PDX Planning Efforts

[tworivers]

Sorry to start a new thread with an article from the pathetic Tribune, but they seem to be the only ones reporting on this meeting.

Region's future beginning to take shape
Concensus (sic) building to concentrate future growth in urban centers

By Jim Redden

The Portland Tribune, Dec 15, 2008

Potential winners and losers are beginning to emerge from Metro’s two-year study of where and how the region should grow in the future.

Regional leaders meeting last Wednesday expressed strong support for concentrating new development in existing urban centers and along major transportation corridors. They leaned heavily in favor of developing new mass transit lines, including streetcars — a transportation option favored by Portland Mayor-elect Sam Adams to spur growth in the central city.

The leaders were far less inclined to support building new freeways or adding lanes to existing ones. Proposed projects that drew little support included the Sunrise Corridor between Interstate 205 and the new city of Damascus, the Interstate 5 to Highway 99W connection intended to relieve congestion on the Newburg/Dundee area, and the Interstate 84 to Highway 26 connection to serve parts of east Multnomah County.

Such decisions could concentrate future public investment in the already-urbanized areas of Portland, Gresham, Beaverton and Hillsboro, where efforts have long been underway to build dense, mixed-use neighborhoods. Fewer public funds might be spent in outlying, less developed parts of the region.

The gathering took place at the Oregon Convention Center. It was the fourth in a series of planning sessions designed to help form a regional consensus about the direction future growth should take in the greater metropolitan area. It was organized by Metro, the regional government charged with managing growth much of Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties.

The event was attended by elected officials from throughout the three counties, along with several members of the elected Metro Council. They spent most of the meeting completing a lengthy survey on future transportation and other growth-related options. The questions grew out of the discussions at the previous three meetings. The results are intended to help the Metro staff narrow down the focus of two important planning efforts that are under way.

One is the update of the Regional Transportation Plan that is indeed to guide transportation spending in coming years. The other is a study to determine whether and where the urban growth boundary should be expanded in the future. The urban growth boundary is a zone administered by Metro in much of the tri-county area where new urban development is allowed.

Both of the planning efforts are considered important because the region is expected to grow by around 1 million more people during the next 20 years.

The Metro Council is scheduled to vote on final versions of the planning efforts by late next year.

Portland Commissioner-elect Amanda Fritz attended the Wednesday session and said it helped create a “good framework” for discussing such issues in the future. Although Fritz has not yet been assigned any city bureaus, she hopes to be appointed to serve as the council’s liasion (sic) to Metro on the efforts.

Not everyone who attended the session was pleased with the direction it took. A number of officials from Forest Grove felt that many of the preferred options — such as pricing downtown parking to manage congestion — did not apply to their city, which wants to retain its small town feel.

Participants also overwhelmingly endorsed supported the state of Oregon’s efforts to fight global warming. The 2007 Oregon Legislature set aggressive goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in coming years. The targets call for stopping the growth of such emissions by 2010, reducing them 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and reducing them 75 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

At the Wednesday gathering, leaders overwhelmingly agreed that the region should be “very proactive” in figure out how to comply with these goals. This is expected to require significantly reducing the number of vehicle miles all residents drive. Vehicle emissions account for 34 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Based on the survey results, the first choice for reducing driving is to expand and improve regional transit systems. The second is to make zoning changes to encourage more development in existing urban centers and along transportation corridors.

[65MAX]

Glad they're reporting this. However, as with most Tribune articles, there are more grammatical and spelling errors than a 6th grade book report. So, I guess nobody at Pamplin's rag has spell check?

[MarkDaMan]

Tribune lays off Stanford
Portland Business Journal

The Portland Tribune has said goodbye to two longtime staffers, including columnist Phil Stanford.

Steve Clark, the paper’s publisher, confirmed that Stanford and Denise Szott, the paper’s top designer and copy editor, are no longer with the publication.

Stanford was one of the paper’s first hires, before the Tribune began publishing in 2001. He previously worked as an Oregonian columnist. Szott has effectively run the paper’s copy-editing and design efforts for the last six years.

“It’s really nothing to do with newspapers, it’s the reeling economic conditions that are confronting America and the world,” Clark said.

Clark wouldn’t comment on any severance terms or whether more workers would lose their jobs.

Stanford is perhaps best known for his columns about Frank Gable, who was convicted of killing Oregon Department of Corrections director Michael Francke in the 1980s. He wrote a screenplay on the case that became a television movie starring Angelina Jolie.

His latest book, Portland Confidential: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Rose City, published by Westwinds in 2004, continues to sell well throughout the state.

Szott led a team that won scores of design and editing awards.

http://portland.bizjournals.com/port...5/daily11.html

[pdxman]

Darn, no more stanford. Looks like the anti-portland paper is finally beginning to bite the dust.

[PDX City-State]

“It’s really nothing to do with newspapers, it’s the reeling economic conditions that are confronting America and the world,”

Bullsh*t. Newspapers have been bleeding for a decade. I for one am sad to see Stanford go. I hardly agree with him, but he is a damn good reporter who often challenges popular opinion in Portland. With him gone, I see no reason to read the Trib.

[tworivers]

I never found much to respect about Stanford. I never thought of him as providing much in the way of substantive analysis or reporting in his column, just snarky attacks in the vein of Jack Bog. There are plenty of diverse voices (and, I'm guessing, talented writers) in this city who could have been given a platform by the Tribune, rather than some embittered old-guard white guy.

[tworivers]

A LUBA disaster in the making. These assholes (the "Friends of Urban Renewal") definitely do not have the best interests of the city in mind. This could set us back years, unless the Council has some tricks up their sleeve that we are not aware of. No Post Office purchase, no Holst-designed homeless access center, no Centennial Mills.

You have to love Randy for diving in to the Oregonian's sewer of a comments section to say things like this: "Their law suit represents the dying gasps of a wealthy few who are losing their grip on Portland's economic future." Story here.

Two lawsuits stall Portland's efforts to help the homeless and create an employment district
by Mark Larabee, The Oregonian
Monday February 16, 2009, 8:05 PM

Two lawsuits over how the Portland City Council hopes to spend property taxes to fight urban blight have stalled efforts to help homeless people and create a new employment district downtown.

The suits have frozen the city's ability to borrow money against future property tax income generated in the River District, a downtown urban renewal area that includes the Pearl neighborhoods.

Without the money, the city can't break ground on the Resource Access Center, a $48 million shelter and day center that is seen as a crucial piece of the city's 10-year plan to end homelessness.

Construction was set to begin in October, with the center opening in 2011. But the backhoes won't start digging without $29.5 million in River District urban renewal money.

The other major project on hold is the city's acquisition of the main U.S. Post Office building downtown. The site is one of the last large build-to-suit properties downtown, and Portland officials hope to attract a major company to anchor a new, dense employment district.

But the city can't market the site with the lawsuits looming. It has an agreement to buy the building from the federal government in 2013, though the parties haven't agreed on a price. The Postal Service wants to move closer to Portland International Airport.

In the worst case, the lawsuits could delay the projects -- more than a decade in the making -- for years, city officials say.

Here's what happened: Last summer, the City Council voted to spend $19 million set aside for downtown improvements to build an elementary school in outer Southeast Portland.

The unusual move, the brainchild of former City Commissioner Erik Sten, was viewed by some as a creative way to help the David Douglas School District absorb a growing population of students from mostly middle- and low-income families who were moving from the city center to the suburbs.

Sten's idea was to create a satellite of the River District. After he quit his council post, the council moved ahead with the idea, despite legal threats from some of the state's most prominent urban renewal experts. The group challenging the city calls itself Friends of Urban Renewal.

The council also expanded the boundaries of the River District and increased the amount of tax revenue available for projects, from $225 million to $583 million. The Friends group challenged that move, too.

The experts filed two suits with the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals and prevailed on key points in each suit. The City Council now must decide how to resolve the problems.

"The urban renewal area fight was over the satellite district, but they took the River District hostage and poor people are paying the price," said Commissioner Nick Fish, the city's housing boss.

Oliver Norville, the former Portland Development Commission general counsel and a member of the group, said that even if the city reverses itself on building the school, the group would still have major concerns about the increased funding in the River District.

"Some of the projects they are proposing are not proper expenditures of tax increment funds," he said.

Land Use Board of Appeals decisions can be appealed to the Oregon Court of Appeals. The deadline for appealing in the satellite case has passed. The city has until Friday to appeal the boundary dispute. The council hasn't decided how to proceed, Mayor Sam Adams said. An appeal could take 18 months or more.

The Land Use Board of Appeals allowed for the city to submit more information in each case that could change the outcome. The board asked for more information about how the city's moves would target urban blight.

Adams said the opponents of the city's efforts, 10 signers in all, are interested in different issues about the cases, so settling through private talks hasn't worked.

Norville said the city hasn't been interested in talking.

"We held out all kinds of offers to sit down and negotiate," he said. "The PDC and the council have been unwilling to discuss this with us."

-- Mark Larabee: marklarabee@news.oregonian.com

[alexjon]

The people filing these lawsuits should be made to house the homeless in their own homes

[bvpcvm]

re: the post office site. is it realistic to hope that someone like homer could step in and buy the property, if need be?

[Okstate]

^ Who is homer?

[PacificNW]

Homer Williams=Major Pearl Condo developer.

[zilfondel]

I think the last thing the Pearl needs is more condos...

[MarkDaMan]

I've always been under the impression Homer doesn't have a lot of spare capacity. He's had a couple developments go bust, and supposedly had some problems in the Pearl too.

He's a TERRIFIC visionary, I just don't know he manages money well. I think that is what Dame is for.

The city will buy the Post Office site. If the PDC is still shut down in 2013,

It has an agreement to buy the building from the federal government in 2013

then there will be a lot bigger problems than the post office site.

[NewUrbanist]

Originally Posted by MarkDaMan

I've always been under the impression Homer doesn't have a lot of spare capacity. He's had a couple developments go bust, and supposedly had some problems in the Pearl too.

He's a TERRIFIC visionary, I just don't know he manages money well. I think that is what Dame is for.

The city will buy the Post Office site. If the PDC is still shut down in 2013,



then there will be a lot bigger problems than the post office site.

I have heard that due to the billions in budget deficit, the Post Office has considered pulling out of the deal. They might even eliminate Saturday post service to deal with their budget, and are definitely reconsidering moving their central location to the airport.

[65MAX]

Originally Posted by NewUrbanist

I have heard that due to the billions in budget deficit, the Post Office has considered pulling out of the deal. They might even eliminate Saturday post service to deal with their budget, and are definitely reconsidering moving their central location to the airport.

The USPS would have no reason to back out of selling their downtown property. The reason for moving to the airport in the first place is because it would save them millions annually in operational costs. Trucking all of the mail from the planes to be sorted downtown is a huge (and expensive) intermediate step that the PO wants to eliminate. Even mail that is trucked in from out-of-state can reach the airport facility easier than it can reach downtown.

Also, the fact that they are considering eliminating Saturday delivery has no bearing whatsoever on the sale of the downtown property.

[MR. Cosmopolitan]

I've seen some old study about energy efficient urbanism, that mentioned Portland; In 1973 Portland had already many regulations, to increase the energy efficiency like encouraging dense and semi-dense mixed use debelopment along transit routes, major employment centers and neighborhood grocery stores 1/2 a mille from transit stations, encourage building in vacant land in the central area and inner suburbs, discourage building in poor land far away from transit routes, creating bike paths, encourage use of public transport, increase carpoolind, etc... PDX planing efforts camed very early, but in a way also too late, a lot of sprawl and destruction of the downtown had allready taken place in the 50's and 60's, PDX still has a lot to do to compensate the mistakes of that time.

[RED_PDXer]

Has anyone heard about this effort? The City is proposing to rezone a huge industrial swath just north
of I-84 next to 60th to allow high density residential and/or commercial infill. Some nice changes for
Glisan and Halsey, though modest, to finally match the zoning of streets like Belmont and Hawthorne.
Interestingly, they're proposing to downzone a pocket of residential within 1/4 mile of the station from
R1 (about 43 - 65 units/acre) to R2 (about 20 - 30 units/acre).

I read the article and one resident says she's concerned about the scale of infill and says her
neighborhood doesn't have amenities? What more do they need?? There's a full service grocery
store a block away at 65th and Glisan and MAX stop with 3 lines running by all day! There's parks
nearby and potentially more commercial services on Glisan and Halsey. That move by the City
doesn't make sense to me. Maybe the City is trying to balance the increased density anticipated
in the industrial pocket with the residential neighborhood already there?

Rezoning possible in MAX corridor
City is seeking public support for proposed changes in east Portland
POSTED: 04:00 AM PST Thursday, February 26, 2009
BY TYLER GRAF

When light rail trains start zipping through a neighborhood, they carry promises of transit-oriented
development. But the city of Portland realizes that these promises haven’t been fully met on the
outer east side. So the city is contemplating zoning changes to areas along the east-side MAX route,
from Northeast 60th to Northeast 162nd avenues. These changes, coordinated through the Bureau of
Planning and Sustainability, would be intended to encourage mixed-use projects and spur higher
densities. Community input over the past several years has set in motion long-term plans along
the east-side route, but more needs to be done, said city planner Tom Armstrong.

A series of community meetings will continue into March. The meetings will be used to gauge public
opinion and formalize a package of development and zoning plans that would go before City Council
this spring. Though the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability has already pinpointed some potential
zoning and development changes, Armstrong said it was essential for the public to first support the
proposed changes before moving forward. One such change would be to increase density and
encourage mixed-use projects along Northeast Halsey Street and Northeast Glisan streets.
“We are (also) exploring up-zoning industrial land in the area, with the goal of trying to get more
employment-intensive uses,” Armstrong said. Additionally, the city has identified potential new “bike
boulevards” along Northeast 60th and Northeast 82nd avenues. Those would be incorporated into
the city’s Bicycle Master Plan update.

Not all development is welcome, say residents. Over the years, many residents have spoken out
against large-scale infill projects. They’ve argued that these sorts of multifamily developments
would not fit the scale or context of the neighborhood, insisting they would be incompatible with
existing buildings. “Our neighborhood has very little support for high density,” said North Tabor
resident DyLynn Robertson. “We don’t really have schools, libraries or amenities. It doesn’t really
serve residents to keep large numbers of people in the neighborhood.” She added that infill development
could be incorporated into the neighborhood better at a lower density.
The city has been listening, and plans to lower the density of future infill projects, Armstrong said.
He added: “Design review may go a long way to addressing those concerns.” For now, the city is
busy gathering public support for the proposed projects and zoning changes. “Once we have a set
of recommended zoning changes, then we’ll look at what it means for each
station community and decide whether we can move forward with a package of changes,”
Armstrong said. “We’ll also see if they need to get incorporated into the Portland Plan discussions.”



http://www.djcoregon.com/articleDeta...in-east-Portla

[JordanL]

I read the article and one resident says she's concerned about the scale of infill and says her
neighborhood doesn't have amenities? What more do they need?? There's a full service grocery
store a block away at 65th and Glisan and MAX stop with 3 lines running by all day! There's parks
nearby and potentially more commercial services on Glisan and Halsey.

I live about 10 blocks from this stop, (but off your map).

The thing(s) lacking in this area are:

- Any entertainment whatsoever (with the exception of two bars at 60th & Glisan)
- Any supporting commercial services/retail, like Hawthorne, or Belmont, or 82nd, or inner Division, or Powell, etc.
- Places of employment

The first two are the real issues. There is NOTHING to do in this neighborhood, and its VERY hilly, so getting around is a lot harder than the map makes it look.

Additionally, there aren't really any parks nearby, and just as the woman points out, there aren't really any schools either. The only school in the area was closed by PPS two years ago.

This neighborhood needs a lot of infrastructure to seriously talk about infill.

[RED_PDXer]

Does a neighborhood need a movie theater or comedy club to be dense? What type of entertainment does a neighborhood need and what comes first, entertainment of the neighbors?

Schools are an issue, but that's an issue throughout the city..

One of the biggest employers in the city is less than a mile away at Providence. Additionally, there are small businesses in the industrial area. There's more employment there than in the Hawthorne or Belmont area, for sure.

There's Normandale and mt. Tabor parks nearby.. both are within walking distance, but Normandale is really close.

As for the hills, the area being rezoned is essentially flat, the hilly area is south of glisan. commercial and such is within the flat area.

So what infrastructure does this neighborhood need? It has plenty of transportation access, as far as transit and autos go.. It has parks, full service grocery store, a few restaurants, bars, etc. on glisan. Plus, with Glisan being rezoned to allow commercial all the way west to Providence, there's good potential for more services.

I'm confused.. what else would this place need to support higher density infill. There's higher density places east of I-205 and people are complaining about density this close-in??

[JordanL]

Originally Posted by RED_PDXer

Does a neighborhood need a movie theater or comedy club to be dense? What type of entertainment does a neighborhood need and what comes first, entertainment of the neighbors?

Schools are an issue, but that's an issue throughout the city..

One of the biggest employers in the city is less than a mile away at Providence. Additionally, there are small businesses in the industrial area. There's more employment there than in the Hawthorne or Belmont area, for sure.

There's Normandale and mt. Tabor parks nearby.. both are within walking distance, but Normandale is really close.

As for the hills, the area being rezoned is essentially flat, the hilly area is south of glisan. commercial and such is within the flat area.

So what infrastructure does this neighborhood need? It has plenty of transportation access, as far as transit and autos go.. It has parks, full service grocery store, a few restaurants, bars, etc. on glisan. Plus, with Glisan being rezoned to allow commercial all the way west to Providence, there's good potential for more services.

I'm confused.. what else would this place need to support higher density infill. There's higher density places east of I-205 and people are complaining about density this close-in??

Not about density... complaining about the severe commercial underdevelopment. This place is going to be a vertical suburb in the sense that it'll be like an island without some very ambitious commercial zoning or development.

If Portland wants to rezone/develop this area, it needs to be an Urban Renewal Zone planned out by the PDC, complete with mixed use buildings mandated on all new construction.

There is not supporting retail here. You can buy groceries, that's it.

It takes about 30-45 minutes to walk to Mt. Tabor from here, but I suppose it is relatively close...

the infrastructure around here, even so far as power lines, phone lines and sewage lines are not up to high density development. It's not a decrepit neighborhood, but it's a very development poor neighborhood.

I don't think you understand the concept of how high density works... you don't just build six story studio apartments and magically the neighborhood becomes vibrant... there are suporting commercial services, supporting city infrastructure, traffic flow patterns, etc.