(Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
(Photo: Amy Wren)
It’s a shame Bridger Elementary and Harrison Park Middle schools will be so quiet this year because its students and staff would be amazed at what the streets look like outside of them.
No more mud. No more puddles. And no more weaving cautiously around drivers and cars on the walk or bike ride to school.
“To watch my students come to school with wet shoes — knowing that those are their only shoes — because they have a journey to school that involves walking through water is heartbreaking to me,” Harrison Park Middle School Assistant Principal Michael Rowell said in a Portland Bureau of Transportation statement when the project broke ground back in February. “I think it’s an assault on their basic dignity to have to live like that.”
PBOT and the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services have finished the $2.6 million project that added new pavement, speed bumps, drainage, and sidewalks to a multi-block stretch of streets on SE 80th and Mill in the Montavilla neighborhood. The project was an example of collaboration that also included Portland Public Schools and 21 nearby residential property owners, who were so tired of the unsafe, unpaved streets and seasonal flooding on “Lake Millstreet” they agreed to form a local improvement district and chipped in $758,505 to help fund the project. (You might recall our story on Amy Wren’s Portland State University transportation class project that focused on this area.)
Advertisement
Just one block from bustling 82nd Avenue, 80th used to be unimproved for a half-block outside Bridger school. And the block of Mill from 82nd to the school — a key route to school for many students — had no sidewalks and was often strewn with gravel and foot-deep puddles. In a 2016 video created by Rachel Kimbrow to raise awareness of conditions outside the school, one student shared that, “The street we walk on, there’s really no sidewalks and there’s a lot of cars parked on the side. We have to walk in the middle of the road and my mom’s always nervous because they don’t always pay attention.”
Now the blocks have continuous sidewalks and PBOT has widened a section of 80th near Mill while maintaining several large trees in the center median to help with traffic calming. Ironically, because the street is now paved and smooth, we’ve heard some concerns that drivers are going faster than they used to — despite this area being a neighborhood greenway with 20 mph speed limits.
While out there on Monday I spoke to a man who was walking slowly on the sidewalk with a cane. He said he feels much safer now while on foot; but that the project has also made it easier for him to drive because he no longer goes a few blocks out of his way to avoid the narrow, unpaved road.
Check out these before/after images:
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
— Get our headlines delivered to your inbox.
— Support this independent community media outlet with a one-time contribution or monthly subscription.
Thanks for reading.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
Big cheers for the local advocates (Amy W., Rachel K.) and creative folks at PBOT (Andrew A.) who worked so hard on coming up with this idea and connecting the dots to get it funded. You even kept the trees. Thank you for your persistence and for caring enough to make this little piece of the world so much better.
Andrew A. at Pbot was/is amazing!!!!! This would never have happened without all his support and wrangling.
This is fantastic. There are so many streets that need these improvements in east Portland, and I’m glad they are prioritizing bike routes and safe routes to schools.
Waiting for the comments lamenting the loss of gravel routes in the city.
Whaaah!! They removed the organic traffic-calming devices of gravel pits and narrow roadways!
But seriously, they did a nice job of preserving those evergreens, plus they added a few speed tables. I know this corner well, on one of my favorite routes from East Portland to downtown when I lived there.
Who is “they”. These neighbors had to get together and agree to pay a high amount of money to get this done. This isn’t the city of Portland or PBOT “helping” them out. “They” aren’t prioritizing anything, definitely not paving the miles of unimproved roads (most of them in lower income and POC communities) in Portland.
That’s just incorrect. The majority of the project cost was paid for with PBOT and BES funds, with some help from property owners in the form of a Local Improvement District to pay only a portion of the cost.
So $2.6 million minus $758,505 is how much money? PBOT does not have a directive to pave every street in the city, since that should be done when a neighborhood is developed.
Should have, but wasn’t in many of the lower income neighborhoods in Portland (and I”ve heard plenty of rumors that the city promised to pave those roads when they annexed much of east Portland and increased residents taxes). 75 years later and here we are where Portland has the highest amount of unpaved streets of a major city in the US.
And of course this isn’t really “East Portland” at all, it’s west of 82nd and is moreover in the Montevilla NA of SE Portland. But I’m sure to everyone in the Pearl or Irvington it looks like EP. And it is a POC community, more or less.
I live about a mile from here. This is east Portland.
East Portland, yes, but very few places in East Portland where you can walk half a mile to homes worth over $500k.
My wife and I looked up a home in our neighborhood that just sold. It’s on 80th and Clinton and it went for $531k.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2640-SE-80th-Ave-Portland-OR-97206/53855198_zpid/
82nd? Ha there is whole lot of East Portland beyond that. Seemingly more than the city seems to realize or care about.
Good example of focused funding making a legitimate impact for residents.
Why didn’t the city make this a park like NE 13th at NE Holman?
That would be really great. I used to live on 13th just south of the park and it was great seeing how much it quieted down that street.
Does this mean I can bike 80th from Washington to Division without riding through rocks? Is there still a block of loose gravel between Lincoln and Harrison?
Yes, it’s all paved, with some nice new retaining walls and sidewalk work.
This also provides a much improved connection to those biking and walking to Portland Community College.
These neighbors are awesome if they paid for that work! Must have been expensive too, but it looks great and must be very functional.
The before images look like the street in front of my house. 😛
Most of the LID funding appears to have come from Portland Public Schools and the Slavic Church that faces 82nd. Much of the project beyond the LID came from PBOT SDCs and BES funds. So, while the residential properties paid a share, it wasn’t the full costs (and it probably never would have happened if they’d had to pay the full cost, so I think this is a good outcome).
The City with the LID likely has an annual installment payment system set up.
Typically property owners pay off their LID slowly over 20 years at a very low interest rate. It’s like adding onto a mortgage. For low-income property owners, there is a deferral option where the LID amount is just added to the sale cost of the home whenever it is next sold.
So now that we’re biking with kids, we head down 80th to Bridger on a weekly basis. It’s a great spot for them to run around and play. We’ll also keep riding and go up through the Slavic Church parking lot to PCC, and then ride around the campus. It’s a nice area for low-stress family riding. The east-west alleys between 80th & 76th and Salmon and Washington are a lot of fun, too. The Mill street improvements and light make it easier to cross 82nd, without having to go down to Woodward and out the back of Fubonn, though that’s a fun route. Crossing Division at 87th always has some debris and fast traffic.
I’d like to see the improvements continue with some kind of 80s bikeway extension through the PCC campus and across Division. It’s scheduled but the project managers are getting funky with the route north of Glisan and making it twist and turn off of 80th and into the 70s up there. I think the key part of improvements like these are maintaining a great alternative to 82nd for bikes that also has reduced car traffic.
I noticed this a couple of weeks back. It is great! I ride this area a lot. At first I thought I took a wrong turn because it was such a dramatic change.
This little bit of street always made me sad. The new version looks so, so much better!
Looking at the before/after photos of the property of the people whose front yard and driveway was mostly turned into street/sidewalk as part of the project, there is now a basketball hoop in their parking strip with the street as the court! That is cool.
Many, many streets ought to be calm enough for street play. Most aren’t, but this project at least moved one more into the “yes” column (I hope!)
On a different note, the lead photo shows two people riding the new BIKETOWN bikes. That’s the first time I’ve seen a photo of them in the wild.
Staged?
Oh, I’m glad they look the same as the old ones!
Can someone explain how it is that such a large chunk of someone’s front yard was turned into the new street and sidewalks? Was it always part of public right of way or did the city have to purchase this land from the landowner?
In my neighborhood it’s really common to have plants and even major trees in the sidewalk easement. Some property owners don’t have any idea where their boundaries are and in fact some long-standing structures are across boundary lines.
I doubt if this project, with permanent curbs and new pavement, could or would have been done without surveys, consent and compensation. I’m guessing the property owners went for saving the trees over keeping every inch of yard up the edge of the sidewalk easement. The area around the trees looks minimal for their survival and stability, hope they make it.
From the assessor map it looks like the de facto front yards for 1810 and 1824 SE 80th extended quite a bit beyond the property lines, which isn’t uncommon. The property lines for 1838 SE 80th only did extend out into the middle of the street (leaving only 30′ of ROW for that 50′ frontage) and it looks like the city acquired that land through eminent domain.
Yes, their yard extended well into the right of way. My understanding is that the neighbors who contributed to the L.I.D. have liens on their property based on lot size rather than out of pocket payments.
I confess to being a bit contrarian on this matter. I grew up on an unpaved street in Multnomah and never suffered for it. Walked to school every day without sidewalks; delivered papers everyday for years with no problems. Learned to ride a bike on uneven gravel and later biked everywhere. We played in the street, the dog hung out in our potholes waiting for cars to chase, if someone drove too fast they lost their muffler or even bumper! We played sports on a portion of nearby cross street that was all grass thanks to the adjacent property owner; Mom said its city ROW, so play on!
The LID idea came up a few times back in the day. But why? more runoff, loss of trees, faster traffic…who needs it. Things are still unpaved out there, and most of us couldn’t afford a house on my old street.
On another note…what happens when you make a neighborhood more attractive? or the “next big thing?” as in Montavilla. You attract more people, more demand for housing, prices go up, rents go up, marginal folks, especially renters, move out or are forced to relocate.
This has been tagged as “gentrification,” but its more like normal capitalism, isn’t it?
And what are the options? I remember making a little speech at NW 23rd and Overton after getting out of jail after the Save the Good Old Houses demo. “More graffiti, more plywood, more crime!…those are the only things that can keep our community affordable.”
When we finally got around to looking for a house to buy, NW was too expensive, so we headed out to SE, “beyond the Pale” and bought a little place on Salmon St & 46th. so what?
I live in this neighborhood and have a kid at Bridger. LOVE LOVE the improvements. It makes it much easier to go on walks and bike rides and not have to be out in the road, dodging huge potholes and (in the rainy season) 8-12″ deep puddles. Would love to see this continue to the east on Mill Street, where it’s hard to walk from 82nd-85th due to parked cars and no sidewalks.
The city took away some great gravel grinding 😉 Just kidding these are really awesome improvements and a really useful connection between East Portland and inner SE. I like how they saved the big fur trees and how they were able to drain the water from the street. A few years ago I crashed on Mill when some of the water in Lake Millstreet had frozen into a giant ice rink and I went sliding.
Awesome news and reporting! Driven that off-road path for years as my kid was at Bridger and it was my drop off route, way safer now!
Thanks to all that helped.