The Portland City Council voted Wednesday to authorize the purchase of a property in the Cully neighborhood for future development of affordable housing. It will be the latest acquisition made with money from a $258.4 million voter-approved affordable housing bond; the city aims to use those dollars to acquire or create 1,300 units of affordable housing by 2022.

Councilors voted 4-0, with Commissioner Amanda Fritz absent, to authorize the Portland Housing Bureau to acquire the property at 5827 N.E. Prescott St. for $500,000, with closing and pre-acquisition costs not to exceed $58,000. A single-family home currently occupies the site, which measures 19,000 square feet and is zoned Commercial Mixed-Use (CM2h).

The property was identified as ideal for affordable housing for several reasons, including its proximity to multiple transit lines and a full-service grocery store. According to Housing Bureau interim director Shannon Callahan, the Cully neighborhood was targeted specifically.

“We are prioritizing communities of color, families and households facing homelessness or displacement,” Callahan testified before the City Council. “We are particularly excited about the opportunity to purchase this property in the Cully neighborhood – an area of rich diversity and a strong sense of community, and unfortunately also with a high risk of gentrification.”

The Housing Bureau plans to build a multifamily building with 50 to 75 units, but the scope of the project won’t be finalized until the bureau works with the bond’s oversight committee and the Cully community. The bureau and Home Forward will begin planning for programming and services by the end of this year, which will inform future development goals. For now, the existing house on the site will remain in place and be leased out until a development plan is in place.

The acquisition is the fourth made by the city via the affordable housing bond, and the second made for the purpose of new development. The city last year purchased a former strip club site at Southeast 30th Avenue and Powell Boulevard for $3.72 million for a new affordable housing development. That project is currently in the design phase; construction is set to begin next year.

In addition, the city in 2017 purchased the Ellington Apartments, a 263-unit multifamily property in Northeast Portland, for $47 million, and last month announced the purchase of a newly-completed 51-unit building at 10506 E. Burnside St. for $14.3 million.

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A community service project initiated by the International Living Future Institute will transform a vacant lot in Northeast Portland‘s Cully neighborhood into a small park.

Over the past four months, a group of Portland architects, landscape architects and Portland State University architecture students have worked with neighborhood residents to design the $20,000 project. Plans call for the addition of native plantings, a gravel path and a decorative steel wall at the Oregon Department of Transportation-owned lot near the intersection of Northeast Killingsworth Street and Northeast Portland Highway.

On Saturday, between 30 and 40 volunteers are expected to attend a work party to plant about 500 native plants. Solar-powered lights also are in the works. The park is expected to be net zero in regard to both energy and water usage.

John Shorb, an associate with Portland-based Opsis Architecture, organized the project as the concluding event of ILFI’s 2014 conference in Portland.

“The intention was to actually have a physical, hands-on activity for the attendees to have a lasting impact on Portland,” he said.

The ILFI, which promotes green building, was looking for a way to reach an underserved community, Shorb said. That led to project partnerships with ODOT and nonprofit Verde, which has worked to add green space in Cully.

Carpet manufacturer Interface donated $16,000 for the project.

The lot will eventually serve as an entrance to the future Cully Park about a block away, Shorb said.

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The Cully neighborhood in Northeast Portland has only one park to serve its 13,000 residents, according to city of Portland officials.

That will soon change when a new park is built on the Werbin property, a 2.4-acre site located on Northeast 52^nd Avenue. The park is now in its design phase, and Portland Parks and Recreation has asked for public feedback on . The designs differ in the size of their gathering, garden and playground spaces. One option also includes a skateboard and skating area.

The public has until July 9 to submit an to give feedback on the designs.

The park, called Werbin Park, will be the first park in the neighborhood with a playground, according to Tony DeFalco, neighborhood resident.  However, DeFlaco hopes the park will go beyond providing recreational benefits.

“It’s critical that the investment at Werbin has economic benefits for low-income people and people of color,” he said. “Ideally, the (construction of the) park should provide workforce opportunities.”

DeFlaco is also the coordinator of Let Us Build Cully Park, a coalition of 15 nonprofit organizations that is working to transform a former landfill site on Northeast 72^nd Avenue into a large park.

Construction on Werbin Park is expected to start late this year or early 2013.

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The Cully neighborhood may soon become more accessible to commercial developers.

The Portland is developing the Cully Main Street and Local Street Plans project, an initiative to increase development in the neighborhood. The proposal would add substantial commercial zoning along a stretch of Cully Boulevard, from Northeast Failing Street to U.S. Route 30.

City Council will vote on the proposal in July.

“This will benefit future businesses in the area and will help residents in the neighborhood gain more access to their daily needs,” senior BPS planner Debbie Bischoff said. “There are a lot of children and families in this area and very few family businesses; this will help change that.”

Bischoff said Cully Boulevard was designated as a main street by the city in 1994; however, it was not until last summer, when a $5.4 million renovation finished, that the street finally began to look like one.

Unlike the neighborhoods that surround it, Cully wasn’t annexed into the city until 1985.

“If you look at the amount of commercial zone here, there’s only about 2 percent, whereas other neighborhoods have 10 percent,” Bischoff said. “The area is woefully under-zoned.”

Although she is unsure how many square feet of commercial zoning would be added, she said an economic planning study for the project, which started in April 2011, predicted approximately eight acres of retail and office space.

The types of zoning would range from general commercial – bigger developments with motor vehicle access – to neighborhood commercial – smaller developments near denser residential areas.

Neighborhood officials hope the project will lead to the area welcoming not only new businesses, but also startups by residents.

“There’s a diverse bunch of people from the neighborhood, and we’re really encouraging them to take advantage of this project,” said Evans Martin, vice chairwoman of the . “A lot of folks here have expressed interest in starting their own business, and this will help them.”

Both Bischoff and Martin said the project has received a large amount of support in Cully. During a neighborhood meeting earlier this month, Martin said 40 of 50 residents voted in support of the project. Opponents said they were concerned about an increase in traffic, Martin said.

Nathan Teske, director of community economic development at , a nonprofit organization based in Cully that helps provide affordable housing to Latino families, said new commercial spaces could bring together neighborhood residents who work in the area.

“A lot of Latina women who don’t necessarily have the proper permitting operate child care facilities out of their homes; we’ve been talking about bringing them together. This could help create a communal day care center,” he said. “There are a couple of existing food businesses – carts and small stores – that we could maybe bring together too.”

The BPS also proposes adding mixed residential zoning, which would allow commercial and residential units on the same site.

BPS officials could not comment on any possible interest from businesses or developers. However, Teske said the project would let Hacienda expand its affordable housing units in the neighborhood; the organization hopes to conduct a multimillion-dollar renovation in the next three years.

The project also would address the neighborhood’s run-down side streets. Denver Igarta, a city planner with the , said that only a third of the streets in the neighborhood have a sidewalk and that most haven’t been improved since the 1980s.

“We now have this efficient roadway in Cully Boulevard, but we also have all these unimproved local streets around it,” Igarta said. “We desire to improve routes for neighbors and make it so they can walk and bicycle to destinations more easily by repairing the roads and adding new walkways and trails.”

Igarta said side streets are not eligible to receive money directly from the city, so PBOT would have to seek financial assistance from grant programs, private developers and residents. Repairs would be phased so that they would be more economically manageable.

“It’s been really beneficial to think of the land use and transportation aspects of this neighborhood at the same time,” Igarta said. “When we’re looking at serving more commercial area to the neighborhood, we can also look how residents can get there besides just driving their car.”

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More than 20 years have passed since the Riedel Municipal Solid Waste Composting Facility shut down in Northeast Portland, and Cully residents are still talking about it.

“In terms of how they were running the facility, it was a really bad experience,” said Kathy Fuerstenau, chairwoman of the . “They had very little communication with the neighborhood, and it smelled terrible.”

The multimillion-dollar facility lasted less than a year and produced no viable compost.

So when proposed to build in the same area a new $55 million facility that would turn food waste into energy, company officials said they reached out to residents first.

“We knew we wouldn’t succeed without support from the neighbors,” said John McKinney, president of Columbia Biogas. “We wanted to let them know the plan for operating the plant and how they could get involved.”

The company, the neighborhood association and several east-side nonprofit groups formed a Neighborhood Advisory Committee to make sure that everyone in the area would benefit from the facility.

One of the commitments made by Columbia Biogas and the committee was to stimulate economic development in the Cully neighborhood by providing jobs. Recently, the committee partnered with , a local nonprofit agency, to coordinate an initiative to identify tradespeople in the neighborhood and then hire them to build and operate the facility.

“It makes sense for people in this area to have priority over other people for jobs (related to the facility),” Fuerstenau said. “Because the facility is in their neighborhood, they would take personal sense in the work and make sure everything runs smoothly.”

Worksystems Inc. will use WorkSource Portland Metro, a database often used by small contractors, to search for qualified candidates who live in the neighborhood. , the general contractor for the project, has agreed to devote personnel to meeting with candidates. Additionally, , a water-treatment specialty firm that will run the facility once it’s completed, has agreed to do the same.

According to Alan HipĂłlito, executive director of , one of the nonprofit organizations represented in the NAC, the facility will create 85 construction jobs and 20 operations jobs. HipĂłlito said both job types will include entry-level positions and specialized positions. He added that any of the positions could go to Cully residents if they have the right qualifications.

“We’ve been involved in other processes where we’ve had to convince the owner and general contractor to create these types of opportunities, and it was hard to do so,” HipĂłlito said. “This is a pretty unique situation.”

HipĂłlito said that he would not have supported the project if the commitment to job creation had not been made.

“We’re just not interested in developments that benefit themselves and protect the environment,” he said. “We want developments that will do that and benefit the existing community – to help residents with low income make money and build skills to use down the line.”

An NAC event is planned so that workers discovered by Worksystems Inc. can submit their applications and interview for positions.

No one in the committee knows how many positions exactly will be filled by Cully residents. However, many of its representatives say residents have inquired about jobs related to the project.

John Gardener, community investment manager at Worksystems Inc., said he expects half of the operations jobs to go to neighborhood workers. He added that construction jobs are harder to determine because he does not know how much specialized contracting work will take place.

“Unfortunately unemployment is very high in Northeast Portland, so there are a lot of folks that we could put to work in the area,” Gardener said. “If we were to sample the area, I’m guessing we would find a lot of experienced out-of-work trade workers, who are exactly who we want to help.”

Gardener said if not enough workers are found in the Cully neighborhood, the search will expand to other Northeast neighborhoods.

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In one area of upper Northeast Portland, it’s not a walk in the park to find a park to walk in.

“Cully is by a number of measures, one of the most, if not the most, diverse neighborhoods in the whole state and also one of the most park deficient, habitat deficient, low-income neighborhoods in the city,” said Alan Hipolito, a community advocate, a landscape construction contractor and the executive director of Portland-based nonprofit .

Verde is joining a 17-group coalition, , in an effort to turn a 25-acre former gravel mine and landfill site in the Cully neighborhood into a flourishing community space called Thomas Cully Park.

Hipolito said the group recently completed a historical records search and community interview for a human health risk assessment at the site; it’s presently testing the water, land and air quality. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the Oregon Office of Environmental Public Health are paying for that $135,000 assessment, Hipolito said.

Verde also is working with , a natural landscape planning and design firm in Portland, to develop a master plan for the park. Hipolito said development of the entire park will cost between $15 million and $18 million, and that he hopes to finish the first phase in the next two years.

“There are parks built on top of landfills all over the country all the time over the past 10 to 20 years, because in a lot of cities … landfills are some of the only close-in, open space that they have,” he said. “So they’ve got to find a way to reuse them, and parks are a pretty recognized reuse of landfills now.”

The city is going to need parks like the one planned in Cully if it is going to meet its long-term goals for green spaces.

According to Portland Parks and Recreation’s 2009 progress report for , approximately 75 percent of Portland residents are within easy reach (one-half mile) of a park. For the bureau to reach its goal of 100 percent in the next eight years, 46 new parks are needed, the report stated.

According to Hipolito, approximately 13,000 people live in the Cully neighborhood. One park – roughly four acres – exists within Cully’s four and a half square miles.

The progress report also estimated that 29 future parks could be paid for through the city’s system development charge acquisition program. For the Cully park, at least for now, development is requiring a lot of fundraising.

Hipolito said construction of the first phase will cost between $2.5 million and $3.5 million. Approximately $1.5 million has been raised, with another $300,000 in in-kind donations, and $500,000 potentially on the horizon. He said that in May the coalition plans to initiate a Friends of Cully Park fundraising effort to raise the balance.

One small piece of the project that is progressing is development of a 30,000-square-foot community garden. Hipolito said the garden will not sit on the actual landfill, so it’s clear to move forward.

Portland-based landscape architecture firm is working with students at Harvey Scott School to design the garden. Principal landscape architect Jason King said it’s an effort to help instill a sense of ownership.

“We’ve been facilitating the process through to kind of guide (the students) in the right path but really not be too heavy-handed about designing it for them – letting them be the ultimate authors of the garden,” King said.

King said the trial-and-error process of deciding where to place planters, faucets, tables and other amenities has resonated well with the students. He said they are starting to ask bigger-picture design questions, like how an entrance will work in conjunction with the larger park, and whether raised planter beds should be made more accessible for elderly populations.

“They’re starting to make that next layer of connections,” he said.

King said that only about $45,000 is available for garden development, so his company is donating its time to the project.

“I think the idea that you can actually create some usable spaces with landfill space … particularly in the Cully neighborhood, it’s a great opportunity because there is such a deficit of usable green space in that neighborhood that it just makes a lot of sense in that way,” he said.

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Cully Street in Northeast Portland is in the middle of an extensive upgrade. The work between Killingsworth and Prescott streets for the Oregon Department of Transportation and the city of Portland calls for installing a new water main, adding sidewalks, building storm-water swales, installing a traffic signal, and upgrading lighting and landscaping. General contractor Westech Construction Inc. is in charge of the project that should be completed in spring 2011.

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