I call partial bullshit. The Mt. Hood highway was designed to be an elevated highway for at least the lower Clinton area at least. There would have been fewer houses between Clinton and Division, and the rest of the houses directly below the freeway certainly would have been hella cheaper, but it wouldn't have destroyed Clinton. In fact, Piccolo Park at 27th between Clinton and Division exists because it the two to four houses that were there were torn down so that stanchion for the freeway could be built. So every four blocks or so you'd have had that. Not sure where the landfall of the freeway was supposed to be, though.

What if 'Merc writers had to be sober before pitching article ideas...