Why the Pearl District Works: Part II Continuity

The Pearl District is grounded in history.  In 1982 a five-step process was established to meet Goal 5 of the statewide planning act, which required Oregon cities to identify and protect historic places.  The next year the Portland Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) assessed the building stock in the Northwest Triangle District.  Entitled, “The Last Place in Downtown,” the AIA report is a founding document of the Pearl District.

The area was unplanned and devoid of civic identity. It had no school or neighborhood association, but there was a bounty of historic warehouses being leased or sold. A small artistic community had gained a foothold, and the transitioning district was ideally situated for incubator business. It could become “a definitive and distinctive district,” the AIA reported, provided city officials acted to preserve 90 buildings found worthy of preservation.  The architects proposed creating a historic preservation district that encompassed the quadrant between Lovejoy and Burnside, and between I-405 and 9th and 10 Avenues. The remainder of the Northwest Triangle was envisioned to be an office park.

In 1983 office parks were part of the lexicon of suburban development, but the idea fell away once investing in urbanism gained relevance. The historic preservation district concept, however, gained traction. In 1987, the city council established the NW 13th Avenue Historic District.  Al Soldheim, the major property owner, played a crucial role in protecting the six blocks that had 20 multi-storied, architect-designed warehouses, the largest collection of such buildings in the city. The district’s mix of loading docks, roof top water towers, metal awnings, and remnants of old Belgian block street pavers also lent a unique character to the pedestrian friendly environs.

In 1988, the seven-story Blumauer-Frank Drug Company Building (the district’s tallest) was converted into apartments.  The first significant investment in residential living in the Pearl District, the retrofitted reinforced concrete structure constructed in 1925 offered a new prototype.  Tax abatements and tax credits for preserving historic buildings made the project viable, and other developers followed suit.  In 1996, two 1910 brick warehouses were converted into the historic district's first condominiums, the Chown Pella. Open loft spaces with exposed brick and heavy timbers were created to provide what developer John Carroll called, “industrial strength living in the Pearl.” The water tower adorning the building became a visual landmark and syntax in the architectural vocabulary that influenced future projects after the city adopted the River District Special Design Guidelines in 1996. 

Painting of Chown Pella featured in Center of Architecture Exhibit

Historic preservation keyed the Pearl District’s development. Eleven buildings outside of the 13th Avenue District were listed on the National Historic Register. In 1997, the first of the two buildings that comprised the 1908 North Depot Warehouse was turned into town homes.  After the second building was converted in 2000, the historic block on NW 11th Avenue marked a new measure of urban living in Portland. Loading docks set above the sidewalk were the defining features of the two-story buildings. Converted into porches with small gardens and planted terraces, residents enjoyed their pleasant ambiance. This synergistic intersection of history, private property, and public space helped activate the derelict block, which now has the most valuable real estate (per square foot) in the Pearl District.

The development of the Brewery Blocks in 2001 turned the Pearl District into a destination. The preservation of the Weinhard Brewhouse and the Armory Building set the foundation for a historically grounded transition between the central city and the NW 13th Avenue Historic District. In addition to providing housing for 1000 residents, the project spurred significant investment in retail and commercial development. The five-block area also introduced the benefits of sustainability by salvaging and recycling 94 percent of construction material, reducing energy demand by 40 percent in residential units and 25 percent in office space, and constructing eight LEED certified buildings, including the first Gold certified condominium tower in the nation.

The Pearl District is now home to over 7,000 residents. The NW 13th Avenue Historic District remains the centerpiece, and it still lures developers. A seven-story office building is set to arise on its last vacant parcel. The property owner’s desire to “create a building that looks as if it has always been there” drew inspiration from the Chown Pella and the Confectionary Lofts, another early 20th century brick warehouse conversion. An architect’s rendering depicts a building with a proportionate height and mass and material that fits seamlessly with its surroundings. Special emphasis was placed on the 13th Avenue frontage. An extensive metal canopy and detailing on the doors and windows will ensure the ground floor respects the human scale of a street heavily trafficked by pedestrians and enlivened by the remnants of history. 

The Pearl District lies at the epicenter of Portland’s building boom. Development pressures have raised concerns that it is losing its character.  Only a third of the 90 historic structures the AIA identified in 1983 are protected.  The Pearl District Neighborhood Association supports densification, but it worries that 35 buildings of historical significance lack any protection. The fear is that “the Pearl District will become a place without any grounding in history and without the story its own creation.  It will be a place without soul.”

The Neighborhood Association’s Planning Committee has charged a task force to create a tool to protect historic structures. A refined code to deliver transfer of development rights must be procured, but this reform could be at odds with the regulations proposed in the new Central City Comprehensive Plan.  At the same time, neighborhood associations are legally sanctioned to assist city agencies in planning efforts. 

Resolving the tension between preservation and development is essential. It will require tempering rights and responsibilities, but this is the expectation of a free people residing in a republic. This cornerstone of civilization was laid over 2,000 years ago when Pericles claimed, “ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters.”

David August's keen eye and knowledge of the Pearl District was instrumental to this piece.  I strongly recommend one of his architectural tours.  Afterwards, you will see the neighborhood with a more discerning eye. 

Why the Pearl Distict Works Part I: Connectivity

In the late 1990s, critics wondered if the Pearl District was a folly.  This week, a PBS documentary recognized Portland’s “Urban Paradise” as one of “10 Towns that Changed America.” The Pearl District is the culmination of an experiment initiated 43 years ago with the passage of Senate Bill 100, which, in the iconic words of Governor Tom McCall, sought to reign in the “gasping wastrels of the land” and “the ravenous rampage of suburbia.” It required Oregon cities to establish Urban Growth Boundaries, and meet 19 goals to develop a more efficient and sustainable land use pattern. The path-breaking legislation turned Portland into the nation's planning laboratory, and the Pearl District is a tested prototype of a new urban future.

Read Estate Advertisment for the Pearl District

The 1992 River District Vision set the foundation for the Pearl District.  The City Council unanimously endorsed the plan drawn by businesses interests and citizen groups to build a dense urban neighborhood on a street grid that extended across the contaminated railroad yards north of the Lovejoy Viaduct. Bill Naito, an incomparable civic leader, claimed the project marked “the next chapter of this great city.”  At the time, building urban neighborhoods on a historic grid pattern was a radical idea.  For a generation, auto-dependent “master planned” projects favored cul-de-sacs and dead end streets that insulated neighborhoods in a series of pods. In fact, River Place, downtown’s Portland’s first significant infill project, had the markings of the “dead worm” disconnected subdivision.  Outside of the promenade that celebrated the riverfront and provided a vital pedestrian linkage on its eastern edge, the rest of the mixed-use project was severed from its surroundings.  There was no grid, and the River District plan could have followed suit.

1992 River District Vision

The River District Vision faced a major obstacle, the Lovejoy Viaduct. It severed the site and deflated real estate values. In 1999, while most cities were widening highways and building toll roads, Portland officials spent $13 million to tear down the Lovejoy Viaduct and remove the 10th Avenue ramp. “The reconstruction of Lovejoy is a critical piece of the emergence of the River District as a vibrant residential neighborhood in Northwest Portland,” City Commissioner, and now Mayor, Charlie Hales declared. The improved link to the Broadway Bridge and the construction of new streets established a grid that tied the emerging Pearl District to the surrounding neighborhoods. Infrastructure was also provided for the Central City Streetcar, which started service in 2001. The  first urban streetcar system constructed in over half a century, the Pearl District was defining a future built on past.  In the 1920s one of every three trips were taken by foot, transit or auto, a metric that gained new meaning in a neighborhood designed to make pedestrians a priority. 

In 1996, the River District Right-of-Way Standards provided the means to transform the industrial warehouse district with unpaved streets and a score of loading docks into a “Pedestrian District,” where walking the mode of choice.  The straight forward standards called for what was once common place: a regimen of street trees planted next to 12-foot wide sidewalks located on both sides of streets (the exception being the 13th Avenue historic district).  On street parallel parking was provided to slow traffic and provide a buffer for pedestrians.  In addition, two 50-foot wide landscaped walking  routes were constructed between 12th and 9th Avenues.  Besides offering safe passage, these linear parks became havens of repose. Private developers followed in kind, and provided similar verdant connections to their buildings. Over time, improvements for bicyclists were incorporated into a full fledged “multi-modal transportation system.”

Pedestrian Haven in the Pearl District

Portland's new Comprehensive City Plan has prioritized “high-quality connectivity proposed to and within the area by modes of transportation other than the automobile.” In plain English this means two-thirds of trips in the Pearl District will not be by automobile, and a majority will be by foot.  The Pearl District is the most walkable neighborhood in Portland, an intentionally interconnected community and a recognized agent of change in a nation where nearly 90 percent of trips are made by car.

On connectedness in the Pearl District see https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/306704

Finding Moral Clarity in the Pursuit of Happiness

Besides economic security, happiness is contingent on being physically active, having access to nature, and interacting with others besides our immediate family.  With the arrival of spring, I was eager to pursue happiness and embarked on a twenty-minute walk (one mile) to Washington Park, a historic park designed in the Arcadian tradition Frederick Law Olmsted instituted at Central Park.  Ninteenth century urban parks or “sanitary institutions,” as Olmsted called them, were scripted versions of Walden Pond where citizens could escape the city’s crass materialism and renew their humanity.  I set out to, as Olmsted put it, “re-create” myself.

Fortunately, the pedestrian network running between the Pearl District and Washington Park is stellar. Other than the deafening roar at the I-405 underpass, I enjoyed an idlyllic walk along tree-lined streets through the city’s most densely developed neighborhoods.  I smiled when I saw 1906 engraved in the sidewalk on NW 24th Avenue.  It was a reminder that Portland is built on the past, and on a spring day with aged trees offering a kaleidoscope of blooming efflorescence how could one not be happy?

Studies show that crime drops and property values rise in urban neighborhoods having a regimen of street trees.  They enhance the pedestrian experience, and more walking brews stewardship. https://depts.washington.edu/hhwb/Thm_Crime.html  Blending nature and human impluse to cultivate civic pride defined city planning before World War II.  “Trees in the city have great value for health in improving the quality of the air, for comfort in furnishing welcome shade from the burning heat of the sun, and for beauty in the glory that they often impart when well grown to an otherwise commonplace street,” John Nolen wrote in Remodeling Roanoke (1907), one of the nation’s first comprehensive city plans.  Street trees and sidewalks were essential components of the transportation system that Nolen, a devoted Olmsted disciple, designed to move machines and pedestrians in tandem.

By the late 1950s, city planners were focused on moving automobiles not pedestrians.  Road widening evicerated the finely grained networks of sidewalks and street trees.  Walking and bicycling rates dropped, and since the 1980s obesity rates have sky rocketed.  Portland has spent 30 years  rectifying the myopic vision of a generation of traffic engineers, and its investment in walkable urbanism has fostered one of the most lucrative real estate markets in the nation.  The bottom line is clear: in the American city a comfortable twenty-minute saunter that inveighs happiness is priceless.

My stroll became more strenuous after sighting a knoll studded with towering conifers.  Washington Park occupies the steep hillsides that bound the central city, and after crossing traffic laden Burnside Avenue, I felt I was entering a temple as I gazed up a steep flight of stairs.  After 200 odd steps I followed a path that led to what the good pantheist Olmsted considered sacred ground, a glen with a stand of trees filtering the sun’s rays into in an artistic mix of shadow and light. 

For Olmsted, picturesque settings like this fomented “re-creation.”  He believed watching the interplay of light and shadow led to reflection as one discerned the patterns nature transmits.  He also thought the meeting of forest and open space bred a sense of comfort, a fact scientists now tell us is rooted in our genetic coding.  Our species became “human” when they moved from forested jungles to savannahs and developed the ability to walk upright and see into the far distance.  In fact, our  deep-seated preference for pastoral landscapes at the edge of wooded areas is traced to this key point in our evolution (Tony Hiss, Experience of Place, 36-39).

Glen (on left) in Washington Park

The glen in Washington Park was occupied so I set off to find another place of repose.  A bench graced with an overhanging tree limb in full flower called to me.  I settled in and let the scenery galvanize my thoughts.  I greeted a score of people with a nod or a few words.  Imbibing in wonder of a spring day, we enjoyed a common bond.  It was a good place to be, a place that lends moral clarity to our often frazzled existence.  Being immersed in nature not only helps still the mind, it instills an appreciation for humanity’s better nature.  A century ago, citizens taxed themselves to create a green haven where future generations could purse happiness and escape the cacophonic consumerism that prices our lives and subverts the soul.   Parks can “educate people to better things,” John Charles Olmsted wrote in his 1903 Report to the Portland Barks Board.  Aptly re-created, I left Washington Park thankful of the education I received.

Traffic Congestion, The New Sign of Prosperity

In the 1920s smokestacks were signs of prosperity.  In post-industrial society, traffic congestion is the new sign of success.  It has accompanied Portland’s dizzying increase in real estate values, rents and job growth. A new study showed Portland tied with Chicago and Washington D.C. for the eighth most congested metropolitan area in the nation.https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/trafficindex/city/POL  While traffic has slowed in the last year, Portland's unemployment rate has fallen to 4.3 percent, the lowest rate in 16 years.  In the booming Central City, traffic congestion is an accepted “trade-off,” according to the new comprehensive plan, in the effort to procure “high quality connectivity to…modes of transportation other than the automobile.”

Four decades ago, Oregonians invested in the novel idea that the judicious use of land could create a sustaining mix of private capital and civic enterprise.  Rather than invest billions in highway projects, the Portland metro area spread the wealth to build a “multi-modal” transportation system that integrated automobiles, transit, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Its real estate market is one of most lucrative in the nation, and the catalyst is a lively pedestrian-oriented, bike friendly, nature infused urban environment that offers new venues for work and leisure. 

The problem is safety. While traffic deaths are down for drivers, pedestrian fatalities are rising.  The national migration to walkable urban neighborhoods has led to a million more Americans choosing to walk or bike to work in the last year.  With cheaper gas roads are more crowded and, at the same time, drivers are more distracted by their love affair with their technical devices. A study by Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) found that pedestrian fatalities due to distracted drivers increased by 50 percent between 2009 and 2014.  At the same time, pedestrians put themselves at risk by staring at their phones or using earbuds to listen to music that drowns out the approach of vehicles.https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/as-roads-become-safer-for-drivers-and-passengers-pedestrian-deaths-still-rise/2016/03/07/41caa802-e47d-11e5-b0fd-073d5930a7b7_story.html 

Living without a car in Portland, I can attest to the accuracy of the GHSA report.  Coming from Orlando, which has the highest pedestrian death rate in the nation (and highest per capita expenditure on highways), I found Portland drivers particularly polite.  Crosswalks were respected and I learned the requisite hand signals to communicate with car and truck drivers.  I also learned to pocket my devide at intersections after a near collision with a bike rider.  The young man gave me invaluable advice: “Lose the I-Phone dumbass.”  

In the Central City, this code of street and a high quality multi-modal infrastructure enhances safety.  The Portland metro area ranks sixth in the nation for pedestrian safety according to the Mean Streets Study conducted by Smart Growth America.http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/documents/dangerous-by-design-2014/dangerous-by-design-2014.pdf  It has a low pedestrian danger index of 32.1.  By comparison, metropolitan Orlando had a score of 224.28. In other words, pedestrians are seven times more likely to die in Orlando than Portland. Yet officials, are not satisfied, the City Council has adopted a “Zero Death” policy for traffic fatalities.

Multi-Modal Infrastructure

The new comprehensive plan is set to make it easier to navigate the city without a car.  “Walkable neighborhoods,” with a compliment of sidewalks and access to transit and greenways (bike trails) will be the norm.  Completing a sidewalk network will cost $60 million, the estimated cost of improving the bike network is $120 million, and new streetcar lines (NE Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, NE Sandy Boulevard, and NW 18th and 19th Avenues to Montgomery Park) will cost $180 million.  The $360 million price tag is steep, but only slightly more than a third of the $1 billion bill for mitigating traffic congestion.http://portlandtribune.com/pt/9-news/298829-176015-comp-plan-add-missing-middle-housing

The future demands innovation, and money follows good ideas.  Portland’s investment in walkable urbanism is prospering, but citizens must continue to participate and turn good ideas into good places.  Affordable housing, homelessness, and climate change demand solutions.  Reducing auto dependence is crucial to this agenda. Fortunately, Portland has invested wisely.  There is a foundation to build on, and citizens must challenge their leaders to continue to sculpt a city that is as sustainable as it is just.  

Citizens are encouraged to provide amendments to Comprehensive Plan, which is still under review
https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/569930 

Stupid is as Stupid Does: The Bundy Gang and the Farce of Revisionist History

LaVoy Finicum’s senseless death underscores how greed, absurdity, and blatant stupidity are skewing the essential lessons of American History.   Finicum touted himself as a,  “Cowboy Standing for Freedom,” the Marlboro man riding the range and securing a living from the arid plateaus of the West.  Finicum, a welfare cheat in a saddle, proved to be the opposite, a moronic figure who met his end in a Cascadian version of Pineapple Express.  Trying to escape the law, he plowed his supersized pickup truck into a snow bank, which never happens in truck commercials shilling “the code of the west.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euFSN7s8FMo With its wheels still spinning, Finicum jumped out of the vehicle yelling, “Shoot me,” and the state troopers obliged. 

Perhaps, Finicum had a death wish. Regrettably, his conception of history did not ride into the sunset as well. The “freedom” Finicum trumpeted is grounded in 19th century laissez-faire nostrums and a theocratic interpretation of a sacred civic document, the Constitution.  His “thought” has more in common with Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah, the tribal leader of the Sudan who claimed to be the “Mahdi” in 1881 and declared holy war on the British.  Of course the occupation of the Harney Wilderness Preserve hardly matched the Mahdi’s successful siege of Khartoum.  In addition, the Mahdiyya army, unlike Bundy’s gang of criminals and malingers, had a historical claim to the land.  Federal ownership of the Harney Wilderness Preserve dates to the territorial period before Oregon was a state (the Paiute Tribe were the previous “land owners”).  The occupation of Harney was a land grab, and layered in the patriotic blather was a desire to profit at the taxpayer’s expense. 

The unfettered use of public land has costs.  That is why the government keeps the likes of Lloyd Finicum and Ammon Bundy (both declared bankruptcy and owe thousands in unpaid fines) from grazing cattle in a manner that will imperil water supplies or degrade the environment.  Regulations are necessary, but government officials are compelled to work with neighboring landowners and private interests.  The new 15-year management plan for the Harney Wilderness Preserve refuge was the product of a successful collaborative approach.   It is not easy, but patience and trust can secure the negotiated “win-win” outcomes that will secure the long-term sustainable use of the land. 

Unfortunately, Filicum and Bundy are not the only ones skewing history to condemn “environmentalism” as an elitist power grab.  Politically correct historians contend there is an “unsavory often hidden history underlying the conservation and environmental movements.” Matthew Kingle is a ringleader of this Neo-Marxist contingent determined to disavow history as well as write it. “Creating usable pasts” is “difficult even dangerous,” he claims in The Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle.

“A superb history,” Kingle recommends is a recent book by Portland State professor Catherine McNeur, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City.  McNeur argues that New York’s precedent plans and laws constituted a zero sum game, “it privileged one group” while “amplifying environmental and economic disparity.” That Ammon Bundy assesses land use controls in a similar vein is why this book is so disquieting.

McNeur vividly recalls the filthiest city in the United States. Hogs rooted in streets layered in garbage, horse manure, and human waste. These foul-smelling creatures plagued New York’s image, but they devoured refuse and were an important food source for their owners, primarily the poor.  The privileged sect wanting the hogs removed were hardly civic-minded, “they were also complaining about the undesirable classes that impinged on their public space.” Mayor Cadwaller Colden’s legal remedy—declaring hogs a nuisance—resulted in “unleashing the authority of the city to limit the hog owners property rights.’”

In the 19^th century, municipalities employed police powers to still nuisances and secure the public welfare. Interestingly, McNeur’s claim of government overreach parallels the plaintiff’s argument in the United States’ precedent takings case, Lucas v South Carolina Coastal Commission (1992).  The Supreme Court cited historic nuisance law in ruling that environmental regulations deprived David Lucas of his property rights.  Lucas became a conservative icon, and his case inspired The Contract with America (which set the agenda for the Republican takeover of Congress) to limit regulations on private property and leash the authority McNeur decried. 

Taming Manhattan also critiques Frederick Law Olmsted, the champion of Central Park. Olmsted believed Central Park would be an antidote to crass materialism, an escape where citizens could re-create themselves and renew their humanity. On its 150th anniversary, Witold Rybczynki echoed this idea. “Without Central Park, New York would risk becoming as callow and mercenary as many of its critics maintain it is.  The park is part of New York's better nature.”[i]  McNeur sees it differently. Olmsted’s monumental achievement was “not a generically benevolent public good.” In fact, she concludes that civic reform itself was a chimera—it “did little to alleviate social tensions. Perhaps the city was never truly tamed at all.”

Ironically, Portland is built on the history McNeur dismisses. After Olmsted died in 1903, John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., the Olmsted Brothers, moved to build on their father’s legacy and to better serve the public by designing “park systems.” Portland was their test case.  The Olmsted Brother’s Report to the Portland Park Board established the foundation for one of the nation’s greenest cities.  Today its “world class park system reflects John Charles Olmsted’s vision for a comprehensive, interconnected park system writ large," respected activist Mike Houck writes in Planning the Pacific Northwest.

What escapes McNeur is that there is a history to embrace as well as to critique.  Moreover, she is a beneficiary of the history she derides, as the antebellum park (an “exclusive, elite space” in her lexicon) that centers Portland State is one of the city’s most beloved spaces. That Ammon Bundy is incarcerated near Portland State is serendipitous, but Bundy and McNeur are interminably linked.  In denying history’s “better nature,” they impair plans designed to secure a just and sustaining future.  

On the importance of Olmsted's "useable past" seehttps://nextcity.org/daily/entry/orlando-bridge-district-design-planners-nature
I reviewd The Emerald City in the Sepember 2008 issue of the Journal of American History.

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[i] Witold Rybczynki, New York Times. June 22, 2003.

Centennial Mills: Boondoggle or Iconic Landmark?

In 2000 the Portland Development Commission (PDC) purchased the four-acre Centennial Mills site for $12 million.  After two botched development proposals, PDC’s return on investment is approaching “boondoggle.” The PDC has paid out $550,000 to consultants after rejecting their plans.  This loss is not insurmountable, but the loss of trust just might be.  Harsch Investment Properties (HIP), which prepared the latest plan, was not allowed to gather public input. Jordan Schnitzer, who heads HIP, finally shared the firm’s vision with a crowded gathering in the Pearl District.  The presentation was well received, which only added to Schnitzer’s lament. “The city has lost its way,” he concluded.   

PDC once had direction.  In 2006, it funded a six-month public process that set the framework to turn Centennial Mills into a community focal point that captured history, embraced sustainability, complemented nearby parks, and provided connections to the waterfront. http://www.pdc.us/Libraries/River_District/Centennial_Mills_Framework_Plan-Feb_07-2007_pdf.sflb.ashx HIP's plan effectively integrated these points, but its $38 million subsidy was too much for PDC.  Schnitzer, a philanthropist rooted in the community, is not without hope.  He proposed moving the Oregon Historical Society to the site, an idea that foundations and corporations could support. It also has precedent.  

In 1944 after a scheme to develop Portland’s West Hills foundered, a Committee of 50 was formed to establish the “Forest Park” the Olmsted Brothers identified in their 1903 park plan. Four years later, Forest Park opened to the public.  Can history repeat itself?

Once again, the Olmsted Brothers offer guidance.  They warned against confining creeks to “large underground conduits at enormous expense” when they could provide “delightful local pleasure grounds.” Tanner Creek suffered this fate and its outflow abuts Centennial Mills.  Schnitzer’s team proposed restoring a portion of the riverine wetlands.  Revitalizing nature would strike a synergy with Tanner Springs Park, as its restored marsh recalls the natural pre-engineered landscape.  

Centennial Mills also has a rich cultural history. The mill business established Portland. Lucrative wheat exports turned a frontier settlement into a prosperous city, and this wealth procured a definitive civic realm that was progressively expanded.  Pioneer Courthouse, Olmsted parks, and the city’s sustainable environs are the product, historian Carl Abbott writes, of a “moralistic political culture that valued the public good over individuals.” 

Centennial Mills should tell this story.  It would make the perfect bookend to Portland State, a center of civic education that celebrates the past and envisions the future.  As the world becomes more urban, retrofitting abandoned industrial properties is essential, and   Centennial Mills would be Portland’s exclamation mark.

Access is the key.  Plans exist to bridge the railroad, and the structure, like New York City’s High Line, should provide pedestrians with a visceral experience.  In addition, students could walk from Jamison Square to the Willamette River and learn how wetlands were transformed into a rail yard and then an urban neighborhood, where wealth and poverty co-exist.  Despite its reputation, 33% of the Pearl District’s residents earn less than $25,000 annually (the city average is 25%).

It’s time for a public discussion. In the meantime, Mr. Schnitzer could secure a new Committee of 50 to rescue a fading vision.  Centennial Mills is a test. Integrating parks and urbanism is not just about “business prosperity,” the Olmsteds wrote, it measures a city’s “intelligence, degree of civilization and progressiveness.”

For more on the Olmsteds in Portland see: http://www.pbs.org/wned/frederick-law-olmsted/learn-more/john-charles-olmsted-the-pacific-northwest/

The Cady Way Trail: An Investment in Humanity

2016 marks a quarter of a century since Orlando, Winter Park, and Orange County completed plans for the Cady Way Trail, Central Florida's first bike trail.  Like the Cady Way Cycle Track, it was a tortuous two-year process to turn a plan into reality.  I devoted a semester to the project, directing the analysis of 25 Environmental Studies seniors who produced a 100-page document.  Included in the study was:
1. The project's anticipated economic benefits
2. The connections that could create a regional bike system.
3. Points for resolving conflicts with property owners.
4. A plan (with costs) to line the trail with native plants.

Students presented the report to the Orlando Parks and Recreation Board.  It was a valuable experience for the college seniors.  Studies show that completing an indepth project and presenting it to a group outside of academia develops essential job skills.  The student research also helped  planners in Winter Park and Orlando make their case.

I had studied the Pinellas Trail (it is the focus of "Recycling Eden," a chapter in the book, Visions of Eden), and I knew that property owners would be wary of building a bike trail on a defunct rail line near their homes.  This issue quickly came to the fore at a neighborhood meeting held at Winter Park High School.  "I'm afraid some one will rob my home and use the trail as a getaway," a resident claimed.  My response, "You are much more likely to have a criminal rip you off and escape on an abandonded right of way."  I followed with an account of how residents living next to the Pinellas Trail residents had the same concern, but once the bike trail went in it became a valued amenity.  It not only raised property values, but a number of homeowners redesigned their lots to provide better access to the trail.  Today realtors list 13 properites for sale on the Cady Way Trail, a selling point for a linch pin in a growing regional bike network.

Map of regional network on Cady Way Trail

A shift in the federal funding of transportation projects in the early 1990s (the Inter-Surface Transportation Efficiency Act) made it possible to span highways and link trail systems.  The bike bridge over Semoran "Boulevard" (using boulevard to describe State Road 436 deserves a law suit) was crucial to the success of the Cady Way Trail, as few humans would brave crossing the six-lane arterial.  I was reminded of the chaos that ensues on SR 436 when the flashing lights of a highway patrol car caught my eye as I biked over the highway on an otherwise calm Saturday afternoon.  The four car accident pictured below marks another round of statistics in a metropolitan area where someone dies every 44 hours in a traffic death.  The carnage also reminded why Florida suffers the highest bike death rate in the nation.

4 car collison viewed from Cady Way Bike Bridge

The 436 bike bridge cost $5.9 million to build.  This is relatively cheap when considering that FDOT has allocated $770 million dollars to "improving" the State Road 408-Interstate 4 interchange since 2006.  In other words, FDOT could build 130 bicycle bridges for the cost of one interchange.  The math is simple, an easy lesson in understanding why death comes more quickly to bicylists in Florida. To add insult to literal injury, FDOT claims the $2.1 billion being spent on Ultimate I-4 will enhance  "livability."http://i4ultimate.com/project-info/ Given that Metropolitan Orlando suffers the highest pedestrian death in the nation (followed by Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, and Miami) what FDOT means by livability is open to conjecture.  For a fact, it does not match the definition the City of Orlando employed in its sustainability plan: neighborhoods with “complete streets and green public spaces” that “encourage walking, public gathering and neighborhood-oriented shopping activity.”

Tax Dollars Employed to Improve 408 Interchange in 2006

Obviously, FDOT's concept of livability runs counter to good planning.  In 1926, Lewis Mumford warned that the trend towards engineering cities to the scale of the auto constituted "a kind of barbarism." It covered the landscape with "a machine-made fabric, increasingly standardized, regimented, characterless, spreading outward by a process seemingly as automatic as the spread of grassland, forests, and jungles in nature."  The soul of the city was being lost.  "Traffic and commerce are the names of the presiding deities, human beings...merely units," Mumford concluded, "designed to run or use elaborate mechanical devices." 

FDOT's worship of traffic efficiency has severed the souls and cost the lives of too many Floridians.  I am looking forward to returning to Portland, where I do not have a car.  My machine of choice is "Man's Most Perfect Invention," the bicycle.http://i4ultimate.com/project-info/ I am just thankful that a generation ago a small group of Orlando city planners had the vision and determination to invest in humanity. 

For more on Lewis Mumford, see "The Sacred City," The New Republic January 27, 1926 and Donald Miller, Lewis Mumford: A Life