Category Archives: Land Use & Transportation

By Garlynn Woodsong | Chair, CNA LUTC

If it seems like the Portland Residential Infill Project has been dragging on for years, that’s because it’s true. The project began in autumn 2015. It will be four years later – autumn 2019 – before the project is likely to be adopted, at the very soonest.

So, what’s going on with it? Ever since last summer, the Portland Planning and Sustainability Commission (PSC) has been reviewing the staff proposal from April. Public comment was taken until mid-summer. Since then, PSC members have been voting on changes to recommend.

The most recent action was Dec. 11, when the PSC received a staff briefing on an updated economic analysis of the project. It reflects the PSC’s tentative amendments to the proposed draft from September, when it directed staff to revise the proposal to incrementally increase floor area limits for additional units.

This change would allow more housing options and expand the area within which those options would be allowed to all R2.5, R5 and R7 zones, with some exceptions for natural resources and hazards.

Key findings from the economic analysis include:

• The PSC’s revisions would significantly increase housing production in the R2.5, R5 and R7 zones across the next 20 years. An additional 24,000 housing units would be produced, accompanied by only a modest increase in demolitions – 117, which is fewer than six a year citywide.
• The incremental increase in floor area ratio (FAR) allowances for additional units provides a bigger incentive to build housing types other than singlefamily residences. FAR is the ratio between the floor area of the building and the area of the parcel that it sits on.
• The new missing middle housing types – duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and additional auxiliary dwelling units (ADUs) – have smaller unit sizes, which are an average of 56 percent less expensive than new single-family houses.

These reduced housing costs help to provide housing choices for people across a broader range of the income spectrum in more areas of the city.

The PSC is scheduled to receive a briefing on staff’s revised proposal, which should reflect the changes requested to date by the PSC. The PSC is scheduled to vote on recommendations to the city council in March.

City council is anticipated to begin public hearings on the project this summer. No council vote on the project is yet scheduled, but my guess is such a vote will not occur until the school year begins in the autumn, at the very earliest.

From the perspective of the Concordia Neighborhood Association – which has requested that the Portland Residential Infill Project include allowing fourplexes to maximize the potential for reduced housing costs in our neighborhood – the positive news is that the PSC agrees and has requested that fourplexes be added.

The additional good news is the economic analysis confirms that adding fourplexes – and scaling the allowable FAR with the number of units – will result in more, lower-priced units than either the status quo or staff’s original proposal.

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 | Chair, CNA LUTC

Perhaps you remember, or have heard about, when neighborhoods used to mean something in Portland.

At one point, neighborhood associations in Portland successfully defeated the Mount Hood Freeway proposal. It would have begun at the ramp that juts out into space at the east end of the Marquam Bridge and bulldozed a wide path to destroy neighborhoods on either side of southeast Clinton Street to Gresham.

That’s clout, and it enabled the monetary resources allocated to the freeway to instead go toward construction of the first modern light rail line in Portland.

The city, on the freeway proposal and others, used to listen to input from neighborhoods, to be swayed by neighborhoods’ advocacy. Nowadays, does a letter on neighborhood association letterhead mean anything? Should it?

The city of Portland says it weighs input from individuals equally with that from organizations, that everybody is equal in the eyes of the public process. What, then, is the incentive for neighbors to band together to engage in collective decision-making to advocate what we think best for both our neighborhood and the city? How can neighborhood input be meaningful again within the city’s public processes? Should it?

One issue, indeed perhaps the main issue, revolves around physical presence. Everybody is busy. Parents are raising children, and most people are working to pay the rent or the mortgage and maintenance.

There are folks who have achieved sufficient stability in their lives to be able to make the time to physically show up and volunteer. And they usually represent just one demographic cross section of their neighborhoods.

Should people be required to show up in person to neighborhood meetings for their voices to be meaningful within the neighborhood association’s internal deliberative process? What about attending only periodically? Should the occasionally-voiced opinion carry more, less or the same weight as that of someone who shows up regularly?

Perhaps we need to look for more solutions to enable greater inclusivity. Are there various ways for people to engage on their own schedules? Can they do that without having to physically show up to regular meetings to participate in ongoing conversations within the shared forum of neighbors? It seems that, following director Suk Rhee’s visit to Concordia in September, there may be an opportunity to engage with the Office of Community and Civic Life to address these issues.

There’s a wealth of technology we might apply to include more voices in the neighborhood association processes. Our task is to decide what, how, within what constraints, and for what purpose.

The CNA Land Use & Transportation Committee (LUTC) will examine these and related concerns. We welcome your ideas about how we might meet these challenges to best represent the needs of our entire community.

Please email us at LUTC@ ConcordiaPDX.org to share your thoughts, and I’ll include them in a follow-up piece here in CNews. And we’ll let you know, via CNews and Facebook, when the LUTC meetings are scheduled to discuss those contributions and more… and how you can participate.

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 | Chair, CNA LUTC

This election isn’t a national presidential election, so some folks may be tempted to tune out. I would like to encourage you instead to engage, pay attention and make your voice count.

Here’s a run-down of ballot measures that may impact Concordia neighbors.

Measure 26-200 imposes campaign finance contributions and expenditures, and requires campaign communications to identify funder, within the city.

Measure 26-201 imposes a 1 percent surcharge on Portland retailers with more than $1 billion in total annual revenue and Portland annual revenue more than $500,000. It would create the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund for Clean Energy Projects (renewable energy, building efficiency upgrades, green building design, tree canopy expansion); clean energy job training efforts for traditionally underemployed/disadvantaged workers; and future innovation efforts.

Measure 26-199 issues bonds to fund affordable housing in the metro region. If Measure 102 is also approved, these bonds could be used to enter into public-private partnerships to deliver more housing units than would otherwise be possible using the same amount of bond proceeds.

Measure 102 allows cities and counties to use bonds to fund privately-owned affordable housing. This is a companion to Measure 26-199, which would issue those bonds within the metro region. This is Metro’s effort to “do something” about housing affordability in the Portland region.

Measure 103 permanently exempts a wide range of transactions from any taxes and fees. It was devised as a way to prevent the city, or any other local Oregon jurisdiction, from enacting a tax on soda pop to help to pay for the additional medical expenses imposed on public healthcare by regular soda pop consumption. It has since broadened in scope, however, and now also proposes to block taxes or fees on a broad range of transactions, including Oregon’s bottle deposit fee, the fuel tax and restaurant meals. While it is described as banning a grocery tax, it is broadly written and does much more than that.

Measure 104 expands the Legislature’s three-fifths supermajority requirement from taxes to fees or taxloophole-removal efforts. This would make it much more difficult to do the business of government, which includes setting taxes and fees, and make it possible for the minority party to expand its veto power and thus its influence in the state capitol.

Measure 105 repeals Oregon’s sanctuary state laws, which currently limit the ability of local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Oregon’s 31-year-old sanctuary state laws were enacted originally to ensure that citizens and non-citizens alike would feel free to report crimes and testify in court to assist law enforcement in arresting and prosecuting crimes more serious than immigration violations.

Measure 106 prohibits public funds from being spent on abortions. No matter how you vote, please vote Nov. 6!

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 | Chair, CNA LUTC

I’m a planner who specializes in the impacts of urban development on greenhouse gas emissions. As a realtor and a general contractor, I spend a lot of time on job sites talking to people in the trades, in offices with professionals hearing about the latest technology, then installing it or otherwise having the opportunity to observe it in action.

I’m very interested in technologies that allow us to fuel-switch away from carbon-based fuels and toward electricity and other options to achieve net-zero-emission lifestyles. Installing solar panels on a house — ideally a minimum of three kilowatt-hours capacity per roof — provides power for water, home heating and home cooling services to shift efficiently toward electricity.

In this context, I share with you three strategies to support fuel switch to electric in pursuit of net zero, with which I have some experience:

Whole-house fans
There are two basic types:

• A standard insulated-door fan sits at the top of the livable space. When turned on, the insulated door on top opens to allow the fan to blow the hot air from the house interior into the attic, where it escapes through roof venting. You may have to add more roof vents to provide sufficient square footage for quick, efficient ventilation.
• An in-line fan can either hook up to your existing HVAC ducting system, or be installed as a new duct run, to suck hot air out of the house.

Both use much less energy than air conditioning systems, but during much of the year can be just as effective at cooling your house.

The downside is they cool the house by sucking in outside air through open windows in your house. Thus, if operated when outside air is not noticeably cooler than interior air at the top of the house, they won’t make much difference.

At all other times, however, they really work well, especially at providing moderate-weather cooling.

Mini-split systems
These come in two varieties:

• Ductless mini-split systems are the most common. An interior “head” unit – a rounded rectangle about 18 by 36 inches that sits high up on the wall – is connected via heating/cooling pipes and an electrical cable to an external unit, just like built-in whole-house air conditioners. It also features a condensate drain tube, which can either be routed to a drain internal to the house – like a floor or laundry drain – or to the outside of the house through a wall.
• Ducted mini-split systems use ductwork to distribute their climate control services to each room.

Hybrid heat pump water heaters
These are the latest and greatest in water heating. Five years ago, it was tankless water heaters, but these units are now available for one-half to one-third the price. They operate by using a heat exchanger to suck heat out of the ambient air, and use it to bring the tank of water up to room temperature.

The electrical heating element is then used only to elevate the water from room temperature to the desired setting. They are more efficient at heating water than anything except passive solar panels. However, they have two issues:

• They can be loud. Not just a little loud, but jet-plane-taking-off loud.
• Did I mention they suck heat out of a room? Yeah. They need at least 100 square feet of room to operate, and more is better. They will keep a room that size cool like a wine cellar, by transferring room heat into the water. They should be placed accordingly away from sleeping areas and in open areas with lots of cubic feet of air is available from which to suck heat. Garages, attics, basements and large utility rooms are thus the best places to put them.

All three of these are technologies that will save you money on home operational costs. Each home and each system would have its own cost-benefit ratio and, if you’re curious, look into each one further.

Although this sort of home energy efficiency upgrade discussion is a bit beyond our usual discussions, the CNA Land Use and Transportation Committee meets the third Wednesday of each month from 7 to 9 p.m. in McMenamins Kennedy School Community Room. I encourage you to join us Sept. 19 for a discussion of current land use & transportation issues in our community.

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 Steve Elder | CNA Media Team

In the near future you’ll be seeing more TriMet buses in the neighborhood, but they won’t be just picking up and delivering passengers.

TriMet is in the process of having a new bus operations facility in the neighborhood for bus storage and maintenance. It will be on the five acres on the north side of Columbia Boulevard, just east of 42nd Avenue, in the Cully neighborhood. Since 1960, the property has been the home of Peterson Cat, the Caterpillar equipment dealer.

“TriMet’s 10-year expansion of transit is accelerating and we are adding more than 11,000 weekly service hours coming in the next five years,” said Roberta Altstadt, TriMet media relations & communications manager.

“To make this happen TriMet will be adding buses, hiring more operators and increasing necessary support staff and equipment. This will require space TriMet does not presently have.”

TriMet currently has about 690 buses and, by 2020, expects the need to grow to more than 900 buses. Its three bus operations facilities are already at capacity, so the service expansion will require a fourth bus headquarters.

TriMet looked at several locations for a fourth garage and the Caterpillar property was felt to have the best potential. Among the criteria is the proximity to the service area and access to major arterials to minimize bus travel to and from the route to the garage.

“Locating a garage in northeast Portland, where TriMet has some of its most robust bus service, allows buses to begin and end their routes closer to their home bases,” Altstadt explained. “This minimizes the time buses spend in traffic between the garage and the starts or ends of their service routes.”

TriMet’s outreach team has been working to notify residents and business owners in the area. It has sent postcards to addresses within a one-half-mile of the Caterpillar site.

What about an environmental impact from leaky buses or bulldozers? “Any potential cleanup is to be determined as we learn about the site condition,” Altstadt said. “TriMet values sustainability and we will meet or exceed environmental standards.”

What about buses going through Concordia, particularly 33rd Avenue? “Traffic studies are underway to determine what improvements TriMet might make to adjacent streets and sidewalks,” she explained.

“It is likely that a traffic signal and pedestrian crossings will be added at northeast Columbia and northeast 42nd.”

Steve Elder, East2@ ConcordiaPDX.org, is an inactive lawyer, a developer, activist and old grouch.

By Tamara Anne Fowler | CNA Media Team

Organic. Non-GMO. Humane pet food. And now intentional communities are the wave of a green future. One is in next door neighborhood Cully.

An intentional community is a cluster of private homes, with shared interior and exterior spaces, designed to benefit groups of people of all ages. This makes it easy to form clubs, organize child and elder care, and to carpool.

Cohousing facilitates interaction among neighbors and thereby provides social, practical, economic, and environmental benefits.

Members share common amenities such as garden plots, open outdoor areas, tools, a common house for large gatherings, guest rooms and more. They work together to enhance and beautify the landscape. That also creates a sense of being part of something larger than themselves – while they also enjoy private homes to retreat to with family and friends.

Cully Grove is the most recent, full-scale intentional community built by Eli Spevak, the owner of development company Orange Splot LLC, a company named after a favorite children’s book.

Eli partnered with Mark Lakeman. Mark, the owner of Communitecture, has worked with Eli for more than a decade. He started with volunteer work at Dignity Village.

Cully Grove homes were presold to people looking for community living. Some of the residents, including Eli’s family, had previously lived at other cohousing communities.

The development sits on nearly two acres right in the heart of Cully near 42nd Avenue. It is comprised of single-family residences with a large shared garden, bike parking, tool library, interconnecting pathways, and a central grove of trees perfect for planned or spontaneous gatherings.

Eli assembled the Mason Street property in 2014 and 2015. After going through several design iterations with Communitecture, they submitted for permits in late summer 2016 and broke ground in spring 2017.

It offers opportunities for those looking to move either up, or down. “Orange Splot focuses on walkable neighborhoods, where it’s possible to get to transit, groceries, restaurants, schools and parks without always having to jump in a car,” pointed out Amber Turner, principal real estate broker.

The development is within easy walking distance of an Albertson’s grocery store, coffee shops Bison and Beeswing, the five-corner restaurants and food carts, and less than 100 feet from a bus stop. It’s also within easy walking distance of Wellington Park and Rigler and Scott elementary schools.

Tamara Anne Fowler is a copy/content editor, fiction editor and accountability coach. Visit her at EditKitten.com, email her at Tamara@editkitten.com or call 310.359.6038. She would love to hear from you.

By Garlynn Woodsong | CNA LUTC Committee Chair

It’s an exciting time to be involved with the Concordia Neighborhood Association (CNA) Land Use and Transportation Committee (LUTC). That is fortuitous, because it also just so happens the committee has four current vacancies.

In May, the CNA Board approved sending another comment letter to the city of Portland concerning the Residential Infill Project (RIP). Once again, the board acted upon a recommendation from the LUTC to ask the city to make fourplexes legal within the zones covered by the project, among ot he r re commended changes to staff’s proposed plan.

The board has gone on record with letters recommended by the LUTC such as this multiple times during the past four years. The board’s position on this issue comes from a deep-seated desire for more equitable outcomes from the local housing market.

Recently, the LUTC has worked with the board to apply for a pilot program for residential parking permits to help manage parking demand adjacent to the Alberta Street commercial district.

For many years, the LUTC and board have worked to try to improve bicycling in the neighborhood –and indeed around the city and region – recognizing that bicyclists often leave neighborhood boundaries

Efforts include:

• Working with the city on the 20s Bikeway Project
• Advocating for better bicycle access from downtown through Sullivan’s Gulch to the Columbia River Gorge
• Advocating for more physical diversion to prevent automobile cut-through traffic from damaging the city’s investment in bicycle greenways to provide safe bicycle infrastructure for Portlanders of all ages.

The LUTC is now recruiting new members to bring new energy and to help share the load of working on these exciting topics and more.

If you, or somebody you know who lives, works, or owns property in Concordia – and who is interested in these or similar issues related to land use and transportation – please come to a meeting.

We meet the third Wednesday of each month from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Community Room in the southeast corner of McMenamins Kennedy School. Our next meeting is Wednesday, June 20.

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 Chair, CNA LUTC

Parking in the neighborhood was the focus of the Concordia Neighborhood Association (CNA) general membership meeting Sept. 6.

Guests for the evening were Jay Rogers from the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), and Tony Jordan from Portlanders for Parking Reform. They joined a room full of neighbors who came to discuss residential on-street parking.

The PBOT representative walked folks through the current city of Portland policies related to on-street parking, as well as the pilot project currently authorized by city council and underway with residential permit parking in northwest Portland’s Alphabet District.

The current policies – outside of the Alphabet District pilot project – were developed in the 1980s and are largely focused on areas adjacent to downtown that experience large volumes of commuters driving in to park while at work.

These 30-year-old policies were not developed to address parking problems related to large amounts of visitors – for various purposes – at many times through the day and night, week and weekend. The policies were not developed to address the situation of greater residential demand for than supply of on-street parking.

The Portlanders for Parking Reform representative then laid out the basic policy points of the residential on-street parking policy toolbox that city council requested, staff developed, and that city council then failed to adopted last December.

This toolbox was developed specifically to address the parking problems on residential streets in Portland today, including how to handle the needs of residents and visitors in neighborhoods that don’t just see commuter-related parking issues.

The toolbox would empower neighborhoods to work directly with PBOT to develop tailored policies to fit the problems they see in the places where they see them. That includes the ability to design policies to match the results of surveys of on-street parking use on individual block faces.

Neighbors had many questions for both guests about parking. A civilized, neighborly discussion ensued concerning what would happen under a residential permit parking system:

• What the money would be used for
• How a parking benefit district would operate
• How the neighborhood could design policies to mitigate the impact on lowincome residents
• What the equity impact would be on property owners
• Whether the revenue would be primarily to benefit the city or the neighborhood
• Many other related issues

By the end of the evening, it seemed clear that neighbors wanted to see the parking policy toolbox adopted by city council.

Then they would have the option to decide for themselves what parking policies to implement in the neighborhood – when, how and where. That would also include the details of how much it would cost, how the funds would be used and who would pay.

The CNA Board of Directors recommends Portland City Council put the Parking Policy Toolbox back on its agenda, and vote to pass it ASAP.