In East Portland, where Interstate 84 meets Interstate 205, offers 25 acres of parkland – an opportunity for respite from hustle and bustle. And now it’s even better.

A $5.75 million project concluded recently. It produced a gravity-oriented mountain bike trail, an asphalt pump track nearly 600 feet in length, a playground, a grassy area for gatherings and performances (when public health conditions allow), improved utilities including restrooms and a drinking fountain, and more.

“Gateway Green is finally the park we always dreamed it could be,” Paul Dickow, chairman of the Friends of Gateway Green board, stated in a press release. “This is a huge day for East Portland, Portland Parks, and off-road cyclists!”

The park now features two miles of single track, two pump tracks, gravity-oriented flow trails, and a bike park with an adaptive course for people in wheelchairs. Also, the habitat was diversified via additions of plants.

The project was paid with Portland Parks & Recreation system development charges and a $1 million Nature in Neighborhood grant from Metro. In addition to Friends of Gateway Green, project partners included Northwest Trail Alliance, The UNPavement Project and Sasquatch Trails.

Design consultants included GreenWorks PC, PBS Engineering & Environmental, and C2 Recreation. Minority-owned Raimore Construction served as the contractor.

“We didn’t want to reduce the quality of the bike experience out there but with added advancements improved upon them,” GreenWorks landscape architect Ben Johnson said.

Johnson worked to make sure people could access all of the trails in the park without disrupting the existing bike trails.

Because Gateway Green differs in elevation by approximately 100 feet from its top to its bottom, design and construction were challenging. A key design aspect was ensuring accessibility for all potential park users.

GreenWorks also improved the habitat to keep wildlife and recreational use in mind. For example, trees were planted in areas to provide shade for cyclists. The whole habitat was designed with native trees except for a few by the hub to give the area separation and prominence.

Upon the park’s opening in 2017, it had only a single track and bike park. It was “bare-bones,” Chris Bernhardt, of C2 Recreation, said. “(It) didn’t feel like a park.”

Now Gateway Green is expected to become a regional destination for cyclists of all skill levels as well as an attraction for many others.

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Portland’s new bike-centered amenity, Gateway Green, represents a bit of a paradox. The 25-acre parcel is highly visible, wedged as it is between two well-traveled interstate highways in East Portland. But park booster Linda Robinson acknowledges there’s a problem.

“People can’t find it,” said Robinson, a Friends of Gateway Green (FoGG) board member. “People can’t even find the bike path to get there.”

This became obvious to Robinson early in the park’s , when she would arrange meetings with other stakeholders at the parcel, and they’d consistently get lost trying to reach it. The park is accessible only via a spur off the Interstate 205 multiuse path, and the nearest one can park a vehicle is the Gateway transit center a quarter-mile away.

So now, local design firm Propel Studio is finalizing concepts for a package of wayfinding and signage options for the Gateway neighborhood, to help bicyclists – plus residents – find the off-road facility. The 4-year-old firm’s work is being paid for by a $50,000 Prosper Portland grant.

And it’s not just the park. The entire business district is difficult for outsiders to locate, said Tom Badrick, a FoGG board member.

“If you hop on light rail and get off at the Gateway transit center, you can’t find anything from there,” he said. “Nothing is obvious.”

Also, with a shortage of public streets, is difficult to navigate, according to Badrick. He remembers shopping at the old Fred Meyer store – more open-air promenade than big-box – as a child growing up in Gateway. He moved back eight years ago and has been involved with a number of community groups, including the Gateway Area Business Association.

“Some areas are different, but some areas, it just seems like time stood still,” he said. “Still, it’s not very pedestrian-friendly. It used to be a lot more pedestrian-friendly.”

But before Propel could address signage in Gateway and the issue of directing people to Gateway Green, it first had to tackle another, broader issue, according to partner Lucas Gray.

“It’s hard to design signage and wayfinding if there’s no overarching logos, texts, fonts, colors, etc. to work from,” he said. “So we started to think big picture – what is the identity of the Gateway district?”

The Gateway area was founded by Fred Meyer himself. Continually trying to evade city regulations, the one-stop-shopping innovator in 1954 established a new shopping center amid the orchards east of Portland. Included in the design was a prominent arch, like a scaled-down version of St. Louis’ Gateway Arch.

Suburban sprawl continued for the next five decades, and the Gateway arch was taken down in 1991 due to deterioration. Gateway’s location at the confluence of two interstates and with easy access to downtown and the Portland International Airport continue to make it a target for development; however, zoning requirements challenge developers, and connectivity and access to parks challenge residents.

Gateway was designated one of seven regional urban centers in the Metro 2040 Growth Concept planning document, with the area scheduled to receive millions of dollars’ worth of transit and highway improvements in the coming years.

Young people who settle in East Portland, priced out of hipper neighborhoods, still expect urban amenities like reliable transit and fine dining. Propel Studio’s work crafting signs for Gateway Green has involved striking a balance between old and new, Gray said, and a big sticking point has become the arch.

“Some of the older business owners think of the arch as this really iconic thing, and they are really interested in having that image restored and prevalent in the identity of the area,” Gray said. “And there’s the younger people – and some of the older people – who want it to be a little bit more progressive, and for us to forget the arch. It’s not there anymore and it’s not relevant to the future of the district.”

Most of the aesthetic options Propel has created reference the arch by varying degrees. One option features an arch carved out – or “subtracted” – from a larger space. However, some options leave out the arch altogether.

Funding has yet to be secured for fabrication and installation, and it’s possible the final branding won’t match Propel’s ideas. But incorporating branding into architecture is an exciting, emerging field, according to Gray, and it’s the sort of work Propel would like to do more of.

For the Gateway area, Propel envisions three tiers of “intervention.” The first is a large-scale object that would function as a mix of community meeting point, art installation and simple shelter, similar to the Jorge Pardo-designed streetcar stop at the east end of the Broadway Bridge.

“It hasn’t been 100-percent defined,” Gray said.

The structure might contain bike-friendly amenities, like a tire air pump. The cost for this level of intervention is estimated to run around $100,000 each.

The next tier down would involve medium-scale objects, like information kiosks similar to those designed for the Lents area. Propel envisions rolling out four or five of them at strategic locations, at an anticipated cost of around $10,000 each.

The third level would be small-scale interventions to create pathways through the neighborhoods. These items would be much more affordable and faster to fabricate than the others. Reusable medallions could be used to imprint roads and sidewalks during repavement projects. Sign-toppers made of laser-cut steel could run as little as $10 each, Gray said.

There’s even talk of “tactical urbanism” tactics, like temporary wayfinding devices to help community members become familiar with new routes.

formally opened with a ceremony June 24, a 100-degree day. More than 1,000 people attended, most on bikes.

The moment was a great relief to Robinson, who, along with developer Ted Gilbert, spent more than a decade shepherding the project. But it served as a reminder how much work remains, she said, citing water hookups, restrooms and other work.

As for what Robinson would like the final designs to look like, she said she hasn’t decided if she’d like the arch to be incorporated in Gateway going forward.

“I’m still vacillating back and forth – should we use it, should we not use it?” she said. “I don’t think we should totally ignore it.”

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