The zoning trade is fascinating. I guess if your neighbor is rich enough to give the city some money for one of its toys, he can build whatever he wants next to you. Some "model" of land use integrity we are.

A park, and a school, yeah, that's the ticket. Add those two items and it will make the Pearl irresistible to families; they will revitalize the condo market ... NOT! Just more paper pushing to get a yuppie utopia.

For the school part, see here.

Field of Schemes

Hoyt Street’s proposal: For additional FAR, which would allow the developer to build larger buildings in the north Pearl, Hoyt Street would give an acre to the city to make the Fields larger.

Troy Doss, a senior planner with the city, said last week that the deal has been made. Hoyt Street will get 4-1 FAR on its remaining undeveloped properties, and the Fields will be three acres instead of two.

this encapsulates part of what disgusts me with Portland planning efforts. city officials routinely make "deals" with developers on building size. Hoyt Street gets to build buildings twice as tall elsewhere if it increases the park size.

why have a FAR at all, if you simply use it as a bargaining tool instead of part of a coherent set of town planning beliefs?

this was done in the South Waterfront so egregiously as to render the FAR there meaningless. it's part of why the "SoWhat" has become a joke played by the city government on itself.

from the Tribune article:

"Troy Doss, senior planner with the city’s planning bureau, says families leaving the Pearl has been the undeniable trend in recent years."

"undeniable"? a few sentences later, we read:

"Precise numbers for children in the Pearl simply don’t exist...And nobody knows how many children born in the Pearl stay there."

truth is, Doss doesn't have a clue--he's making sh*t up. is a school a good idea? maybe, but it's like buying tires when you don't have a car. a few residents are collecting and delivering form letters to city government; as a result, the government considers spending millions of dollars on a park and school for a wealthy, insular neighborhood of condos.

what does "make stuff up" mean?

at the risk of over-posting, here's where the rubber meets the road: the existing development was never intended for families:

A PDC housing study found that only 20 percent of the units in the River District (which encompasses the Pearl but also includes undeveloped property that reaches east to the Willamette River) have at least two bedrooms, and that only 3 percent have three bedrooms.

well, what to do?

The solution for that, according to the new district plan, is to increase development bonuses for buildings that include housing designed for families. If developers put in more two- and three-bedroom apartments, they will get to build larger projects.

too late. the pearl is essentially built out. full. overbuilt. little land remains.

But Commissioner Erik Sten says the city should do what it can to encourage more families to live in the Pearl and that he expects more families to stay.

“If you’re gong to have a city that’s kid-friendly, it’s got to be kid-friendly everywhere,” Sten says.

goodbye, Erik. take a drive through the rest of Portland on your way to DC.

As the past president of a group called Citizens to Save the Willamette Riverfront, which commented for years on density and height issues in the statewide Greenway zone along the Willamette, a question arises. How can increasing the height and density along the river in The Pearl meet the requirements of the Greenway Regulations-both state and city? The regs require the decrease of height and density as one approaches the river. That is why Portland's downtown (PGE Buildings are reduced in height in just its two block depth west to east) has zoning with decreasing height as it approaches the 400 ft wide park along the river. Examining Homer's proposal for the Pearl riverfront is just the opposite of Greenway Regs.

Where are our planners? Why do we have Greenway Regs?

Where are our planners? Why do we have Greenway Regs?

Whereupon Jerry was seized for reminding the citizens of Portland that greenway regulations exist.