PDC’s all aboard for Pearl silence

Agency will spend urban renewal funds to improve crossings, mute train whistles

By peter korn

The Portland Tribune, Sep 25, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (15 Reader comments)

L.E. BASKOW / Portland Tribune

Trains blow their whistles as they pass through the Pearl District, including here on Northwest Ninth Avenue. The PDC has budgeted $250,000 of the district’s urban renewal funds to build cement barriers at the railroad crossings, preventing cars from crossing the tracks and eliminating the need for the trains to honk their horns.

Pearl District residents are about to find their neighborhood quieter at night, but maybe not as quiet as they’d like. And if envy had a sound, well, things wouldn’t be quieting down at all.

Two years ago, condominium owners in the Pearl began complaining about middle-of-the-night whistles from trains that make their way through the neighborhood. Petitions were gathered, city officials were contacted.

A few residents insisted at a neighborhood association meeting that they liked the train sounds. A few people from outside the neighborhood pointed out that the trains and their whistles were in place long before the Pearl’s condos began to rise, and didn’t the new residents notice that before they moved in?

And, of course, a study was done, paid for by the Portland Development Commission. The study found it would cost about $280,000 to fix three Pearl District train crossings, making them secure enough that federal railroad officials could tell train engineers to lay off their whistles at night. The whistles are required as warnings to automobile drivers and pedestrians as trains approach the intersections.

Now, the Portland Development Commission has found money to take care of the improvements. In the next week or so, the PDC will sign an intergovernmental agreement authorizing the Portland Office of Transportation to begin work on overseeing the design, necessary applications and construction of the crossing safety improvements.

PDC has budgeted $250,000 for the project, all of the money coming from the Pearl’s urban renewal area funds, according to Eric Jacobson, senior project coordinator with the agency. But the PDC is unlikely to spend that much on the project.

Hoyt Street Properties, the Pearl’s original and primary developer, has pledged to pick up half the cost of the work, says Tiffany Sweitzer, the development firm’s president.

Sweitzer says that the train noise has become more of an issue as the Pearl has expanded north toward the Fremont Bridge, bringing residents closer to the tracks. In fact, one of Hoyt Street’s latest condominiums, the Encore, edges within about a dozen yards of the train tracks.

Sweitzer hopes to get other developers with projects in the Pearl District to help pay for the improvements, but regardless, she has made a commitment to the PDC that half the costs will be covered.

If all goes according to schedule, says Rich Newlands, who is shepherding the project for the transportation office, actual construction should begin next summer and be completed in fall 2009.

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