At their weekly meeting yesterday, the Portland City Council passed an ordinance that included funding for operation and maintenance of Gateway Green, a project that will turn a vacant, 35-acre parcel of land in East Portland into a new park with a network off-road bike trails.
The ordinance was for budget adjustment recommendations and the Supplemental Budget for the 2010-11 fiscal year. In that ordinance was a line item that states:
FPD [Financial Planning Division] shall increase the FY 2013-I4 ongoing discretionary target of Portland Parks & Recreation by $198,110 to reflect the ongoing operations and maintenance costs of the Gateway Green Phase I project.
Phase I of the project is estimated to cost $5 million and includes all the trails and bike-related amenities.
This funding makes good on a commitment made by Parks Commissioner Nick Fish back in September when he announced that the City of Portland was stepping up to, “put money on the table to make this vision a reality.”
Also back in September, Commissioner Fish announced that the City of Portland would assume the role of lead agency on the project, an important step that’s required before ODOT (who currently owns the land) can move forward with a lease agreement.
Now, the City of Portland and other partners and stakeholders on the project will come together with various commitments of leadership and funding to sign a “Declaration of Cooperation,” the last step required in the Oregon Solutions process the project is going through. That declaration is not a binding legal document, but a public statement holding project partners accountable for their commitments.
Linda Robinson, one of the project’s visionaries and leader of the Friends of Gateway Green non-profit says after the Declaration is signed, the real legal documents will be drafted, and then ground will start to break. “The assumption, at this point,” she says, “is that we can be ready to start construction sometime in 2012, with the site opening for public use sometime in 2013.”
— Browse our Gateway Green story tag for more background on this project.
Wow, this is fantastic news! Major kudos to Friends of Gateway Green and Nick Fish.
Permanent cyclocross course, anyone? I think, yes.
Nick Fish is filling in the cracks in our platinum status with lead. Looks platinum-ish, right guys? Gateway Green will be a great project, but a narrow strip of land in between a 4 and 7 lane highway does not satisfy the great need for a 90+ minute singletrack experience near downtown. Only Forest Park can provide that.
This is great news! It is a start and Portland NEEDS a start. I would love to see what the plan is for spending 5 million dollars on mt bike trails and ameneties? What is that. The best places I ride didn’t spend that kind of money, what do we get for 5 million? I would love to know.
This site is not intended to be a substitute for single track in the forest. It’s going to be an outdoor space to recreate on your bike, in a part of town that has currently has none. We should keep the heat on Nick Fish over Forest Park, but not at the expense of support for Gateway Green.
Great!
Another piece of wild urban land tamed & ruined by “progress”…
*crap*
Just like the Eastbank Esplanade, Springwater on the Willamette, & (in progress) McCormick & Baxter. All much better when you weren’t supposed to go there.