I was talking to city NE neighborhood planner Debbie Bischoff this week about the Cully-Concordia Community Assessment Plan (a big project that involved interviewing 70 or so people in the area about how their schools can help community life – check it out before the group presents to City Council next week) when she pulled […]
Neighborhoods
Posted inCrime
Prostitution Pushed to Interstate?
One night in mid-October, I met up with the Montavilla in Action neighborhood patrol squad in a parking lot just off 82nd Ave. The group gets together a couple nights a week and wanders the streets in shiny orange vests, shining their flashlights into darkened parking lots and among shrubbery looking for prostitutes. I expected […]
Posted inNeighborhoods
Trade Your Guns for Food or Money
This weekend, there will be hundreds of guns on a single street in Lents. The Ceasefire Oregon Education Foundation, an anti-gun violence group, is hosting its 14th annual Gun Turn-In Day in Lents, where you can hand over your working handgun or other lethal device and receive a $75 gift certificate to Fred Meyer. Last […]
Posted inNeighborhoods
Grassroots Plans for Alberta Lot
Right in the middle of Alberta’s booming business stretch is an empty plot of land that’s conspicuously lined with weeds and fig trees while the rest of the street has sprouted condos, boutiques and bistros. It’s the Lot. And now, after lying vacant for 10 years, City Repair Project is starting to pull together a […]
Posted inNeighborhoods
The Gypsy Joker Clubhouse Compound
There’s a building on NE MLK that people driving by probably don’t notice at all. The fancy new development across the street with its bizarrely-named restaurant “Belly” probably steal their focus first. But when you happen to wander by on foot, this building’s curious, off-kilter details are far more interesting than its posh new neighbors. […]
Posted inNeighborhoods
Neighbors Protest Balfour House
Sunday morning at the dead end of SE Balfour Street, Ardenwald Johnson neighborhood activist Kim Hutchinson stood on a plastic stool in the middle of a crowd of neighbors holding protest signs and delivered a fiery impromptu speech. “If you look at the signs, at no time do we discriminate against the mentally ill. Mentally […]
Posted inPolitics
Is Commissioner Dan Saltzman Trying to Bring Back the Prostitution Free Zones?
The hot political rumor at city hall this week has Commissioner Dan Saltzman readying a resolution that would resurrect the controversial Prostitution Free Zones around 82nd. One source explained that “Dan doesn’t like when people are mad at him,” and pressure from neighbors around 82nd was getting to be too much. So what gives? Saltzman […]
Posted inCrime
When Suspected Prostitutes Attack
So it’s Saturday night and a mother and daughter are cruising down 82nd Ave, snapping photos of women they think might be prostitutes. This is part of the Montavilla in Action neighborhood activists’ plan for Community Patrols: people taking to the streets, shooting photos of women who look like prostitutes and sending those photos to […]
Posted inNeighborhoods
No, You Can’t Kick Mentally Ill Criminals Out Of Your Neighborhood
A major but familiar dust up in the Ardenwald-Johnson neighborhood is changing course this week. Encouraged by residents, the Milwaukie City Council tried to block a plan to turn a residential home into a secure treatment facility called Balfour House – stocked with cameras, alarms and 24-hour staffing – for 15 people who had been […]
Posted inNeighborhoods
Council Leans in Favor of Keeping Colwood Green
Whoa, for months the leaders of the Cully and Concordia Neighborhood Associations have been rallying volunteers to fight the planned rezone of the Colwood golf course (follow the controversy and see some sweet maps here) and tonight the City Council gave them a pretty huge straw-vote victory. After two hours of testimony from both rezone-supporters–who […]
Posted inCrime
Prostitution Blog Battle
The neighborhoods along 82nd Ave are all in uproar this month over that perennial hot button issue: prostitution. What’s really interesting to watch is how the conversation has played out on the internet, where a degree of anonymity and the ability to link together like-minded people across the neighborhoods have led to a flurry of […]
Posted inNeighborhoods
Lents Whips Whippits!
Lents Neighborhood Association member and genuinely nice guy Jeffery Rose spotted something unusual at the corner market last night that sparked an All-Alert Email to the neighborhood: “I was in the Wing-Ming on Foster for a late night purchase and I noticed sitting on the counter a box of “cream chargers” which supposedly are used […]