- Among residents of those buildings who responded to a survey, 72 percent owned cars, and two-thirds of car owners park on the street. But only 36 percent use a car for a daily commute.

And I would venture to guess that the residents who did NOT respond to the survey are more likely than not to own cars (perhaps they did not fill out the survey because they feared being outed as an evil car owner), and thus the impact on neighborhoods is even worse than the study says.

The other fault with the study is that it is studying the effect of something on a finite quantity of neighborhood parking spaces, yet not examining the future impact of more parking-free apartment buildings. It's like saying "hey, the water quality in this stream did not deteriorate when we dumped 100 gallons of chlorine into it, thus we can probably dump 1,000 gallons into it." Parking in places like RIchmond and Sunnyside may not have deteriorated yet because there are few of these things around now. However, there are TONS in development--THAT is what neighbors are concerned about.

"Residents of no-parking apartment buildings aren't less likely to own a car."

What a shocker!

It's amazing that a council which has been trying to solve the parking problem in NW for years (a problem caused in no small part be the many historical apartment buildings which have no parking), is intentionally recreating that problem all over the inner east side.

Just remember Eastsiders, the city doesn't work for you. It works for The Million. Just think, your neighborhood is being ruined now, so that some child just being born today somewhere in the Midwest will be able to take his god-given place in inner Portland 20 years from now. Beautiful isn't it? Your job is to shut up and pay taxes until he gets here.

In related news:

Water is wet. Turkeys are stupid. Developers lie.

Fewer built parking spaces = higher profit.

And Portland's Bureau of Planning & Sustainability doesn't mind if hipsters park in front of your house every day.

I am sad sometimes to see what is happening in Beaumont and Hollywood, my stomping grounds. The low-quality, 45ft tall, no parking apartments are taking off like wild mushrooms.

Wally Remmers, according to an attorney that has worked against him in the past, has a strong dislike of Portland. The city is the opposite of everything the he stands for and has built in his rolling house farms in WA county. It is so ironic that the king of the Mc Mansions finds an abettor in chief planner Joe Zehnder to come in and rob the inner east-side Portland neighborhoods of their value.

Wally's greed is understandable and one of the excesses of the American Way. Joe Zehnder and Susan Anderson are the enemy of east Portland. The people who, along with Saltzman as BDS Comm., could have stopped this from happening and chose to do nothing, or even worse, chose to do a study.

"Heritage Tree Committee – Michael McCloskey
Michael reported that the Committee is planning a meeting sometime in the fall to finish discussion on delisting trees.

There may also be an optional field tour sometime in the fall."

http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/index.cfm?c=41487&a=407170

http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/index.cfm?c=41487

Not the only shame on The Commissioners.

"Heritage Tree Committee – Michael McCloskey
Michael reported that the Committee is planning a meeting sometime in the fall to finish discussion on delisting trees"

Rule # 1 these people are lying to you. Rule # 2 Trees don't mean anything to these people. We have listened to the TRI Met drivel monthly from Claudia Steinberg MLR spokesperson about how we are going to trim this tree and MAYBE take down another here. B>>>Shirt come take a look at what they have done to the century + year old trees along McLoughlin
just out of Millywakay. Total destruction and they have a huge muddy mess going on.

Tri Met and their contractors are so screwed up that they are still negotiating on additional homes and buildings that they have discovered that they need and did not plan for.

BINGO!

We don't need no stinking trees! Just soviet style bunkers for the part time employed barista class. Inner city infill at its finest!

"It's just a transfer of wealth from the existing taxpayers of Portland to developer weasels from places like Lake O."
===

I think Obama would call it 'spreading the wealth around'. But Obama spread it from the wealthy to the not-so-wealthy.

Doesn't Progressive Portland have it kinda backwards? Transfers to LO from Portland's middle-class-taxpayers is robbing from the poor to give to the rich, no?

"As long as everyone's okay with that..." As a former LO-regonian who may return someday, fine by me.

Rule # 1 these people are lying to you. Rule # 2 Trees don't mean anything to these people.

Hey now, that is ABSOLUTELY incorrect! If you are a citizen who has a scrawny, ugly, invasive tree planted in your parking strip and you'd like to replace it with something more suitable, you have to go through acres of red tape to so much as prune it, much less remove it.

I feel sorry for those folks in the area of the proposed bunkers on Division. Years ago I lived around 51st & Hawthorne when I worked nights. My front yard was only about 20 feet deep. Every time a car door slammed I'd wake up. The blocks north of Division and west of 39th are very similar. People will be coming and going at all hours, and it will have a terrible impact on the livibility of the neighborhoods (in addition to the lack of parking.)

Is neighborhood livability a tangible asset that directly effects property value? Is there a class action suit here?
OR . . .
Is this unstoppable ?

Harry - not sure what LO developers you are referring to. Can you name them?

I must be on several email lists because over the past week I received several near duplicate emails with a link to a different survey that apparently went to a number of neighborhood groups. Several of the questions appeared to be politically motivated by the car hater crowd, but many others were not. I believe results of this additional survey will be presented to the planning commission this coming Tuesday along with the City's survey. It will be interesting to see how the planning commission will react - especially the well known Sammyboy crony and anti-car commissioner that has his own blog.

"Among residents of those buildings who responded to a survey, 72 percent owned cars, and two-thirds of car owners park on the street. But only 36 percent use a car for a daily commute."

Hmmm...Okay, 2/3 of the 72% of the residents (presumably the child residents don't own cars) who own cars park their cars on the street. Yeah, right. So, the remaining 1/3 of car owners in these units, who do not have off-street parking...where are they storing their cars? In the building lobby? They would certainly take up way too much room in the bike rack.

So, I'd bet that nearly 100% of adults living in these new crapartment units own cars and they ALL park their cars on the street.

Those kind of neighborhoods work best if you walk or take the bus. I lived in two of them a few years back, Goose Hollow and the Lloyd District. I did have a car parked on the street that I rarely used. Great walking areas. The newer buildings that I recollect around West Burnside to the south were built with below-ground parking.

My car got covered with sap-ridden leaves in one place and broken into, stolen and totaled in the other (a crime for which I had to pay substantially in towing and storage fees).

When I was a single person I loved the downtown or close-in life relying on walking and bus, but then I've never liked to drive. Parking was terrible in those areas. I also rarely drove because it was just too hard to find a parking place again.

Crazy to shoehorn a bunch of new no-parking complexes in other areas. It WILL ruin your neighborhoods.

Well, it doesn't really even take a apartment complex to mess up the parking situation. In the North Portland neighborhood I used to live in--which was already lacking parking for many of the older homes--everyone who was already parking on the street was forced to compete with the customers of a neighboring newly opened restaurant with no onsite parking. We just got used to driving down a block or two away to park at peak times. And that was just one restaurant on the edge of a residental neighborhood of single family homes.

But we were so close to a MAX line said the local planners...

It WILL ruin your neighborhoods.

Planners must know this. Question is who rules the planners? Who benefits from property values/livability taken down notches?

I am wondering whether that is not the long range game plan, to take down the neighborhoods, as neighborhoods as we knew are an old fashioned concept, and the new trail to be blazed is now the mixed-used density concept!
Neighborhoods don't matter much as they don't fit in with those "new plans" anymore?

I wonder what the neighborhood associations think of this, or are they still somehow aligned with city plans, accepting concepts that reduce their neighborhood livability all in the name of the UGB?

In my view, that UGB concept was very heavily put into the minds of the population, who could be against saving farmland and forests?

Were we also told that in order to do this, that our neighborhoods and the livability of where we actually live would become a sacrifice zone?

Were we also aware that some people would then benefit greatly financially from this "land" UGB concept at the expense of our quality of life/livability here?

Some neighborhood associations are split on this (Richmond), some are against it (Beaumont and Alameda). They are largely powerless unless the developer has development plans that will require a variance to the zoning code. They then have a seat at the table during review of plans.

Almost all of the two dozen buildings going up now are in zone CS which has no parking requirement and has a height restriction of 45 feet. If they stay within those guidelines the NA has no voice.

Richmond has an added layer of code known as an overlay that was specifically crafted for the area. It is my understanding that they are or plan to appeal to LUBA regarding development conflicts with the overlay. In an area like Beaumont where there is not an overlay, it is just the developer and what he can get away with in zone CS.

For those interested here is a link to a short summary of the commercial zones - http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/64432

If you have the time scroll down and read about Zone CS. It makes a lot of sense, sounds reasonable, and is largely a cut and paste of the underlying codes preamble.

If you go further and read the code, you will find that no part of it lives up to the spirit outlined in the preamble. Nothing is required of the developer. Doesn't have to preserve character, no parking is fine, no storefront is fine(!), as many units as can fit in 45 feet is fine, towering over single family residential is fine. No bike parking is not fine, but that goes without saying.

Clinamen has nailed it dead center.

Smart-growth sounds like a great idea to a lot of guilt-ridden people who unfortunately can't grasp that it also creates an irresistible and enormous opportunity for politicians and developers working in partnership to scam the 'religion' for personal gain. You'd think they'd get a clue when their own elected officials are documented liars.

It's like one of those televangelist shows where the minister has one hand in the giving bowl, the other up his secretary's skirt, and a secret savings account in the Grand Caymans. The congregation is so desperate to believe and be saved they refuse to look behind the curtain.

Honestly folks , you sound like people arguing over who gets to keep the fine silver as the titanic goes down.
Global Warming is happening, and fast. You seem to think that it is someone else's problem, and that your precious cute 1920's hood should remain untouched til the end of time, [which is coming faster all the time]. We need to do some fairly significant things to avert GW , and densifying our cities is job number one. You don't own the city or the street in front of your home, we all do, along with the new people who will inhabit your neighborhood in ten years, when many of us will be in nursing homes. Sharing is what we teach tots in kindergarten. Share with your new neighbors, and the future neighbors of our city.

Wow! Someone who actually advocates for the bulldozing of Portland.

The congregation speaks.

Even if it were the right thing to do, which collection of fellow human beings do you trust to mastermind and execute this without saying to themselves, "Well, since I don't really believe what tiny Portland does to itself is actually going to have much impact on GW on a global scale, and since there's no way any single government would be able to pull this off without starting WWIII which would surely hasten the end, and since the big climate sh*t's going to hit the fan anyways, I think I'll just help myself to the cookie pot so that my family and I will have more resources to purchase influence and comfort when things go south".

So far, all we've seen at the helm are accomplished liars and frauds.

"...which collection of fellow human beings do you trust to mastermind and execute this..."

Isn't that the 30-trillion-dollar question. Me: none. But by various vote-counts and attendant rhetoric I think I'm in the minority. This is exactly where the future of the USA is going to divide or be decided, I think.

Clinamen somewhat nailed it. But adding to it, from my experiences from spot zoning to whole neighborhood plans-with some cynicism, is that Planning has become a major industry. Why? Politicians with their egotism, hopeful political rise use Planning as a change-agent, that they can list in their achievement list. But what supports this notion? Who are one of the biggest contributors to the politicians?-the Developers. Change equals profit from upzoning, rezoning, all the subsidies, tax incentives, etc.

That doesn't necessarily make Developers evil. They are merely using the system that we have allowed them to use, and get away with Change in our neighborhoods.

State Planning Goals/Metro/CoP/Planners were successful in convincing some that Smart Growth/Density was necessary to save the planet. But they didn't realize the consequences for neighborhoods. And how can an ordinary layperson know the affects of centralized planning that in Portland's case induces Change.

Citizens need to re-examine how our Planning has and will affect their own neighborhoods. We have several examples that we can examine to demonstrate to citizens how they are affected. One is using mass transit from streetcars to lightrail and analysis its affect on Interstate, or Central Eastside. We can examine the massive rezoning/upzoning of SoWhat. The list goes on.

tda, there are numerous studies that disproves that densifying our towns and cities uses less energy and helps global warming.

All you need to do to see the future of the inner Portland neighborhoods is follow the MAX line out to Rockwood and Gresham. I grew up in that area and it's now so ticky-tacky and generic that I don't recognize it.

Of course developers are happy about not having to provide anything but bike parking. Parking doesn't generate income; apartments do. Parking is wasted space - or worse - space that needs to be developed in addition to the income-generating human occupation cubes which are growing increasingly smaller.

One wonders about that trend as well. It's one thing to say that there's a need for bedsitter convenience apartments among young working people (retired folks can't afford them and probably want parking) but has anyone given any thought to the future and who might be occupying them if and when the surge of young single workers debarks for larger family abodes? Remember the surge of elementary schools in the 60s to accommodate the baby boom generation? Many of them (including some high schools) are now only memories or empty buildings owned and managed by PPS but often empty).

In the last month or so, I've seen several articles about this apartment building frenzy, particularly in NW Portland, but strangely enough nobody is talking about what the anticipated rents will be. My guess? "Market Rate" which means that I and most of my neighbors will be priced out of them.