Category Archives: Land Use & Transportation

Last month, I introduced the concept of accessory commer–cial units (ACUs) that redress the historical wrongs that created economic exclusion by enacting racial segregation.

ACUs create new destinations within our neighborhoods and enhance walkability.

What forms might accessory dwelling units (ADUs) take as infill within an existing neighborhood such as ours? A traditional building form sometimes found within the front setback in our neighborhood is a carriage house, with a residence above a garage on the ground floor.

A twist on an ACU could see one placed on the ground floor facing the sidewalk, with an ADU on the second floor. This arrangement could also work in an alley.

This sort of gentle infill could help to build neighborhood intensity without significantly changing neighborhood character. It could build the local demand for services, such as retail and transit, that do better when there are more customers within a short walking distance.

When considering where ACUs might be appropriate, there are at least four different potential regulatory paradigm concepts worth considering:

1. Along all frontages facing bicycle boulevards/greenways
2. Only at new village center nodes, such as selected intersections along family-safe bicycle facilities
3. At intersections
4. Everywhere, on any properties, for any reasons, as long as they face a sidewalk or internal courtyard accessible by pathways from the sidewalk that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

Concept 1 would deliver on the original vision, to give bicyclists the option to choose local retail by bicycle, since it appears that our main streets aren’t going to be made family-bicycle-friendly, anytime soon.

However, by allowing ACUs on greenways everywhere, there would be potentially greater conflicts with neighbors interested in a strictly residential character for the street they bought into.

Concept 2 concentrates ACUs within smaller, more defined areas, minimizing the potential of conflict with neighbors. From an equity perspective, however, it would be the least equitable, as the least number of property owners would have the opportunity to provide and benefit from revenues of ACUs.

Concept 3 spreads the opportunity for revenue, lowers the barrier to opening a new business and increases access to the lowest rungs on the economic ladder to those who need it most. Those include populations victimized historically by racism, sexism and other forms of oppression. By allowing ACUs on any properties – or perhaps any served by ADA-compliant sidewalk networks – ACUs could come to areas where residents may have moved to find life in peaceful, quiet neighborhoods.

Neighbor concerns could be addressed through regulations that use ambient standards to deal with noise, odors, traffic and other potentially-noxious impacts – or by addressing the impacts rather than by establishing use regulations.

It’s up to each community to engage in dialogue over these three paradigms and choose the one that resonates most with community members participating in the public process.

Editor’s note: Garlynn’s first install–ment about ACUs was published in July at ConcordiaPDX.org/2021/07/urbanism-acus-could-make-shopping-by-bike-more-safe. In a future CNews, he’ll dive deeper into questions of commercial space affordability and a discussion of the potential benefits to neighbors from ACUs.

Garlynn Woodsong lives on 29th Avenue, serves on the CNA board and is an avid bicyclist. He also is a dad who is passionate about the city his son will inherit. He is the planning + development partner with Cascadia Partners LLC, a local urban planning firm. Contact him at LandUse@ConcordiaPDX.org.

By Garlynn Woodsong | CNA Board Member, SW1 CNA LUTC Chair

We in the Concordia neighborhood live in a streetcar-era neighborhood – platted and built out during the first two decades of the 20th century – around streetcar service that connected it to downtown Portland.

Lines traversed from Union Avenue (now Martin Luther King) up Alberta Street to a wye – or junction – leading to a terminus at Alberta and 32nd Avenue, and another at Ainsworth Street and 30th Avenue, as well as a line on Dekum Street to 24th Avenue.

Each of these areas was the focus of neighborhood main streets, surrounded by the homes sold by real estate developers to finance the construction of our original neighborhood. The streetcar lines were paved over in the 1950s as a part of a nationwide conspiracy to boost rubber, petroleum and automobile sales. However, the bones of our neighborhood from this era remain: the streets, sidewalks, alleys and buildings.

Regardless of style, the buildings from that era all speak the same design language. Just like with a spoken language, a design language has a certain structure and defining elements that allow for design conversations between different elements of the built environment. The results are mutual design understanding.

For instance, the main street buildings of the streetcar era all have certain characteristics in common:

• A base-middle-top pattern is evident, in which the building has certain characteristics that it presents at the ground floor level, another set at the upper floor level and a third along the roofline.
• At the base level, the pattern consists of typical store fronts, including raised sills, recessed entries, large storefront display windows and clerestory windows at the ceiling.
• At the middle level, vertical recessed windows are aligned horizontally and vertically in paired groupings. • At the top level, articulated rooflines feature elements such as cornices, towers, curves, chevrons, gables or columns amongst many other roofline elements common to that era.
• Within the building, all of the levels feature aligned floorplates with stacked openings, an age-old solution that results in affordable, long-lasting buildings.
• The exterior skin of buildings from this era is made of natural materials, including brick, wood, metal, stucco or stone.
• Consistent materials are used across the entire facade, if not the entire building.
• Subtle ornamentation is applied at the facade – the face the building presents to the street. That includes brick detail work, cornice lines and wood trim details that are much less costly than the structural gymnastic and graphic approaches chosen by recent development stylistics trends.
• At corners, chamfers – the cut aways – and recessed entries prevent people from running into one another.
• A rhythm of recessed entries is created for the pedestrian who walks down the sidewalk past a series of businesses.

These characteristics form the timeless approach to add distinct individual characteristics affordably. They also:

• Increase pedestrian interest in the public realm through the use of building texture
• Enhance the joy factor of the community experience of the built environment through the beauty and craft of each building as expressed in simple ways
• Provide opportunities to highlight local cultural representations and reflections of the surrounding community

For a Main Street Minute, you can watch the Main Street Patterns video, here: tinyurl.com/mainstpatterns.

Register here to join us for a walking tour of Alberta Street at 6pm on July 15th, to help the CNA Board and LUTC learn about the design features of our unprotected historic main street. Attendees will learn how to identify local area patterns, and participate in a community dialogue about design priorities and goals for future development and/or preservation.

Garlynn Woodsong lives on 29th Avenue, serves on the CNA board and is an avid bicyclist. He also is a dad who is passionate about the city his son will inherit. He is the planning + development partner with Cascadia Partners LLC, a local urban planning firm. Contact him at LandUse@ ConcordiaPDX.org.

By Garlynn Woodsong | CNA Board Member, SW1 CNA LUTC Chair

The concept of communitybased design standards refers to clearly-understandable regulations that govern the form of new buildings and that are developed through community-based conversations.

The Design Overlay Zone Amendments (DOZA) project is scheduled for a Portland City Council hearing May 12. It’s the first major overhaul of city design standards and guidelines in 30 years, and it would:.

• Eliminate use standards that previously regulated certain design elements for a specific set of project types in the Concordia neighborhood
• Rewrite zoning code language, including a new set of citywide design guidelines, for the zones that apply to Portland’s centers and corridors, like Alberta Street west of 25th Avenue, among others.

Although DOZA guidelines were shared in draft form with neighbors, the updated standards haven’t and – for that reason alone – don’t adhere to the concept of community-based design standards.

The DOZA project will leave the entire neighborhood without any sort of context-sensitive building design regulations, including the entirety of the residential zones, as well as the main streets along Alberta Street, 42nd Avenue, and at 30th Avenue and Killingsworth Street.

This is problematic and inequitable. It ignores the enormous effort developing the Albina Plan in the early 1990s to develop neighborhood design guidelines based on broad community input from what was then the physical heart of Portland’s Black community.

The Concordia Neighborhood Association (CNA) heard from PDX Main Streets Design Initiative at the April board meeting. The initiative is in response to the recent skyrocketing development rates of rather bland buildings.

It offers a community-driven process to create a set of design guidelines for main streets with rich architectural heritage to be joined by new buildings that fit in with the human scale of the street.

CNA looks forward to working with nearby neighborhood associations and Alberta Main Street to develop and adopt a new set of Alberta Street Design Guidelines, based on those produced by the PDX Main Streets Design Initiative.

With the Residential Infill Project set to take effect later this year, in addition to DOZA, neighbors may wish to ask city hall to provide the opportunity to produce and adopt neighborhood-specific, context-sensitive design standards to regulate growth to support human scaled design, enhance walkability and context-sensitivity to ensure buildings are more harmonious with the existing fabric of established neighborhoods.

You may wish to weigh in now to delay DOZA adoption until the new standards can be clearly explained and feedback sought.

Garlynn Woodsong lives on 29th Avenue, serves on the CNA board and is an avid bicyclist. He also is a dad who is passionate about the city his son will inherit. He is the planning + development partner with Cascadia Partners LLC, a local urban planning firm. Contact him at LandUse@ ConcordiaPDX.org.

By Garlynn Woodsong | CNA Board Member, SW1 CNA LUTC Chair

We are emerging from not just four lost years, years during which our country made no national commitment to meaningful action in response to the threat posed by climate change. We are also emerging from a lost decade that saw us fail to achieve our emissions reductions goals for 2020 that were set at state, regional and local levels of government.

We must make 2021 the year we begin taking meaningful climate action.

There has been some discussion globally about 2021 being the year for sustainable energy. Indeed, sustainable energy is a policy focus at the state and local levels this year as well.

With passage of Ballot Measure 26-201 in 2018, the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF) will soon begin paying for weatherization, clean energy installation projects, workforce and contractor development, green infrastructure, and regenerative agriculture. Its focus is on serving historically marginalized community members.

This will allow more neighbors to also begin to focus on sustainable energy at our own homes and businesses, with funding supplied through this program. Those folks who may not have sufficient income or assets to qualify for the Clean Energy Works Oregon (CEWO) program will especially benefit from the new PCEF program.

What does this all mean?
It means that buildings are a big chunk of the problem when it comes to climate emissions. It’s not just the petroleum-powered cars most of us drive around. Our homes and business buildings depend on electricity that comes from a grid that still includes a sizable amount of fossil fuel-sourced power. Buildings also may directly burn fossil fuels in the form of natural gas to heat water and our interior air.

The more we insulate our buildings, install double-pane windows and plant trees to shade our buildings during the hottest days of the year, the less energy it will ultimately take to heat and cool them.

Through PCEF and CEWO, a combination of loans and grants should be available for most residents and businesses to retrofit buildings. We can make buildings more efficient by installing electric room heating/cooling systems, such as heat pumps and mini-split systems. We can retrofit them with hybrid electric water heating systems, and renewable energy generation and storage equipment.

There’s at least one promising way to meet the moment locally when it comes to coordinated community responses to the need to transition our buildings off fossil fuels. That’s to form local sustainable energy cooperatives to hire and train local residents to retrofit buildings.

Work would focus on:

• Increasing energy efficiency
• Switching heating, cooling, water heating and lighting systems over to the most efficient options available today • Installing renewable energy generation and storage equipment
• Installing grey water systems so trees planted in the yard to help cool the building receive water during summer droughts, even during outdoor watering curtailments

If you are or would like to be involved in such efforts, please contact me at LandUse@ConcordiaPDX.org.

—
Correction
The piece headlined “Let’s make 2021 the year of climate action” in the February CNews referenced the Clean Energy Works Oregon program, which is no longer available. CNews regrets the error.
—

Garlynn Woodsong lives on 29th Avenue, serves on the CNA board and is an avid bicyclist. He also is a dad who is passionate about the city his son will inherit. He is the planning + development partner with Cascadia Partners LLC, a local urban planning firm. Contact him at LandUse@ConcordiaPDX.org.

By Garlynn Woodsong | CNA Board Member, SW1 Land Use & Transportation Committee Chair

In early August, a mother and her son, a student at Vernon Elementary School, were traveling on North Portland Highway (Hwy 30) when she lost control of her vehicle, it crossed the center line and impacted with an unoccupied truck and fifth-wheel on the opposite shoulder.

The car burst into flames, and both vehicle occupants died in the resulting fire. Police report the vehicle was traveling at a high rate of speed before impact.

A year ago, this space reported on the Columbia/Lombard project that Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) had embarked upon to study conditions along those roadways, and recommend safety improvements.

Since that time, absolutely no safety improvements have been made to Lombard Street, meaning nothing prevents future tragedies such as this one from occurring again, and again and again.

It’s an unsafe highway, and the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) does not appear to feel any motivation in the slightest to fix it to make it safer for travelers and nearby residents.

On the contrary, ODOT appears to feel its only required role is to justify why continuing the status quo is the only outcome they’re interested in.

The time has thus come to remove North Portland Highway from ODOT’s jurisdiction, and to transfer responsibility for the roadway to PBOT. This will free the roadway from needing to meet ODOT standards, and allow for alternative design solutions to be implemented.

Concordia Neighborhood Association suggests the facility be put onto a “road diet.” The roadway cross-section would have a continuous sidewalk, street trees and a two-directional cycle track on the south side next to the neighborhood.

Then add another row of trees, on-street parking, a single eastbound traffic lane, a median with trees and turn pockets at intersections, and a single westbound traffic lane with a shoulder/ break-down lane.

The trees would limit the ability of traffic to cross the center line, reducing the severity of crashes. With only one lane in each direction, the temptation to speed to pass other vehicles would be eliminated and, with lower speeds, would also come fewer crashes and deaths.

A protected cycle track and new sidewalk would allow bicycles and pedestrians to travel east and west along the corridor safely and comfortably. The trees would provide shade to reduce the urban heat island effect, where large expanses of asphalt cause excessive heat on hot summer days. They would also help to capture pollution, trapping it on their exposed leaf and branch surfaces until it can be washed away in the next rain.

It’s past time to stop making excuses for why bad designs have to remain. It’s time to start building the safer future that we need to manifest to stop the senseless deaths on this blood-stained piece of local infrastructure.

Garlynn Woodsong lives on 29th Avenue, serves on the CNA board and is an avid bicyclist. He also is a dad who is passionate about the city his son will inherit. He is the planning + development partner with Cascadia Partners LLC, a local urban planning firm. Contact him at LandUse@ ConcordiaPDX.org.

By Garlynn Woodsong | CNA Board Member, SW1 CNA LUTC Chair

Alleys are helping Concordia neighbors engage in active transportation while socially distancing during this time of quarantine in the age of COVID-19.

For the section of the neighborhood west of 33rd Avenue, alleys double the number of north-south pedestrian connections on each block.

For neighbors – with dogs, other family members and/or cohabitants, or out walking solo – a new social custom has developed to look down a block for oncoming pedestrians and consider entering if seeing none, or to continue on otherwise.

When walking along east-west streets to the west of 33rd in Concordia, however, continuing on only means walking the depth of a standard lot in the neighborhood, or roughly 100 feet, before an alley is encountered.

At alleys, the diagnosis is a bit more complex. It’s not just a matter of oncoming traffic, there are also passability/blockage assessments that must be performed quickly.

Some of these assessments can be conducted visually, from the alley entrance. Others require entering the alley to continue the assessment beyond visual barriers, most likely overgrown vegetation.

There are certain pattern areas within the neighborhood as a whole, where there are clusters of alleys that share a certain look and type.

In general, there are three classes of alleys in Concordia:

• Paved alleys with concrete or sometimes asphalt providing a driving surface that doubles as a vegetation barrier, physically preventing the alley from becoming quickly overgrown each spring
• Gravel alleys that were, at one point, cleared, graded, graveled and that continue to be used to provide vehicle access to the rear of – at least some of – the properties they serve
• Overgrown alleys – maybe at some point in the distant past, were gravel alleys – that, over the years, neglect has allowed the vegetation to take over, with enormous expanses of thorny blackberry patches, impassable to all but the most intrepid, machete-armed pedestrian

I believe our challenge should be to turn all of the overgrown alleys in Concordia into gravel alleys – at least to the width of a pedestrian path – to strengthen the resilience of our neighborhood in providing a diversity of options for folks to walk and maintain social distancing whenever the need arises.

For all of us who live on alley frontages, however, let us please plant food for pollinators: wild flower mixes where appropriate, flowering vines to grow along fence-lines, flowering shrubs in the little nooks that are formed along the edges of the alleys from place to place.

Our city provides a wealth of biodiversity to support pollinators. Yet they still face threats, from the application on plants of chemical pesticides and fertilizers to plants death by highway.

Our alleys provide an opportunity to provide more food for pollinators and habitat for humans. Let’s celebrate them!

Garlynn Woodsong lives on 29th Avenue, serves on the CNA board and is an avid bicyclist. He also is a dad who is passionate about the city his son will inherit. He is the planning + development partner with Cascadia Partners LLC, a local urban planning firm. Contact him at LandUse@ConcordiaPDX.org.

By Garlynn Woodsong | CNA Board Member, SW CNA LUTC Chair

The largest project in Concordia funded by the 2016 Fixing Our Streets gas tax is scheduled to break ground this summer, as Alberta Street is repaved from 15th to 33rd avenues.

The project will take place a few blocks at a time, with the street periodically closed as needed to facilitate this. In addition to repaving, the project involves the rebuilding of many of the sidewalk ramps to bring them into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The city settled a lawsuit in 2018 with the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center. It requires the city’s pedestrian network to be brought into ADA compliance within 12 years of that date.

Approximately $10 million of work each year is needed to meet this goal.

One of the common improvements coming to Alberta Street is the replacement of a single diagonal ramp pointed into the center of the intersection from the sidewalk at the corner, with two ramps, one each facing the sidewalk on the other side of a single street.

All corners on Alberta Street were surveyed, resulting in a list of upgrades that also includes decreasing the grade of slopes, adding flat surfaces for landing areas and adding yellow bumpy pads where missing.

When asked if the project is expected to lead to increased speeding on Alberta Street, the response from the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) was that recent traffic counts from last July showed an “85th percentile speed of 24 mph.”

This means 85% of drivers were traveling at or below 24 mph. The only planned response is to measure speeds again after repaving. PBOT is not planning to install speed table crosswalks on Alberta Street – such as those found on 41st and 42nd avenues between Fremont and Knott streets – or install any other physical measures to slow traffic.

PBOT reported its plan is simply, “If speeds increase after paving, we can take new speed counts to see what the speed differential is before and after the paving work.”

Finally, the Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030 and the Portland’s Transportation System Plan both call for a separated, in-street facility on this exact stretch of Alberta Street, classified as a bikeway.

Without consulting with the community, PBOT staff made the decision, however, to ignore these classifications and instead simply repave the existing street cross section. For better or for worse, PBOT currently plans to finish the repaving of Alberta Street by the end of the year.

Garlynn Woodsong lives on 29th Avenue, serves on the CNA board and is an avid bicyclist. He also is a dad who is passionate about the city his son will inherit. He is the planning + development partner with Cascadia Partners LLC, a local urban planning firm. Contact him at LandUse@ ConcordiaPDX.org.