Let's make Albina Vision (and buildable I-5 caps) a reality

Rendering of Albina Vision (Hennebery Eddy Architects)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In a recent Portland Tribune column, I argued that Portland should start taking steps to make the Albina Vision a reality. And with the comment period currently open for ODOT's proposed expansion of the Interstate 5 freeway at the Rose Quarter, which falls within the plan's borders, the future is up for grabs for a short time.

As much as any central-city development anticipated for the coming years, be it the Broadway Corridor or the area around OMSI, the Albina Vision comes with a lot to like. It's also a bit of an anomaly in that it's citizen-generated. But it addresses a historic wrong of mid-20th century urban renewal: the wiping away of a neighborhood, and with restorative justice in mind places a priority now on affordable housing, something the city desperately needs.

Just as importantly, Albina Vision is precisely the kind of high-density, central city place-making we need. Albina Vision takes what's practically a wasteland of intersecting freeway overpasses, under-utilized buildings and land, unsightly parking garages and other urban planning disasters between the Broadway Bridge and Martin Luther King Boulevard, and makes from these lemons some tasty lemonade: a diverse, high-density neighborhood oriented toward open space. Albina Vision imagines precisely the kind of high-density, pedestrian-oriented placemaking that our long-range planning calls for.

As east-side real estate goes, this land could not be more centrally located. It's just across the river from the Pearl District and Old Town, just south of North and Northeast Portland residential areas and high streets, and with every kind of transit option you could want, from a pair of freeways to major thoroughfares like the MLK/Grand Avenue couplet and Broadway to mass transit options like MAX, the Portland Streetcar, and a major Tri-Met bus hub. And yet what do we find there? Besides the Moda Center and Memorial Coliseum, when you're not crossing the divide that is Interstate 5, it's mostly surface parking lots and some low-density businesses: car dealerships, storage facilities. What a waste!

There was one point in the column I didn't make explicitly that I'd like to emphasize here: buildable freeway caps. They're essential but they're not currently in ODOT's plans. And that is unacceptable because they're the only productive part of this proposed I-5 freeway expansion at the Rose Quarter.

It's an established fact that increasing freeway capacity only leads to increased demand. It never cuts congestion. Looking at the Rose Quarter interchange, it's easy to identify a decrease in lanes from three to two in each direction and think if the lanes stayed at three there wouldn't be congestion. But what causes congestion at the Rose Quarter as much as the lane decrease is the freeway's interchange with Interstate 84 and, about a hundred yards later, the exits for Downtown and the Central Eastside: all those cars changing lanes. Portland has a proud history of fighting freeways, for it was citizen activism that once stopped a planned Mt. Hood Freeway where Powell Boulevard is today, not to mention several other freeways proposed by New York highway and parks commissioner Robert Moses (in a consulting role) that weren't built. I suspect we won't be able to stop this freeway-widening project from happening, but I applaud those trying.

In the meantime, Albina Vision represents a kind of quid pro quo: a chance to restore through capping some of the blocks that I-5 originally took away.

 

A map of the area (Google)

 

Right now there is an official comment period with regard to the freeway's proposed widening and reconfiguration. The Oregon Department of Transportation has apparently agreed to cap a few blocks, but so far not with the necessary structural underpinning to allow buildings on top of them. They seem to be content to throw a few planters over the concrete cap and call it a "park." However, ODOT and some of the people behind the Albina Vision have been talking, and there may still be reason to believe that we'll get buildable caps. They may only have the capacity for one and two-story buildings, but that's still something. Even so, it's not just the buildability of the caps but where they are placed.

There is also an important ODOT public hearing happening tomorrow, March 12, at the Oregon Convention Center, at which the public can make its voice heard.

"Over the past few months in particular we’ve really engaged with ODOT and their engineering staff in terms of evaluating the structure of the caps they’re proposing, to see if they can carry buildings. What we’ve discovered is they can," says Tim Eddy of Hennebery Eddy Architects, the firm that designed the Albina Vision. "Most of what they’re already planning can carry buildings. That’s one thing. The second hurdle is those caps need to be shaped so the placement of space—circulation, vehicles—are situated so that we end up with an urban place that makes sense. The caps, we’ve advocated that they relate to the grid of the city instead of the sweep of the freeway."

In the initial ODOT proposal, the caps not only weren't allowed to hold buildings, but they were out of step with the rest of the city grid there, and therefore isolated. You'd think highway designers would try to make highway on and off-ramps and caps fit the city they're in, but that does not seem to be part of their consideration. When challenged, though, sometimes that can change.

"The starting point of their design is entirely engineering driven," says Hennebery Eddy associate principal Will Ives. "It doesn’t start with a park and build around that. It’s 'build a freeway cap and paint a little corner green.' We’re asking them to consider the place-making aspect. I don’t know that the current configurations would be any improvement over what’s there now. The city grid is not perpendicular to the freeway there, but they’re trying to land the caps perpendicular to the freeway. That’s what’s creating these remnant parks that are destined to not be a success."

"I think the traffic portion is pretty much figured out, but it’s the real estate portion that’s not," Eddy says. It’s important not to create land-locked parcels."

The Albina Vision team actually commissioned its own engineering study for the question of buildable caps, which led ODOT to re-evaluate its own findings. "We went to them and said, 'We talked to a structural engineer and they think two-story buildings will work here," Ives said of the caps in their current configuration. "We also asked, 'What does it take to get to six stories?' ODOT, to their credit, went to their own engineers and asked them to look at it. They came back and said, 'Yes, we can make two-story buildings work and we might be able to make six [stories] work with some modifications. They’re going to look, for a variety of reasons, at different structural considerations and potentially could look at ways to get to a six story building capacity." That would be a major victory for Albina Vision and for Portland: gaining real density where there has been none.

Beyond its intersection with the I-5 freeway and its caps, Albina Vision, despite being generated outside of city offices, fits nicely with what the city has envisioned. "The city has good long-range planning for that area," Eddy says, "and reconnecting the Lower Albina with Northeast Portland will only enhance that. It will only make it better. The two most important streets are Broadway and Weidler, but as you move out from that, the more you can accomplish the better. The most pedestrian connection, the more built space you can make, the better it will be."

 

A future riverside park between the bridges (Hennebery Eddy)

 

"What we want to see is a really good partnership between the people designing and building the freeway and people trying to build the city: the city, Albina Vision, PDOT, and that everybody takes the long view here," Eddy adds. "These are big long-term decisions. We don’t want them to preclude building a great urban community in that part of Portland."

It's always incredible just how much people from different parts of government are not talking to each other. In an ideal world, state and federal highway planners and designers would be working hand in hand with city planners to ensure that transportation infrastructure fits the needs of the neighborhoods it intersects. Some would laugh at this notion, because freeways have a long history of destroying neighborhoods, especially those occupied by people of color and poor people. Portland is no different from other cities and places in that regard, for our biggest mid-20th-Century urban renewal projects both downtown and on the east side did precisely that. Yet Portland also enjoys a history of activism that helped make the city what it is today. We're the city that ripped out a highway to build Tom McCall Waterfront Park. We're the city that stopped a freeway and, in a national first, applied those funds instead to a light rail line. Why not also be the city that took advantage of the highway industrial complex's ambitions to expand what they've already done at the Rose Quarter and hold them accountable for restoring a little of that sense of place?

Albina Vision isn't just about I-5 freeway caps. It's about completing the promise of the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade and plans for the Green Loop, and simultaneously addressing the east side's lack of major green space in a way that the Green Loop alone can't do. To have a real open space at the east edge of the Broadway Bridge feels so intuitive. Looking at the riverfront land between the Steel Bridge and Broadway Bridge, as well as around Larabee Avenue and Benton Avenue, it's really just wasted space right now. But if you imagine tall buildings where the two Rose Quarter parking garages are, and parking buried underground, with a promenade connecting the Moda Center and Memorial Coliseum with the Portland Public Schools property (presumably to be vacated and redeveloped in the coming years), it creates a real sense of place that the area has always lacked.

There is still a lot of campaigning and negotiating to do. If we can get ODOT to agree to caps that can be built on with two to six-story buildings, and agree to place the caps so they're part of the existing grid, that's one essential piece. The City of Portland is another key partner here, for it's about time to issue an RFP for the two garages to be turned into buildings atop underground garages. Portland Public Schools can step up its already-stated desire to eventually move. And City Council can pass a resolution of support for Albina Vision, incorporating it into existing long-range plans. But whether it's for the restorative justice or the smart, high-density, greenspace and pedestrian-oriented place-making, this is a plan we should get behind. We owe it to both the past and the future.

 

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Comments

[Ken]

This will never happen in your lifetime Brian. I mean look how slow the post office site is moving. This isn’t even CLOSE to being started let alone finished anytime soon..

[Brian Libby]

Ken, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I can understand your skepticism. However, I would have to think you're merely speculating, no matter how much you phrase it as established fact.

As it happens, these plans do take quite a long time to come to fruition. The thing is, they're plans, not building projects. That said, you're right that some of these never come to fruition. Centennial Mills is a particularly tragic example and a permanent blemish on the City of Portland for causing such historic buildings to fall into ruin.

Even so, perhaps it's also worth re-emphasizing that this plan is citizen driven. It's not directly comparable to the Broadway Corridor (the post office site you mentioned) because it actually has people behind it.

If the Albina Vision does move forward with a plan, we naturally can't guarantee that development would happen right away. But two of the most important parcels to kick-start this process are city-owned: the two Rose Quarter parking garages. If market-rate offices and housing are viable in buildings there over below-ground parking, that, along with the presence of the streetcar on Broadway as well as attendant zoning changes and the demand for developable central-city real estate given the urban growth boundary can in time make this viable.

I guess we'll see. And if it turns out that you ARE right to be skeptical — that this risks dying on the vine — I'm all the more glad to be advocating for something tangible to happen.

[Brad Perkins]

Brian,
You shouldn’t assume that the I-5 Rose Quarter widening Project is a done deal! Yes, ODOT presented options to the North/NE quadrant study group 6 years ago. Yes, there were some hearings 2 years ago in Salem regarding the huge $5.3 billion transportation package for the State of Oregon in 2017. But the opportunity for the public to comment on the Environmental Assessment and the recent plan first occurred on March 12, 2019. 90% of the people who testified opposed the project.
The power of Portland’s citizens to stop this project should not be underestimated, especially after the minimal improvement conclusions documented that were given in the Environmental Assessment Report. We all want to successfully connect the business district on both sides of the I-5 freeway in the Rose Quarter. Widening a noisy freeway and topping it with poorly designed covers to support trees and shrubs will become dangerous places to walk or bike through.
The “Albina Vision” will remain a vision if there is not a catalyst to spur real estate development. A master plan is needed for a larger affected area from MLK Jr Blvd to the Willamette River and North Russell Street to I-84. Within this context we then can understand how transportation systems work together and become a catalyst that influences economic feasibility for developments on covers over freeways when density is built nearby. Transportation systems include pedestrian corridors, bikeways, transit, high speed rail, freight rail, street, highways, water taxis, etc.
Nothing we do in land use planning or transportation planning should be done in a silo. What we do on the street relates to the surrounding environment and vice versa. Successful urban neighborhoods are based on vibrant streets that support a variety of travel and open space options that is edged by dense and diverse architecture. This sensitive settlement pattern does not happen with a freeway widening and cover project.
The Rose Quarter and its surrounding area should be studied by stakeholders of how transportation corridors connect with a new Rose Quarter Transportation Hub including a Cascadia High Speed Rail Station.(cascadiahighspeedrail.com) To spur conversation Prosper Portland should offer the 33.5 acres of public land around the Rose Quarter for sale via a Request for Proposals from developers similar as to what was done at the Post Office site in NW Portland. This new CHSR/Town Center development opportunity, with proper citizen involvement, will be a paradigm shift for the City, Metro, State of Oregon and the Northwest in non-freeway oriented development paid for by both public and private investment.
We are currently getting Oregon and Washington legislators interested in shifting $450 million transferred from this I-5 widening disaster project to a new Hybrid Bridge Project next to the BNSF Columbia River Bridge for rails and vehicles, which will relieve a third of the traffic and pollution on I-5. The future is now.
Brad Perkins, CEO/CHSR

[Brian Libby]

Thanks Brad! I hope you're right. I'd be happy to see this I-5 project stopped. It's true that Albina Vision can happen without the I-5 caps. We just have to make sure that if the I-5 expansion does come, it's accompanied by buildable caps. Still, I'm on your side.