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Friday, November 14, 2008

Neighborhoods Cully Sidewalk Shortage

Posted by Sarah Mirk on Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 3:31 PM

I was talking to city NE neighborhood planner Debbie Bischoff this week about the Cully-Concordia Community Assessment Plan (a big project that involved interviewing 70 or so people in the area about how their schools can help community life - check it out before the group presents to City Council next week) when she pulled out this crazy ridiculous map.

All spring, planners and neighborhood activists raised a fuss about the lack of sidewalks in Cully but the serious inequity in the ethnically diverse, working class neighborhood hit home when I looked over the map:

cully_sidewalks.jpg

See all those thick dark lines on the west side of the map? Those are sidewalks. See how they almost don't exist east of 42nd? Cully became part of the city in 1985 and 10 percent of its roads are still dirt or gravel. For an embarrassing 23 years, the City hasn't gotten it together to pave all the roads in Cully. Dirt roads and no sidewalks definitely hurt the community: riding your bike along a gravel road or walking to the grocery store on the shoulder of a busy road sucks (and it's also dangerous). Families looking for an affordable place to live - 86 percent of the students at Cully's Rigler school qualify for free or reduced lunch - shouldn't have to say goodbye to basic city infrastructure. No way should sidewalks be a luxury!

Other luxuries: parks. For its 15,000 residents, Cully has exactly zero developed parks. "Cully's big neighborhood amenity was a garage can," says Bischoff - that's all the city developed at the area's Sacajawea Park. Bischoff noted optimistically that the city recently added a picnic table.

Anyway, if you've got an opinion on what the neighborhood should prioritize changing, stop by the City Council meeting on the plan next WednesdayThursday at 2PM.

 

Comments (7) RSS

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1
I live 60 feet away from Cully, in Roseway. Have for a long time. The gravel and rutted street thing? I couldn't care less. It definitely slows traffic way down -- there are blocks on which a car would be damaged if it passed the 5 MPH threshold.

For a very long time, I felt very much the same way about the sidewalks, until about a year ago I ended up in a wheelchair (involuntarily), for a period of 8 months. All of a sudden, I went from being a Cully street hiker, to someone who couldn't go anywhere.

A few years back, I cut out a picture of Sam Adams speaking at the paving of the last street in the Pearl District, and hung it up in the garage as kind of a joke for the neighbors. But once I was bogged down in the mud for a few months, that picture became something else entirely. It blows my mind, frankly, that Portland is willing to assume massive debt for "Major" League Soccer stadiums for Rumsfeld's kid, and leave old and disabled people out here to wallow in muddy trenches.

In the 1970s and 1980s, this town was about social justice -- "density" and "smart growth" went along with permitting poor people to live in close-in locations. Now that's over, and we are "progressive," which means no close-in poor people, more need for people to drive to service jobs, laughable services. I don't blame Sam for all of this, but I do a little. It would be great if the city government just recognized how ~75% of this city really needs some help, and that 75% is not Paulson, or the people in the West Hills whose residential streets are clogged with Wash. County commuters. It's the part of the city where 75% of people live, EAST of the river, EAST of Lloyd Center, EAST of 82nd.

Umm, so yeah, we need sidewalks.
Posted by Manuel Nguyen "Paulson-Rumsfeld" III on November 14, 2008 at 4:23 PM · Report
2
I'm sure if you don't have a sidewalk or paved street in front of your house you would be angry at the city. But the sidewalks and streets have always been built by the builders who built the houses, not the city. (But once it is built, the city maintains the street for free. The homeowner maintains the sidewalk.) This really needs a fact filled feature article.
Posted by R on November 14, 2008 at 5:17 PM · Report
3
You're just finding out about this now, S. Mirk? Not to sound like a dick, but it seems like you've never been east of 39th.
Posted by martin on November 16, 2008 at 1:55 PM · Report
4
To be fair to S.Mirk, who actually did raise the topic in the first place, no one (and I mean no one) really gives a shit about the issue at all, and s/he must have been the product of a poorly funded public education system, not knowing who Harvey Milk was, and all, so cut him/her some slack.

And no, the street paving in the Pearl District was done by the city, just a couple of years ago. The pic where Adams and good old Mark Rosenbaum of the PDC are pissing themselves with pride over the paving of the last unpaved street in the Pearl looks like NW 13th, at about Johnson, and according to the article/photo I cut out, was an 8-block stretch of the street -- which paving was paid for by the city of Portland. Thanks Sam!!!!
Posted by Savior Sam on November 16, 2008 at 8:24 PM · Report
5
Martin - I actually live on NE 35th, so I'm east of 39th all the time, whether it's to watch middle-aged karaoke at the awesome Spare Room on 42nd or attend neighborhood meetings way out on Sandy. But the stark contrast between the basic amenities in my neighborhood and the lack of them in Cully didn't really hit me until I saw the bird's eye sidewalk map, rather than just the view from my bike. And while people have been talking for a long time about Cully receiving the short end of the city services stick (as I said in the beginning of the post), I think it's relevant to report on it now because there's City planning happening that you could be involved in to actually change the situation.

Also, R (and others), I asked Amanda Fritz about homeowners historically being responsible for ponying up the money for street improvements and she says that's a "often-repeated mistake." According to her blog (http://www.amandafritz.com/node/1030 - which has a long post about sidewalk wonkery from 1916 onward) back in the early 20th century, the city actually picked up a big chunk of the initial sidewalk improvement tab. Read through her post - what do you think?
Posted by s.mirk on November 17, 2008 at 11:02 AM · Report
6
SM good on the Fritz research. The street in front of my house was paved by some builders across the street at their expense. What's new is that building a street (with sidewalks, sewers) is more and more expensive. I wouldn't be surprised that new streets in urban renewal districts are payed for by tax increment financing, which is arguably LID-like. Maybe an approach is through the courts for sidewalks under the ADA. The City is/will be freaking on what to cut to do it. (feature article..?)
Posted by R on November 17, 2008 at 3:42 PM · Report
7
Thanks S.Mirk. It was kinda assish of me to make that comment about you not being east of 39th. Sometimes I just wish that everyone under 35 would magically move overnight to Cully so all the assholes that have made places like Hawthorne, Belmont, Alberta et. al. impossibly expensive would wake up one morning and scratch their heads wondering where their coolness went.
Posted by martin on November 17, 2008 at 9:26 PM · Report

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