Concrete Action

VOLUNTEERS STOOD in the middle of a doomed parking lot on N
Williams in early July, joyfully smashing the pavement to bits with
crowbars. It was the first of six asphalt slabs that upstart nonprofit
Depave aims to remove this summer, after pioneering a low-budget
solution to a big local environmental problem.

While Portland is renowned for its green space, almost nine percent
of the city is purely parking lots. Rainwater running off those lots
pollutes the Willamette River. So Depave is aiming its pick axes to
destroy underused lots one by one upon request.

For their initial project last year, Depave founder Arif Khan looked
to a gritty little parking lot on N Williams and Fargo. Lot owner
Angela Goldsmith planned to build a triplex on the 3,000-square-foot
space, but says she immediately agreed in June 2008 to allow 150
volunteers tear up the pavement—and with it, her plans for upward
development.

“I know all the developers are rolling their eyes at me, but it
wasn’t a hard decision. All the other lots on this stretch are going to
be high-density developments and this will provide the balance,” says
Goldsmith, who owns four properties in the swiftly changing
neighborhood.

The city’s Bureau of Environmental Services granted Depave $10,000
in 2008 to turn Goldsmith’s paved lot into a garden. After a year of
work and delays, Fargo Forest Garden opened this past Saturday, July
18. There’s no written contract preventing Goldsmith from developing
the lot in the future, but she has verbally promised not to.

The work of the small Portland group is surprisingly pioneering.
Khan relates the story of when he emailed the Environmental Protection
Agency in 2008 to ask about asphalt’s effect on soil. “They responded
saying we don’t have conclusive info but you can check with this group
called Depave,” he laughs.

The city is willing to invest $10,000 to build one small garden
because, ironically, converting parking lots back to nature helps the
city modernize. Heavy rains frequently cause sewers to overflow and
spew raw sewage straight into the mighty Willamette. A
3,000-square-foot parking lot like Goldsmith’s pours an average 67,500
gallons of stormwater into Portland’s sewers annually, according to
city environmental expert Amber Clayton. As a garden, it should absorb
every single gallon.

The city embarked on the Big Eastside Pipe project to handle sewer
overflows, but for its $464 million price tag, Portland could fund
46,400 gardens the size of the Fargo project. The city aims to build
1,300 new community gardens over the next three years.

“If the city is serious about creating green spaces, they’re going
to have to make it easier for an all-volunteer group like ours to make
them,” says Ted Labbe, one of Depave’s founding volunteers. Organizers
say the group spent $870 in permitting fees to depave the small Fargo
lot.

Goldsmith suggests the city waive permit fees and property taxes for
new community gardens. Tax breaks work to promote other development the
city wants, Goldsmith points out, like the 72-unit Albert Apartments
slated a few blocks away from the site.