The Burnside Blog

Posted By Randy Gragg on 11/16/2008

Greenworks PC

Northeast 102nd is getting a green facelift with, among other things, a “windscape” park designed by Greenworks.

For big ideas, mayor-elect Sam Adams has had excellent schooling. Not only did he serve as chief of staff for 12 years under Vera Katz, the most ambitious Portland mayor since the 1970s, he did it in the city’s biggest development boom in 90 years, ushering in projects like the River District, the Eastbank Esplanade and South Waterfront. But Adams also learned the lessons of ideas that were too big: Recall, for instance, Vera’s hopes for capping I-405. But for all that Sam helped Vera get major things done, he also recalls having to slash six out of 11 budgets Vera proposed courtesy of faltering tax revenues.

The latter experience may serve him best as he plops down in the mayor’s chair Jan. 1. But leave no doubt, Sam is also thinking ahead. In the first weeks of his reign, murmurs having entertaining initiatives ranging from a revamping of the Rose Quarter to building an addition to the Portland Center for the Performing Arts to creating an amphitheater in Waterfront Park. But when we at Spaces invited him to give us a “Modest Proposal,” our hopeful, last-page-of-the-magazine look at future possibilities, he offered up something both bold and modest: Turning Gateway into a town center.

It’s bold for the scale and the fact no mayor has paid much attention to east Portland (Vera, famously, was once nearly tarred and feathered at a meeting in Lents). It’s modest because there’s already a plan in place and it will take years, if not decades, to complete—making it safe to talk about in bold terms.

We boiled his proposal down to a few words for the magazine. Here’s the long-play version of the interview.

Portland Spaces: We gave you an open field to tell the public of any wild scheme you might think up. Why a town center at Gateway?

Sam Adams: Because of the potential that is stoked by what is going to be the most transit-connected part of the city, second only to downtown. It hasn’t reached its potential. And it hasn’t had the leadership focus it deserves. Now we’ve got all this public investment and access to transit, the freeway and light rail. We’ve gained control of some property for the first time. We’ve got some developers like Ted Gilbert and Fred Meyer and others that we can feel we can work with. So it’s a combination. We’ve got infrastructure; the zoning is in place; it’s a tax increment district, and it’s an area I know with owners I know. It’s primed to take off.

PS: It’s been an urban renewal area since 2001. The only thing new is an additional light rail connection. Despite Portland enjoying the biggest development boom since early in the last century, Gateway still never taken off. What’s been missing from the equation?

SA: City Councils of the past have siphoned off significant amounts of tax-increment for public sector projects. We’ve been unable until recently to buy land or had the resources to clean up the poison property even if we got ahold of it. So I’ve used the last four years to put partnerships in place. The old junkyard and tire farm that’s basically been in the middle of the prime town center spot, we’re turning into great opportunities. When the council was rolling in money I got the basic improvements to 102nd you now see. Those kinds of things give developers hope. This is the kind of area where tax abatement was intended. I’m willing to bring tax abatement back.

With the River District and South Waterfront, we’ve shown how private/public partnerships can work and now we can apply that knowledge here. In some ways it’s more difficult, some ways not.

PS: Vera Katz was famously run out of an east Portland meeting once. Much of it wasn’t even annexed until the early ‘90s. In a sense, East Portland hasn’t had a mayor. It’s a different kind of city, not the streetcar grid, but farmland subdivided and developed piecemeal. Can you be the mayor of this place?

SA: Absolutely. And one of the reasons I think it’s so vital to do that is that things can soquickly flip with gentrification. Maybe the events of the last 60 days will cool things off a bit. But with the wrong kind of zoning and not enough public ownership of land, we’re seeing gentrification along TriMet’s Yellow Line. It’s gone from downtrodden to people holding on to their property because they’ll make a lot of money. I really have found that to be instructive. It’s only been the last three months that we finally put in the correct zoning along the new Green Line that should have happened ahead of time. The city doesn’t need to own everything but it needs some key parcels where there are transit stops, so that we have something to give, sell or barter to a private partner – and we need partners.

On the Green Line, we’re studying and changing the zoning at each of the stops. The money former commissioner Eric Sten and I got for affordable housing, we prioritized to buy some land at each of the stops. I recruited a company from Gresham called Assurity Northwest and, suddenly, after eight years of moldering, the Lents Town Square Plan is happening. Now you can go out on Foster and the Lents Town Center is out of the ground and looks awesome.

Courtesy of PDC

The new Lents Town Center is on the rise.

That said, Gateway is more difficult than Lents because it’s a sea of parking lots and the transportation grid is especially dysfunctional. But in some ways those lots have served as a land bank. But the time of land banking has passed. With this new investment on the Green Line, we’ve got to concentrate on getting Gateway the amenities downtown has received. Even in this down time, the time is ripe: The cost of getting into this for a developer is a lot less. They see opportunities. Smaller projects help them keep the core competencies of their staffs. They’re easier to finance. These kinds of neighborhoods you can get into with a lower basis point. People like Ted Gilbert got into it a long time ago.

SP: Can Gateway Green, Gilbert’s proposal to turn all the land in between I-205’s lanes and ramps into a park, happen? SA: Not only can I happen; it’s essential. Here’s an analogy. With the Columbia River Crossing, there’s built into that a process neighborhood remediation. But back when they built freeways in Gateway, there was no concept of remediation. That project will retrofit Gateway with some proper remediation for being carved up by freeways. I’m not going to bullshit you: it’s going to be tough, but it’s got a chance. Plus, it’s totally the right thing to do. A lot of what can make it happen is to get the Oregon Department of Transportation to lighten up. They own the land. The local ODOT folks are great, but statewide policy is if ODOT owns it, stay off –nothing can happen. So we need to clear the way by getting ODOT to be more creative. This could be Gateway’s esplanade, its Jamison Square. In my vision, it’s part of a necklace of buttes connected by green streets.

PS: What’s the first move to get the dominos falling in the right way?

SA: Like we’ve learned elsewhere in the city: Investment in infrastructure and creation of open space. I’m pushing PDC right now to create a really cool, active plaza in Gateway. We know the land adjacent immediately becomes a lot more valuable – and doable for public private partnerships. Where we’re cleaning up the junk yard, that is such a great opportunity for a plaza. Part of my vision for Portland is that we have those large scale open plazas in every neighborhood. One of the things we learned from Pearl District and South Waterfront is the importance of upfront development agreements even before you’ve done anything. They’ve worked: billions in private investment, not in the order the market would do. We did streetcar before development along the line. Put the public infrastructure in first. We need to show Gateway that, after all these years, things are different. It’s about changing the prevailing view among the developers of what’s possible. You can only get them to take so much risk.

PS: But in the Pearl District, you had predominant property ownership by Hoyt Street Properties and de facto gap financing by a cash-rich developer in Joe Weston and vision and salesmanship by Homer Williams. The idea of doing a similar development agreement is great but can you create an agreement that herds the necessary cats of Gateway?

SA: There are smaller property owners. But for gap financing, I’ve been meeting with the unions. Union insurance funds and pension funds are part of the comingling of money in South Waterfront. Unite Here the rebels of the AFL-CIO set up a green fund and they would love to do some of their pioneering work here. I’m trying to get them to green up the headquarters hotel at the Oregon Convention Center. But because they’re new, Gateway would be a great place to get their feet wet. But I’m not going to sugar-coat it. The last 60 days have made everything a lot harder. The city can’t even get short term credit. But that won’t go on forever. We need to get ready for when things unfreeze. As for multiple property owners? That’s why it’s been doubly important that we buy land here. In Lents Town Center, we bought land and it bloomed overnight. Here it might take longer to achieve a similar coherence. But even if there are gaps, we need to start the process.