Isaac Laquedem

Rename SW Second Avenue after . . .

I came across this post I had written in July 2009 about the renaming of 39th Avenue after Cesar Chavez.  As I oppose renaming Portland's streets after people who didn't contribute to Portland's history, I opposed renaming 39th Avenue, and still dislike how the City Council violated public policy on street names in the process.

Professor Bogdanski's comment to my post sparked an idea for a street renaming that I would support, and for which I think a petition drive would succeed.  It's to rename SW 2nd Avenue downtown after James Chasse, the musician whom members of the Portland police beat to death in 2006 (breaking 26 of his bones in the process) and whose death brought about a long-overdue, if not fully satisfactory, investigation into Portland's treatment of the mentally ill.

Why SW 2nd Avenue?  The Police Bureau's address, which would appear on the business card of every officer, would become 1111 SW James Chasse Avenue.  Every Portland police officer would be carrying Mr. Chasse's name while on duty as a reminder that their mission to protect and to serve includes protecting and serving the homeless and the mentally ill.

Think about it.

The Portland Streetcar's real purpose revealed

One of the ongoing discussions about the Portland Streetcar is whether it is faster to walk or take the streetcar.  When I want to travel along the streetcar's route downtown, I trot briskly along the route until a streetcar catches up with me, or until I catch up with the streetcar, or until I get to my destination.  Usually I beat the streetcar.  Every time I follow the tracks, I notice others also jogging or walking briskly along the route, apparently with the same purpose. 

Twenty years ago I visited the Multnomah Kennel Club and watched the greyhounds run around the circuit, chasing a mechanical rabbit that's pulled along a channel next to the track.  It struck me today as I noticed people trotting along the rail line that the Portland Streetcar is not primarily a means of transportation, nor is it mainly a subsidy to lucky if inept contractors and suppliers.

It's a public health measure, designed to not to move people from Point A to Point B, but to improve the cardiovascular fitness of downtown workers and residents who strive to outpace the trolleycar. 

It's the rabbit, and we're the greyhounds.

The Portland Streetcar: TriMet contracts, but Portland's cost expands

Here's an interesting question about contracts.  TriMet is suing Clackamas County because the county commission is asking the voters to decide whether the county should give TriMet two pieces of property that TriMet says the county promised to give it.  TriMet's position is that a contract is a contract, and Clackamas County needs to honor its promises to TriMet.  At the same time, TriMet is asking Portland to chip in $2.1 million for the eastside streetcar (here's the city's proposed resolution), even though the 2010 contract between the city and TriMet called for the city to pay TriMet only $600,000, increased to $1.25 million in 2011.

Is a contract with TriMet binding?  It depends on who's paying.

LUBA deals a setback to the no-parking apartments at 37th and SE Division

Wednesday the Land Use Board of Appeals reversed Portland's approval of an 80-unit mixed-use building at 37th and Southeast Division, proposed to be built without any off-street parking.  (Thanks to Willamette Week for the story.)

LUBA reversed the City's decision, not for reasons relating to the lack of parking, but because of how the City wrote its zoning code.  The site is a rectangle with one of the short sides along Division and one of the long sides along 37th.   The developer proposes to build retail space on the ground floor and apartments upstairs.  The portion nearer Division is subject to the City's "Main Street" zoning, which is intended to make buildings along certain streets, including that portion of Division, look like buildings in small town Main Streets.  One of these standards says that if any of the building is in a non-residential use and the site is on a corner, then "for portions of a building within the maximum building setback, at least one main entrance for each tenant space must (a) be within 5 feet of the facade facing Division Street, and (b) either (1) face Division Street, or (2) be at an angle of up to 45 degrees from Division Street, measured from the street property line."

In that zone, the maximum building setback is 10 feet, meaning that the building's Division Street wall can't be more than 10 feet from Division Street.  In fact, it's built on the lot line, so it's set back 0 feet.  The portion of the building within that 10-foot area includes both street-level commercial space and twelve upstairs apartments.  The main entrances to the streetfront retail face Division Street, but the entrances to the apartments don't -- they're around the corner, on SE 37th, and are more than 5 feet from Division Street.

The City planners rallied valiantly around the developer, and argued that this provision of the zoning code was never intended to apply to apartments, only to non-residential uses.  LUBA rejected the City's argument, saying that the plain language of the code states that at least one main entrance to any tenant space within the 10-foot setback must be within 5 feet of the Division Street facade.

Here are the developer's options, none very attractive:

1.    Convert all of the street-level space to apartments so that the building will be residential-only, increasing the construction cost and reducing the rental income.

2.    Take out some of the commercial space on Division Street (the highest-value portion of the building) and put in a Division Street entrance to the apartments, also increasing the development cost and reducing the rental income.

3.    Remove the portion of the upper floors that's within 10 feet of Division Street; that is, chop off portions of 12 apartments.

4.    Persuade the City to change its zoning code very, very fast, before the neighbors force the City to make the developer tear down what is now an illegal and unpermitted building.

I'd be worried if I were the developer.  I'd be even more worried if I were the developer's lender.

Metro released the Convention Center Hotel study. Let's see the rest of the plan

A few days ago Metro released the market impact study for the proposed Convention Center hotel.  (Here's the Oregonian story reporting that happy fact.)  The study, performed by a firm nondescriptly named Strategic Advisory Group, says that the Oregon Convention Center would attract more conventions if a 600-room headquarters hotel were built across the street.  I read the study with great interest.  Its reasoning seems sound and the methodology is better than what I expected.  I was also impressed with SAG because it included one hotel project, Detroit's, in which it concluded that there was not enough demand to justify building a convention center hotel.  (Beware the consultant who always gives the same answer.)

The consultancy's website includes a list of eleven convention center hotel projects that it's worked on, which you can read by following this link.  One of them is the Portland project, which SAG describes in these words:

The City of Portland desired to increase it marketability within the convention and tradeshow industry. With a recently completed expansion of the Oregon Convention Center, those charged with marketing and booking the facility continued to face obstacles in attracting many key, high-impact events. Would-be customers of the Center and visitors of the City frequently vocalized the need for a larger, first-quality hotel adjacent to the OCC. Therefore, the City of Portland, the Portland Oregon Visitors Association (now "Travel Portland"), and later the Portland Development Commission engaged SAG to create a Headquarter Hotel Strategic Plan and help realize the project. The project involved understanding and defining the market, customer needs, and required hotel
program; assessing the impact of a new headquarter hotel on the existing hotel market; quantifying the economic impact on the OCC and the community; estimating the hotel's cost and financial feasibility.

SAG's description includes this juicy bit:

SAG's Plan did detail a need for a new hotel but also described other necessary steps Portland would need to take to truly maximize its penetration in the industry.

Why is this a juicy bit?  The study that Metro released is only part of what SAG did for Metro.

The study that the Oregonian links to doesn't include the list of "other necessary steps" that Portland must take to "maximize its penetration of the industry," that is, to get more convention business.  SAG told Metro.  Metro should tell us.

Another way to look at street parking

The growing public backlash over the City of Portland's push to encourage developers to build dense housing without parking in single-family neighborhoods led me to do a little math.

First, some basic facts.  A standard city block is 200 feet long from corner to corner.  A 200-foot-long block face with parallel parking and without any fire hydrants, sidewalk extensions ("corner bumps", the little curved bits that project into the street at the corners), truck loading zones, and driveways will accommodate 10 parked cars.  A block face with sidewalk extensions will hold 9 parked cars.  A block face with sidewalk extensions and four houses with single-width driveways will hold 5 or 6 cars, depending on how the driveways are arranged.

Next, consider the proposed 50-unit project at 30th and SE Hawthorne.  The story quotes the developer saying that at a similar project in Northeast Portland, "only 13 to 14 cars parked on the street were attributed to residents of the building."  (I think he had in mind the Irvington Garden Apartments at NE 15th and Hancock Street, also a 50-unit project.)  Taking that as fact, the Hawthorne Boulevard project's residents will bring 13 or 14 cars to the neighborhood to park on the street.  This doesn't count visitors they might have.

How much curb space will the residents' cars require?  Likely about 280 to 300 linear feet, or just under a block and a half.

The Hawthorne site itself, however, is only 100 feet square.  Half of the Hawthorne frontage is taken up by a curb extension for a bus stop, so the site will contribute only 150 feet of curbfront toward the parking needs of its residents.  (The fire hydrant is at the corner and doesn't reduce the available parking.)  The project will require another 130 to 150 feet of curbfront for its residents beyond what's in front of the project itself, putting its residents into a parking competition with the condominium (four units) and two houses to the north.

This leads to the question: what is the available common parking supply, and who should get to claim it first?  It's a question that the city planners should answer before they burden it with more than it can handle.

A Convention Center headquarters hotel would increase business by . . . only 8%?

I've written several times already, over the last five years, about the quirky math that Metro uses to justify the proposed Oregon Convention Center headquarters hotel.  I noticed another odd math fact in Metro's renewed flirtation with the idea.

This April 25 story from the Daily Journal of Commerce says that, according to Metro, in 2011 the conventions at the Convention Center produced $450 million in community spending in the Portland area.   The same article says that, because the Convention Center has no headquarters hotel, it lost 30 conventions in 2011 that would have produced an additional $35 million in community spending.

Maybe I'm understanding this incorrectly (and if so I invite anyone from Metro to help me out here) but if those numbers are apples-to-apples, then by adding a headquarters hotel we could attract about an additional 8% in community spending to the Portland area.  Put another way, without a headquarters hotel we're already getting 92% of the economic impact that we would get with one, according to Metro's figures.

I don't object to Metro selling its parcel of land to a hotel developer who wants to build a 600-room hotel without any public subsidy, but it seems a bit thick to allocate scarce tax dollars to subsidize a project that will result in only a small additional community benefit.

Bath time! City Hall lets loose its inner Mary Poppins on the protesters

OregonLive reports that the protesters who are camped out in front of Portland City Hall have been told to move.  I chuckled over the headline, which reads: "Portland City Hall protesters reminded to comply with code, will be moved Monday for power-wash."  Ah, the nanny state.  They looked fairly clean to me.

Where have the Zoo parking revenues gone, if not to pay Metro's debt?

The more I look into the City's efforts to charge people to park at Washington Park, the more interesting it gets.  (Background: the City of Portland owns Washington Park and leases the Oregon Zoo and the Zoo parking lot to Metro, which operates the Zoo and the parking lot.)

Two days ago I'd posted a snippet from the proposed agreement between the City and Metro, which says that in 1997 Metro borrowed $4,940,000 to help out with the Zoo light rail station, that Metro expected to repay the $4,940,000 with revenues from the Zoo parking lot, and that Metro hasn't repaid the debt yet.  My own experience with the Zoo parking lot is that no one seems to be charging for using it, although it has booths and gates set up.

Later that day Rick commented that the Zoo does charge for parking, and folds it into the ticket price for admission.  So if Metro has been collecting for parking by surcharging Zoo admission tickets, and if Metro hasn't been using the parking fees to repay the $5 million it borrowed, what has Metro done with the money it did collect?  Inquiring minds are curious.

Surprise! Metro has charged you to park at the Zoo since 1997; you just haven't paid

One of the documents prepared by the Portland Parks Bureau, and passed on to me by the Knower of All Things, gives a clue to why the Bureau wants to charge Portlanders to park in Washington Park.  The reason isn't, as I archly speculated yesterday, that the Parks Bureau wants to discourage East Portlanders from using Washington Park.  Rather, it goes back to the construction of the West Side Light Rail 15 years ago.  It turns out that in 1997, Metro borrowed $5 million, which it contributed to the cost of building the Zoo light rail station and other improvements to the Zoo parking lot.  Metro operates the Zoo, and expected that revenues from the Zoo parking lot would be available to repay the $5 million.  As it happened, the revenues weren't available.  Here's how the City's phrased it:

WHEREAS, in 1997, METRO issued debt instruments in the amount of $4,940,000, in order to contribute to the cost of the construction of the light rail station at the Main Parking Lot and construction of improvements and modifications to the Main Parking Lot, which debt was expected to be repaid using the proceeds of parking fees to be paid by users of the Main Parking Lot, but was not so repaid (“Metro Bond Repayment”);

The joker in this deck is that although the City owns the Zoo parking lot, Metro has leased it from the City since 1979 and the lease doesn't expire until 2014.  Metro could have charged for parking any time it wished.  It's not that the revenues weren't available to Metro, but that Metro didn't bother to collect them.  (The lot actually has booths and gates for collecting parking revenues.  I've never seen them staffed, but they may have been used sporadically for a while.)

This makes the City's parking plan a little more mysterious: Metro's been entitled to charge for Zoo parking for years, but hasn't; Metro's unhappy that it hasn't been collecting the parking fees; so the City is going to charge visitors everywhere in Washington Park to make up for this.  Something's not quite right here.   Perhaps someone in the parking meter business needs the repeat business?