Arguments among Old Town neighbors about the planned new
homeless center have taken a pragmatic shift—from whether to
build it and where, to how everyone can get what they want out of the
development.
Neighbors have been scrapping over the center since City
Commissioner Erik Sten essentially offered them a deal on January 9:
The neighborhood would get $400 million in urban renewal money in
exchange for letting the center go ahead without a more thorough
community involvement process. It’s only in the last week, however,
that neighbors have begun writing a list of demands in exchange for
building the center where Sten would like.
Initially, neighbors pushed back, voting at a joint neighborhood
land-use committee on January 16 to pursue an alternative block near
Union Station at the suggestion of Old Town property owner Michael
Menashe [“Not on My Block,” News, Jan 24].
But the land-use committee U-turned on that vote last Tuesday,
January 29, voting 13-11 to keep the city’s focus on Block 25, at
Glisan and Flanders, between 3rd and 4th—the spot Sten had
originally proposed.
“Block 25 is not ideal,” developer Doug Obletz of Sockeye
Development said before the vote. “But there is an opportunity here to
really require that this be done right.”
So instead of continuing to discuss an alternative site, the
committee met again last Friday, February 1, to write a list of demands
for how the new center should be built on Block 25.
The list included office space for the Chinese community, off-street
queuing for homeless people, and financial promises from the city and
The Portland Development Commission to support other developments in
Old Town—including an Uwajimaya supermarket, which Obletz would
like to build on NW 5th.
Nevertheless, there’s still frustration about the negotiations. Old
Town Lofts resident Alexander Mace, whose building faces Block 25,
thinks the various committees are railroading the concerns of local
residents like him.
“People are making decisions without consulting the neighborhood,”
he says. “If the neighborhood is being offered a carrot of ‘there will
be money for projects,’ then I think it’s important to realize that
lots of requests for such money have gone unanswered in the past.
“I hope the process won’t be a sham,” he continues. “There’s an
artificial time period in place right now of Sten being in office and
wanting to get this done before he leaves, but that just isn’t
realistic if we want to come out of this with a compromise that makes
everybody happy.”