um, don't they have to sell/rent those units first? And, would the lack of parking be required to be disclosed under various real estate rules?

If not for these buildings, in time, for future buildings, people will realize that they can't get from there to here without cars, and they won't buy condos in that area. You're trapped in an area with limited public transportation (and Tri-met whacking more every year), and prices for which the young, creative jobless won't qualify. Older folks downsizing might be able to afford these units, but many of my middle-aged peers are no longer able to ride bikes due to a variety of health issues. Spending two hours on the street car to go buy groceries doesn't work, either.

I also noted that Condo association fees would fund part of this - yeah, right.

The TMA “presents an opportunity to show people how they can take advantage of other options for moving about, such as streetcar, bike lanes and walking paths.”

You can move about by walking?! Holy crap! That's what my feet are for! Praise Metro for shining the light on me.

I want to be an "Urban Pioneer," too. It sounds so exciting to be one of the first humans to live in a city. ??????

Puke.

No cars? So do they expect people to only go places you can walk or take public transit? I don't get it. What if I want to go camping, or fishing, or to the beach?
What about skiing?
I guess we need a tram to Mt. Hood.

"A bigger problem for South Waterfront, Poirer added, is that many people don’t know how to reach the district by car."

That ought to be good for business....

No car? Cut me a slice of that!

Bike sharing? Yes, the Yellow Bike program was such a resounding success.

Well, this will be interesting in establishing a Transportation Management Association to the starting cost of $150,000 in taxpayer dollars. I thought SoWhat with all of its transportation infrastructure would naturally achieve PDOT's 40% transit usage dream.

You also must wonder how OHSU, using SoWhat for a parking lot for Pill Hill with the convenience of the Tram, will respond to achieve ultimate "no-car" SoWhat.

Ha Ha! Here's my favorite part:
"Metro has committed $150,000 over the next three years, and that total will be matched by South Waterfront residents and businesses via condo association fees and private assistance."

So the current residents of SoWhat will have their condo fees increased in order to con future residents into not owning cars. Ha Ha!

Have fun moving the furniture in!

This will be interesting seeing all the high-income types that can afford those condo HOAs and taxes taking the bus/streetcar to te show or dining out.

Isn't there some island we can ship METRO and every planner in town to?

Steve is on to something there with the island idea.

I'd propose Government Island, under the Glen Jackson bridge.

It is perfect, and not just because of the name -- you can't get there by car either.

Jack, for God's sake, PLEASE redact the last line of Jon's post at 12:47 before someone at City Hall sees it.

I would like them to see them scrap ideas to change the old MKC into a casino, and move those efforts to the south waterfront district.

Hell, if were are really bringing big time gambling to the Portland area, let's go big time. The buses running our elderly in and out of the new SoWhat casino would only have to figure out how to get there, but after that, no problem.

When our gambling grandparents start to keel over from all the excitement next to their favorite slot machine, they will be only a short tram ride away from medical help.

In addition, funding from the money our old folks lose could go toward more bike lanes for the young and healthy.

JFC - while TriMet slashes service right and left we are going to give special consideration to a SoWat TMA?

If you can afford to live in SoWat, you can afford non-publicly financed transportation since your development was already financed by the rest of us. And most of them are not going to want to use public transportation.

Meanwhile, I had lunch with an old friend today in the Pearl. The first two parking "meter" machines I attempted to use failed to work (same issues for others parking in that area at the time). The third one worked on the second try. I think one of them was out of receipt forms and one was purely broken. The third one appeared to be having network issues for the card authorization. Crap like that does not bode well for the Pearl. If you call the city number on the machines, you get a recording but no help. Nice really nice.

I noticed a lot of empty shops in the area (I don't go there that often) and parking at midday was plentiful enough that I did not use my plan to park in a garage.

I hope to heck that those who own businesses in this area realize that the city does them no favors as it makes life for people like me (middle class auto users - TriMet is not an option in my neighborhood and they know it) more and more difficult.

If the housing market were a shred better, I'd be looking to get out of PDX and MultCo.

Everybody's ignoring the fact that there's 10,000 people who hold down jobs in that area. Where do they park?

http://wweek.com/editorial/2939/4181/

Homer should be in politics with his foresight!

His formula for successful development is simple. "Where most guys usually miss it is that you need to figure out what the public benefit of a project is," Williams says. "If you can't figure that out, you're finished."

Isn't there some island we can ship METRO and every planner in town to?

SoWhat is practically an island (ever try walking there? Walkability my @ss!), why not ship them there. If the condo fortress is good enough for us sheeple, it's good enough for them right?

One linchpin after another.

When the money for this one is gone

"Transportation Management Association"

It will on to the next without the slightest recognition that linchpins reallly suck.

This car free wet dream of the planners is required because, within a decade, traffic engineers expect 3 hours of gridlock into and out of the "district" during morning and evening rush hours. It will be some of the worst urban traffic on the planet.

The FHA and ODOT know that the COP ignored its own studies and their warnings, so they won't help pay for the $500 million of improvements to the "north and south portals" that Dike Dame mentioned casually in the DJC piece. We're nowhere close to being done paying for this collosal mistake.

I love how the condo associations will be paying for this via higher association fees. The fees are already high without these costs, but it's nothing compared to the special assessments coming down the pike.

Note how the DJC reports how the 209-unit Tamarack affordable housing development is scheduled to be finished in 2011. That translates into 500+ poor people moving in. Now the the rich douc***ag residents get to walk everywhere with the poor, mentally-ill, and violent PTSD-suffering Iraq war vets. Hahaha!

lsw, PDOT's arrogance of ignoring ODOT and FHA in the SoWhat's transportation problems has certainly compounded its problems. I remember when the ODOT Chief Planner in meetings with PDOT finally just gave up attending meetings and walked out. He couldn't believe PDOT's insistence that 40% transit usage is achievable in SoWhat. Nor could ODOT accept that SoWhat's traffic backups would not affect the entire I-5 system in the metro area, even affecting I-205 and 405. PDOT's superior attitude is having repercussions from ODOT and FHA on several fronts besides SoWhat.

Recently it's been acknowledged by PDC that there's little money for transportation projects to begin the South or North Portals, and the Central Portal has been scrapped. So there is no way to get NoWhere. SoWhat.

I've taken a couple of bike rides through the SoWhat "neighborhood" in the past couple of weeks, in between rain showers. It's a completely unappealing place to live, and I don't see any hope for it. The idea that the streetcar, which I was able to pass on my bike (even if it goes faster than it does in the Pearl, where I can pass it walking), is a valid alternative to a car is laughable.

Ah, I'm reminded of our local unbearable cross, the UT-Southwestern Medical Center. There's always money for constructing new buildings, especially if you have some rich slob who wants a building named after him because he knows he can't get into heaven. Parking, though, is never financed or budgeted, so the parking at UT-Southwestern is absolutely insane. An old girlfriend of mine worked there as a molecular geneticist back in the Nineties, and one of the reasons she quit was because she was tired of having to get to work at 6:00 just to find a parking space.

And these twerps expect people to put up with this sort of abuse so they can live there? It's a brilliant idea...in fact, I recommend that everyone working for the City of Portland move there. Right NOW. Let's see exactly how fond they are of SoWhat if they actually have to deal with the repercussions of their asinine decisions.