Urban renewal funds give new life to site

Interstate park gets needed makeover as neighborhood grows

By Jennifer Anderson

The Portland Tribune, Jun 12, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

North Portland’s Patton Square Park, the tiny green space next to the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, will celebrate its reopening to the public this week after getting a $600,000 face-lift.

The 1.2-acre city park along the Interstate MAX line at North Interstate Avenue and Emerson Street has been closed to the community for the past year while crews installed new paths, lighting, a playground, benches, picnic tables and landscaping.

It’s a far cry from the old site, which “was a little bit like what I imagine a park was like in the Soviet Union around 1958,” said Overlook neighborhood resident Cynthia Sulaski.

“It was dreary. There were maybe two teeter-totters with lead paint, three of those strap swings … it was totally not safe for kids. There was no lighting, one drinking fountain smack dab in the middle of the park, and I think one garbage can.”

Sulaski said Patton Park historically had been a site for drug activity in the evenings, and at least one person, an elderly man, had been mugged there.

North Portland neighbors decided to do something about it two years ago, and approved about $600,000 for a total renovation of the park with funds from the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area advisory committee.

“This is the largest parks project we’ve funded since the urban renewal area was started,” said Sulaski, who chairs the committee. “Of all the parks (in the area), this was the neediest.”

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