“DON’T EVER let someone call you a ‘Not in My Backyarder’
[NIMBY]. If you don’t care about your backyard, no one else is going
to,” said City Commissioner Amanda Fritz to a crowd of 40 neighbors who
woke up early on the morning of Saturday, April 18, to discuss density
in the Irvington neighborhood.
Apartment and condo projects planned for the historic neighborhood
are good for transit and bad for sprawl—but are there ways to
build density that don’t upset the neighbors?
A planned 71-foot-tall condo project called Irvington Squire [“Raise
the Roofline,” News, July 10, 2008] tested the waters last summer for
high-density development in the tree-lined neighborhood of historic
homes. The response from neighbors was sour: The bed and breakfast
across the street from the development draped its deck with a banner
reading: “Shrink the Condos!”
At Saturday’s density workshop, a new infill development was on
residents’ minds: a plan to split up a historic estate on NE 28th and
develop it into three new houses.
“We don’t want to change the face of our neighborhood without
considering architectural integrity,” said resident Kimberley
Schafbuch. “It’s scary.”
“When you come in and do something like this, it can change the
whole feel of the street,” agreed neighbor Cindy Bilotti.
Metro Council President David Bragdon was on hand to point out that
Portland is actually less dense today than it was 50 years ago.
Portland’s growth since then has been “built on 30 years of cheap land
and cheap fuel,” said Bragdon. “We’re going to have to figure out a way
to bloom in a truly urban way.”
Filling inner Portland neighborhoods with denser housing is one of
Mayor Sam Adams’ top priorities because it means less need to sprawl
outward as Portland gains population. Last week Adams stumped in East
Portland for Senate Bill 907, which will allow Portland to combat ugly
infill with a more extensive design review for dense development in
transit corridors and town centers.
Fritz supports the bill but thinks Portland can’t leave out
infrastructure as it plans for denser housing. With the budget crunch,
the city is slashing funding to all departments, including long-term
planning projects and the Office of Neighborhood Involvement.
Developers and the city will run into problems “if you cram too much
density, too much height in neighborhoods where it doesn’t belong,”
said Fritz. “If we design it right, the neighbors will love it.”
Its scary? People need to stop using that phrase in association with clearly non scary stuff. I thought Portland was all about progressive urban planning, density, mass transit. I thought the reason you live close in on the East side is because it is close in, dense, thriving. If you want CC&Rs, if you want restritions on the free expression of style, if you want to hamstring dense development … move to the burbs. Scary. LMFAO.
I bought a house in inner se Portland w/ a large lot cause I wanted a garden and space and I wanted to be close in…. that was possible 12 years ago….not so much now…..now greedy developers are swooping in on houses like that, destroying them, destroying gardens, mature trees, neighborhood open spaces, and building light blocking monstrosities….chipping away at my quality of life.
Happily some of these developers and speculators are losing their shirts and are being forced to find real jobs. Hopefully, we can use this downturn as a time out on shitty infill that degrades livability.
Now if these developers and speculators want to build big monuments to their egos…go ahead…go build them in degraded environments of the urban core (redeveloping parking lots, strip malls, brown fields, etc…). Not in anyone’s backyard.
Demondog, do you own or rent?
the problem with our local planning is that we’re supposed to increase density in some places, and “protect existing neighborhoods” elsewhere. It’s that second part that seems to fall by the wayside. My neighborhood of old single-family homes is zoned so that someone can come in and build a triplex on a standard 5,000 sf lot. How is that protecting the neighborhood?