The new carfree lane recently established on NE 72nd Drive through Rose City Golf Course will likely be a lot busier in spring 2026 when Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R) opens a new nature trail planned for the site.
According to a kickoff meeting for the Rose City Recreational Trail project held on April 25th, the Parks bureau plans to build nature trails that will circumnavigate the golf course. The proposed trails will run along the outside edge of the existing park and golf course which is bordered by NE Tillamook, NE Sacramento, NE 62nd and NE 80th. Plans also show the trail bisecting the parcel on NE 72nd Dr., the same location of PBOT’s 70s Greenway route.
As currently planned, the $4 million trail won’t be built with bicycle riding in mind. Parks says the goal of the trail is to provide access to nature and neighborhood circulation for walkers and runners. At an online meeting to launch the project, PP&R launched an online survey that’s open until May 23rd. The survey questions asked potential trail users what they’d like to do in the park and none of the options mentioned bicycling. That’s unfortunate, given the ample public right-of-way available in the park, the dearth of unpaved trail-riding opportunities in Portland, and the recent city council adoption of the Off Road Cycling Master Plan which specifically recommended more urban trail options for bicycle riders.
There will be increased pressure for use of this trail by bicycle riders once changes are made to nearby 82nd Avenue. Without adequate bicycling access on 82nd, some riders are likely to use the new trail through the golf course as a convenient north-south connection between Tillamook and Sacramento (see yellow lines on the right of above image).
Funding for this project comes from the local share of Metro’s 2019 voter-approved Regional Parks and Nature Bond measure and from Parks System Development Charges. In order to be eligible for those Metro funds, PP&R needs to spend them on projects that serve, “People of color, Indigenous, low-income, varying abilities, and low prior investment; protect and restore habitat; and connect people to nature close to their homes.”
The type of trail that will be built remains to be seen as the project is in its infancy and there are a lot of feedback and design decisions still to come. PP&R’s presentation showed several options for trail typologies including: asphalt, crushed gravel, wood chips, and natural surface.
Design of the new trails will begin in earnest next spring. PP&R is currently seeking a community focus group that will help advise on the project. If you’re interested in joining that committee or want to learn more about the project, visit the PP&R website.
In related news, PBOT announced this week they will complete a Safe Routes to School project just north of the golf course near the western entrance to McDaniel High School. By spring of next year, PBOT will add new sidewalks, install eight new curb ramps, stripe new crosswalks, and square-off a turn at the intersections of NE 77th Ave/NE 77th Place and NE Alameda St.
Ha, great timing as I just listened to the Kickoff Meeting Zoom video. It has some interesting chat message comments from people in the neighborhood.
There’s a lot of potential here, and I think this project will help transform the golf course into a space that’s actually usable for a much larger group of users than the course currently serves. Having entrances/connections at the NE and E sides of the course will be huge for connectivity. Imagine being a kid in the Binford/Ellington housing area who has to walk along busy roads to get to Roseway or McDaniel, and suddenly you’re able to walk through a car-free greenspace to your school! A McDaniel gate open during school hours/weekends/always would be amazing.
There’s a lot of “concerns” about golf ball dangers and such, but it’s just the usual fear mongering from the crowd around there that doesn’t like any kind of change. I like that one of the presenters said that regarding golf ball strikes; it’s more dangerous to drive to the park, than it is to walk along a path next to a golf course. Also they mentioned that there’s actually more room/less potential golfer/pedestrian conflict areas at RCP than Glendoveer, and that the Glendoveer staff has said there haven’t been any big problems. Basically a LOT of people use the trails at Glendoveer, and really appreciate them, and they’re looking to do the same here.
The presenter mentioned that the golf course officials don’t like the idea of cyclists in the park. I took the survey, and was sure to write in a few comments about including some bikeable areas for kids and such.
Dang! How’d I miss the recording being available?! Oh well. I might follow up on this next week. Thanks for the great comment.
I know a person who suffered a traumatic brain injury from a high velocity golf ball strike and I beg of you to stop dismissing the very real hazards that exist around sporting facilities.
Thanks.
The challenge I have with these comments about dangerous golf balls is this: the project team was given the directive to build a trail around the golf course. People who don’t want to use the trail–perhaps for fear of being struck by a golf ball–don’t have to use the trail. I can’t understand what they are trying to accomplish by making this comment to the project team? Are they asking them to tell their bosses that the project should be cancelled b/c golf balls are too dangerous? If that’s the goal, they should have been at Metro Council in 2019. So, why do these folks keep bringing the dangerous golfs balls up? I agree, they can be dangerous! And, to the project manager’s point: they are much much much less dangerous than all sorts of things we do on a daily basis.
I know a guy that nearly had his leg taken off by a commercial delivery truck while riding his bicycle. I recognize that there is an inherent danger to riding a bicycle in mixed traffic, but I would dismiss anyone that argues that bike should not be allowed on public streets due to the danger.
You’re missing the point that the people I’m referencing are only bringing up potential golf ball injuries as an excuse to try and stop or limit the scope of this project. You should probably also take umbrage at the statistics the project manager reported.
I am sorry to hear about your friend, and I acknowledge there are hazards around sporting facilities. There are hazards to many things we do in life, but generally the risks are worth it. I do wonder though; if these golf course hazards are so great, why don’t golfers or course workers wear helmets?
Statistically, in Portland, walking and biking is far more hazardous than golf. There’s no sidewalk on the north side of Tillamook. Clearly it’s more dangerous to walk in the street than it is to walk on a path 10 feet closer to the golf course. Therefore, the path is worth building, and worth using.
“Parks says the goal of the trail is to provide access to nature and neighborhood circulation for walkers and runners.”
Why can’t just everyday people, ride their bikes and “access nature”? I’m thinking especially about older adults, kids and families who just want to be able to ride their bikes safely someplace w.o cars and/or through & around homeless encampments and w/o spandex clad cyclists furiously sprinting on the MUPs, often in groups and/or idiots on their e-powered & sometimes gas powered micro-mobility vehicle of choice, both of which go way too fast for other MUP users to enjoy their use of it w.o having to be on high alert for their own safety of having everyone yell “on your left” or ringing their bell at them the whole time.
“Everyday people” use all the different modes you just described, and electric micro-mobility is especially helpful for older adults and families with children. Giving an audible warning when passing is generally considered good trail etiquette. Dunno why someone would see it as a problem unless they just don’t like sharing public spaces with anyone else.
The planners are talking to the school district about a connection to McDaniel High, probably at the parking lot next to Glenhaven Park. If that happens, there could be a really good through bikeway from 80th and Thompson to Glenhaven Park. Add (1) a bikeway across Glenhaven Park to 80th and Siskiyou; (2) the 80th Avenue bike bridge across the Banfield (which I’ve seen proposed in 82nd Avenue planning documents), and (3) a good connection across the PCC SE campus, and that creates a useful bike route for the 82nd Avenue corridor on 78th/79th/80th from Flavel all the way to Alberta.
I’m following the project and attending any public planning events they set up. I’ll be asking for a N/S bikeway on the solid yellow line along the east edge, and a walking/jogging loop trail on the dotted yellow line.
Will these plans make it possible to access McDaniel High School from the southwest without going all the way west to 72nd?
Right now students who live between 82nd and 74th either have to go 4 block out of the way and walk or bike along the sidewalk of 82nd, or they can go 4 to 12 blocks out of the way to the west and take the 72nd thru the golf course.
If the new path could connect to the west entrance of McDaniel it could save 4 to 12 minutes walking time for the students that live to the southwest of the school, and 2 to 6 minutes biking time for all students riding from the south (potentially 700 students)
It looks like in these plans the paths are in the park but don’t connect to the McDaniel parking lot in the NE corner of the golf course, unfortunately.
Please fill out the survey and talk about the importance of access at the north and south end of the yellow trail on the East edge of the park for students. Several people, including one who has been spreading a lot of misinformation about the changes on 72nd avenue were commenting in the meeting about how they wanted strong fencing preventing students from using that trail without having to go much further west and the reasoning one of them gave was that prostitutes would be entertaining clients in the golf course if a gate was installed. It sounds nuts but these people are loud and those kids shouldn’t be forced to walk blocks out of their way to get to school because people don’t want increased foot traffic on their street, which in my opinion is what they are actually trying to prevent.
So long overdue. The trail on the NE side really needs to work for cyclists, and have a connection to the high school. That would be transformative for this neighborhood.
Trails on a golf course? Trails are good addition to any golf course, especially one that is publicly owned. Everyone should be able to enjoy these green spaces.
However, it’s ironic that at the same time as trails are being added here, the City of Portland is considering selling off the RedTail Golf Course for use as a Major League Baseball stadium. Not only will a green space be paved over if this stadium is built, but RedTail is the one course that makes money. It funds maintenance and operating funds for the others, important as Portland Parks is operating at a deficit.
Two other things that ought to concern folks about this sale. All golf courses run by the COP are operated by the Parks dept. They are park lands. If they sell off one chunk of park land, what’s to stop them from selling other parks if they find themselves short of money in the future?
The other thing is that a stadium would cost close to a billion dollars, based on recent stadium costs. Infrastructure costs for access to the site would easily be in the hundreds of millions. Who pays for that? Anyone who pays taxes anywhere in the state: stadiums are rarely fully funded by the team owners and the state recently allocated millions for the Hops to build a new stadium in Hillsboro. It goes without saying that the roads, and with any foresight light rail, that such a facility would require, as always, be taxpayer funded
RedTail golf course is such a ridiculously poor place for a sports stadium (inadequate transportation infrastructure, residential neighborhood surrounding it, etc.) I can’t conceive of it ever happening. It’s just absurd that it was even proposed.
Errol Heights Park got a complete rebuild of its trail system recently. On the good side, they’ve added quite a bit of graveled trail. This allows inventive runners and walkers to make little loops around the park, up and down the bluff above the wetland.
On the other hand, they’ve widened the existing single track quite a lot, and put up signage saying bikes not allowed.
The park certainly wasn’t perfect before, but it had the only bike-legal single track in the huge area between Forest Park, Mt Tabor, and Powell Butte. So now that’s gone.
The Off Road Cycling Master Plan was very clear about the value of narrow, bike-legal, natural surface trails. Yet every park renovation and project I’ve seen recently involves some combination of widening, paving, and making bikes illegal.
So I’m not optimistic about the golf course planning.
I really wish PP&R would read the the master plan! If I had any hairs left, I swear I’d be pulling them out.
Does everything have to be bike path? Can’t pedestrians have a trail where they can feel safe and not worry about being slammed into by a speeding cyclist?
I think it is fine to have some pedestrian only trails, the problem is that is what we have almost exclusively in this town. I volunteered to be on an off road paths committee what seems like a decade ago but honestly if you include grey trails that weren’t necessarily legal but weren’t banned either I think we have fewer trails now than we did a decade ago. It feels like there should be the opportunity to have some off road bike trails included in such a large park.
They can and they do!
In fact, the vast majority of the mileage of natural surface single track trails inside Portland city limits are legally off limits to bikes. Also, you can find many hundreds of miles of pedestrian only trails in the nearby National Forests.
99% of the trail miles in Portland are not open to bikes.
Dan, Forest park has over 80 miles of trail bikes are allowed on ~.5 mile of trail (yes we can ride leif and some of the other roads, but ~.5 mile of trail. If any user group needs some love it is cyclists in Portland Parks.
Cyclists already use these trails. They’d be kicked out of a place they were used to going. Also, I deem your worry as hyperbolic.
Or,
Does everything have to be a pedestrian path? Can’t bikers have a trail where they can feel safe and not worry about being interfered with by loose dogs, unpredictable kids, oblivious people with headphones, packs of walkers blocking the whole path?
Nobody’s proposing that “everything” being a bike path. But Parks IS proposing that every new trail be a pedestrian path, not even mentioning cycling in the possible uses.
But the reality is people can share, and the project could easily make SOME trail space also rideable by adult cyclists, kids on bikes or trikes, etc. In fact, that would make it less likely they’d use the other trails, just like dog parks help keep loose dogs out of other park areas.
PREACH!
This is what happens when we fight over the scraps left after giving all our public space to cars and (in this case) golfers.
Seriously. In this case Rose City Park is like a big sheet pizza, the golfers get all the cheese and toppings, and we’re left fighting for the scraps of crust.
I agree we should have soft-surface walking paths in addition to paved bike paths. But in this case, the very east edge of the golf course would be incredibly beneficial for bicycle travel because there are no other north-south bike route opportunities parallel to 82nd Ave in this area. The high school and golf course west of 82nd Ave, and the big old landfill property and topography issues east of 82nd Ave, create a total lack of streets or other available connections. If there were a way to bike along the east edge of the golf course and then get up to McDaniel High School and/or Sacramento Street, people wouldn’t have to cut all the way over to 72nd Drive, a half-mile away from 82nd Ave.
It seems the city of Portland only uses surveys to support their plans. If the responses don’t align with their pre-determined actions it seems the public never hears of the survey again. Does anyone else have this feeling or is it just me? Does the city of Portland publish the result of their surveys or are they secret documents only released when it serves their purposes? In my opinion it’s a lack of transparency from the city “that no longer works”.
I love the idea of paths around the golf course, and I hope they are not just reserved for pedestrians. Now do the same with Eastmoreland golf course! Some sidewalks already exist next to it, but it would be amazing if one could walk around the whole course and enjoy the beautiful scenery.
The project mentions bird watching as an activity people using the new trails can enjoy. With the trails going along the golf course, people should be able to see lots of birdies, and occasional eagles.
Haven’t the people of this neighborhood suffered enough already? /s
The whole argument for banning auto traffic on one lane of 72nd was to help “less confident” cyclists climb the hill without cars present. Every “confident” cyclist I asked never seemed to have trouble with the auto traffic there… it’s a very low volume street, even at rush hour.
Now PBOT announces that there’s room build a new, likely asphalt surfaced multi-use path parallel to the lane they just closed for bikes? Funny, that sounds like a perfect route for a “less confident” cyclist, same as we have on any shared MUP around town.
So who needs the closed lane now? Confident cyclists didn’t ask for it, and less-confident cyclists will have a slow, chill, car-free path to use. Seems redundant and wasteful, not to mention needlessly divisive in the community.
I am a confident cyclist and I did not appreciate getting tailgated by motorists up the hill on 72nd however that was only one of the reasons for the closure. Another was that the motor vehicle counts were above the standard for a greenway going north largely due to cut through traffic which was also impacting the greenway outside of the golf course. Closing the street to motor vehicle traffic through the golf course acts as a diverter that will move that cut through traffic over to the arterial streets where it belongs.
It appears that they’re still pretty early in the planning phase, so we’ll see, but I’d guess the closed lane will be the trail there.
The trails coming to the golf course are great.
But excluding bike use from the project before it even starts is so typical of Parks. The project info and survey don’t even mention bikes as a use people might be interested in. So the only survey responses they’ll get that include bikes will be write-in responses. Ironically, it asks if biking is a something survey takers currently do.
As I recall from the info, the funding is from a Metro program aimed at creating trails for pedestrians. Parks may use that as their reason why they excluded biking from their survey.
But a trail can certainly support both. A paved trail (one of their options) should be included as part (not all) of the project. It would work for walking, and also for people that can’t negotiate unpaved trails, and also for people with strollers, kids with bikes or trikes, and regular biking.
I live near a Park trail like that, and there’s really no conflict among the uses. The times people are riding faster (weekday commute hours mostly) are different than the weekends and middays when the other uses occur.
My last time on a Parks advisory committee, Parks made several critical decisions before the committee even met. It made getting the project steered in the right direction a needlessly adversarial process, and compromised the results. I hope Parks hasn’t already dug in too deeply against bikes this time.
We walk on the upper path along Sacramento St. and sometimes on the lower one next to the golf course. Neighborhood volunteers have done an amazing job restoring the landscape of the bluff…a portion of the vast gravel bar left by the Missoula Floods. We often image the entire golf course converted to a huge park…it would certainly get more use than it does now. Note that the path through the park in the SW corner of the picture is already there and goes to Tillamook.
I’d highly recommend people checking out the yearly party there in the summer, makes it pretty clear how awesome of a space it could be if it wasn’t reserved for primarily wealthy white guys to play golf.
*moderately wealthy white guys. The truly wealthy go to the private golf courses.
I have played this public course many times as a Black man. Never had an issue.
Not sure why it’s considered “funny” to keep saying golf is only for white people. It is not. At some point I feel that those who keep repeating this falsehood actually want it to be true. And that is very sad.
Hello Geoff,
I have a friend, a self-made wealthy woman who even before she made her multi-millions loved to golf. A few decades ago she joined a group in San Diego whose mission was to bring the joy of golf to kids without much money. I don’t know much about it, just that she was really into it, and in San Diego I’m guessing that a lot of those kids were Mexican, Black or southeast Asian.
I’m not a golfer, but more power to you.
Sorry. I’m a non golfer. I didn’t mean to convey any race based animus in my comment, but I can see why you took offense. That was a poorly worded and hurtful comment and I’m sorry for making it. I’ll try to do better.
I am a Black man who golfs at Rose City and I find this generalization hurtful.
Given the likely popularity of this trail in the dense urban environment, perhaps the trail design could include separation of user modes to increase the sense of safety for all users, especially on the hilly sections.
From the Off Road Cycling Master Plan, page 91:
Efiles – 2023-03-10_ORCMP_Final_Report (23/ED/21744) (portlandoregon.gov)
“Rose City Golf Course
2200 NE 71st Ave
Rose City Golf Course is a public, 18-hole golf course in Northeast Portland. Existing demand trails exist along the northern (NE Sacramento) and southern (NE Tillamook) perimeters of the property, which lack sidewalk improvements. Rose City is located near Glenhaven Park, Madison High School, and the planned bike/pedestrian connection to Gateway Green.
Recommendations
• Develop a natural surface loop trail for family-friendly cycling, walking, running and enjoyment of nature. Off-road cycling skill features (like rocks, logs, or skinny bridges) could be added along the sides. The loop trail could provide safe walking access along NE Tillamook and connect neighborhoods to the south of the golf course to Glenhaven Park. Creating a full loop may require on-street segments. Care should be taken to limit potential conflicts with the golf course. Metro’s Glendoveer Golf Course’s fitness trail could serve as a model.
and/or
A small bicycle park (about 5,000 to 10,000 sf). Bicycle parks have areas for family recreation and skill building. Given the continued use of the property as a golf course, the under-utilized slope between NE Sacramento Street and NE 72nd Drive on the northern edge of the property is the most suitable location for a bicycle park. Building a bicycle park or trail here will require coordination with the Rose City Golf Course and additional planning and community input.”
Yes! A thousand times yes!!!!
Someone would come along and say “it’s too busy a location to allow bike riding here.”
Then someone would say “this place has too much environmental value and we must rewild it- we can’t allow bikes to take priority over the environment. Won’t someone think of the animals???”
And it drives me nuts, because between those two maximal positions, there’s literally no place where bikes should belong.