Portland City Council this afternoon finally settled on a site where the city can store all the large equipment and vehicles required to dig out Westsiders after the inevitable happens and a massive earthquake wipes out our creaky Willamette River bridges.
Moving forward on a plan first mentioned in January, the city will now turn Southwest’s Sergeant First Class Jerome Sears U.S. Army Reserve Center—a 3.7-acre site once targeted for affordable housing—into a disaster-response staging area. And the beauty of the plan is that using the site won’t cost the city a dime.
That’s a far cry from this plan, which the Mercury wrote about last year:
City council members sparred recently over a proposal to use money from a water-rate increase to buy land from the Oregonian newspaper. The controversial site would be a disaster-response staging area in case Portland gets hit by an earthquake that Mayor Sam Adams referred to as “The Big One” in council on May 19. “We’ve identified a site in Northwest and we’re negotiating a purchase for around $10 million,” explained Adams, who is pushing for the purchase of the NW Yeon and Nicolai lot, to provide parking for heavy equipment that’s currently stored on the Eastside. Commissioner Randy Leonard, a supporter of the plan, cited the possibility of a bridge-busting earthquake: “How would we provide emergency services to the Westside?” But Commissioner Dan Saltzman, reenergized from his strong election results last month, pushed back. “I don’t think we should be taking the last large industrial parcel of Northwest Portland and using it for, in essence, a parking lot,” he said.
Dan Douthit, of the Portland Office of Emergency Management, said the cost eventually got too high for a council majority to feel comfortable. That deal fell through six to nine months ago, he said. And with it went a weird chapter in which the city’s daily newspaper was involved in a complex land deal with a city government it covers and a mayor it’s no friend of.
not sure where the army reserve center is, but I assume it’s that site along Multnomah Blvd. just E of I5.
which would seem imminently smarter since all or most of the NW industrial area is on fill or sand, and will enjoy high degrees of liquefaction during a big quake. getting any equipment out of there may well be impossible after “the big one”.
unless I’m missing something, which is not unheard of.
Good decision by the city. Doing something for free rather than spending $10 million is so unPortland like.
BTW, no news outlet, or even an organization that makes little to no attempt at impartiality, should be a friend of the mayor, or any other elected official. You’re supposed to be the fourth estate, not an inhabitant of a politician’s spare bedroom.
No, it’s the Oregonian’s huge gain, since no private individual could afford or would get such a sweetheart deal.
And no, I don’t fall for the ‘store large equipment’ line.
What equipment is this that the city does not already own or contract out?
Or land the city does not already own?
Or parking space?
D, I think you’re misunderstanding the purpose. Most (if not all) of the large equipment and such that the city (and TriMet, and PGE… and–oh shit, we’re screwed in an earthquake) owns is stored on the east side. This site is necessary for when the earthquake knocks down the bridges and that OHSU-PSU merger goes through rapidly and we need that equipment on the west side to unbury people and things.
A responsible move for the city, but I sure would have liked to see affordable housing a la The Knoll go in at that armory site.