Zoning issue handled badly

MY VIEW • City Council and Portland Planning Commission tune out citizen input in $150 million Columbia Villa reconstruction

By Richard Ellmyer

The Portland Tribune, Jul 9, 2002, Updated Oct 30, 2009

The Housing Authority of Portland is planning a $150 million reconstruction of North Portland’s Columbia Villa, Oregon’s largest tax-subsidized low-income development. The plan calls for increasing this population from 1,200 to 2,500 and creating as large a commercial storefront zone as possible.

When HAP first approached the Portland Planning Commission, the commission balked at a request for 10 acres of commercial zoning. HAP returned a week later with a revised request for 7 acres. Again the commission could not get HAP to explain exactly what it intended. The commissioners debated for almost an hour and a half over what to do.

HAP had no details and no plan. An ordinary developer would long since have been laughed out of the hearing room for lack of preparation. But the commissioners didn’t want to be accused, as HAP staff implied, of being responsible for losing a $35 million federal grant. So they benevolently recommended an arbitrary 3.5 floating acres because nobody could say exactly where this zone would be.

The commission failed to do its job. At the request of a planning commission member I submitted 15 copies of briefing materials before the hearing. Not one member of the commission nor one member of the commission’s staff bothered to read these materials or ask me to comment upon them at the hearing. Being too busy to read briefing materials may be a good reason for the citizen volunteers who make up the commission, but it’s not an excuse. And what about the staff? What do they get paid to do? If everyone at the commission is too busy to read briefing materials prepared by concerned citizens at their own time and expense, why bother submitting them?

On June 26, donning hard hats, Mayor Vera Katz and her cohorts Jim Francesconi and Dan Saltzman poured the foundation for a building with no plans. Totally ignoring the public record of rejection and anguished debate by the commission, our city’s elected builders paved over civic process and citizen participation with a truckload of concrete zoning.

Assembled at barely quorum strength, the Portland City Council voted to approve a Portsmouth Neighborhood Plan that included a 3.5-acre commercial storefront zone at Columbia Villa. Displaying a sincere lack of interest in the subject matter as the vote was called, Dan Saltzman let a simple “yes” express all the thought and effort he had put into his decision. Jim Francesconi exuded cotton candy expressions of appreciation for all those who worked so hard to support the zone change (most of them were paid by tax dollars for that work) while gratuitously insulting everyone who worked hard to oppose it.

At least Mayor Katz recognized that all the creatures in the North Portland theme park were not getting along. She hoped that the adversarial parties in North Portland will get together and just work things out.

A $150 million low-income housing project will have a serious effect on any neighborhood’s stability. HAP’s massive exercise in social architecture has the potential to enhance the quality of life or throw the North Portland community completely off balance.

However, HAP’s unprofessional handling of the commercial zoning issue; the commission’s confused concern, then carelessness; and the Portland City Council’s indefensible and unexplained vote are all bad omens.

Richard Ellmyer lives eight blocks from Columbia Villa and has been a citizen activist for 27 years. He began studying the Columbia Villa redevelopment project in February 2001.

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