property looking south on
the I-205 bike path toward
NE Halsey.
(Photos © J. Maus)
The effort to build turn 35 acres of vacant land in east Portland into an off-road trails park and bike recreation to be called “Gateway Green” is moving forward nicely.
Last week I bumped into parks and neighborhood advocate extraordinaire Linda Robinson at the Metro quarterly trails meeting. Robinson, along with developer Ted Gilbert, is spearheading the Gateway Green project.
Robinson said they’ve received a small neighborhood grant to put together a “Friends of Gateway Green” organization. The grant was awarded through the parks subcommittee of the Hazelwood Neighborhood Association. According to Robinson, the funds will go toward creation of a brochure, a website and a kickoff event. Membership opportunities will also be coming soon.
In addition to this new group, an important “Kick the Dirt” event will take place at the Gateway Green site this weekend. The invite-only event will be attended by 25-30 bike trail and facilities experts from around the region. The goal of the event will be to brainstorm ideas and tell the project staff what type of bike facilities might work at the site.
A follow-up open house will be held in March or April where the ideas from Saturday’s event will be presented to the general public.
Download it (3MB, PDF)
The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) currently owns the land and must sign-off on any transfer. Last year they awarded the Gateway Green project $50,000 to undertake studies required before the land can be conveyed.
Currently, the “vision” for Gateway Green includes a variety of cycling opportunities including cyclocross, a skills area, freeride/gravity routes and cross-country trails. The project would also link the site by bike/ped bridges to other publicly owned land on and around Rocky Butte and with the proposed Sullivan’s Gulch Trail.
Stay tuned for further developments on this exciting opportunity.
I love the idea and I hope they can get it off the ground!
this is awesome. right now the space is empty and not used for anything. there couldn’t be a better use for that property.
I think some race teams already use that for offroad CX practice in the fall…
what would the differences include? its a bit noisy for my general liking, but maybe better further east off the bike path…
so cool.
Yes please, more x-country trails in Portland.
This is awesome and couldn’t happen any quicker. I’d like to see it modeled after the Colonnade bike park in Seattle.
http://evergreenmtb.org/colonnade/ This has been very successful and turned an area that was mainly used by crackheads into almost a destination place.
Sounds like a great idea but for one thing: how about a tarmac cycling circuit. In 35 acres there should be enough room to put in a closed road circuit of at least 3/4 mile.
Our own 1/2m track encloses 2 all-weather soccer pitches and we regularly have 40+ kids doing basic skills on the rolled shale pitches, adjacent grass and road skills on the circuit. Max attendance ever was 67 last September.
Add a couple of containers full of planks, pallets, ramps, seesaws, limbo bars, cones, etc., and bikes, you would have a kids delight as well as for adults.
Approx UK cost for 1K x 8m wide circuit is £300/350k
Thanks, Jonathan, for the well-done update on Gateway Green.
I do have one correction, however. The $50,000 is coming from the City of Portland, through East Portland Action Plan implementation funding — not ODOT. The money will be used for additional studies that ODOT is requiring as part of the approval process.
First off, thank you to all who read & support this website & what they accomplish.
Here are my thoughts.
A bridge needs to be built to ensure this stays on track.
Between commuters, XC, Cyclo, BMX, Velo, Road, Downhill, Freeride & any other sector of cycling I am leaving out, there has never been a great reason for building relations across the lines.
This would be a HUGE one.
Working for a common goal seems to be something all of these varied groups have never had to do.