Beaverton Community Development Director Don Mazziotti will speak on the city’s plans for a new downtown urban renewal area as part of the new Beaverton Downtown Forum.

The Beaverton Downtown Forum is a new monthly event sponsored by the Beaverton Downtown Association and the city’s newly created Main Street Program that will cover a varying range of topics that relate to downtown Beaverton. The first forum will take place June 15 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Beaverton Community Center, 12350 S.W. 5^th St.

Beaverton city staffers, along with several members of the surrounding community, have been working on a new urban renewal plan for Beaverton since last year. The plan is expected to go in November to voters, who must approve it by a majority vote for the plan to be set in place. Citizens will not only have a chance to hear about the plan, but ask questions as well.

Refreshments are being donated by Beaverton Bakery and Ava Roasteria.

Future forum topics are likely to cover downtown parking issues, sign codes and marketing and promotion opportunities.

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The Keizer City Council on Monday approved a master plan for a new 116,000-square-foot, large-format retail store and a 36,000-square-foot, mixed-use building to be built on a parcel near Interstate 5.

But the council’s approval of the master plan is another blow to a citizen-driven ballot measure being voted on today that would stop the development.

Because the development application was submitted to the city before the ballot measure went for a vote, the ballot measure, if approved, won’t apply to the development, according to city attorneys. The development application would have to be appealed successfully to the Land Use Board of Appeals or the Oregon Court of Appeals in order for the measure to apply.

At issue is the development of a 36-acre parcel known as Area C that is part of the Keizer Station development. It includes nearly 650,000 square feet of mixed-use, retail space. The parcel is vacant and sits between the commercial development and a residential neighborhood. Nearby residents formed the advocacy group Keep Keizer Livable and have been fighting the development, which they believe to be a Walmart, since it was first pitched four years ago.

After the city began the planning process for the development last year, the group gathered the 3,770 signatures needed to get a measure put on a special ballot, said Kevin Hohnbaum, one of the cofounders of the group. If approved, the measure would limit all developments outside of the already developed Area A of Keizer Station to a 65,000-square-foot maximum, which is about 10,000 square feet larger than the average Fred Meyer, he said.

Even though there has been ample and vocal disdain for the project, City Attorney Shannon Johnson said at the meeting that the council was only to judge the development based on its compliance with city codes.

The approval of the master plan sets a directive for city staff to prepare an order that would approve the development application. It will be presented to the council for formal approval sometime next month.

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Regional government Metro councilor Robert Liberty hosted a meeting tonight to discuss alternatives to the Columbia River Crossing project, a new Interstate 5 bridge connecting Portland to Vancouver, Wash.

During the course of the evening, Liberty showcased and then discussed 14 citizen-submitted alternatives to the project with a panel.

The panel, which discussed some of the pros and cons of the alternatives, was composed of Gary Toth, senior director of transportation initiatives with the Project for Public Spaces; Mary Nolan, Oregon House Majority Leader; Chris Girard, CEO of Plaid Pantry; and Keith Lawton, a transportation consultant and former transportation planner for Metro.

The goal of the meeting was not to pick or endorse an alternative to the current plan, but to simply propose a “Plan B,” Liberty said. Due to a long list of political and financial problems the current design faces, Liberty believes it is important to have a backup plan ready to go in case the current plan does not move ahead.

The panel echoed Liberty’s concern over the existing plan.

“I come to this process now with an interest in finding a project that can move forward quickly,” Nolan said. “We’ve already spent a lot of time and effort on this project. We need a project that will get moving and get people working.”

The panel all seemed to agree that no matter which design goes ahead, it would be wise to take a phased approach to the project. The majority of the plans also call for building a third, and in some cases, a fourth bridge.

The panel’s views on the alternatives can best be summed up with a statement by Gary Toth.

“In these projects I saw a lot of 21^st century thinking. The current CRC project represents 20^th century thinking,” Toth said.

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When a private developer teams up with the Portland Development Commission or another city bureau on a project, what follows is a long, public process.

Working from an 82-page , the public-private team must engage stakeholders, hold open houses, conduct surveys and create advisory committees.

But while developers around town may agree that Portland’s public involvement policy is among the most extensive in the nation, they disagree on the extent of the process’ benefits. Because of this, the city of Portland is working to make adjustments.

After listening to concerns expressed by both developers and the public, the city created the – 15 city staffers and 15 community members – in 2008. The group, charged with improving the public involvement process, will soon present its work to the City Council.

“Portland has a long history of public involvement in the public process, but it’s also a long history of poor public involvement,” said Paul Leistner, neighborhood program coordinator for the city’s Office of Neighborhood Involvement and a member of the PIAC. “That’s why PIAC was created and I haven’t come across another group in the entire country like it.”

Brian Owendoff, managing director of CB Richard Ellis in Portland and a member of the Rose Quarter Development Project Stakeholder Advisory Committee, said he hasn’t come across a public process like Portland’s.

“The Portland public process is much more involved, and engages more stakeholders than any place I have worked,” he said. “In Portland everyone is aiming for perfect and it gets in the way of good.”

When the PDC is the lead agency for a project, it must follow the 10 steps in the Public Participation Manual. It includes details such as how to seat people at a public forum and how to create buzz in the media.

Owendoff has two major gripes with the public process: One is that too many stakeholders are invited to the table, which increases the difficulty of reaching agreements; another is that insight comes only from people willing to attend meetings, and those people tend to represent special interest groups.

He has seen public process impede two major projects: Burnside Bridgehead redevelopment, when he worked for Opus Northwest in 2005; and the ongoing Rose Quarter development project. For the Burnside Bridgehead, the PDC eventually let its contract for development services with Opus run out because the public and the development team couldn’t agree on what to do with the property.

“It seems like every time you get a good idea that is actually viable the small interest groups beat it to the ground like a piñata,” he said. “We have some great opportunities in this town and we need to stop tearing the good ideas apart.”

While Owendoff views the process in Portland as cumbersome, Shaheen Sadeghi, principal at Lab Holdings in Costa Mesa, Calif., thinks it has helped significantly in the redevelopment of Centennial Mills in Northwest Portland.

“Citizens should be the co-author on a project that they are going to have to live with, and I think the people of Portland and the city government both embrace that,” Sadeghi said. “There’s a high level of intelligence in Portland, and the people have genuine concerns and genuine solutions.”

The process in Portland is extensive and could easily get out of control if not done right, Sadeghi said. But the task of the developer is to separate the groans from people that want to protest everything, from those that have legitimate concerns and ideas, he said.

“It takes good leadership or it turns into the wild, wild West,” he said.

Sadeghi said he is developing a project similar to Centennial Mills on the waterfront in San Clemente, Calif. And the process has gotten out of control because no one had the foresight to plan ahead for the amount of public involvement that was needed, he said.

That’s why the city created the PIAC, according to Leistner. Leadership needs to be at the forefront of the process, he said.

Since its inception two years ago, the PIAC has been assembling a new list of public involvement principles that every bureau in the city will be required to follow.

The principles are designed to help city agencies be more strategic about when to engage the public, how to engage the public and how to increase convenience for public involvement, Leistner said.

The PIAC will present the principles to Portland City Council at a meeting on Aug. 4. If principles are approved, each bureau will have to implement them into any project that requires public involvement.

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Oregon will receive $1.9 million in Public Lands Highway grant funds for two highway improvement projects, according to an announcement made today by US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood.

The award includes $475,000 for improvements to Highway 199 and $1.425 million for improvements to Highway 42.

Sixty-eight road projects in 31 states received $93.9 million, with the goal of improving access to federal lands. Federal lands roads are usually maintained by tribal and federal agencies, unlike public roads which are managed by state departments of transportation.

In addition, Washington received $2.56 million for three road improvement projects, including the B-Reactor Access Road Analysis project, Skokomish Tribe Reservation Road improvements and the Squaxin Island Access Improvement project.

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