In the wake of the news that the Oregon Sustainability Center will not move forward this year as its supporters hoped, Mayor Sam Adams announced that the city of Portland is not ready to give up on the project.

The Oregon Legislature wrapped up its short session on Monday and failed to approve a market rate loan request to help build the $61.7 million project. Adams, one of the Sustainability Center’s key advocates, a few hours before the official close of the session.

“It is disappointing that partisan, election-year politics trumped progress. This is evidenced by the fact that the Federal Economic Development Administration awarded the project a grant, but the state refused to provide a market rate loan,” Adams said in the statement.

But Adams went on to say that the city will continue to explore project alternatives, working with Portland State University, the Oregon University System, and the other project partners.

The project partners have not settled on an alternative to pursue, but several businesses and local firms have supported the project over the years.

In May 2011, was the first retail tenant to sign a lease commitment with the OSC. Since then, local firms and both signed letters of interest for space within the building.

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A group of 28 local policy makers that present recommendations to the Metro Council unanimously support a modest urban growth boundary expansion for the Portland-metro area.

But about two-thirds of the group’s members went further and asked that the council also require residential zoning in those expanded areas to be as dense as most Portland neighborhoods.

During a Metro Policy Advisory Committee meeting last week, Portland Mayor Sam Adams received majority support for a resolution asking the council to require housing densities of at least 20 units per acre in any expanded area. If the council was to consent, the density requirement would be equivalent to row housing on the fringes of the metro area.

“Local jurisdictions should commit to a higher capacity target – based on a transit supportive density of a minimum 20 units per buildable acre,” Adams wrote in a letter to MPAC. “The particular areas that are under consideration represent the best of the urban reserves – they are adjacent to major transportation corridors and town centers.”

According to Adams, a set of row houses each with about 2,000 to 2,500 square feet of space would allow for about 16 to 22 units per buildable acre. Comparatively, detached homes built on 5,000-square-foot lots would allow for about eight units per buildable acre, and a three-story apartment building would allow for between 35 and 40 units per buildable acre.

Adams’ recommendation came as MPAC recommended to the Metro Council how much to expand the UGB. The council is set to decide Oct. 20 whether to expand the UGB.

The group unanimously called for adding approximately 1,600 acres to the UGB for residential needs. That amount of acreage falls into the lower end of the middle third of Metro’s population growth projections for the area over the next 20 years and would be considered a modest expansion, according to Metro spokesman Ken Ray.

The Metro Council is considering 10 areas for potential expansion. Two of those areas touted since the beginning of the process – a 1,063-acre swath south of Hillsboro and the 543-acre South Cooper Mountain area near Beaverton – have gone through the preliminary planning process and would meet MPAC’s recommendation.

“We regard (South Cooper Mountain) as absolutely critical to accommodating growth,” said Don Mazziotti, community development director for the city of Beaverton. “Through our initial planning we’ve discovered that 12 to 15 units per buildable acre would work. At first blush, 20 per acre sounds like a real stretch, not only for this area, but even parts of Portland.”

The MPAC resolution is just a recommendation, but Mazziotti noted that such a requirement would negate initial planning work already done.

Other MPAC members had similar concerns. Hillsboro Mayor Jerry Willey said 20 units per buildable acre should be a goal, but that it is too late in the process for it to be required.

“It’s unrealistic to think we can go from a region that internally averages about 10 units per acre to the expectation that only on the edges be 20 units per acre,” Willey said. “It’s too tall of a charge right now. I’d like to see it in 2015 or later.”

Adams emphasized that the greater density is consistent with other recommendations MPAC has made to the Metro Council in the past.

In the end, the final decision will belong to the Metro Council.

“The council can condition UGB expansions with certain requirements,” Ray said, “but this is just a recommendation. The council will listen, but they’re not saying if they would include something like this.”

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Portland City Council has delayed a final decision on whether to allow a private developer to repurpose a South Waterfront building to house the Portland office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The council on Wednesday voted unanimously to reopen the public record for seven additional days – until 5 p.m. on Sept. 28. The extra time will give opponents of the project a chance to rebut any evidence they believe was added to the public record too late. It also will give the developer time to secure federal approval for a new safety plan the project team believes will alleviate residents’ concerns.

City Council will take up the matter again at 3 p.m. on Oct. 5. It is expected to make a decision at that time whether to grant the developer – Lindquist Development – the Type III conditional-use permit required for the project to move forward.

“This time will allow us to be certain that we are making the decision the right way,” Mayor Sam Adams said. “We run the potential risk of making a decision based on something that shouldn’t be on the record if we don’t.”

The project at first did not require a Type III conditional-use permit. After the Portland Planning Commission approved the project, the South Waterfront Neighborhood Association issued an appeal to City Council in January. The group claimed that the project should be subject to conditional-use review – which takes into account the safety of residents, and other issues – because a small portion of the facility would include four holding cells.

The holding cells would occupy 5,198 square feet of the 114,279-square-foot building, which would hold mostly office space. Detainees would be housed in the cells for no more than 12 hours and would then be either transported to ICE’s detention center in Tacoma, Wash., or released.

City Council upheld the neighborhood association’s claims, and the project team was required to meet additional requirements. Those efforts culminated in July when a hearings officer decided that the developer met all of the requirements of conditional use except one: It lacked a plan for release of detainees.

The developer then appealed the hearings officer’s decision, which is why the issue went back before City Council. The appeal did not allow the addition of new evidence to the record after a July 18 deadline. The council sought the extra time to be certain of the record’s contents.

Opponents of the project – 13 testified against it – strongly upheld their safety concerns. One of the biggest issues is that the proposed facility would be within 100 yards of a charter school.

But as John Junkin, a Garvey Schubert Barer attorney representing the developer, pointed out, ICE’s present facility – in Northwest Portland, off Broadway – hasn’t experienced one problem in nearly 40 years of service.

“In the over three decades we could find no evidence or record of any safety issues or concerns coming from the current office,” he said.

But several opponents mentioned that just because nothing has happened in the past doesn’t mean it won’t in the future.

To alleviate some of these concerns, the developer added a new condition of approval, which is not considered new evidence. The condition was for the developer to implement a safety plan that outlines how ICE agents would be required to release detainees. The absence of such a plan was why the hearings officer rejected the permit.

The plan basically states that detainees would not be released directly from the facility, but would instead be driven to a public transit depot downtown, or to another location mutually agreed upon.

Elizabeth Godfrey, a representative of ICE, added that Multnomah County releases as many as 90 detainees a day from its detention center downtown. ICE releases two or three a week from its facility, she said.

City Council seemed to believe the plan was sufficient, but it was concerned about implementation, which would involve the developer. The extra time granted by the council also is intended to give the developer time to obtain a commitment from federal officials that they will follow the plan, and to determine a way to confirm enforcement.

“I want to see ICE confirm these conditions and create and sign some sort of declaration,” Commissioner Dan Saltzman said.

Commissioner Amanda Fritz voted in favor of the time extension, but she questioned its importance. If the federal government has already deemed these people to not be a threat, she said, it shouldn’t matter where they are released.

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Portland has been lucky, escaping the natural disasters that have swept the globe these past apocalyptic years. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Today at 11:15 a.m. at O’Bryant Square, Portland Mayor Sam Adams and other city officials will discuss Portland’s preparedness for emergencies. A kick-off event for National Preparedness Month (September), Mayor Adams will speak about new emergency signage for city parks and strategic planning by the Office of Emergency Management. Hopefully they have made some improvements since 2010, when an audit of Portland’s emergency system found its weak spots.

Thankfully, the city has taken action and ostensibly is more prepared. Adams last month that the Office of Emergency Management is implementing the recommendations of the 2010 audit. Updates include revisions to these city tools:

• and a new

So, swing by O’Bryant Square today to hear the latest on how Portland is preparing for the bad news of the future.

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The city of Portland is moving forward with plans to expand the city’s largest urban renewal area by 430 acres.

But the Rose Quarter, which was criticized by nearby residents for being included, has been removed from the expansion plans.

Mayor Sam Adams has directed the Portland Development Commission to continue building a package of amendments that would expand the 3,804-acre to include four new areas totaling 430 acres. If the amendments were passed, projects and businesses in the area would be allowed to use urban renewal funds from the 10-year-old URA for the remaining 10 years before it sunsets.

“As the economy begins to improve, there are a number of catalytic projects and small businesses in the north (and) northeast neighborhoods that could benefit from access to urban renewal resources,” Adams said in a statement on the decision. “We will discuss whether to add the Rose Quarter to the (Interstate Corridor URA) later this year, but it’s important that we move forward with these four neighborhood expansion areas today, to expedite investment.”

The four properties include portions of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, the St. John’s Town Center, the south side of Lombard Street and portions of both Killingsworth and Alberta streets.

A 21-member citizen advisory committee convened in August 2009 to discuss the potential inclusion of the four properties as well as the Rose Quarter properties. After nearly a year of debate on the matter, the committee unanimously recommended that the four areas be included, but the group was asked to not make a recommendation on the Rose Quarter properties until their development was more defined.

It had been 10 months since those recommendations, and none of the potential expansions had moved forward until Adams’ announcement.

The news is welcomed by neighbors, who in February wrote a letter to the city in support of the other expansions, but not the Rose Quarter properties.

“We believe we represent the community consensus in saying that we are inalterably opposed to the inclusion of the Rose Quarter District in the (Interstate Corridor URA) boundaries,” according to the letter signed by Katie Ugolini, president of the Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods

PDC staff will complete the required technical work over the next few months. The proposed amendments will then appear before the PDC Board, Planning Commission and City Council this summer for potential adoption.

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Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen believes Portland Mayor Sam Adams is on the right track with his proposal for an urban renewal area surrounding Portland State University. But while he’s optimistic and willing to listen, Cogen isn’t quite ready to fully support the plan.

After being met with profuse opposition while pushing for a 325-acre URA last year, Adams took time during his State of the City address last week to pitch creation of a 135-acre URA that would encompass PSU.

Cogen likes the size reduction, but he is concerned that it would be focused around a public institution that doesn’t pay property taxes.

“It’s scaled back and much more focused around a specific area and entity that they want to improve,” he said. “I think supporting PSU is a great thing, but the premise of urban renewal and tax increment financing is to increase the tax base and when you are looking to improve a public institution that’s going to be hard.”

One selling point of a URA is that although taxing districts – such as counties and school districts – lose money while property taxes are frozen, they wind up with more tax revenues after development increases the tax base.

But as Mark Landauer, a lobbyist for the Special Districts Association of Oregon, pointed out, using urban renewal money for school construction projects would not increase the tax base.

“The point of using urban renewal dollars is to increase values, which increases the amount of property tax dollars collected,” he said. “Considering a school is not a taxable entity, it doesn’t do anything to increase the tax base.”

Roy Kaufmann, the mayor’s spokesman, said centering a URA around a public structure is actually fairly common, as happened previously with the Oregon Convention Center. Kaufmann said he understands the concerns about taxing districts losing money, but added that PSU has a long history of using limited public dollars to leverage large private developments. If this URA proposal were to go forward, the city would expect that to continue, he said.

Cogen has been one of the most vocal opponents of Adams’ previous URA endeavors. Last year he criticized the Portland Development Commission for moving forward with the 325-acre proposal before all the parties involved had discussed whether a new URA was needed. But Cogen said that for this proposal, the city seems to have addressed some of his previous concerns.

Adams spoke to Cogen about the URA proposal the day before the State of the City address, and the county chairman said they had a good conversation. But Cogen said he would need some time to decide whether to back the plan completely.

During the coming two weeks Cogen and his staff will review the proposal. Then he and Adams will reconvene an exploratory group that last year had evaluated the feasibility of a new downtown URA. That group includes Cogen, several other stakeholders and representatives of taxing districts that would be affected.

“I believe the group helped point out a lot of problems with the last URA that was proposed downtown and I have faith that this conversation will be constructive too,” he said.

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After striking out on a bid for a new downtown urban renewal area last year, Portland Mayor Sam Adams is stepping up to the plate again.

In his annual State of the City address, which was focused largely around education and economic recovery, Adams on Friday proposed creating a new URA encompassing all of Portland State University in Southwest Portland. His previous URA proposal was opposed by county and public school officials, but Adams believes potential benefits of this one outweigh possible political fallout.

“To facilitate world-class research and commercialization, we need cutting-edge universities,” Adams said during his speech. “Today, I’m proposing a new urban renewal area focused on expanding (PSU) as a leading engine of economic growth, prosperity and opportunity.

“This will take collaboration and partnership to succeed. I look forward to having those conversations with my council colleagues, Multnomah County and the school district.”

Those talks will be critical, said Roy Kaufmann, Adams’ spokesman. Neither the county nor Portland Public Schools gets a vote in whether a URA is created, but they can be influential.

Last year Adams and the Portland Development Commission proposed creating a large downtown URA stretching from the edge of Northwest Portland through downtown to PSU. Both Portland Public Schools and Multnomah County sat in on the discussions, but as soon as talk turned to approval of a plan, Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen and most of the URA evaluation committee questioned whether Portland needed another URA.

Adams put the URA proposal on hold, saying discussions would resume sometime this year. But during his address on Friday, Adams made it apparent that discussions moving forward would focus on the Portland State University URA.

According to Kaufmann, this new proposal is a product of discussions about the one that stalled, as well as discussions with PSU on its plans to increase its enrollment by 20,000 students over the coming years. But the new URA would have a much smaller footprint and be much more focused than the one discussed previously. The district would encompass 130 acres – rather than 325 acres – and have $135 million in tax increment investment capacity.

The focus for this URA would be on expansion and upgrades at the university, and not only on developers’ new buildings. One of the main tenets of opposition to urban renewal is that the property tax dollars used to pay for projects are siphoned from school districts and other agencies funded primarily through such money.

However, one of the main benefits of urban renewal is that projects produced eventually increase the tax base, providing more revenues for school districts and county governments. But if the projects were to benefit only buildings owned by the university – a public institution – the tax base wouldn’t increase.

Both Kaufmann and Kimberly Schneider, the mayor’s economic development director, said that while the new URA would be focused around the public institution, the public money would be used to leverage private investments around the university. A similar strategy was used for the Oregon Convention Center URA.

“By doing this, the mayor is making the point that Portland State has a history on using modest public catalyst investments to spark major private development,” Kaufmann said. “If this goes forward, the university will have to continue to do that.”

Cogen and Portland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith both have said they are willing to listen to Adams and the PDC.

As a friendly gesture to the school districts that would lose revenues if a new URA were created, Adams asked Portland voters to support upcoming bond measures.

“Speaking of businesses and education, I’m heartened by the outpouring of support for the school bond measures in my conversations with business and community leaders,” Adams said. “It’s clear that education truly is a priority for Portland – and I urge all of you to support both the Parkrose and Portland Public Schools bond measures on the ballot this May 17.”

As Adams starts discussions with local leaders, the PDC will work to assemble a project team and an evaluation committee.

Neither the PDC nor Portland Public Schools were available for comment by press time.

The post Adams pitches new downtown URA appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Portland city officials will travel to Spain this week to visit the parent company of Iberdrola Renewables to tout the importance of keeping the wind farm group’s U.S. headquarters in Portland.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams and Portland Development Commission Chair Scott Andrews will meet with Xabier Veteri, CEO of Iberdrola Renovables, at its headquarters near Madrid on Thursday. They return Saturday.

“It’s always nice to be wanted,” said Jan Johnson, a spokeswoman for Iberdrola Renewables, when asked how her company feels about the trip.

Iberdrola Renewables employs about 375 people in Portland at its facility at 1125 N.W. Couch Street, and about 850 people across the United States, Johnson said.

The trip is in response to rumors that have circulated that the company might move its headquarters elsewhere – since the company has grown rapidly and continues to need new space, Andrews said.

“There are some rumors to that effect,” Andrews said. “We think it would be timely for us to visit the folks making the decisions face to face and make sure all their questions are answered.”

The company is looking to expand its space, and its current lease expires in 2013, Johnson added.

“We’ve been weighing numerous options to meet our various needs,” Johnson said. “We’ve had a lot of growth over the past 10 years.”

But when asked directly if the company was looking at moving its headquarters to another state, Johnson declined to answer.

“I’m not really in a position to discuss it,” Johnson said.

Andrews and Adams have paired up for other quick economic development trips in the past, Andrews added.

“We work well together as a team, and this company is well worth the effort,” he said.

Still, emphasizing their case to Spanish officials could be difficult in at least one area – Andrews doesn’t speak a lick of Spanish, he said.

“Not a bit – I should bring my sons, they’re fluent,” Andrews said with a laugh. “My understanding though is that the company is very cosmopolitan and the language issue shouldn’t be a problem.”

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Susan Keil will retire as director of the Portland Bureau of Transportation on May 1 after helping her replacement, Tom Miller, transition into his new job.

Keil has served as director since 2005. She had been thinking about retiring for more than a year, but put off her plans when PBOT Chief Financial Officer John Rist retired from the agency in September. She decided to stay on to help train Rist’s replacement, Ron Geason, she said.

“I’ve got 30 years in the PERS (Public Employees Retirement System), and I’m 64, and I had told Sam last year that I was thinking about retiring,” Keil said. “But with John retiring I felt I needed to stay to get Ron up to speed first.”

She will be replaced by Miller, who is Mayor Sam Adams‘ current chief of staff. Adams selected Miller for the job.

Miller will move his office to PBOT on Jan. 25 and will work with Keil until her retirement in an effort to make the transition run smoothly.

“Tom knows a lot about transportation, but he doesn’t know as much about internal financial management, internal controls and personnel management, so we’ll be working on that,” Keil said.

Miller is also familiar with many of the large projects, like replacing the Sellwood Bridge and the Columbia River Crossing, but Keil said she wants to help him meet more of the players and get a deeper working knowledge of the issues, she said.

“He is smart, he likes transportation, and he’s got an aptitude for it,” Keil said. “He’s a quick study.”

When she retires, Keil expects to do some management consulting and enjoy her hobbies of traveling, gardening and singing, which she does both as a solo performer and with her church choir, she said.

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Portland City Council today voted to change the name of Memorial Coliseum to Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

As part of the Rose Quarter Development project, the city formed a subcommittee of veterans to give input on how the sports facility can better honor veterans in the future. One of its recommendations was changing the coliseum’s name to better reflect its history as a memorial to those who died fighting for the U.S., according to Mayor Sam Adams.

“The issue was raised that the original agreement the city had with veterans was for free access to the facility,” Adams said. “The request to add the word ‘veteran’ before Memorial Coliseum is to make it clear to everyone it will remain that way.”

The coliseum will celebrate its 50^th anniversary on Saturday. The coliseum was dedicated on Jan. 8, 1961 by Mayor Terry Schrunk to the “advancement of cultural opportunities for the community and to the memory of our veterans of all wars who made the supreme sacrifice.”

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