The Multnomah Villager

So I’ve decided to go down to San Francisco on the 21st and 22nd to Attend WordCamp, which is a gathering/conference of WordPress bloggers and programmers. It’ll be a totally nerdly time, which is pretty much what I’m in the mood for. After tabbing too quickly through the registration form and thwarting the auto-form-complete thing which has me totally spoiled, I realized that I had tabbed down too quick and registered with an incomplete last name, so I’ll be attending as “Mark My”. I’ll have to write the “ers” in by hand I suppose. Nothing says “geek” like a misspelled nametag.

Since I registered this afternoon, I’ve been getting several hits from the WordCamp attendee list (Web 2.0 types love “camel case”). For those of you coming here and expecting to find a tech blog… surprise! This site is totally iPhone free. This blog is pretty much purely about how cool my little neighborhood in Portland Oregon is, and the day-to-day of living here.

Come visit for real sometime. I’ll see you in a few weeks.

Couldn’t make it to the whole meeting, but I did stop into the Gabriel Park Skate Park Community Open House. There was a good-sized group, primarily made up of skaters, who were contributing suggestions and feedback on the design features when I arrived. It seemed a little chaotic, mainly since the group of folks (older folks, not skaters) two tables in front of me insisted on having a completely separate conversation during the entire meeting.

Most of the suggestions were about the finer points of the design of the park, which since I am not a skater, don’t mean a lot to me, but it seems like the main points that came out of the meeting are as follows:

• There is a strong push towards making this a primarily “tranny” park, and only the late arrival of some pre-teen skaters towards the end of the meeting may have saved ANY street features in the design.
• There is concern among some members of the group, and primarily among the aforementioned younger folks, that there be various skill levels accommodated in the design. The current design is not for beginners.
• Many folks seemed to think the current snake run design could stand to have a bit of a curve towards one end.
• More curbs man, more curbs.
• The park eventually will have some sort of a roof or cover on it - perhaps similar to the open cover on the basketball courts at the Multnomah Center.
• The design team is very interested in the comments of skaters and community members, but at this point mostly skaters, since they’re trying to lock the design. There is a link to the comment form below.

Here’s a CAD of the preliminary design. Based on all the feedback given at the meeting, this is certainly subject to change, particularly the balance of tranny to street features and several people suggested ringing the skate park with “rideable” planters, which would help alleviate noise concerns.

Here is a link to the comment form. Comments need to be submitted prior to July 6th.

I’ve posted about this enough that I’m adding a category for skate park posts, since I’m tired of linking them up by hand. Click on the category list to the left to find all my posts related to the skate park, or for those of you reading this on an RSS feed, try this link: All Multnomah Villager posts tagged “skate park”.

The next open house will be on July 31st at 7PM at the Multnomah Center. Tuesday’s meeting was in the auditorium, so check there first.

Come out to the Multnomah Center tonight from 7:00 - 8:30PM to review and comment on the design for the upcoming skatepark at Gabriel Park. This is the first of two of these open houses, the second will be next month on Tuesday July 31st, also 7:00-8:30 PM. Not sure what room these are in, but there will surely be signage. Multnomah art Center is at 7688 SW Capitol Highway. Call 503-823-6191 with questions.

A Village resident left the following quote as part of a long comment on Sam Adams’ blog, as a follow up to the transportation meeting on Tuesday night. Since the poster didn’t leave his full name, I’m leaving this anonymous although I know who the speaker is in this case - feel free to ping me if you want me to attach your name to this.

Currently there is a pre plan application for new condominiums in Multnomah Village. The plan calls for the removal of two small homes with 18 new condo units and street level store frontage being added. In this plan it calls for only 17 parking spaces, 4 of which are on street. With recent improvements in the village the Business corridor lost 4 parking spaces in this area. So with 18 residential units and store frontage and only 17 parking spaces where will the cars go that people will have? because we don’t have light rail and we have bus service only on the 1/2hr, they will park on the gravel unimproved streets, on neighbors lawns and along the major unimproved edges of the arterial right of way’s. Think about NW 23rd without curb and gutter. That is what we will have soon if something isn’t done. There are several options to solve this: Force extended infrastructure installation by the developer, Add a parking garage to offset the increased added traffic (probably not popular thing with the city or the residents for that matter, but a way to solve a problem. A great location in Multnomah Village is the parking lot next to the Multnomah Center. A two or three level garage could be put there without impacting any views, and in my mind would actually enhance the site as it is a bit ratty today. Add Trolley, Light Rail or substantially increased bus service and of course sidewalks or walking paths that extend well beyond the arterials.

I’ve been meaning to post about this potential new devleopment, but haven’t had access to sufficient information, but the resident I’m quoting is right to be concerned about the impact on traffic and parking if this development goes forward as planned. FYI the site that’s being talked about here is the gravel road bit between Troy and Multnomah Blvd to the side of Abby’s Auto Body. What is that, 37th? Either way, it’s one of our “unimproved streets”. I’ll post more info as it becomes available because we Village residents want to make sure that this developer puts in the necessary infrastructure improvements to help alleviate the traffic and parking issues a development of this scale, in this location, will cause.

Well, I got there FAR TOO LATE to get a seat, although I was able to lurk in a corner for a while where I took, this - the Worst Picture Ever Posted to This Blog (TM). There was HUGE turnout for the transportation town hall meeting last night, with many neighborhoods represented. After hanging about for a bit, and asking a question, I retreated to the quieter, cooler side room equipped with a TV feed.

Without deconstructing the whole session, the gist of it is this: This is step one in a long lobbying campaign for a shiny new assortment of taxes that are coming our way. The City will be happy to repair streets and bridges, and install sidewalks and curbs, as soon as we agree to pay for it all. Oh, and Sam was none too happy to have the bikes-vs-cars crowd hijacking his meeting, thank you very much. Still, I think he did a good job presenting the facts and potential solutions, all the while doing the best he could to soft-pedal the hard sell that will have to come sooner or later if any of these “funding options” are to become reality. It was nice to see so many people come out for this type of issue. Transportation can be one of the wonkier local government issues to begin to get involved with, but it touches on so many of the things we value, that we really need to be informed and involved if possible.

Once again, it is clearly obvious why Sam had such an easy time getting elected. He knows how to work a room, and doesn’t feel “political” in the way that, for instance, Dan Saltzman does. I have no problem with Dan, but these two men give off a very different impression when addressing and handling large groups.

I must admit, guiltily, that I had planned all along to link to Amanda Fritz’s blog for the writeup on this event, knowing that she’d deliver far more information than I would ever be interested in recapping. Amanda didn’t disappoint, so go to her blog and read her writeup on the event, here.

There’s discussion options, email signup, the survey some of us took (although not apparently a digital copy of Sam’s Powerpoint deck, which is too long for me to scan) at www.commissionersam.com. EDIT: The powerpoint is up now, in PDF format (619K) - download it here….

Commissioner Sam Adams is hosting a town hall meeting TONIGHT at the Multnomah Center from 7PM to 9PM to discuss “Portland’s Ailing Transportation System”.

Selectively reading the press release for this event gives us these gems: “The City of Portland, in response to the unlikely event that the Oregon Legislature will approve an increase of the gas tax….” and “These meetings create a dialog for how to garner transportation dollars and spend them more effectively”. So… Sam is pretty much coming out to soften us up for some shiny new tax proposals - and while we probably won’t have much say about those, we should have some input as to how those extra dollars are prioritized.

Amanda Fritz has a thorough writeup about this process over on her blog (www.amandafritz.com), and here’s a quote from Amanda that’s worth repeating here:

I’m hoping many people show up at the meetings to ask why there is funding for new streetcar routes and not for basic services in outer neighborhoods. Up to now, there haven’t been many opportunities for citizens to have that public conversation with the commissioner-in-charge of Transportation.

We certainly have our share of road issues here in the Village, and with some of the upcoming development projects, traffic is more likely to get heavier in the near future. If you’re interested in these types of issues, and want to hear what Sam has to say, and maybe get a chance to have your opinion heard, you should come out tonight.

Here’s the press release with all the info. (PDF, 156k)

Don’t get too excited, it’s just me.

Hi, I’m Mark Myers, and yes, I write the Villager ‘blog. Several people have been after me to “come out” recently, and my latest column the Post was published under my actual name, so I guess I better pull back the curtain on this thing, eh? When I started writing this blog, I thought it’d be easier for me to do it under a pen name, as I didn’t really want to put myself out there until I was sure I’d be able to keep up with maintaining a “real” blog, and I wasn’t sure if people would read. Plus, I like the idea of being able to just go places in the Village as just another Villager, and not as “that guy who writes the blog”, which is why I’m still going to be pretty low key about my “secret identity”.

My wife Parni, and our son Max and I live right on 35th and we’ve been here since I think 1997. Parni and I rented a house over on 41st and Iowa for a year or so before we bought our place here. Max just finished his first year of school at Maplewood and is VERY EXCITED about being a first grader.

Back to our regular programming….

Well, a sure sign of warmer weather is that “Rock and Roll Guy” is back on the streets in full effect. I know that there has been talk about certain Village residents feeling uncomfortable with him around, but personally, I’d only be worried if I found out that he wasn’t actually listening to music.

There are two community open houses to review and comment on the design options for the new skatepark at Gabriel Park, says the flyer that arrived today. I know all of you have one of these, but for those friends OUTSIDE the immediate area, here’s a scan of the schematic of the skatepark area, showing where the skatepark will be, and where the additional 10 parking spaces will be added.

The open houses are on Tuesday June 26th, and Tuesday July 31st from 7:00PM to 8:30PM at the Multnomah Art Center (7688 SW Captiol Highway, 503-823-6191)

I’ve posted about the skatepark several times, the most recent post is here (Gabriel Skatepark Update and NIMBY Alert) . For the record, this ‘blog gets a fair amount of traffic from Google and Yahoo by people searching for skatepark information. There’s definitely a lot of interest in this facility, on both “sides”.

The Gabriel Park skate park specific section of Portland Online has all the details, here.

PDF document, 182K, click to download or view.

As you probably know, the Jerome F Sears Army Reserve property is being surplused by the US Government. There have been numerous meetings and plans surrounding this site. PDC came to the last Neighborhood Association meeting and gave us an overview of the process of screening and selecting potential development proposals for this site. This is the update sheet handed out by the PDC representative at the last MNA meeting.

The website for keeping track of what’s going on here is www.pdc.us/dod, and you can sign up for email alerts at the site. This is a large parcel of property, and there’s LOTS of potential options for its future. If you’re interested in the potential develeopment of this site after it’s vacated by the Army, check out this PDF and sign up for the emails. It appears that we (the Multnomah Neighborhood Association) will be able to have something of a voice in this process, as long as people show up to be heard.

The PDC project manager is:

David Sheern
Portland Development Commission
Associate Project Coordinator - Housing Department
503-823-4103
sheernd@pdc.us