The Burnside Blog

Posted By Mike Thelin on 08/18/2008

It’s a challenge to persuade people to see something that isn’t yet there, and for those who backed the relocation and reuse of the old Sauvie Island bridge as a pedestrian and bicycle span over Interstate 405 at Flanders Street in Downtown Portland, the vision of a great idea was never successfully communicated.

Here’s what it would have cured. The portion of Northwest Portland between 21st Avenue and I-405’s concrete canyon is no-man’s land. Sure, people live in the area’s numerous brick-clad dwellings, but as a functioning district, it lacks an identity. It’s home to a hodge podge of businesses and boasts an unhealthy amount of surface lots and underutilized buildings, considering that it’s only several blocks to the heart of the Pearl District. During the most recent wave of Portland development (a wave that included an unprecedented amount of infill) this area was hardly touched.

What’s missing, in my opinion and my experience, is a pedestrian corridor that links the Pearl District to Northwest Portland. Sure, there are plenty of ways to walk or bike to Northwest Portland already, from the eastern side of 405, but none of them are entirely pleasant. Remember, there’s no street parking on Burnside, and that means we pedestrians may enjoy the un-safety of a narrow sidewalk passage by which cars whiz dangerously close. Traffic moves too fast for comfort along the other two thoroughfares, streets Glisan and Everett. For me, someone who walks this route every day of my life, I choose Couch Street as my crossing point across Interstate 405. Though I must jaywalk across the Interstate 405 on-ramp, at least the traffic moves slow.

Everyday as I walk to work, I think about what 16th, 17th, and 18th Avenue of Northwest Portland could be if there were a better way for pedestrians to interact with the area. Along with the large amount of high-density residential that dominates the area, I imagine a street like Flanders could be lined with retail to accommodate the thousands of pedestrian commuters who would likely choose this route over Glisan, Burnside, Everett on their morning walk to work, that is, if it were more accommodating.

Utilizing the Sauvie Island Bridge for such a crossing was not only a clever idea, it was a great opportunity. Not only did the span fit perfectly across the freeway, its position at street level would have created a line of site from Northwest Portland to Old Town, and it would have been a pedestrian bridge as wide as the sections of street it was connecting. But most importantly, it was an opportunity to remake a neighborhood. When one considers this, its estimated $7 million dollar price tag seems worth it.

Today, I read in the Daily Journal of Commerce that the Old Sauvie Bridge is being destroyed. At some point, I imagine we’ll get a pedestrian crossing at Flanders Street, but it won’t be as wide and it certainly won’t be as iconic. Bridge design in America is more the work of engineers, not architects. So instead of something beautiful that would have cost a few million, immortalized an icon, and been yet another great example of Portland innovation in planning and adaptive reuse we’re left with both a local landmark melted down and sold for scrap, and a neighborhood that’s far from living up to its potential.