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Publisher’s note: Welcome to Perlman’s Potpourri for October — a roundup of news items from the Gateway and Parkrose neighborhoods of mid-Multnomah County from veteran Beat Reporter Lee Perlman.
Coming up, the Colwood Golf Course in east Portland will remain an open space ... for now, anyway.
A hired gun/consultant tells the Portland Airport Public Advisory Group that the airport “has excellent facilities and is well-positioned to deal with future needs.”
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.
Traffic engineer Scott Battson said funding for the Safe Routes to School strategy has been eliminated from the city budget, but there are alternative funding sources.
And here’s some good news for Mid-county motorists: the 102nd Avenue Improvement Project is nearing completion.
Next, Perlman, along with city activists and interested government parties, takes a tour to measure the potential of Gateway Green, the 35-acre developable open space between the I-205 and I-84 (Banfield) freeways in east Portland.
The Western States Chiropractic College unveiled plans at last month’s Russell Neighborhood Association meeting to replace the 108-year-old building on their property with a shiny new one.
And finally, Perlman reports on a contested — yet cordial and polite — election for chair of the Madison South Neighborhood Association.
But first, to the battle over keeping a golf course as open space ...
LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
Colwood Golf stays open space
East Portland activists contributed last month to another neighborhood battle to the west of them: efforts by owners of Colwood Golf Course to change the zoning on the 140-acre parcel at 7313 N.E. Columbia Blvd. from OS (Open Space) to IG2 (Industrial) and the Cully and Concordia Neighborhood Associations’ resistance to it.
Earlier this year, after hearing three hours of testimony, Hearings Officer Gregory Frank had recommended against the proposed comprehensive plan amendment. He wrote that although the change would have supported some comprehensive plan goals such as industrial development and job creation, it would work against others like recreation, open space and natural habitat preservation. In this case, he said, “The Colwood open space site is unique. (It) is a practically irreplaceable asset, and thus therefore this application should not be approved.”
Despite this setback, the owners did not give up. By the time of their hearing before the Portland City Council last month they had hired attorney Steve Janik, perhaps the most feared land use lawyer in the state, and the popular former commissioner Mike Lindberg. Janik argued that Frank’s decision was not proper because he did not seek to strike a balance between the competing uses. In contrast, he said, the developer’s proposal would retain 22 acres (straddling the Columbia Slough) as open space, would deed the land to the city and donate $100,000 for its park development. He argued that the land was not particularly valuable anyway, since a recent Metro natural resources inventory did not mention it. On the other hand, he said, as industrial land the parcel could provide as many as 1900 family-wage jobs.
Other speakers, including Corky Collier of the Columbia Corridor Business Association, said that the parcel would be one of the few industrially zoned properties of more than 50 contiguous acres zoned for industrial activity. It was needed to attract and keep industry, they said.
In contrast, Bob Sallinger of the Portland Audubon Society said that the Metro inventory “captured the highest value habitats, but clearly articulated that more needed to be done. The approach was: protect the best and restore the rest.” If nothing else, the property is a connecting link to the rest of the slough, and the Olmsted brothers envisioned the idea of larger holdings in their 1902 park plan. As a golf course, the rest of the property “isn’t habitat now, but it has tremendous potential.”
Hazelwood activist Linda Robinson, a founding member of the Columbia Slough Watershed Council and the East Portland Parks Committee, lent her support to the preservation cause. “Riparian habitats are even more valuable if you have upland habitats around them,” she said to the council.
The Port of Portland has offered to buy the northern 47 acres of Colwood, subject to rezoning, as the potential site of a third runway for Portland International Airport, and Port representatives testified in favor of the rezoning. Erwin Bergman of Cully, one of the leading proponents of making Colwood a park and a longtime airport critic, responded to the Port. “Current projections show that this need (for a third runway) has lost all validity,” Bergman said. “The third runway is dead and will never materialize. (See Airport Futures below.) There is a need for recreation space in Cully and in Portland.”
Cully chair Kathy Fuerstenau pointed out that the Colwood owners had cited no specific project in their request, so there was no way to tell what would occupy the land and what its economic value would be.
After hearing from 27 such supporters, the council voted four to zero, with Mayor Tom Potter absent, to deny the zone change request. The vote was tentative, subject to a final vote on October 22. Janik requested and received permission to submit an additional written rebuttal during the next week.
There was speculation that Janik’s move was intended to lay the groundwork for an appeal of the case to the state Land Use Board of Appeals. He argued that retaining the open space zoning amounted to an inverse taking, since it left his clients with a use for their property that is no longer economically viable.
In casting his vote, Commissioner and Mayor-elect Sam Adams retorted that Janik had failed to prove this last point. The council as a whole found that he had failed to prove that IG2 was the best possible designation for the property, as the law requires for a comprehensive plan amendment.
Airport has what it needs, consultant finds
Portland International Airport “has excellent facilities and is well-positioned to deal with future needs,” consultant C. F. Booth told the Public Advisory Group of the Airport Futures study last month.
In particular, Booth said, PDX’s 67 gates and its inventory of ticket counters are adequate in part because airlines are more willing than they have been to share facilities. In the past, airlines, especially the largest such carriers, had resisted such measures, he said, but they are more amenable now because of their need and desire to cut operating costs to stay viable. “They’re on our side now,” he said.
The capacity of curbside automobile drop-off areas can be stretched by shrinking the time motorists occupy these areas from the current average of six minutes to one and a half minutes, which is closer to the national average. “I assume the police will do their job,” he said. Constantly evolving technology, including a pending change to allow check-in entirely by cell phone, will make operations in general easier. There is even a plan for mood lighting in the security area that will have a calming effect on passengers in general, and make suspicious behavior stand out more.
Still on the drawing boards are plans for a centralized or decentralized terminal expansion. In the former case, the new facilities would be to the west of the existing terminal building and connected to it. In the latter case, a separate building would be built to the south, necessitating moving the Air National Guard base. Both scenarios have an option to either build or not build a third north-south runway. The need for such facilities is further in the future than once thought, Booth said.
One problem is that the two existing runways are too close together, he said. This reduces the capacity for takeoffs and landings, since any planes taking off or landing would use the same air space regardless of which runway they used. There will also be a need for traffic improvements at the Northeast Airport Way/I-205 interchange by 2012 and at the Airport Way/82nd Avenue interchange by 2017, as well as minor work on other streets.
In a related matter, the PAG began a debate on a sustainability policy statement. So far the statement reads:
Unconstrained global population is not sustainable, in particular the desire by all peoples to increase their standard of living, thereby increasing their consumption of resources considerably beyond the earth’s capacity. This is a global issue that we cannot effectively address in the Airport Futures process.
However, recognizing that each of us must play our part to achieve worldwide sustainability and that we must think globally and act regionally, the PAG recommends that the Port and city:
• Not intentionally institute policies that promote unsustainable growth
• Institute policies that accept, plan for and manage the Metro projections for growth
• Recognize the importance of regional coordination with the Western Climate Initiative, the state’s “Big Look” and Global Warming Commission, Metro’s urban reserve discussion, and the city’s Portland Plan
• Institute policies that encourage the growth of family wage jobs with benefits and quality land use to foster the region’s sustainability and
• Show leadership by becoming the most sustainable airport in the world.
>>continued
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