Southeast Portland's Buckman neighborhood is facing a big decision: Should the entire neighborhood be declared historic?

A group of neighbors are petitioning the city to become a historic district. Portland has numerous historic districts, including the eastside residential neighborhoods of Ladd's Addition and Irvington, and the designation is a mixed bag. Basically, if a neighborhood is a historic district, people who want to change their houses or build new projects have to go through extra-serious design review that's intended to make all new development have the same "character" as the existing neighborhood.

City planner Tim Heron spelled out the positives for me: Historic districts increase property values and protect historic buildings. "It's all about what you see when you move into a district," says Heron. "Historic districts preserve a certain look that some Buckman residents clearly want to preserve."

The extra design review comes with a steep cost, however, and some neighbors are rallying against the change. To stop the designation, critics need to get 50 percent of property owners in the area (plus one) to sign a notarized letter of dissent.

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One of the more publicized statistics from the 2011 survey is that ratings of downtown (sorry, Pioneer District) have taken a nosedive over the past few years. Maybe it's the constantly climbing parking and bus fees to actually get there, maybe it's all the loogies people feel the need to hock onto the city's sidewalks (YOU'RE ALL DISGUSTING), but rankings of downtown as a "good" or "very good" place to shop, live and work have dropped from 69 percent in 2008 to 58 percent this year. The surveys were filled out in July and August, so that perception can't be blamed on Occupy Portland.

But that perception is contrary to the facts: residents of downtown and Northwest Portland reported the lowest crime rate of any neighborhood in the city. Two percent of downtown dwellers reported home burglaries in the past year and nine percent reported car break-ins. Compare that to the statistically most crime-ridden neighborhood: East Portland. Eight percent of Portlanders who live east of I-205 reported homes burglaries in the past year and 24 percent had their cars broken into. Northwest and downtown residents also feel safer both alone and around police than other neighborhoods.

Despite this, everyone should probably head over across the river come the 2012 Zombie Apocalypse— East Portland respondents were by far the most disaster-prepared of all the districts, with 70 percent of reporting that they'd have enough supplies to last their household a week or longer.

Other interesting factoids below the cut!

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GOOSEWITZ.

• Westmoreland Park, 7:55 am today

• Zervas

Since last year, the city has been paying about $10,000 a month during the summer to close off NE Alberta Street and provide security for the massive, free-form arts fest. That security is meant to reduce tensions in the neighborhood, which gets hit with people urinating on lawns, leaving trash, and generally being whippersnappers after the block party officially shuts down at 10 PM.

That has been the biggest change in the monthly event that has come to define Alberta in some ways: It used to run late into the night, but since the city got involved, a wall of security and volunteers march down NE Alberta promptly at 10PM, pushing all the party-goers back onto the sidewalks and into the bars. The debate over the event is the same: Is it a good use of limited city funds?

On the pro side, it brings thousands of people (and their cash) into the neighborhood every month, contributes to the area's new identity as an "arts district", and, of course, it's a good time. On the con side, some argue that Alberta businesses, not citywide taxpayers, should bear the brunt of the cost.

"It's clearly an equity issue," says Commissioner Amanda Fritz, whose office handles the neighbor-relations aspects of the event. "When we had a meeting back in 2010, we had over 400 people come out, most of whom came to say it's wonderful. But we don't think citywide taxpayers should be paying for it."

Fritz wants to let people know that if they see illegal behavior on Last Thursday, call the police nonemergency line to report it: 503-823-3333. If you have problems the day after (like trash), neighborhood group Friends of Last Thursday want to take your call: 503-888-2934.

Week by week, the Safeway at SE 27th and Hawthorne has emptied out. When products disappear, they're not replaced, creating a bizarre and inconvenient supermarket that no longer stocks random items such as chili powder, peppercorns, or red cabbage. They're also selling off the least popular items one by one at discount rates. Last week, off-brand poison ivy cream and plus-size nude leggings shared discount shelf space at the front of the store with DVDs of Tom Hanks' The Terminal. This week, what seems to be all the Jewish food in the store is tagged half-off for quick sale.

All this because my Safeway, arguably the ugliest and worst-laid-out Safeway in the city, will soon be burned to the ground. From its ashes will rise a new, bolder Safeway! A shiny $20 million Safeway with 20,000 more square feet of shopping space, an underground parking lot, and what seems to be a bland, vaguely Spanish Mission-inspired facade.

The store itself will be closed for a year, leaving me and the rest of the neighborhood to find a new place to buy our discount gefilte fish.

Portland's newest outdoor market will open next week in the Boise-Eliot neighborhood on a plot of land that's been a vacant eyesore for years.

The new Boise-Eliot market is the brainchild of stonemason Spencer Burton who ran for Dan Saltzman's seat for Portland city council in November. Though the bid for city council flopped, Burton and the NE Coalition of Neighborhoods did succeed in a different project: securing a plot of land for a farmer's market in his neck of the woods.

Five weeks ago, the owner of the vacant lot on the corner of North Williams and Fremont offered up his land for a twice-weekly neighborhood market that has about 30 businesses signed up to sell goods so far, including Martini Farms, Canby Asparagus Farm and Portland Organic Garden. Burton hopes to sign up 20 more businesses before the market opens next weekend, July 17.

This isn't one of the official city farmer's markets and it's been a little bumpy organizing a market from scratch, says Burton.

"People can't believe there's nothing there," Burton said about the area's empty lots, many of which are scars from the early 1970s when Emanuel hospital razed 20 businesses in the area to make way for an expansion (which then never materialized).

Opening a market will "help the area as a new commercial hub," Burton says. He hopes people who don't have enough money for a storefront for a business can sell their goods at the lot.

During the summer the market will run twice a week on Tuesdays from 3-7p.m. and Saturdays from 9-1p.m.

Three years from now, Division Street is going to look a lot different.

City council approved a $7 million plan this morning to rebuild Division Street from 10th Ave to 39th Ave as a more pedestrian-friendly, sustainable, generally less crappy thoroughfare. About 15,000 cars travel along the stretch every day and Division needs to be repaved anyway, so the city will take the chance next year while it's being repaved to do what Portland does best: lay down the "green streets."

The city has been working for the last year on the plan (download the pdf here) and came up with a final "Division Streetscape and Street Reconstruction Project" which will make cut most of Division's busiest inner-SE stretch down from two lanes of traffic to one lane in each direction.

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• Look! It is Henry's! Something nefarious could happen here.

Gone fetal worrying about the dearth of condo owning gentrification news in the wake of Matt Davis' vacating Portland? Shaking a fist at the sky and shouting "UNJUST I SAY UNJUST" while popping lorazepams like candy? You are not alone, my friends. I, too, have been in a funk since Matt's departure but I might just have a solution to our depressing predicament.

I have recently moved from San Francisco (yay!) to the suburbs (OMG BOO) and finally downtown to a LEED certified building so smug in its smugness the elevators are powered by EFFING WINDMILLS. The building has 24 floors and I'm on one of the upper tiers. What I am saying is I can actually see your house from here. And I know what you're doing. And stop it because it's really freaking me out.

So, in lieu of leaving the house to do actual reporting (new media is all about aggregation anyway) I've given myself the "gentrification beat." If I can see it from my windows and it's vaguely newsworthy and/or gentrify-y I will know! And I could tell someone about it! Maybe even on Blogtown or the Twitters or at a bar! I am just spit balling here! There are no bad ideas! This is a safe space!

The point is I can see stuff from up here and it might be interesting. Mostly I like looking down on all of Portland. But you knew that already.

• This is a map. And a bandana. And it will cost you $40.

But Bicycle Transportation Alliance advocate Gerik Kransky raised some alarm bells last week when he noted that the city budget for Sunday Parkways seemed to drop from $217,000 to $0.

Well, the truth is not that extreme. But the popular festival is still having trouble making ends meet. In the new draft of the budget, funding for Sunday Parkways moved from a line item to part of the Portland Bureau of Transportation's (PBOT) "base budget" (which is why some people, like Kransky, thought it disappeared entirely) but does not meet the $474,000 that PBOT originally needed to host the five day-long events.

The city came up with $157,000 to put toward Sunday Parkways and health insurance company Kaiser kicked in a generous $100,000. Seeing that the numbers weren't going to pencil out, festival director Linda Ginenthal tightened the belt of Parkways by $80,000 (cutting mostly pre-event ads and fliers) and also dug up $35,000 from private donors (including $25,000 from Pearl District business and $1,000 from Milagros Boutique in NE).

All that leaves a $100,000 budget hole. The first Sunday Parkways, held in NE on May 16th, brought an estimated 15,000 Portlanders out onto the streets. Ginenthal's hoping the city can fundraise the $100K from mostly small, individual donors who want to see all five events take place. Some small bait to donate: Ginenthal just got in a box of Sunday Parkways 2010 commemorative bandanas, available for $40 a pop.

The mayor's office, at least, says its committed to making sure all five of the planned Sunday Parkways take place. "This is a huge benefit for the people who live in the neighborhood," says Mayor Adams spokesman Roy Kaufmann. "There’s a demand for even more of these."

Yesterday the Daily Journal of Commerce featured a proposal from PSU graduate architecture students to build some high-rise structures as a "Pearl District Gateway."

• PSU

The complex would go in between Burnside and Davis, and 13th and 14th Avenues. The designers are suggesting some national chains, like Best Buy and Apple, as anchor tenants. Quoth Jonathan Malsin of Beam Development:

"Having national chains close-in would be great because we know people will go to them. At Burnside Bridgehead there was a lot of resistance to big box stores. But the Pearl is a retail-specific area that already has several national chains. People value authenticity here, so you do risk backlash."

The students pitched their idea to developer Harsch Investment Properties yesterday morning. So long, South Waterfront! Hello, Pearl!

Now that Clear is rapidly pursuing its dream to bring plodding, intermittent wireless internet into thousands of Portland homes, its transmission equipment is popping up across the city. Not everyone's happy about the idea.

• Or, "NIMBY" for short.

Now neighbors around the site are putting up signs on their lawns, like the one pictured here.

Health risks from radiation aren't the only concern: the Beaumont-Wilshire neighbors say city code requires the company to look for less populated sites first, and that the equipment makes too much noise.

Clear wants to mount its antenna on an existing utility pole outside the Wilshire Market. It previously wanted to put it in a school, but Portland Public schools agreed to stop installing antennas on its property after a public outcry over health concerns last year.

Last spring, the City of Portland, led by Amanda Fritz, asked the Federal government to do more studies on the effects of wireless signals on public health.

Speaking of antennas and schools, a couple weeks ago Jack Bog's blog pointed out this little farce out in Gresham. Log on, kids!

Neighbors and the Portland Police, you may recall, were hoping the OLCC would reject the application to establish Mynt Gentleman's Club on the edge of the Laurelhurst neighborhood due to problems in past clubs managed or owned by Mynt applicant Tracy Doss. The police complained that under Doss's management, Fusion nightclub in Old Town saw six fights or assaults in two months in 2008. The violence dropped off after Doss turned Fusion into Spyce Gentleman's Club. The guy's got a thing for y's, apparently.

During the OLCC review process, Neighborhood Association Chair Eric Fruits dug up some more tantalizing dirt on Doss: he was cited in Ohio for allowing brutal man vs. bear wrestling at a bar he owned in Columbus.

The neighbors snagged big-name local lawyer Jim Francesconi to defend their objections to the OLCC, but Fruits says he's not surprised the board swung in favor of the restricted license. "They’re fairly stringent restrictions. The next step is how does the OLCC actually enforce those restrictions," says Fruits. The list of restrictions include having four security personnel on-site after 9 PM Thursday through Saturday and patrolling their parking lot every 30 minutes. The restrictions make no mention of bears, wrestling or bear wrestling.

It’s not often that the line to enter a public meeting looks like the line outside an exclusive bar. But as over 400 people squeezed into the Acadian ballroom last night for a public meeting about the future of Last Thursday, the crowd spilled out the door and stretched up NE Alberta. A girl in striped tights with bright red hair and bells around her ankles joined the end of the line just as the sun was setting. “Is this the place?” she asked. Of course.

• Zervas
• The spirit of Last Thursday

Adams and Fritz called the neighborhood meeting to discuss the impact of the art event that has grown over the past 13 years from a few fringe artists and ne’er-do-well clowns to a defining aspect of a neighborhood in transition. Over the past year, the city has shelled out $11,000-12,000 a month from May to October to keep Last Thursday clean and car-free. Now it’s up for debate whether the city should continue to foot the bill.

With 10,000 people heading to NE Alberta every last Thursday for five months out of the year, it seems like there would be a way to dig up money to pay for trash cans, portapotties and police. “Unlike every other arts festival in town, nobody runs Last Thursday,” noted city crime prevention coordinator Stephanie Reynolds. “This makes things a little bit complicated because there’s no one person to go to and say, ‘Hey! You! Fix this.’”

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