 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
 |
MEMO BLOG | |
Memo Calendar | Memo Pad | Business Memos | Loaves & Fishes | Letters | Home |
 |
 |
 |
Publisher’s note: Welcome to Perlman’s Potpourri for November, a roundup of news items from the Gateway and Parkrose neighborhoods of mid-Multnomah County from veteran Beat Reporter Lee Perlman.
Coming up, after many meetings over the last year, the East Portland Action Plan moves toward making decisions on how to spend the half-million-dollar allocation from City Council. How will they spend it?
By moving the school bus loading point to the back of the school, the Russell Academy of Academic Achievement completed the first Safe Routes to School project successfully.
The Portland Bureau of Planning’s Station Area Project has scheduled a new set of open houses for the public to learn about proposals to improve east Portland MAX light rail stations and their surrounding areas.
Remember the old bingo hall in Gateway, next to J. J. North’s? The Portland Development Commission is looking to acquire both pieces of vacant property, but there is a problem. There was a dry cleaning store there 50 years ago, dumping enough chemicals and solvents to make it a mini Superfund site needing extensive cleanup.
Also in the Potpourri, a bar and mini-mart in Gateway are becoming crime generators according to East Precinct and the Neighborhood Crime Prevention Program.
Some sad news to report as Steamers Restaurant & Lounge on Northeast Sandy Boulevard closes its doors after decades of operation.
Good news for Mid-county motorists: The 102nd Avenue Improvement Project crosses the finish line before the end of the month. Woo hoo!
Russellville III, the four-story, 122-unit structure at 102nd Avenue at East Burnside Street, should be complete by April 2009.
And finally, Perlman reports that the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, having to redo its existing mission statement, omits the term “neighborhood associations,” which didn’t sit well with the people involved in them.
But first, to the East Portland Action Plan’s spending priorities ...
LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
EPAP moving toward priority decisions
The East Portland Action Plan’s Implementation Group came closer last month to deciding priorities for spending $500,000 allocated by City Council for short-term projects.
At a meeting Oct. 9, the subgroup engaged in a preliminary voting exercise that set the following priorities — as pairs of options:
• A staff person to oversee the further implementation of the program, operating out of the East Portland Neighborhood Office — or a small grant program
• Planning for street improvements on Southeast Powell Boulevard — or planning and promotion of Gateway Green, the 35-acre open parcel between the I-205 and Banfield freeways, for recreational use
• An annual multicultural event — or expansion of the Portland Development Commission’s popular Storefront Improvement Program for small businesses
• A land use project in east Portland — or a marketing campaign for east Portland.
• A project to identify and pursue family-wage industries — or promotion of block parties to build a sense of community
• A community-built park
• Outreach to under-represented communities, including ethnic groups
• Expansion of the Lents Home Ownership Initiative to the rest of east Portland
• Prioritizing east Portland schools for future Safe Routes to School programs (This received no votes from the nine members present.)
The priorities are still subject to change. At press time, there was a public open house slated for Oct. 23 at the East Portland Community Center to let the general public weigh in. The committee’s final choice will be forwarded to City Council at a session set for Dec. 10.
Russell Academy buses’ move helps safety
Parkrose School District’s Russell Academy of Academic Achievement, at 2700 NE 127th Ave., has moved forward with its first Safe Routes to School project: moving the school bus loading point to the back of the school, on Northeast Brazee Street.
The situation at 3:10 p.m. in front of the school “was insane,” Principal Debbie Ebert told the Russell Neighborhood Association last month. Virtually the entire student body converged on the front of the school, creating a bottleneck. Parents coming to pick up their children tried to dart in and out of the constricted entrance quickly, resulting in fast-moving cars crossing the paths of children.
The move “has worked really, really well,” Ebert said. “The front of the school is 100 times calmer. Visibility is much better, and people can get in and out quicker.” In addition, she said, “We now have the same consistent people directing traffic out front, and they’re able to identify the consistently bad drivers so that we can deal with them.”
Shirley Zurcher, a volunteer with the Safe Routes program, agreed. “The difference is amazing.”
It has worked so well, in fact, that a series of improvements to Northeast 127th Avenue in front of the school have assumed a lower priority, including a proposal to make the street one-way northbound.
As Vern Sundin, another volunteer, has noted, one of the objectives of the program has been left unaddressed: the promotion and facilitation of more children walking or biking to school rather than being driven at all. Earlier this year, with the help of city traffic engineer Scott Battson, Ebert and interested parents identified safety problems in the paths of potential routes to the school, and Battson proposed a menu of potential improvements with a total price tag of just under $1 million. Unfortunately, all money to implement these proposals has been cut from this and other Safe Routes programs. Ebert said Lore Wintergreen from the Portland Office of Transportation, a liaison to the program, has been hounding him about setting priorities so the city has a chance to obtain grant funding for some of the projects.
However, those at the Russell meeting suggested that there were more problems than just a lack of funds. “My kids walked to school when they were little, but it’s a different world in terms of safety,” Russell Neighborhood Association Chair Bonny McKnight said.
“It occurred to me last year that we weren’t going to solve the driving problem,” Ebert said. “I’ve been trying to promote carpooling.” One proposal was to organize walking school buses in which parents would take turns accompanying groups of children to school, but Ebert said, “It takes so much effort to organize that.”
Sundin said he was personally against one proposed solution — the strategic installation of speed bumps — because “they punish everyone because some people speed.” He said he preferred stop signs and traffic enforcement.
“I wish there was a silver bullet,” Ebert said.
New Station Area open houses set
The Portland Bureau of Planning’s Station Area Project has scheduled a new set of open houses for the public to learn about proposals to improve east Portland MAX light rail stations and surrounding areas.
The first open house, which will deal with the 60th and 82nd avenue and Parkrose-Sumner stations, will be Wednesday, Nov. 12 at the Banfield Pet Hospital’s Glenhaven Center, 8000 N.E. Tillamook St. The second, concerning the 122nd, 148th and 162nd avenue stations, will be Nov. 13 at Ventura Park School, 145 S.E. 117th Ave. Both sessions are from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
The project aims to identify and propose solutions to problems that interfere with the operation of the stations, the development of higher intensity transit-oriented development within a half mile of them and the creation of a pleasant and safe pedestrian environment. The bureau’s outreach for this project included walkabouts, in which interested citizens and bureau staff met at the stations and surveyed both the stations and the surrounding area on foot.
>>continued
MEMO Advertising | MEMO Archives | MEMO Web Neighbors | MEMO Staff | Home