This is a repost from the St Johns Sentinal NoPoJoe Blog page :www.stjohnssentinel.com/
Next Loft Hearing maybe less than dramatic
Justin Dollard is a Planner for the City of Portland. Hes attached to the Design Review Section of Bureau of Development Services. Sounds boring but he is the one who reviewed the plans for the much maligned Mississippi Lofts project and submitted a findings report to the Historic Landmarks Commission. As you all know that Commission handed a pimpslap to the Loft developers and sent them back to negotiate with opponents. Developers and community folks sharpen their knives in anticipation the next review of the project before the Historic Landmarks Commission meeting on June 12th. But Dollard says that there won't likely be a deciscion handed down by the board until the June 26th meeting.
Dollard says this next meeting will be utilized to absorb the details of any new changes the developers have submitted and to get input from the board. Then a new set of finds will have to be submitted by Dollard. That will then be voted on in the next meeting.
The real trick with this issue seems to be the Landmark Commission's charge is mostly design and aesthetics. But the project oppoents have a problem with basic size and structure of the project.
Dollard is a good purveyor of double speak. I asked him, that the builidng has an allowed height of 45 feet and that's the big beef with neighbors. But its allowed by zoning. So can the Landmarks Commission contermand something that is in compliance with the zoning standards?
He answered --Reducing the height or building coverage is beyond the scope of the commission's authority.---
But when we continued he said that the Landmark Commission could --Limit the height of the building--
Whut???
Well the upshot is, get ready to hoot and holler come Monday but don't expect the square dance to end just yet.
Portland Landmark's Commission Meeting, Monday June 12th, 3pm 1900 SW 4th Ave room 2500a
Even though the agenda item is scheduled for 3 pm, it could get switched last minute to start at 1 pm. So it is suggested for people to arrive at 1 pm.For full information please call ,Nancy Quan, Bureau of Development Services (503-823-7803).
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They try to fool residents objecting to the physical parameters of the project by dressing the building up in green technology, devising to wear down the residents resistance to the overwhelming scale of the proposed building and its resulting quality of life impact. The progressive technological features do absolutely nothing to address concerns regarding the scale of the building.
It's 8:45pm, a balmy Sunday evening on mississippi avenue as I start walking northernly past a very inviting and aparrently popular pizzeria. This being June, and the sun not far from setting, light from today's partially occluded sky is still quite high. The lyrical sound of clinking glasses and laughing voices of comfortable, happy people rapidly fade away by the time my steps carry me 2-3 doors further.
Mississippi Avenue, basically just across the river from downtown, is a world removed from the comparatively wild character of that place. This is clear, walking past quite a number of modest, working class victorian houses sitting alongside unprententious, older, one and two story retail and commercial structures. Stopping before one of the houses to study it's little garden, the deliciously soothing sensation of relative silence registers upon my senses along with many others that as a whole, are increasingly extraordinary in neighborhoods so close to a big city downtown.
For some years, younger people with a little more money than that of residents pre-existing them, have moved into this neighborhood and embraced the charming old, yet solid little houses with keen appreciation. Hippies and artists, and other working, moderately poor people among them, they helped to stop the decline of the old structures and the neighborhood, even if they lacked sufficient capital or inclination to expand the neighborhoods infrastructure on a bolder scale.
Creative, artistic, relatively accessible, thought inviting influence is bountiful here in a lot of businesses on the street. An amazing combination of relatively complimentary businesses and organizations coexist here. A laid back way of living other neighborhoods once had but elected or were forced to relinquish, thrives here.
Looking again to the sky, I resume walking so as to take in more delightful sights and sounds, but also because I'm on sort of a mission. Somewhere on Mississippi Avenue, a controversial mixed use residential retail structure is to be constructed pending resolution of hotly debated conflicts over the effect its physical configuration is likely to have on the neighborhood's character. I want to see the site where it's to be built.
Not knowing exactly where the site is, I ask as I walk along. Not many people out here just walking on a sunday night. Two different individuals know nothing about the lofts. Same response from a couple walking togethere. A couple slightly drunk guys don't know quite where the site is, but suddenly sober, tell me if I meet the builders, to tell them the loft idea sucks.
9pm. I've been walking where Mississippi Avenue starts to go uphill again, and am finally across from a house making an extraordinary presence in the neighborhood in its role as a home for The Black Rose Co-op. Slightly shabby, the home nonetheless has lots of interesting neatly arranged items out on the porch, front steps, lawn and sidewalk strip for people who might need them.
I have a pretty good idea that if someone is home, they will have the answer I need. A door opens, a girl appears, and sure enough, is able to point me to a building up the street a couple blocks where the proposed loft may eventually be built.
By now, I'm up the hill and 4-5 blocks away from where the thick of this neighborhood's business activity and most recent renewel has taken place. Around me are mostly single family dwellings, trees and open, grassy lots. It's quiet, pleasant, and peaceful, a luxury in the city.
Getting to the actual site of the proposed lot, I find myself looking at what appears to be an unused nondescript cinderblock one story utility building. It seems to run about one hundred feet. Fairly low, thick trees make the sidewalk in front of the building dark. North of the building, going to the corner, the rest of the block is occupied by grassy open lot and a one story building on the corner occupied by a laundromat and a tai restaurant, both happening places this time of night.
The lot is on the east side of Mississippi Avenue. To the east of the lot is at least one older two story home. It's 9:15 and the sun will shortly set, but at last breaks through the clouds to peek through the trees of the urban neighborhood backyards adjoining the site of the proposed lofts.
Creative, artistic people, in companion with the effort and support of solid, long established neighborhood residents, curtailed the looming death of the neighborhood. They cleared out the riff-raff in exchange for a fresh, inspiring, welcomed vitality, many long term residents of the neighborhood likely imagined they might never live to see. While the neighborhood still may have looked down at the heels to outsiders, on the whole, it had become a much more appealing place to be, a fact not lost on ever watchful realtors and investors.
The realtors brought in people with money, more money than the neighborhood had seen in many a decade. These were still people securing a home for themselves, but they used their relatively greater cash resources to turn the older homes of Mississippi Avenue into a picture postcard vision of days long gone, with new paint and renovation.
Older two or three story commercial retail buildings in the swale of Mississippi Avenue succumbed to the inevitable condominium conversion older neighborhoods succumb to as they become viable business propositions in the eyes of investors and developers. Coincidentally, the scale of the market potential here continued to be iffy enough that physical scale of new construction remained generally complimentary to existing structures.
The proposed Mississippi Avenue Lofts is perhaps the first new building to be built on Mississippi Avenue that clearly indicates the degree of confidence and nature of aspiration that developers have in mind for the future of this neighborhood. Even though, from a point across the street from the proposed loft site, looking roughly southeast, and continuing 360 degrees around the compass, it is clearly an area characterised by mostly 1, 2, and the occasional 3 story structure, they would contemptuously defy that character in order to capitalize on the next, relatively wealthier, prospective residents to Mississippi Avenue.
9:15. I took some pictures as the sun was setting on the forlorn cinder block building occupying the site of the proposed lofts.
(To be continued )