March 04, 2004
Poorly-Promoted Public Workshops On Pioneer Courthouse Square
Final Session Of A Three-Day Schedule Is Saturday
Did you know that there are public workshops being conducted "to assess the current performance and opportunities of Pioneer Courthouse Square" during Winter?
Well, there are, not that they've gone through much trouble to let people know. And even the above link only lists ths sessions that occured this morning and today at noon. You have to click through to this Project for Public Spaces page to know that there are additional sessions -- tomorrow and Saturday morning.
They're doing it again. While they reportedly are somewhat backing away from their dogged insistence on a major ice rink proposal (although, well, not entirely), and discussing a more general question of Winter activities for the Square, they once again seem to be doing it at least partially under the radar.
That's how we got into the ice rink disaster in the first place.
What good are public workshops if they don't go out of their way to inform the public of their existence? It sort of undercuts this element of the event description on the PPS website:
This week, citizens of Portland will be evaluating and proposing improvements for their coveted civic square during a series of PPS led Place Audit workshops. Pioneer Courthouse Square Inc., the management organization that deserves much of the credit for what is perhaps the best civic square in the country, is opening up their ongoing improvement efforts to engage the greater Portland community helping the square further realize its potential.
While interested parties can download the audit, answer its questions, and then try to figure out where to send it, or call 503-223-1613 to register, we suggest instead that said interested parties simply show up at the Theater on the Square either Friday or Saturday at 9:00 AM.
If they tell you they don't have any space for you, explain that this would be their fault for not bothering to do any real outreach in the first place to let the public kow that "public" workshops were being conducted.