The Multnomah Villager

So Jr. V and I walked up to the Multnomah Arts Center last night (after a brief stop at Thinker Toys to check out the new Playmobil stuff and the Lego Star Destroyer that we both crave) to attend the Community Policing Celebration. Many folks came out to thank our former community response team and welcome in the new guys.

It was a homespun low-key gathering, as these things are, with much fun being poked at the officers, particularly Scott Westerman, who brings it on himself. There were snacks, and much to the delight of Jr. V, cake. I took a minute and introduced Jr. V to Mark Friedman, one of our new neighborhood officers. I guess I think it’s important for kids to see the police in a normal setting and to get comfortable with the fact that they’re just regular folks. I was glad we had the opportunity to meet and greet, since I’ve been meaning to introduce him to some officers for a while.

Picture by Jr. V
There were quite a few officers in house, and many familiar names buzzing about the room. I don’t know if you’d call it a who’s who of neighborhood association society, but it was certainly close.

This is Scott, Stephanie and Steve - our outgoing team. Thanks folks!

So about a week ago, I noticed a URL in my site stats from outside.in. Now, you Portland people know that there’s a homeless youth shelter in Portland called Outside In, which is waht I initially assumed this link was. After noticing more hits from this URl yesterday, I decided to click through and find out what the deal was. The URL in question is http://outside.in/97219. Turns out it’s a Google Mashup blog aggregator based in Brooklyn, NY. I got the following info in my email later in the day.

I’m writing to let you know about a web site called outside.in that launched about an hour ago. It’s a site that’s aiming to capture and organize all the neighborhood-centric information on the web, drawing, in part, on the amazing work being done by local bloggers like yourself.

Our vision for the site is this: You sit at a computer and type in a street address, or a neighborhood name, or a zip code — perhaps for your own home area, perhaps for a place you’re visiting or interested in — and within seconds the screen gives you a glimpse of all the textured, real-world issues and conversations and news unfolding in the location you’ve entered. Up to now, only the most connected local experts in any neighborhood could keep up with all these evolving  conversations. outside.in is designed to let you see it all in seconds.

Today I see some links from another blog called The Future of Real Estatee Marketing that apparently is run by someone in or near the Village, which provides quite a nice writeup about outside.in, so go read it over there.

I have very mixed feelings about blog aggregators that place ads and make money off of other people’s (mine) content, and this blog is certainly not a calculated part of the “Future of Real Estate Marketing”, but it is a resource for future homebuyers who Google the Village, or so I’d like to think.

Turns out I’m part of hte “hyper-local blogger movement”. Who knew?

This event is definetly worth stopping by….

We are going to be giving special recognition to former Neighborhood Response Team Officers Scott Westerman and Officer Steve Andrusko, plus Crime Prevention Specialist Stephanie Reynolds.  This special crime fighting team worked together over the last several years to address crime issues and promote crime prevention strategies to solve community problems.  We hope residents and business owners will attend a brief reception on Tuesday, October 24th at 7 pm at the Multnomah Center, to say thank you to these individuals and the officer that serve Southwest Portland.

Tomorrow night!

Ha! No, not the Multnomah Athletic Club, but our own MAC, the Multnomah Arts Center. Don’t believe me? Show up and see him yourself.

Senator Wyden will be holding his Multnomah County Townhall in SW Portland this Thursday, Oct. 19 from 3:00 - 4:30PM.
County residents are invited to attend the community meeting in Portland to voice their questions and concerns on any issue.

It’ll be in the gym, so there’s plenty of room.

• At the meeting on Tuesday, Brian mentioned something I had noticed from the street, but not investigated, which is that there is an OLCC permit application notice on the front door of the house which used to be the location of Village Beads, before their recent move. Apparently, this application is on behlf of something called “Half Full LLC” and is to result in a “beers of the world” tasting room. There was some concern about whether or not the Village needs another establishment selling alcohol. One resident voiced concern over the rear parking situation, but I pointed out that her concern would be better directed at outdoor tables, since the house has a very large backyard. If it were my beer tasting place - I’d have tables out back. Brian pointed out that the backyard of this lot is zoned residential, but I’m not sure I believe that, since Jackie’s (next door) has the nursery in the backyard, wouldn’t they be zoned the same?
• Much hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth about the new stone facade of the Soleil day-spa thingy on the corner just as you come off of the bridge on Captol Hwy into the Village. I thought “they” were building a house behind the spa, but it turns out that the spa is expanding. Personally, I think the stone looks cool, but there are many folks who feel like it’s out of place in the Village. For my part, considering how many businesses have been in that space before, it’s nice to see something expanding - they must be doing well. Yes, I know Sip D’Vine used to be there, and they’ve apparently grown well too!
• I notice there’s a rug store in the advanced stages of moving in to the old Multnomah Post offices, across from the Bento Hut where there was breifly a computer business.
• What is going into the Village Yoga Space? Anyone?
• Oh, and for record-keeping’s sake, thanks to a pickup by Jack Bog’s Blog, yesterday was my single biggest traffic day in the year-and-a-half history of this ‘blog. I’ll admit that there is a temptation to “go political” in order to hang on to these types of numbers, but I’m sticking with my formula - still - I hope at least one or two of the new readers comes back once or twice!
• And the last housekeeping item - I remain amazed at the frequency with which the Wikipedia entry for Multnomah Village leads people to this ‘blog. I noticed that hits have started coming from Answers.com, which mirrors the Wikipedia content, and now includes the link to this site.
• Interestingly, there’s a new bit in the Wiki entry today, stating “Multnomah Village was, for a long time, home to the world’s first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, which was physically located in an office there. The website has since relocated.”

So, several months ago, a couple of freshly-scrubbed Jr. Executive types visited the Multnomah Neighborhood Association meeting to present an “idea” being proposed for a condo development in the Village. This is located kind of diagonally across from the Multnomah Art Center, twoards the stoplight on 31st. Two older houses were to be removed to make the space. We never heard anything again. Last month, we noticed that the houses had been torn down. Last night, I noticed the above-pictured signs, up on the fence of what is now a construction site.

So much for the neighborhood review process.

Which brings me to mention an issue I have with the Neighborhood Association structure as a whole. There have been rumblings in the Portland-area media this year about how the City is trying to cut the neighborhood associations out of the already convoluted process of development, etc. This is certainly an example of that - since there’s no way that a development of this size would have little to no impact on the neighborhood. It gives one the feeling that the neighborhood association is not much more than a discussion roundtable for local residents - and not the arm of local government that many people assume the NA’s to be. This is not the only recent case of this sort of thing. Is there really such a thing as neighborhood-level influence on local government? I’d say that recent developments point to the answer being “no”.

For now, I’ll leave the politicking to Jack Bog.

The website is non-existent, just a paceholder page with no info, but for the record - it is here.

Although different companies are involved (so far as I can tell) the design looks very familiar….

Well that and being overwhelmingly busy at work. I’ll start updating again tomorrow. See you at the Neighborhood Association meeting tonight at 6:30? That or the Ballot Measures Forum if you’re into the whole educated voter thing, which hopefully many people are.

Anybody know what’s going in to the (not so) old Village Yoga Room space?