Resident has seen Foster-Powell’s good and bad

My View

By Kathy Rentenbach

, Jul 10, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (19 Reader comments)

Kathy Rentenbach takes a morning stroll with her dogs, Bear and Rosie (on leash), in the Powell-Foster neighborhood.

l.e. baskow / portland Tribune

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I live in the Foster-Powell wedge, too …nine years in a 100-year-old house. The young couple in your June 26 Rethinking Portland story “Area has identity struggles” can rest assured that there are others in this neighborhood with whom they can feel comfortable.

I can point to four households on my block that meet the criteria of liberal politics, biking to work and valuing travel; all of us are transplants.

We are in our 40s to 60s, married with families or single. None of us has a car in the front yard. I hire someone to manicure my lawn. I like an edge to the grass — I just don’t want to do it. But not everyone in Southeast has the disposable income to manicure.

Here in the wedge, we don’t have a neighborhood meeting place. We need a bookstore, a coffeehouse, a grocery store, alittle movie theater.

I used to rent in Northwest Portland, and after I moved, I realized I missed Cinema 21, the Thriftway that is now Trader Joe’s, Coffee People, bookstores with readings, and restaurants.Everything was within walking distance. Now I have to drive everywhere I want to go unless I want to risk biking.

Foster-Powell is named and hemmed in by the vicious traffic of the same. It takes courage to cross at the signal at Southeast 69th Avenue and Powell Boulevard; it changes when you’re just over halfway across. You’re on your own from there, staring down the onslaught of SUVs.Hence, like the couple in your piece, I, too have given up trying to cross the main throughfares and do my walks crisscrossing the wedge.

Ihave seenchange coming.One of my neighbors died at age 102. Her double lot was quickly divided, and up went a huge new slick house. Her house was gutted and rehabbed. Down came the tall, blooming bushes that had hid her old porch. Her neighbors salvaged her rosebushes. Real estate agents had been salivating over that property for some time.

The house that faces me has had three owners since I’ve lived here; it, too,sat on a double lot. In its backyard was a beautiful giant tree. As I walked my dogs, I watched as they slowly dismembered the tree. The power saws were buzzing for several days.

Now, instead of a backyard complete with rope swing, there sits an oversize house just a few feet behind the original house. It almost completely covers the lot, with very little lawn area. It’s an oddity in the neighborhood. It seems all the double lots are sporting new houses that shout: “Look at me. I’m big. I’m new, and I’m bland.”

There are rentals. I’ve had almost a decade of loud, drunken parties nearby. I let them be and only call the police when I hear fist on flesh.

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