Failed Smart Growth promises in Portland's Suburbs.(Lesson for Marin)

The lost vision for east Portland's Gateway 

Broken Promises: A failed vision for GatewayOver the past two decades, planners and economic developers have crafted multiple visions for remaking Gateway into a true regional center. All of them called of the district to become denser, more walkable and generally more urban in feel. That hasn't happened.Editor's Note: Be certain to watch the three minute video above. I imagine many of us in Marin will be frustrated like the residents of East Portland, ten years from now, with a county ruined from overdevelopment and failed promises.  Like Portland, Marin is not considering basic services, like water, sewer, school capacity, road widening and other problems of rapid urbanization. We can do better in Marin. In the sixties we led the nation in conservation when we saved West Marin.  We will lead the nation again and push back against these latest hyperdevelopment schemes .  We will Save Marin (again).

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By Anna Griffin | agriffin@oregonian.com 
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on July 12, 2013 at 11:14 AM, updated August 23, 2013 at 3:21 PM

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Gateway was going to be something special.
Two decades ago, when planners, elected officials and economic developers looked at this collection of working-class neighborhoods and worn-down commercial strips, they predicted big, bold things.
Gateway would be a "regional center," a bustling hub of high-tech jobs and educational institutions on Portland's eastern edge. Gateway would be a "second downtown," with all the parks, bike lanes, coffee shops and density to go with it.

Despite years of planning, Gateway remains largely suburban in feel.Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian

Instead, Gateway is underdeveloped, underutilized and under-served. Rather than the best of urban life in a more suburban setting, residents and business owners have usually received the worst of both.Taxpayers have spent millions to remake this literal doorway to east Portland. Yet Gateway remains a place where public services cost more, cars trump mass transit, property values lag - and residents expect people in power to let them down.
Built by Fred Meyer
A half century ago, Gateway wasn't even a place. That was its appeal.
Grocery store owner Fred Meyer, looking to expand, was tired of Portland regulations. He picked a spot amid the orchards of unincorporated midcounty, the no man's land between Portland and Gresham, and in 1954 built one of the region's first car-centric, suburban-style shopping centers.

Fred Meyer, here celebrating the second anniversary of Gateway Shopping Center with his wife, chose to build in midcounty to avoid city regulations.The Oregonian

He named the place Gateway, and erected a tall concrete arch signifying the entry to a new kind of community."People looked to Gateway as the answer to urban decay: You don't want to live in the city but you don't want to be that far out," said Fred Sanchez, a real-estate broker and a leadingbooster of Gateway since the late 1960s. "This was the new frontier: 'Go east, young man!'"
Orchards gave way to subdivisions. A 1953 Oregonian advertisement for homes in Lorene Park boasted of "modern ranch homes" built with sidewalks, "ornamental streetlights" and paved streets.
"Yes, for living at its best, for real luxury living, Lorene Park is your answer," the ad said.
The boom didn't last long. Portland successfully revitalized closer-in streetcar neighborhoods, slowing outward migration. Those who did ditch the city for suburbia instead chose newer subdivisions in Clark, Clackamas and Washington counties, lands of lower taxes and more services.
Portland annexed most of the neighborhoods around Gateway in the 1980s, to the chagrin of many residents who chose their homes specifically because they weren't inside city limits. Parallel to annexation, Portland built the Mid County Sewer Project. The city charged property owners to upgrade from septic tanks and cesspools to new sewer lines.
"They promised us all these services, then the first thing they did was send us a bill," said Linda Robinson, who grew up in Gresham and bought a home in Gateway in 1986. "That sort of set a mood."

Broken Promises

Follow The Oregonian's series on the future of east Portland, looking closely at promises not kept.
But we need your help. Do you live, work, study or own property east of 82nd Avenue? Tell us your story.

In 1992 mayoral candidate Vera Katz and her young campaign manager, Sam Adams, seized on east Portland's anger. Her opponent, then-City Commissioner Earl Blumenauer, ran the city sewer department. So Katz kicked off her campaign at an east Portland diner and made improvements in the neighborhoods beyond 82nd Avenue a key election promise:
"People in that community feel that the door has shut on them," she said at one business association meeting. "They're absolutely right."
Among political types, the sense was that a critical mass of voters was coming to the city's newest neighborhoods, particularly to those adjacent to Gateway. Metro planners looked at2040 growth projections and declared the area one of eight "regional centers."
City leaders, including future Mayor Charlie Hales, pushed for its inclusion: "We want it to be urban, but quieter and greener than downtown Portland," said Hales, who ran the city's planning department at the time.
In reports and studies, planners promised huge changes, including construction of a network of connector streets, an education center, a government center, parks galore, wider sidewalks, a performing arts space and bike lanes. The district's main drag, 102nd Avenue, would become a "boulevard with landscaped walkways, storefront windows, benches and fountains." Residents would eat outside at cafes and coffee shops and gather at a new "Gateway Station Plaza."
A 2000 study summed up the promise of Gateway: "More than anything else, it is expected to become a place to be proud of - an embodiment of the values and aspirations of the east Portland community."

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PORTLAND, OREGON - June 19, 2013 - No one can question the mix and diversity of businesses along NE Halsey Street. Over the past two decades, planners and economic developers predicted that Gateway, because of its proximity to Portland, its location at the intersection of two highways, the placement of the transit center and the MAX, would become a regional center second to downtown Portland. Although the area has grown, that vision hasn't become reality. Many feel Gateway could be much more and that its attributes have been squandered by inattention of leaders. Even so, the area is primed for new development and interest from home buyers and businesses. Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian

Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian

Big plans never became realityFew of those envisioned improvements happened.
Gateway remains decidedly suburban, with wide streets carrying traffic at speeds that preclude walking and biking. 102nd Avenue has new trees and banners yet remains a fast-moving four-lane mishmash of aging strip malls, car lots and fast-food outlets, with the occasional 1950s house nodding to the district's curious and inconsistent zoning history.
There is no public square or plaza. The city owns land for a park at Northeast Halsey and 106th Avenue but lacks the money to build or operate it, and neighbors say drug dealers and homeless people plague the property.
Though his concrete arch was razed in 1991, Fred Meyer would have no trouble recognizing the place.
"There's been a lot of talk, but very little has actually happened," said Jerry Koike, a longtime neighborhood activist. "Everybody talks about wanting to do things out here, but the execution is always about helping downtown."
The recessions of 2001 and 2008 slowed development. Residents also blame government for years of benign neglect and poor prioritizing.
City leaders created a Gateway urban-renewal district in 2001, meaning that the city can borrow money to make public improvements, then use the ensuing property tax rise to repay debt. Elsewhere in Portland, urban renewal has paid for game-changing projects, transforming South Waterfront, the Pearl District and theNortheast Portland commercial strips of Alberta Street and Mississippi Avenue, for example.
Gateway's list of completed projects is very different and less impressive.
Planners who took part in the creation of the Gateway district recommended that the first projects built with urban renewal money generate new tax revenue. Instead, the district began with a compromise. In exchange for City Council support to create the area, members of a citizens advisory committee agreed to spend their initial $682,000 on the "children's receiving center," a temporary home at 102nd and Burnside for children declared wards of the court.
"We were told that we needed to do this or we would face a much harder time getting the district approved. We were told, 'You guys aren't against children, are you?'" said Arlene Kimura, president of the Hazelwood Neighborhood Association. "In hindsight, it set a bad precedent."
Gateway's urban renewal money contributed $3 million toward extending light rail to Clackamas County, built a $9 million parking garage at the transit center and covered half the cost of buying the future park site at 106th and Halsey.

Glisan Commons, an affordable housing project built with urban-renewal money, is an example of the taller, denser development envisioned for Gateway.Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian

The district's latest high-dollar urban renewal project is another that doesn't put new property tax dollars back into Gateway: The Glisan Commons affordable housing development will feature 127 apartments on top of a new home for Ride Connection, a nonprofit that helps senior citizens and people with disabilities find transit options.Even the district's one clear economic success raises eyebrows.
The three-story, $3 million Oregon Clinic complex, paid for with New Market tax credits earned with city help, is the first thing riders see when they arrive at the transit center. It brought more than 300 new jobs to Gateway and was the first Class A office building erected in the district in 20 years. Yet it's also a nondescript box with none of the street-level charm or retail needed to key transit-friendly development - or called for repeatedly in all those plans for turning Gateway into a second downtown.
"I don't think anyone in charge was thinking long-term about why urban renewal was created here," said Colleen Gifford, who runs the Growing Gateway EcoDistrict, a nonprofit that promotes environmentally friendly development. "They've consistently taken money to do what people downtown wanted."
Hamstrung by infrastructure and financial realities
City leaders say it's unfair to compare urban renewal in east Portland with more central locations.
"I don't think what's happened in Gateway is in any way a result of the projects we've chosen to invest in," said Patrick Quinton, the Portland Development Commission's executive director. "By no means do I consider Gateway a success, but I think the broader market has a bigger impact than we do."

The view from east Portland

"We get ripped off by paying a disproportionate share of taxes for services that we don't even get."
— Carrie A., Montavilla"The best thing about east Portland is the diversity. There is so much variety in lifestyle and experiences with diversity."
—Lauren Ashley J., Powellhurst-Gilbert

See more

Gateway has a number of factors working against dramatic, quick change. It contains few large parcels of land owned by one or two developers, and thus has few properties ripe for projects that can change the course of a street or commercial strip seemingly overnight. Gateway is also a much smaller urban-renewal district - 658 acres compared with 2,800 in Lents and 3,990 in Interstate - meaning it has a much smaller tax base to generate redevelopment money.
City planners and economic developers are hamstrung by the realities of underlying infrastructure established when Multnomah County, with its far more hands-off approach to development, ran the area. Gateway has those wide, pedestrian-deterring streets, few east-west connectors and a hodgepodge of large and small plots that make orderly, grid-style development difficult. Removing even one parking spot from Gateway Shopping Center, let alone the hundreds required to create a plaza or movie theater, would require every tenant's approval.
Another, less tangible obstacle: City leaders and the people who live and work in Gateway haven't shared the same vision for what this neck of Portland should become.

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Early on in the process of creating the new urban-renewal district, neighbors balked at giving the city powers to condemn property in the name of blight removal. Early rezoning efforts allowed 14-story buildings in Gateway, until residents objected. Early plans for urban renewal would have spread tax-increment financing over twice as many acres, but the district shrank to avoid residential neighborhoods.Planners say their vision for Gateway may have been, in hindsight, unsophisticated and overly ambitious.
Growth is still coming
Metro still predicts enormous growth for Gateway over the next three decades. Computer models project the area from I-205 to the Gresham line will grow by up to 60 percent by 2035, with many of those newcomers landing here.
For one thing, the district remains uniquely situated: It is the single most accessible spot in the entire area, within easy reach of two highways, a dozen bus lines and light rail in four directions. For another, neighborhoods closer to the central city can only take so many more residents. "Go east, young man" still applies.
The question is whether that growth will improve quality of life and city budgets or add to east Portland's existing woes.
"Sixty-five million people go through Gateway by car or MAX each year. If we can get something that makes people stop and look at what we have, everything changes," said Ted Gilbert, a developer who owns the equivalent of eight city blocks near the transit center.
He says that's Gateway Green, a grass-roots effort to turn 35 acres along I-205 into a public park for hiking and biking. Other advocates suggest building an international market, appropriate in a community with 70 languages spoken or an educational center to serve David Douglas and Parkrose school districts and local colleges.
All the ideas center on the same theme: giving people a reason to stop in Gateway.
"We have no signature place," Kimura said.

Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian

Small tweaks could help. The Transit Center is a small hub of activity surrounded by an ocean of concrete. There's a small concession stand, but no place away from the din of arriving buses and trains to talk with friends or enjoy the view of Rocky Butte over coffee.Consultants who looked at the station last year pointed out "a notable prevalence of negative signage such as no parking and no smoking ... which generally creates an atmosphere of mistrust and hostility." No signs direct new arrivals to any local landmarks. When the shopping center was rebuilt in the late
(Cont...)

Working class priced out, kicked out in new Portland housing boom

Construction boom transforms Portland, pushes rents to new heights

Developers have flocked to Portland to build high-end apartments. Here's how it's unfolding at one Southeast Portland neighborhood.

By Jeff Manning | The Oregonian/OregonLive 

Enrique Rios, a 26-year-old Los Angeles transplant, lives with his fiancée and small dog in a 250-square-foot "micro-unit" apartment in Northwest Portland. It is the size of a college dorm room with space for a bed, a toilet and not much else. He cooks meals in a communal kitchen shared with other tenants.
Rios pays $995 a month.Seattle developer Footprint Northwest LLC bought the home that was at the site on Northwest Thurman Street in 2013, replacing it with a five-story, 54-unit building.
Call them "a-pod-ments," or hipster hovels, there are now hundreds of these micro-units in Portland. They are part of a real estate gold rush that is transforming Portland and is propelling housing costs to levels never before seen.
Seven years since the last housing bust flattened Oregon's economy, developers have let loose another tidal wave of building. From the red-hot Clinton neighborhood in Southeast Portland to St. Johns, developers are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into glitzy apartment buildings.
Despite 22,000 new apartments coming on line in the metropolitan area since 2012, more than half in Portland proper, vacancies remain practically non-existent. That has freed apartment owners to charge eye-popping rents -- think $1,200 for a 400-square-foot studio, as much as double that for a one-bedroom.
The average rent in Portland has jumped 41 percent since 2010 to $1,242, according to Axiometrics, a Dallas real estate analysis firm.
The boom raises troubling issues of economic inequality, as rent hikes have spiraled far beyond workers' wage increases. The posh new apartment houses are prevalent on Portland's east side, historically the gritty home to the city's working class. Even developers share foreboding that the central city is becoming a playground for the affluent while the young and the old and the people in the service economy no longer can afford to live there.
Critics have coined a nifty phrase for the trend -- "economic apartheid."
Affordable housing has become a hot political issue up and down the West Coast as prices continue to escalate. But addressing the downside of popularity and growth is no easy task. Said one local planner: "This is capitalism. How do you fight it?"
While bureaucrats mull policy, people are struggling to stay in their homes.
"We're getting a hundred calls a week from local people in some sort of housing crisis," said Bobby Weinstock, of Northwest Pilot Project.
Developers discover Portland
Real estate developer Patrick Kessi has brought the apartment boom to St. Johns, the blue-collar neighborhood where he attended college and raised his family. His company in January completed the Marvel 29, a 165-unit, four-story apartment building in the neighborhood's commercial district.

The building filled in just six months, fast enough to convince Kessi he wasn't charging enough rent. Nine months after the building opened, Kessi upped the rents on select units 30 percent or more. Rent for a 400-square-foot studio with a view of the St. Johns Bridge increased from $900 to $1,300 a month.
For years, the $3 per-square-foot barrier was to the Portland apartment rental market as the four-minute mile was to track. It was a price few developers dared charge.
"Now, we've broken through $3 and we're headed for $4 per square foot," said Mark Madden, a local developer who's built about 600 units, about half of them micro-units, since 2010.
To be sure, the apartment boom is a problem many cities wish they had.
The construction cranes dotting Portland's skyline mean jobs, tax revenue, and increasing property values. The developers are here because people are moving here, attracted by the vibe, the climate and environment. Portland's population has jumped by more than 36,000 since 2010.
Under the typical formula used by economists, the city would need 15,700 new units to house that kind of growth. But because so many Portlanders live alone – 35 percent, well beyond the U.S. average – the actual need is significantly higher, city officials say.
The target market for the developers are the thousands of highly paid tech workers now working in the central city, particularly transplants from the Bay Area and Seattle who view Portland housing as a bargain.
"The city is really attracting a lot of young, educated people and those people are attracting companies with jobs," said Sam Rodriguez of Mill Creek Residential, a Texas-based developer.
It wasn't too long ago that condominiums were developer's product of choice. But today, it's all about rentals. Between Millennials who can't borrow or don't want to be tied down and baby boomers who want to retire in the central city, the urban apartment market is hot.
"You have this confluence of the two largest demographics in the country," said Homer Williams, a Portland developer. "You've got the baby boomers downsizing and the Millennials who can't upsize."
Dennis Sackhoff made his fortune building single-family houses through Arbor Homes. But he saw the demographic trends and pivoted to multifamily. His new company, Urban Development Group, has built more than 650 apartments in the last three years.
National and regional developers also have discovered Portland.
Mill Creek has built or is under contract to build 1,600 apartments, and is considering another 200 to 400.
American Assets Trust of San Diego is finishing up 657 apartments in the Lloyd Center and will soon break ground on a 1,000-unit apartment project nearby.
Capstone Partners completed 975 units, including the Grant Park village apartments in the Irvington neighborhood and the Burnside 26 in the inner eastside.
In addition to the 750 units he's already built, Madden is planning another 180.
Between them, these five companies have invested more than a billion dollars building more than 5,000 apartments since 2010.
Supply and demand
Because of the strong in-migration, vacancies hover at just 3 percent, which gives landlords enormous leverage to raise rents. Portlanders suffered a 15 percent year-over-year average rent increase in the 12 months ended in August, the steepest increase in the country, according to Axiometrics.
As a result, Williams said, the portion of income Portlanders can expect to devote to housing has increased from 25 to 35 percent. Renters moving from major West Coast cities are used to paying 40 to 50 percent of their income for housing.
The escalating rents in Portland have attracted the biggest institutional investors in the world, who are buying apartment houses at hefty premiums.
Like home-flippers from the last housing boom, the developers are now reselling buildings only recently completed to big institutional investors. Mill Creek in July sold the Cordelia Apartments in Northwest Portland for $47.5 million to TIAA-Cref. A month later, Capstone sold the Burnside 26 to BlackRock, a huge financial firm, for $41.5 million, a record for an eastside property.
Based on numbers provided by Capstone, it appears the BlackRock sale generated an $11 million profit – more than 30 percent. The company declined to confirm that number.
BlackRock almost immediately raised the rents. Candace Camarillo said after just seven months in the building, she was informed the rent for her 683-square-foot one-bedroom would jump 23 percent to $1,895 a month.
Camarillo, a 35-year-old software developer, moved.
Terminated at the Sovereign
Colby Gillespie, 63, had every intention of living the rest of his life in his studio in the Sovereign Apartments in downtown Portland. He lived in the building at Southwest Broadway and Madison since 1980 and the $750 monthly rent fit his grocery checker's budget.
But the new owner of the building had other ideas. In May, Randall Investment Co. informed Gillespie and the residents of the other 43 units that a planned renovation required everyone to be out by the end of the year.
"I have no idea where I'm going to go," Gillespie said. "I'm really angry. It's all very cold and corporate."
Gillespie and his neighbors are suddenly among Portland's "displaced," those low- and middle-income locals forced out by the boom. While the big new projects have gotten the headlines, smaller operators have been snapping up dozens of smaller, older apartment buildings.
Tenants are often forced out by building renovations or rent increases they can't afford.
Advocacy groups struggle to bring attention to the impact. The Community Alliance of Tenants claims hundreds of Portlanders have been forced out by landlords seeking higher rents -- known in the rental business as a no-cause termination. Last week, the group declared a renters' state of emergency and called for a year-long moratorium on no-cause terminations and stricter notice of rent hikes.
The next day, Portland Commissioner Dan Saltzman said he would introduce new tenant protections requiring that landlords give a minimum of 90 days notice of a pending termination – up from the current 30 days.
Whatever new protections are enacted, it comes too late for residents of the Sovereign.
Randall bought the building for $3.7 million from an affiliate of the Oregon Historical Society in May 2014. The company didn't return telephone calls seeking comment.
For a year, it seemed like life would carry on as usual. Helena Thompson, 51, moved into the Sovereign in February 2015. No one from Randall warned the musician and photographer her stay would be short, she said.
Three months later, Randall made it official: Tenants had to be out by year's end.
They scrambled for affordable alternatives.
Thompson is leaving Portland. A former San Francisco resident, she said she's familiar with gentrification and has no desire to watch it happen in Portland.
Gillespie lucked into a Northwest Portland apartment. His rent, though, jumped 28 percent.
"It's just on the edge of what I can afford," Gillespie said. "But I'm one of the lucky few who found something."

From "Up Sucker CreeK" Charting the demolition of Single Family Homes. (to Build Multi-Unit Apartment Buildings)

Demolition derby

It's a race to destroy our present and our past 

And the future doesn't look very bright either

This website intrigues and depresses me.  Portland Chronicle charts the demolition of houses in Multnomah County.  They have been extremely busy this year.  Below are maps of demolitions in Portland in 2015 to date, and all of 2014.  From the website you can zoom in to see exact locations.  From the menu you can select the list of demolitions and count them.  I did not take the time to do this - the list was too long.

What would such a list look like for Lake Oswego?  How many tear-downs are there per acre (not counting lakes or rivers) in each city?   It would be an interesting comparison, but it is distressing no matter which city you live in.  

The Next Stage of development of Marin is upzoning Single Family Home Neighborhoods like Portland and Seattle. (Important film for Marin)

Den$ity: Profit Over People in Portland, Oregon from Straw Bale Films on Vimeo.

This is an important film for the people of Marin to watch.  Portland, Oregon is thought to be the "cutting edge" of smart growth policies for densification.   Marin undoubtedly is heading this way.

Last year, Planning Commissioners openly talked about the elimination of "racist" single family home zoning.  They contend that building apartments is the only way neighborhoods can become more inclusive.

The Community Development Department has been advocating "densification" policies along the "101 Priority Development Area".  Although it is no longer "official" planning is underway to urbanize all areas within 1/2 mile of the 101 corridor.

Portland Housing: Density at Any Cost?

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Portland’s regional planning agency, Metro, recently released its 2014 Urban Growth Report, which projects that the region will gain 300,000 to 500,000 new residents between 2010 and 2035. The report suggests that it may not be necessary to expand the region’s urban-growth boundary to house those new residents because people are willing to live in smaller homes on smaller lots.

That’s an extremely distorted view of the future, says Gerard Mildner, an associate professor of real estate finance at Portland State University’s Center for Real Estate. In a paper titled, Density at Any Cost (which was also published in the Center for Real Estate’s quarterly report), Mildner argues that Metro’s report “distorts economic data and will lead the region to make decisions that will harm economic growth.”

Not only will Metro’s vision make single-family housing more expensive, says Mildner, it will increase the cost of rental housing. Contrary to claims that more people want to live in smaller quarters, achieving Metro’s goals will require “multi-billion dollar unfunded mandates on local government to subsidize housing and transportation projects.” Nor will Metro’s plans be good for the environment, since they will just lead a lot of people to move “from our region to places in the southeast and southwest United States where carbon emissions will be higher” because those places require more air conditioning and use more fossil fuels to generate electricity.

Oregon law requires cities and (for Portland) Metro to periodically evaluate whether there is a 20-year supply of available land for housing. But in 1993, Metro persuaded the state legislature to allow it to provide that supply through densification rather than by expanding the growth boundary.

Metro’s report doesn’t cite Arthur Nelson, the University of Utah planner who doesn’t seem to understand basic economic concepts like supply and demand. But Mildner points out that Metro is capable of misusing those terms without Nelson’s help. Although Metro “uses the words ‘demand’ and ‘supply,'” says Mildner, in fact the “region’s urban growth boundary as paramount. Within [Metro’s planning] model, households and firms must locate within the UGB should any zoning capacity exist, even if that capacity can only be utilized at very high cost.”

Metro proposes to have 64 percent of all new housing be multifamily, while only 36 percent would be single-family. To justify this, Metro has “become fixated on the last five years of building permit data, when the national economy was in crisis, home values deteriorated, consumers lost confidence in homeownership, and the federal government was the dominant supplier of credit, largely for multi-family housing.” This led the agency to produce “an unbelievable housing production forecast.”

Even with overproduction of multifamily housing, increasing land and construction costs will force a 37 percent increase in real-dollar apartment rentals. This does not mean people want to pay such high rents; it only reflects the high cost of such housing and the lack of any alternatives, especially since single-family home prices will rise by 52 percent.

Even at higher rents, Mildner estimates that huge subsidies will be needed to persuade developers to build the high-density housing Metro wants. He estimates that Portland and its suburbs have provided nearly $2.9 billion in subsidies to nearly 89,000 housing units in transit-oriented developments to date, an average of more than $33,000 per unit. At that rate, given an average of 2 people per unit, housing another 300,000 to 500,000 people would cost taxpayers $5 billion to $8 billion more.

No thanks to urban planners, Portland is the microbrewery capital of the United States, which has made it attractive to a lot of young people. But anything who thinks that Portland planning provides a model for their city or region should read Mildner’s report.