Portland City Council voted 4-0 (Mayor Potter was absent) in rejecting a proposal to rezone a large swath of open space in Northeast Portland (that’s currently home to Colwood Golf Course) for industrial development (I reported on this story last week).
After the vote, Commissioner Nick Fish told the Oregonian, “This is an historic opportunity…We have a chance to look to future generations… This is a regional resource.”
The plan now is for Council to re-convene on October 22nd for a final vote, after giving the applicants (owners of Colwood Golf Course who want to sell the property) time to present new evidence.
Thanks to everyone who wrote in or testified about the Colwood rezoning. I hope that the next step that the City will take will be to attempt to buy the land from the golf course owners so that it can be incorporated into the park system.
Bjorn
OK, great. Now, a lot of people think I\’m anti-green because of my comments in the previous post on this subject. However, I\’m just saying that a park is not automatically the best thing you can do with any parcel of land in an urban environment. Sometimes, there may be development which could be better for green principles if it meant reducing commute distances, etc. I don\’t know all the details of what was proposed, so maybe the alternative that was proposed would have been very bad indeed. So, yes, a part of me is sorry that we didn\’t get to learn more about other uses for this land.
On the other hand, there are tons of things worse than a park or other green space, and I\’m sure the land will be better used as a park than a golf course. So, I am reasonably pleased.