Mt. Tabor Park access plan stirs neighborhood

Walking path or new road? Answer to that question is still being discussed

By Steve Law

The Portland Tribune, May 30, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (11 Reader comments)

Courtesy of WH Pacific

One option for the Mt. Tabor Park plan is to extend Southeast 64th Avenue, shown here looking north. Some residents do not support the road plan.

Changes are afoot at the southern edge of Mt. Tabor Park, but this time Portland Parks and Recreation is bending over backwards to accommodate nearby residents.

Two years ago, Mount Tabor residents foiled the parks bureau’s plan to sell off its central parks maintenance yard on Southeast Division Street to neighboring Warner Pacific College, which wanted the land for athletic fields.

After the neighbors mobilized, the bureau backed down and agreed to renovate its antiquated maintenance yard and adjoining nursery at their locations in the park’s southwest corner.

Under a 2007 agreement reached via mediation with the Mount Tabor and South Tabor neighborhood associations, the city created a 34-member committee to plan the project.

One of the city’s biggest issues is improving worker safety and productivity at the maintenance yard, where more than 100 workers report for duty each day, said Maija Spencer, public involvement coordinator for the project. One of residents’ concerns is how to improve access to the park from the south, perhaps by extending 64th Avenue from Division Street north a couple blocks to Sherman Street.

Click here to see the May 19 presentation on the city’s options.

On Saturday, the parks department is opening up the 13-acre site for public tours, hoping to brief neighbors on plans and get feedback on various designs. Open Yard Day is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the south entrance to Mt. Tabor Park, near Southeast 64th Avenue and Lincoln Street.

Poorly maintained buildings

The maintenance yard and nurseries are used to support all Portland city parks, but some of the facilities date back nearly a century.

“Some of these buildings were built to house horses,” Spencer said.

As Mayor Tom Potter observed months ago, the parks maintenance yard appears to be one of the city’s most poorly maintained facilities. Some of the buildings lack proper heating and air conditioning. Some of the roofs leak. There’s inadequate parking and traffic circulation for heavy equipment.

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