Jessie Burke owns the Society Hotel in Portland’s Old Town Chinatown and volunteers as chairperson of the Old Town Community Association. She watches the neighborhood decline as it suffers from what she sees as the city’s badly skewed enforcement priorities.

“We get parking tickets, and I see a hatchet fight two hours later,” Burke said. “It’s the craziest thing to reconcile in your mind.”

Old Town Chinatown has long been one of Portland’s roughest neighborhoods, but conditions have deteriorated precipitously since the pandemic began, according to community representatives. Now, tents line the sidewalks. Loud arguments break out at all hours. Cleanup personnel battle needles and human waste.

On Tuesday, the Old Town Community Association held a press conference to kick off a 90-day “reset plan” to improve conditions in the neighborhood. The event seemed to be designed as a rallying point for neighborhood businesses and nonprofits, while increasing pressure on Mayor Ted Wheeler and other city officials to boost law enforcement’s presence and clean up the area.

The neighborhood group laid out several goals it wants the city to achieve within 90 days:

• reduce person-on-person crime by 40 percent;
• reduce property crimes by 50 percent;
• increase lighting, including reinforcement of red lampposts to support the weight of string lights;
• organize a Zoom meet-and-greet with police offers (Portland police officers should know the name of at least one person at each business or residence, and business owners or nonprofit directors should know the name of at least one Portland police officer in Old Town Chinatown); and
• implement mental health response teams with Blanchet House, a nonprofit shelter and kitchen on Northwest Glisan Street.

Old Town Chinatown is adjacent to downtown Portland, separated only by West Burnside Street. But in contrast to other adjacent neighborhoods such as the West End and Goose Hollow, real estate and community development in Old Town Chinatown has been sparse.

The Old Town Community Association holds weekly calls with the Wheeler’s office, Burke said. But Old Town representatives have seen crime and grime persist. With only 400 police officers or so assigned to patrol the whole city, incident response lags, Burke said.

“This is the plan: There is no plan,” she said.

Wheeler, in response to questions from the 91ĘÓƵ, indicated more help would be coming.

“The requests made by the Old Town Community Association are very reasonable,” Wheeler stated in an email via a spokesperson. “Oldtowners are asking to go to work peacefully, attend college, make a living or visit Old Town’s unique stores, bars, restaurants and cultural attractions. I intend to help them in the weeks ahead and ask others to join with me. Portland Oldtowners’ never-give-up attitude deserves our full support.”

Lacking an adequate police presence, Old Town business owners have increasingly turned to private security services such as Echelon Protective Services, as in December. Echelon security guards were present at Tuesday’s press conference.

Still, the efforts haven’t stopped deaths and shootings in the neighborhood. Jaquan Jenkins, 26, was killed in a shooting at Northwest Second Avenue and Couch Street early in the morning of Jan. 28, according to police. On Christmas Eve 2021, Derrick Kenreko Marshall, 41, was fatally shot at Northwest Sixth Avenue and Davis Street.

Living in the neighborhood has become difficult for residents, many of whom have low incomes. Leonard Keck, 52, said he was relieved when he got an electric wheelchair that allows him much greater mobility. But the presence of tents on many sidewalks complicates his trips.

“The tents, they don’t give me room on the sidewalks,” Keck said. “Half the time, I have to go into the middle of the road.”

Keck said trips have become so troublesome that he hesitates to leave his apartment in Musolf Manor, an Innovative Housing property.

Meanwhile, real estate development in the neighborhood has slowed despite its proximity to downtown. The neighborhood has seen an influx of affordable housing projects, including The Starlight, a Central City Concern project that Walsh Construction is building. Formerly the Westwind Apartments, The Starlight will offer 100 deeply affordable apartments when complete.

Old Town Chinatown is entirely within Portland’s opportunity zone, offering capital gains tax benefits to investors. Maximum heights in portions of the neighborhood were increased by the Central City 2035 zoning plan. Height limits vary but reach 460 feet on some properties.

Business and city officials are working to combat a proliferation of storefront vacancies. Upper Playground, an apparel shop and art gallery in business since 2016, announced on Instagram that it would close permanently on Sunday. Other closures since the pandemic began have included hip Mexican restaurant Mi Mero Mole and a Starbucks.

But other businesses are showing signs of life. Karl Dinkelspiel, a project manager at Prosper Portland, is tracking several openings:

• Deadstock Coffee plans to expand into the vacant former Mi Mero Mole space at Northwest Fifth Avenue and Couch Street, Dinkelspiel said. (Deadstock Coffee owner Ian Williams could not be reached for comment).
• OpenHAUS, a co-working business that caters to entrepreneurs of color, has taken approximately 5,000 square feet at Northwest Third Avenue and Davis Street.
• Goodies, a new market and plant nursery, will open on the 200 block of Northwest Davis Street.
• Cycle Portland, which closed briefly, will reopen at Northwest Third and Davis.
• A new arts and event space, Homies, is planned for Northwest Fourth Avenue and Glisan Street.

Prosper Portland is following a strategy laid out in a May 2021 ECONorthwest report to activate Old Town Chinatown, Dinkelspiel said.

“We’re following the strategy as best we can and with the resources we have available to us,” he said.

Prosper Portland also follows its five-year action plan. The agency has funded storefront improvements and repairs.

Matt Goodman, vice president of Downtown Development Group, said the neighborhood has suffered from the “spillover effects” of a concentration of social service organizations that hasn’t been managed well by city or Multnomah County officials.

“By any measure, that’s been a tremendous failure in Old Town,” he said. “If you walk or drive through Old Town, it’s heartbreaking.”

Downtown Development Group owns neighborhood parking lots that have not yet been snapped up for redevelopment. Other properties the family firm owns have been sold for redevelopment, including Block 216 for the Ritz-Carlton tower, or in the case of Eleven West, redeveloped with partners.

As part of the 90-day pilot program announced this week, the Office of Civic Life will step up graffiti removal, and Downtown Portland Clean & Safe will pick up litter. But business owners are looking to the city to do more.

Burke said she asked city officials what they plan to do for the neighborhood. They turned the task back to Burke, asking her to come up with goals to accomplish, she said. That she has done.

“You might regret asking me to write the goals,” Burke said, “because that becomes your deliverables.”

The post A search for solutions in Portland’s Old Town appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A tunnel under the Willamette River is still an option on the table for replacing the aging and vulnerable Burnside Bridge.

The alternative was discussed last week at a coffee-and-pizza stakeholders meeting facilitated by the agency in charge of the 91-year-old span, Multnomah County.

Officials are considering how to shore up the 17-mile “Burnside Corridor” – Burnside Street from U.S. Route 26 to Gresham – as a “lifeline” through the Portland-metro area, with the bridge over the Willamette River an acknowledged weak link.

A tunnel, however, is considered a highly unlikely solution, for reasons including high energy consumption and lack of space for terminals. What’s looking more and more likely is that all or parts of the Burnside Bridge will need to be replaced to provide a regional lifeline in the case of a major seismic event.

Other options that fared poorly in the assessment by the county’s consultants include preserving the Burnside Bridge, performing a full retrofit, and bolstering a different bridge, such as the Morrison. Though these alternatives scored low, planners cautioned nothing has been decided yet.

The county’s project manager, Megan Neill, said the “universe of options” for a Burnside Bridge upgrade is expected to be reduced enough by next fall for a recommendation to be presented to the Board of County Commissioners. After approval, around a decade could pass before project completion.

The meeting of stakeholders was the second of four. Interested parties have included the Old Town Chinatown Community Association, the Central Eastside Industrial Council, the Portland Saturday Market and Burnside Skatepark users. Wide-ranging discussions at this meeting and previous ones have covered how Portland will respond to a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake – specifically, how it will clear debris and kick-start commerce.

The project is one of several efforts by governments in the region to prepare for fallout of a major quake. Metro is drafting a debris management plan, and the Portland Bureau of Transportation is preparing a plan for transportation recovery and a plan for upgrading unreinforced masonry buildings.

Dan Yates, director of the Portland Spirit, said his business signed an agreement with the city years ago to provide ferry service across the Willamette River in case of a major disaster.

He and others mused at the meeting about how Portlanders would respond when tested by disaster.

“I bet this city surprises itself,” he said. “People will do remarkable things after a big event.”

None of inner Portland’s bridges are expected to fare well in a major earthquake. Even TriMet‘s young Tilikum Crossing is compromised by highly liquefiable soil beneath its approaches. The county’s two most recent large bridge replacements, the Sauvie Island Bridge ($48 million) and the Sellwood Bridge ($215 million), both meet current seismic code, but the crossings aren’t considered good seismic lifelines due to their locations and other factors.

“It’s really a call to action,” Neill said. “People wonder why we’re focusing on a bridge in Portland, but we feel it’s important to the entire region to restore service to the Burnside.”

Like the Tilikum Crossing, the soils under the Burnside Bridge are highly liquefiable and expected at the east approach to move toward the river more than 20 feet. This will have to be addressed in whichever plan is adopted.

One space likely to be significantly affected is the Burnside Skatepark, which was constructed off-the-books in the 1990s among the bridge abutments on the bridge’s east side.

“It feels to me that there are going to be some kind of impacts to the skate park no matter what alternative we talk about,” said Jeff Heilman of consultancy Parametrix. “There are certainly needs in those existing columns.”

The skate park’s designated representative was not in attendance Thursday.

Stakeholders at the meeting acknowledged another major challenge: informing constituents. The county recently scored a win in this regard. It paid $135,000 to engineering firm HDR to create a realistic video rendering of the bridge during an earthquake. It’s so far gotten more than 50,000 views.

(Editor’s note: This story has been modified from an original version to reflect the correct price for a video rendering of the Burnside Bridge during an earthquake.)

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