July 11, 2003
(Updated) City Council Makes Amendments, Heads Towards Approving South Waterfront
Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.
There were a number of items related to the South Waterfront plan yesterday, but I was busy helping a bookstore with its move (about which I'll post more at some point soon), and I'll pull them all into this post along the way. But first, the results of Thursday's City Council session:
In the face of community criticism, the Portland City Council on Thursday amended a development agreement for the South Waterfront area. Nevertheless, the council indicated that it ultimately would approve the $1.9 billion deal.
Mayor Vera Katz said at the outset of a 31/2-hour hearing that the council would not vote immediately on the agreement -- a delay urged by community activists who said the proposal merited more scrutiny.
According to The Oregonian, the City Council "adopted amendments to set aside housing for the poorest Portlanders and to pay adequate wages to project workers."
Among those concerns are these:
The Corbett-Terwilliger-Lair Hill neighborhood wants the city to spend tax dollars from the new development on street improvements and a bridge that would connect the neighborhood to the South Waterfront's parks and other public amenities.
Environmentalists want the city to preserve a 150-foot-wide greenway along the banks of the Willamette. Current plans for the central district set aside a 125-foot-wide greenway.
Affordable housing proponents protest that the central district's planned 790 affordable units won't be enough to reflect the city's income levels. To reflect the diversity of the city's households, affordable housing would have to be 2,175 of the first 3,000 units.
Not to mention -- as indeed the article does not, although I have no idea if anyone at the Council session did -- that the plan is in part the result of architectrual arrogance which pretended there was no greater urban context in which the project was being designed (like, say, a pre-existing City that's already here).
But anyway. I gather there was some sort of "issue rundown" in Thursday's edition of the paper was well, but the online version cuts off before every telling us what they are.
Also in Thursday's edition was a deeper look at the issues surrounding "font-loaded high-end development." It's worth reading in its entirety.
Meanwhile, I was amused to find a post about South Waterfront on Portland Independent Media Center, which is not worth reading in its entirety, but feel free to skim it for interesting bits.
Update
Also note that OPB says the Council postponed their final decision to approve the development "for a few weeks."