the other cheek with the couplet.

The ironic thing about the couplet to me is that, despite whatever claims its supporters make about pedestrian health, this is a plan for automobiles. When you think about all that Portland is known for, does it really fit to radically change the most significant major thoroughfare in the city in a way that's about moving cars? That's why marrying the streetcar plan to the couplet plan is so clever--and (however unwittingly) devious.

Also, I’m continually flummoxed at the notion that there are property owners in Old Town or otherwise along Burnside who are waiting to invest until the couplet is approved. It’s true that the streetcar has been used in the past as a development tool, but I believe the promised value of a couplet to property owners is a purely psychological one. The couplet is news that they can use to spin for condo buyers, but not something that will transform their area—only they will do that, but renovating the buildings they’ve been sitting on.

How about this: we go forward with what everyone agrees on and then take up the couplet if necessary. That means we put a streetcar down Burnside. We take out the trees in the middle of the intersection, put them on the sidewalks and widen them, adding those wide curb extensions at key intersections. We also put traffic lights on Couch to make it more viable as a through street. Those combined things would in my and a lot of people’s minds solve what needs solving. If it doesn’t, we can still make Burnside and Couch one-way at a later date. But for now, why not move forward with solely the measures people agree on?