Conceptual drawing of cap looking southwest from NE Tillamook toward the river. (Source: ODOT)
Just two days after the Biden Administration announced a $450 million grant to construct highway caps above I-5 through the Rose Quarter, the advisory committee that is largely responsible for making it happen held a meeting. Members of the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Historic Albina Advisory Board (HAAB) gathered on Zoom Tuesday. The group aired feedback on the grant news and watched presentations about the caps and other details from project staff.
HAAB meeting on Zoom with ODOT Director Strickler on bottom right..
I found the meeting very enlightening and figured you might too. Below I’ll share some of the slides and other things I took away from it…
Dimensions
Slides shown Tuesday that give us a sense of where the cap will go and its size in context.
The plan is for one continuous cap (also called a “highway cover”) that would stretch over I-5 from the corner of NE Tillamook and Flint south to NE Weidler (see images). The cap, which is estimated to cost about $700 to $900 million total (about half the project total) would fully restore the street grid of North Flint, Vancouver, and North Williams (north/south) and N Weidler, Broadway, Hancock and Tillamook (east/west). The cap would add about 7 new acres of land to the Rose Quarter.
A skeptic
In addition to still being about $1 billion short on the project (which includes widening I-5 between I-84 and I-405 in addition to other surface street changes), ODOT has to address at least one high-profile HAAB member who is very skeptical that the money will be spent in a way that directly benefits Black people. A top priority of the HAAB is to use this project to rebuild wealth that was stolen from the Black community when the freeway and other developments were built. HAAB member James Posey is well-known in Portland as a former mayoral candidate and co-founder of the National Association of Minority Contractors of Oregon. He’s also president of the local chapter of the NAACP.
When ODOT Director Kris Strickler stopped into the HAAB meeting to thank members for their help in securing what he referred to as the largest grant ODOT has ever received from the federal government, Posey seized the opportunity to express skepticism about who will see benefits from the investment:
James Posey (Photo via Linkedin)
“I hate to be a naysayer… but the truth of the matter is there are a lot of people that are concerned that very little of that money will go into the hands of the Black community. Some of us are concerned that we’ve seen this movie before… And you know, we use the HAAB and Black faces all over the place and at the end of the day, Black people will receive very little benefit from this project. I would recommend that you all put in place a Truth and Reconciliation committee to look at every one of the dollars that come from it and see if in fact we are maximizing the participation of African Americans, which you all are selling, don’t make no mistake about it. You’re using Black people. You’re using this community, and some of us feel like we’re going to be played.”
Posey wants to make sure Black firms, contractors, and other Black Portlanders directly benefit from the construction of the new highway caps. ODOT has never led a project like this before and even their work with the HAAB thus far as been unprecedented. Whether or not they can continue to meet the every-growing expectations of the community is a big unanswered question.
Design precedents
What type of development should we expect on and around the caps? At the meeting Tuesday, a Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability staffer shared several buildings and public space projects they believe are good precedents. Among them were: Vanport Square in Portland; the Fruit & Flower Child Development Center on the Portland Community College Rock Creek Campus; the Sherman Phoenix Marketplace in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Pop Courts community plaza in Chicago; and the Louisa Flowers housing block in the Lloyd Center.
Development possibilities
Speaking of construction, a member of the Rose Quarter project team presented at the meeting that the type of development that would be possible on the highway cover will be “limited” due to various necessary offsets and other structural issues. Strength of the cover and whether it would be strong enough to be “buildable” and hold large buildings was a major point in contention before the “Hybrid 3” option was agreed to. So there’s no question multi-story buildings can be built, but what ODOT was saying in the HAAB meeting is that it won’t be a free-for-all in terms of what gets built and where.
According to project staff at Tuesday’s meeting, the northern and southern edges of the cap will have different load ratings due to the length of spans across the freeway and strength of girders. One-story buildings “with some constraints” would be possible in those areas and three-story buildings would be feasible in the middle portion of the cap (roughly between NE Weidler and Hancock).
The staffer also went over a number of reasons buildings would have to be offset from bridge joints, “free edges,” utility access points, and so on. They are clearly trying to manage expectations.
Governance
“Black ownership matters, ownership not only of the land but beneath our feet, but the development processes that shape these spaces.”
– JT Flowers, Albina Vision Trust
Governance of the cover will also be a big issue. As it stands today, ODOT would own all the land created by the cover (since it’s over one of their freeways). This means anyone who owns a building or does business on the cover must have a special lease or governance agreement with ODOT.
At the Oregon Transportation Commission meeting today, Albina Vision Trust members and ODOT are set to begin the first formal, public discussions of a joint workplan agreement that will establish the governance of the caps going forward. In previous work from the project’s Independent Cover Assessment (ICA), ODOT has referred to the need to form a new commission that, ” would have the authority to plan, monitor, manage, and oversee future development activity on the highway cover and any remnant land created by the I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project.” They called it the Black Historic Albina Cover Development Commission
“While such a commission should be formed by a legally binding agreement that requires the coordination and cooperation of multiple levels of government and community stakeholders, its decision-making power would sit with Black community members and representatives,” reads a 2021 report from the ICA.
Albina Vision Trust is in the driver’s seat in the future of that commission. At the HAAB meeting Tuesday, AVT’s JT Flowers said their work plan proposal,
“is rooted in a principle that’s very foundational to the work that we do, which is that ownership matters, that Black ownership matters, ownership not only of the land but beneath our feet, but the development processes that shape these spaces matter, and it’s going to be vitally important for us as a community to make sure that we are driving and shaping this work from top to bottom, not just as we build the highway cover, but as we start to imagine what could be built on top of it and for whom that development centers.”
A slide that will be shown at today’s OTC meeting says the governance resolution will, “determine if Albina Vision Trust can have access and rights to 1) future lease(s)/easement(s) for developable air rights on the highway cover; and 2) ownership and development rights for surplus property associated with the Project.”
This is all fascinating new ground for ODOT and the agency finds itself in a very odd position. They don’t have any money or political support for the freeway widening part of their plans (especially with tolling off the table), while AVT continues to build tremendous power and influence. And since AVT has made it clear in past statements they don’t need the freeway expansion to realize their vision, ODOT’s influence and necessity seems to be waning. Maybe in the end, AVT will be in charge of cap development, the City of Portland will manage the surface street changes, and ODOT will be reduced to nothing more than a landlord.
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I mean this seems great in terms of a possible win for the black community and also for just not the endless expansion of freeways, but also sort of ominous in the sense that:
ODOT ownership means any bike infrastructure will have to pass ODOT’s muster, and they typically have an extraordinarily dumb understanding of what safe bike infrastructure (and safe pedestrian infrastructure for that matter) should look like
Uh also obviously there hasn’t been a great track record of getting good bike infrastructure past the opposition of the black community and I have basically 0 confidence that PBOT has really learned any lessons there
So I’m preparing for yet another disappointment on the bike infrastructure front here
ODOT actually isn’t the roadway authority for any of the surface streets that would run on top of the cap. They just have ownership over the freeway underneath and the on- and off-ramps, and sometimes the traffic signals at those ramps. Sure, they have a lot of influence on what happens right around those points, but PBOT would definitely be the final design authority as far as street design on Broadway and Weidler and streets like that.
PS
9 months ago
They don’t have any money or political support for the freeway widening part of their plans
They don’t?
The same guy you’re applauding for being in favor of the caps had this to say about the project as a whole…
As a transportation project, the I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project will also provide key bottleneck relief on I-5 in the Rose Quarter area and increase safety for pedestrians and bicyclists on local streets. The project will reduce travel times and improve reliability among one of Oregon’s busiest stretches of interstate, with ramp-to-ramp connections and wider shoulders. Local street improvements will knit together communities that were disproportionately impacted by the interstate’s original construction.
And the political support is all for the Albina redevelopment and the caps. When I say “political support” I mean high profile and/or influential politicians willing to say publicly, “We need to widen I-5 through the Rose Quarter!”. From what I can tell, no one is really willing to do that because as we see time and time again, while DOTs can make it appear that urban freeway expansions are necessary, the idea does not withstand scrutiny and legit politicians understand that. If there’s political support for the freeway widening… Why has no money been dedicated for it? Money follows political support. And in this case in particular, money for the freeway was actually TAKEN AWAY from it!
That statement you share is just copy/pasted ODOT stuff. Members of congress don’t really get the details and nuance and they just put their name to whatever statement the DOT puts in front of them.
My opinion remains that the freeway widening portion of this lacks political support.
Also keep in mind that the only reason the freeway widening is even remotely agreeable is because of the Albina Vision stuff. Take away Albina stuff and this project is 100% dead IMO.
Do you believe it would be possible to build the caps without widening I-5? Once the caps are built, further widening would become impossible, so can you realistically imagine a scenario where ODOT approves a project locking in what they see as inadequate road capacity permanently?
I can see no world in which this would happen.
And I completely agree that AVT is all that’s keeping freeway expansion alive. If their fates are tied, would we be better off with both projects, or neither? I think those are the only two options at this point.
I could see a compromise where the caps are built without the freeway expansion, but ODOT is given the ability to “claim the space” for future widening. Then that space is not used in the short term. Then, when the time is right to start the conversation about I-5 in the future, that space can be used for a bus lane or freight-only lane or something like that. Something more creative and responsible that truly shows ODOT has evolved. Hopefully the evolution ODOT has shown in working with the HAAB portends other shifts in the culture of the agency around what we can do with state-owned right of way.
Why spend all the money to create a structure that would absolutely perpetuate using the side streets to avoid highway congestion? If the widening is a waste of money, the cap certainly is. If living adjacent to a highway is terrible, how is living on top, better?
It’s wishful thinking to think that the cover and the auxiliary lanes will somehow be decoupled. The state and Feds would never go for that. This project is about fixing the I-5 bottleneck in the RQ AND helping repair the damage done to Albina. The RCN money can’t be used to build new through lanes but aux lanes are allowed. This is an investment toward what would be the more difficult portion of the project to obtain funding for – the cover.
The idea that auxiliary lanes and through lanes are somehow different to the motoring public is a farce. The stated purpose of an auxiliary lane is to free up capacity on existing through lanes, which is not different than the stated purpose of making a new through lane. If they provide the generally same benefit (from ODOT’s perspective), are located in the same place, and serve the same function in what way are the meaningfully different other than accounting?
I could see them requiring the caps be built in such a way that the freeway could be expanded in the future. The problem there would be that they would no longer be caps. All the cost for the structure supporting the caps would have to be put into place, retaining walls, foundations, etc, that would have been paid for as part of the freeway expansion.
yikes this makes my point. HB 2017 earmarked $$ for this project only based on an agreement that it would also use toll revenue. Not only that, but AFAIK the legislature dedicated money to I-5 at Rose Quarter without a specific edict for how that money would be spent. Also, that money was transferred to the I-205 abernethy bridge.
So yeah, technically there is some money bouncing around for the project. Obviously they’re paying staff and whatnot and yes the OR legislature did technically fund something at the Rose Quarter. But my point remains!
If they had political support for widening the freeway, they wouldn’t even be capping it in the first place. That alone like tripled the cost of the project – not something a smart agency does if they are looking to avoid a political fight.
Jack s
9 months ago
A while back there was an article that talked about how each building could be built on a steel bridge over the freeway, and that it was theoretically doable to build that way. The direct quote was that “You’re economically ahead of the game because you’re not trying to build a deck that you’re then going to build on top of. The building itself is the spanning element.”
Is there a reason that the conversation has narrowed to one solution (concrete caps) while another solution (a building that spans the freeway) isn’t being considered? Was it determined to be unfeasible?
In order to build a “large” building over something like a freeway, you’d have to really integrate the “building” and the “cap”. My guess is that ODOT isn’t interested in either developing these hypothetical “large” buildings themselves or in trying to juggle working with a separate outside developer to build the “building” while they’re building the “cap”. It would be much simpler for them to build a cap and be done with it, the building would be someone else’s project later. Note that JM had the following quote regarding the development possibilities: …“with some constraints.”
The following is a more than a little simplistic, but it is one way think about some of the possibilities. “Park” and “Plaza” aren’t conditions specifically listed in the structural portion of the building code. If the cap was intended to only support a public assembly usage, that’s 100 pounds per square foot (psf). If they have to be able to support trucks driving on them, that’s 250 psf. Lightweight (wood mainly) roofs and floors weigh 15 psf. Residential floors are required to support 40 psf + their own weight. Offices are 65 psf. Ground floor retail and assembly (concerts, nightclubs, large restaurants, etc.) are 100 psf. Roof snow load is 25 psf. So, compared to a regular plaza, a one-story retail type space or two-story residential building with lightweight framing would be about ~40% more load. Significant, but probably not a big deal especially when you consider how heavy the cap itself would be. The post mentions that they expect a that the cap can support a one-story building on the longer spans and a three-story building on the shorter ones. This implies they’re looking at using the same stuff (probably some sort of precast concrete “T” sections) everywhere for the caps and for their preliminary development estimates, they are taking the capacities of these selected members at various lengths and comparing them to the loads I listed above.
Ivc, did you read my interview with Potestio that Jack linked to? He describes how to build over a freeway, complete with back of the napkin drawings showing how to do it.
People who have never lived in, for example Manhattan (where there are a lot of these), were wary. So I followed up with an interview with developer Matt Edlen, who has experience with over-the-freeway building. I don’t think this interview got the attention it should have:
Of course, but they’re looking at it like a developer or architect, not a department of transportation, let alone a DOT that’s trying to get a really messy freeway expansion built. For the kind of stuff that Potestio and Elden are talking about the building is the cap, not something that sits on a cap. It’s just buildings that happen to have abnormally large distances between foundation elements. It ain’t cheap, but if you’ve got a building you want bad enough and a building site constrained enough, it can be done. However, ODOT is in the business of expanding freeways not developing large buildings. They’re talking about constructing a cap that someone can put a building on later. If someone comes along later and wants a big building, the cap would have to come out.
Considering that there is still a good chunk of undeveloped land in the South Waterfront Area and that the Post Office Redevelopment or Centennial Mill projects don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, I wouldn’t expect anyone to be breaking down ODOT’s doors wanting to build something super expensive over I5. If you wanted this freeway expanded, you wouldn’t want to wait for a really difficult building development project to come together and try to piggyback your freeway expansion with that project. I personally really don’t want this freeway expansion to happen, but I do understand ODOT’s point of view about it.
There would be miles of these buildings next to each other and therefore would form a tunnel. Seems plausible to guess that the fumes would be as bad for nearby residents as any other freeway tunnel system, which I’m guessing is orders of magnitude better than the air quality is for residences alongside the freeway currently.
Also we already have built buildings/parks/commercial/etc over freeways in lots of cities around the US and elsewhere.
Need to do a comparison of the price of land & foundation for a normal high rise development vs the price of a steel truss system & complexities of a bridge over a freeway for a building in air
These will be 1-3 story buildings, so the comparable costs are much lower than a highrise. If I’m wrong, and the “land” cost isn’t overly expensive, then we can create a bunch of new buildable areas in the heart of the city at a very reasonable cost that will also improve the surrounding areas.
I am under the impression that these could be much larger buildings than 1-3 stories. I think that specific 1-3 height is just limited by the concrete deck, and that a steel truss would be able to carry a much larger building.
I wonder what the calculus would look like if we could build 5-8 story buildings and the air rights were given to the developer for free with stipulations about how they would rebuild the street in front of the building to reconnect the neighborhoods and if a certain percentage were low income.
Seems like a win-win-win scenario:
Neighborhoods reconnected
Affordable housing built at huge scale that is distributed across the city
Burying the blight that is the freeway which is probably very popular with most citizens of Portland therefore no strong opposition
Opportunity to build air filtration systems under the buildings to improve the health of all adjacent homeowners (including the ones that are actually impacted every single day currently)
Freeway noise is reduced due to being buried
Urban heat island effect is reduced due to more trees and less exposed paving
Could potentially build a MUP on top of all of the bridges going parallel on top of the freeway so we have a true bicycle highway connecting vast swaths of the city in a direct manner
Alllllllll of this could come at close to zero cost to the city/state if the math adds up and/or the deal is sweetened by giving away the air rights for 0$.
I was really captivated by the articles written above a few years ago and would love to see something happen with them. @Lisa, @Jonathan Any world where the developers that were interviewed were asked to make a proposal and guestimate some costs so that this idea could be vetted/shared? Seems like the iron is hot with the discussion of freeway caps right this second.
I love your enthusiasm. I did both the interviews, Potestio and Edlen. You might find it interesting that Edlen & Co is developing Albina One (https://www.edlenandco.com/projects) and is already working closely with Albina Vision Trust. Matt Edlen knows a lot about capping freeways and all the key players are connected.
ODOT engineering is atrocious. The one supportable component of the Rose Quarter “improvement” project appears to be off the table: relocating the existing southbound on-ramp from Wheeler Way to Weidler. I suspect trucking firms had something to do with retaining the southbound on-ramp.
Early designs to relocate the southbound on-ramp from Wheeler Way to Weidler is 1) Downhill, which gets traffic up to speed more readily. 2) Much better visibility. 3) Adds distance to conduct the “cross-merge” whereby entrance ramp traffic must merge Left to access I-5 where traffic on I-5 at high speed must merge Right to access I-84.
The more recent design to relocate the southbound off-ramp from Broadway to Wheeler Way is also unacceptably terrible engineering. The current off-ramp is “uphill” which slows exiting traffic. Instead, southbound traffic enters the dark lid with adjacent traffic at 55+mph and upon leaving the lid hits a 90 degree BLIND “hairpin turn” which can only be taken at 25mph. The accident rating is off the charts but ODOT director Kris Strickler doesn’t care who dies in high accident settings like these.
Strickler, Lynn Peterson & Ted Wheeler are committing NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE on this project, on the voter rejected SW Corridor widening of Hwy 99W MAX extension to Tigard, and on the Columbia River I-5 Bridge replacement. When Ted Wheeler says when the Marquam Bridge is replaced and that I-5 can be relocated in a tunnel under the Willamette River, he’s lying solely to entice developers with waterfront property schemes.
Bye Bye mister Wheeler. Go live somewhere else and don’t come back to visit this city you obviously hate.
It feels important to emphasize that the 8 highlighted lots add up to about 2.5 acres of developable land. And the off-cap stuff is for the most part (outside the exit ramp on Broadway) already used and will require ODOT to purchase (outlined in right of way technical report). Lot #9 is a Sherwin-Williams, Lot #10 is a gas station, and Lot #11 is house/parking lot. It’s not entirely clear to me if ODOT will just be acquiring those lots to then sell to developers, or what the governance situation will be. I guess I’d be fine with changes to any or all of them, it’s just sort of strange.
On cap, it’s about 1.25 acres of developable land. Not nothing, but the PPS building AVT recently got in on is about 7 acres. I think it’s important that ODOT is held accountable for exactly how much land is created, what the stipulations for development are, and what ownership looks like. I don’t think a long-term government lease will be palatable for the public, at least not for those concerned with empowering people whose land was dispossessed by ODOT in the 1960s.
And on the topic of “stitching the community back together”, there is exactly one normal street connection being made by this project (Hancock). North of the Rose Quarter: Page, Knott, Stanton, Morris, Monroe, Cook, Fremont, Beech, Failing*, Shaver, Mason, Prescott, Blandena, Wygant, Humbolt, Alberta, Webster, Sumner, Emerson, Church, Jarret, Jessup, Simpson, Holman, Dekum, Bryant, Morgan, Buffalo, Holland, Stafford, Baldwin, Farragut, Terry, Winchell, Watts, and Kirkpatrick streets were all dead-ended on both ends by I5. If it takes us $1 billion to connect one street, I don’t think we will find the $36 billion required for all of North Portland.
Building a billion dollar cap is a little silly when there’s so much surface parking in the area, ripe for better uses.
I also wonder about the maintenance situation. What does it cost to ensure the structural integrity of a freeway cap? Will it end up being a situation like freeway bridges that go way too long with deferred maintenance until they’re on the verge of collapse? That $1bn doesn’t tell the whole story.
Yeah, by my calculations there’s something like 9 or 10 acres of parking lots in just in the area between I5, Broadway, MLK, and Multnomah. Doing the cheapest possible caps (to improve noise/pollution in directly adjacent area) and buying every parking lot in the area to give to AVT for a ceremonial dollar would probably be cheaper and more impactful than the current plan.
“ Will it end up being a situation like freeway bridges that go way too long with deferred maintenance until they’re on the verge of collapse?”
Knowing ODOT, and judging by the rest of Portland, I would say yes. Probably.
stephan
9 months ago
Jonathan, do you know whether the renderings include the planned highway expansion? I thought that NE Flint was supposed to get demolished to accommodate the expansion, but it looks otherwise in these pictures.
Yes, they do though probably not to scale. The nice diagram with the houses also doesn’t show the new plan for a crazy flyover off ramp at the south end to Weidler
Two buildings are being built (the one at Flint and Hancock that’s now near completion, and the just-starting Albina One building at Wheeler and Dixon extending to Flint) that sort of negate the closure of Flint because they block the extension of Dixon that was supposed to replace Flint.
You’re thinking of the original design, which removed Flint entirely. They’ve changed the design significantly since then, and the Flint bridge will be reconstructed but will still be part of the street network.
stephan
9 months ago
It does not look like there was any discussion about air and noise pollution? This looks all nice and good in these visualizations, but the reality is that being on the caps (as near the highway) will not be pleasant and could have negative health effects for those who live there. I also find it striking that a daycare would be there (and I think there is a daycare currently right next to the highway), given what we know about the negative effects of air pollution due to highway proximity and health / development of young children.
Chris I
9 months ago
Restricting contracts by race seems pretty risky, especially given the small pool of potential minority-owned contractors in Portland.
The Black owned contractors for this project are partnering with Bechtel for the work. It gives them experience on a large project, but with the support and back up of a large national firm.
If the City did a similar project for South Waterfront, I wonder how well it’d go over if Italian contractors were given sole preference for a taxpayer funded project?
It wouldn’t be so different than lots of existing and historical contracting basically everywhere. It’s patronage, but with more socially palatable language. I don’t have super strong feelings about patronage, I mean sure it’s bad, but I think the project itself is more important to discuss than who the contractors who work on it is.
donel courtney
9 months ago
Seattle’s efforts to cover up I-5 bore fruit IMO. However I-5 caps there connect two vibrant, dense neighborhoods. A land bridge between Memorial Coliseum and MLK hardly compares.
John L
9 months ago
$1BN is $28,000 for every Black person in Portland – or about a house downpayment for a couple using low-barrier first time homebuyer mortgages. Alternatively, $1BN is probably about $150,000 for every Black person in Portland under 18 y/o – or about the cost of a college education and then some. Is creating the most expensive per square foot raw “land” in the country actually the best use of $1BN to benefit Portland’s Black population? Or is it just an example of how we can justify anything except direct transfers to populations and individuals in need?
Andy M
9 months ago
Very into that last paragraph. Really hope that happens!
Robert Wallis
9 months ago
Freeway caps are like lipstick on a pig. A few blocks may or may not be improved. Seven acres of “restored land” is nothing compared to the thousand acres of new parking lots, urban sqprawl, and street/highway widening in the metro area that will result from the Rose Quarter widening. Time to stop widening I5 and every one of the city and county streets which the widened freeway will feed. Put the money into bike and pet infrastructure
and just about everyone, regardless of race, color, creed, or income will benefit. ODOT, oil companies, mega consultants like Rose Quarter’s HDR and the IBR’s WSP, plus a handful of highway contractors are the real “minorities” who will suffer. It is about time the scoundrels do.
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I mean this seems great in terms of a possible win for the black community and also for just not the endless expansion of freeways, but also sort of ominous in the sense that:
So I’m preparing for yet another disappointment on the bike infrastructure front here
ODOT actually isn’t the roadway authority for any of the surface streets that would run on top of the cap. They just have ownership over the freeway underneath and the on- and off-ramps, and sometimes the traffic signals at those ramps. Sure, they have a lot of influence on what happens right around those points, but PBOT would definitely be the final design authority as far as street design on Broadway and Weidler and streets like that.
They don’t?
The same guy you’re applauding for being in favor of the caps had this to say about the project as a whole…
https://blumenauer.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/blumenauer.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2023-10-30ODOT_RoseQuarterLetter.pdf
That sure looks and sounds like support for widening the highway.
It’s a fact they don’t have any money.
And the political support is all for the Albina redevelopment and the caps. When I say “political support” I mean high profile and/or influential politicians willing to say publicly, “We need to widen I-5 through the Rose Quarter!”. From what I can tell, no one is really willing to do that because as we see time and time again, while DOTs can make it appear that urban freeway expansions are necessary, the idea does not withstand scrutiny and legit politicians understand that. If there’s political support for the freeway widening… Why has no money been dedicated for it? Money follows political support. And in this case in particular, money for the freeway was actually TAKEN AWAY from it!
That statement you share is just copy/pasted ODOT stuff. Members of congress don’t really get the details and nuance and they just put their name to whatever statement the DOT puts in front of them.
My opinion remains that the freeway widening portion of this lacks political support.
Also keep in mind that the only reason the freeway widening is even remotely agreeable is because of the Albina Vision stuff. Take away Albina stuff and this project is 100% dead IMO.
Do you believe it would be possible to build the caps without widening I-5? Once the caps are built, further widening would become impossible, so can you realistically imagine a scenario where ODOT approves a project locking in what they see as inadequate road capacity permanently?
I can see no world in which this would happen.
And I completely agree that AVT is all that’s keeping freeway expansion alive. If their fates are tied, would we be better off with both projects, or neither? I think those are the only two options at this point.
I could see a compromise where the caps are built without the freeway expansion, but ODOT is given the ability to “claim the space” for future widening. Then that space is not used in the short term. Then, when the time is right to start the conversation about I-5 in the future, that space can be used for a bus lane or freight-only lane or something like that. Something more creative and responsible that truly shows ODOT has evolved. Hopefully the evolution ODOT has shown in working with the HAAB portends other shifts in the culture of the agency around what we can do with state-owned right of way.
Why spend all the money to create a structure that would absolutely perpetuate using the side streets to avoid highway congestion? If the widening is a waste of money, the cap certainly is. If living adjacent to a highway is terrible, how is living on top, better?
It’s wishful thinking to think that the cover and the auxiliary lanes will somehow be decoupled. The state and Feds would never go for that. This project is about fixing the I-5 bottleneck in the RQ AND helping repair the damage done to Albina. The RCN money can’t be used to build new through lanes but aux lanes are allowed. This is an investment toward what would be the more difficult portion of the project to obtain funding for – the cover.
The idea that auxiliary lanes and through lanes are somehow different to the motoring public is a farce. The stated purpose of an auxiliary lane is to free up capacity on existing through lanes, which is not different than the stated purpose of making a new through lane. If they provide the generally same benefit (from ODOT’s perspective), are located in the same place, and serve the same function in what way are the meaningfully different other than accounting?
I could see them requiring the caps be built in such a way that the freeway could be expanded in the future. The problem there would be that they would no longer be caps. All the cost for the structure supporting the caps would have to be put into place, retaining walls, foundations, etc, that would have been paid for as part of the freeway expansion.
House Bill 2017 specifically earmarked new tax revenue for this project so this is factually incorrect.
yikes this makes my point. HB 2017 earmarked $$ for this project only based on an agreement that it would also use toll revenue. Not only that, but AFAIK the legislature dedicated money to I-5 at Rose Quarter without a specific edict for how that money would be spent. Also, that money was transferred to the I-205 abernethy bridge.
So yeah, technically there is some money bouncing around for the project. Obviously they’re paying staff and whatnot and yes the OR legislature did technically fund something at the Rose Quarter. But my point remains!
Good defense of your points, JM.
If they had political support for widening the freeway, they wouldn’t even be capping it in the first place. That alone like tripled the cost of the project – not something a smart agency does if they are looking to avoid a political fight.
A while back there was an article that talked about how each building could be built on a steel bridge over the freeway, and that it was theoretically doable to build that way. The direct quote was that “You’re economically ahead of the game because you’re not trying to build a deck that you’re then going to build on top of. The building itself is the spanning element.”
Is there a reason that the conversation has narrowed to one solution (concrete caps) while another solution (a building that spans the freeway) isn’t being considered? Was it determined to be unfeasible?
Here is the link: Capping Freeways: An Interview with Architect Rick Potestio – BikePortland
In order to build a “large” building over something like a freeway, you’d have to really integrate the “building” and the “cap”. My guess is that ODOT isn’t interested in either developing these hypothetical “large” buildings themselves or in trying to juggle working with a separate outside developer to build the “building” while they’re building the “cap”. It would be much simpler for them to build a cap and be done with it, the building would be someone else’s project later. Note that JM had the following quote regarding the development possibilities: …“with some constraints.”
The following is a more than a little simplistic, but it is one way think about some of the possibilities. “Park” and “Plaza” aren’t conditions specifically listed in the structural portion of the building code. If the cap was intended to only support a public assembly usage, that’s 100 pounds per square foot (psf). If they have to be able to support trucks driving on them, that’s 250 psf. Lightweight (wood mainly) roofs and floors weigh 15 psf. Residential floors are required to support 40 psf + their own weight. Offices are 65 psf. Ground floor retail and assembly (concerts, nightclubs, large restaurants, etc.) are 100 psf. Roof snow load is 25 psf. So, compared to a regular plaza, a one-story retail type space or two-story residential building with lightweight framing would be about ~40% more load. Significant, but probably not a big deal especially when you consider how heavy the cap itself would be. The post mentions that they expect a that the cap can support a one-story building on the longer spans and a three-story building on the shorter ones. This implies they’re looking at using the same stuff (probably some sort of precast concrete “T” sections) everywhere for the caps and for their preliminary development estimates, they are taking the capacities of these selected members at various lengths and comparing them to the loads I listed above.
Ivc, did you read my interview with Potestio that Jack linked to? He describes how to build over a freeway, complete with back of the napkin drawings showing how to do it.
People who have never lived in, for example Manhattan (where there are a lot of these), were wary. So I followed up with an interview with developer Matt Edlen, who has experience with over-the-freeway building. I don’t think this interview got the attention it should have:
https://bikeportland.org/2021/07/30/air-rights-and-freeway-caps-an-interview-with-developer-matt-edlen-335749
Of course, but they’re looking at it like a developer or architect, not a department of transportation, let alone a DOT that’s trying to get a really messy freeway expansion built. For the kind of stuff that Potestio and Elden are talking about the building is the cap, not something that sits on a cap. It’s just buildings that happen to have abnormally large distances between foundation elements. It ain’t cheap, but if you’ve got a building you want bad enough and a building site constrained enough, it can be done. However, ODOT is in the business of expanding freeways not developing large buildings. They’re talking about constructing a cap that someone can put a building on later. If someone comes along later and wants a big building, the cap would have to come out.
Considering that there is still a good chunk of undeveloped land in the South Waterfront Area and that the Post Office Redevelopment or Centennial Mill projects don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, I wouldn’t expect anyone to be breaking down ODOT’s doors wanting to build something super expensive over I5. If you wanted this freeway expanded, you wouldn’t want to wait for a really difficult building development project to come together and try to piggyback your freeway expansion with that project. I personally really don’t want this freeway expansion to happen, but I do understand ODOT’s point of view about it.
This is going to be the most expensive real estate in Portland.
And it’ll come with exhaust fumes! – until the EV revolution happens, of course.
Yeah, and don’t forget all the microparticulate pollution from tires and brake pads! That’ll be there before and after any sort of EV revolution.
There would be miles of these buildings next to each other and therefore would form a tunnel. Seems plausible to guess that the fumes would be as bad for nearby residents as any other freeway tunnel system, which I’m guessing is orders of magnitude better than the air quality is for residences alongside the freeway currently.
Also we already have built buildings/parks/commercial/etc over freeways in lots of cities around the US and elsewhere.
I don’t know if this conclusion is true.
Need to do a comparison of the price of land & foundation for a normal high rise development vs the price of a steel truss system & complexities of a bridge over a freeway for a building in air
These will be 1-3 story buildings, so the comparable costs are much lower than a highrise. If I’m wrong, and the “land” cost isn’t overly expensive, then we can create a bunch of new buildable areas in the heart of the city at a very reasonable cost that will also improve the surrounding areas.
I am under the impression that these could be much larger buildings than 1-3 stories. I think that specific 1-3 height is just limited by the concrete deck, and that a steel truss would be able to carry a much larger building.
I wonder what the calculus would look like if we could build 5-8 story buildings and the air rights were given to the developer for free with stipulations about how they would rebuild the street in front of the building to reconnect the neighborhoods and if a certain percentage were low income.
Seems like a win-win-win scenario:
Alllllllll of this could come at close to zero cost to the city/state if the math adds up and/or the deal is sweetened by giving away the air rights for 0$.
I was really captivated by the articles written above a few years ago and would love to see something happen with them. @Lisa, @Jonathan Any world where the developers that were interviewed were asked to make a proposal and guestimate some costs so that this idea could be vetted/shared? Seems like the iron is hot with the discussion of freeway caps right this second.
I love your enthusiasm. I did both the interviews, Potestio and Edlen. You might find it interesting that Edlen & Co is developing Albina One (https://www.edlenandco.com/projects) and is already working closely with Albina Vision Trust. Matt Edlen knows a lot about capping freeways and all the key players are connected.
ODOT engineering is atrocious. The one supportable component of the Rose Quarter “improvement” project appears to be off the table: relocating the existing southbound on-ramp from Wheeler Way to Weidler. I suspect trucking firms had something to do with retaining the southbound on-ramp.
Early designs to relocate the southbound on-ramp from Wheeler Way to Weidler is 1) Downhill, which gets traffic up to speed more readily. 2) Much better visibility. 3) Adds distance to conduct the “cross-merge” whereby entrance ramp traffic must merge Left to access I-5 where traffic on I-5 at high speed must merge Right to access I-84.
The more recent design to relocate the southbound off-ramp from Broadway to Wheeler Way is also unacceptably terrible engineering. The current off-ramp is “uphill” which slows exiting traffic. Instead, southbound traffic enters the dark lid with adjacent traffic at 55+mph and upon leaving the lid hits a 90 degree BLIND “hairpin turn” which can only be taken at 25mph. The accident rating is off the charts but ODOT director Kris Strickler doesn’t care who dies in high accident settings like these.
Strickler, Lynn Peterson & Ted Wheeler are committing NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE on this project, on the voter rejected SW Corridor widening of Hwy 99W MAX extension to Tigard, and on the Columbia River I-5 Bridge replacement. When Ted Wheeler says when the Marquam Bridge is replaced and that I-5 can be relocated in a tunnel under the Willamette River, he’s lying solely to entice developers with waterfront property schemes.
Bye Bye mister Wheeler. Go live somewhere else and don’t come back to visit this city you obviously hate.
Would you want to live in such a building?
It feels important to emphasize that the 8 highlighted lots add up to about 2.5 acres of developable land. And the off-cap stuff is for the most part (outside the exit ramp on Broadway) already used and will require ODOT to purchase (outlined in right of way technical report). Lot #9 is a Sherwin-Williams, Lot #10 is a gas station, and Lot #11 is house/parking lot. It’s not entirely clear to me if ODOT will just be acquiring those lots to then sell to developers, or what the governance situation will be. I guess I’d be fine with changes to any or all of them, it’s just sort of strange.
On cap, it’s about 1.25 acres of developable land. Not nothing, but the PPS building AVT recently got in on is about 7 acres. I think it’s important that ODOT is held accountable for exactly how much land is created, what the stipulations for development are, and what ownership looks like. I don’t think a long-term government lease will be palatable for the public, at least not for those concerned with empowering people whose land was dispossessed by ODOT in the 1960s.
And on the topic of “stitching the community back together”, there is exactly one normal street connection being made by this project (Hancock). North of the Rose Quarter: Page, Knott, Stanton, Morris, Monroe, Cook, Fremont, Beech, Failing*, Shaver, Mason, Prescott, Blandena, Wygant, Humbolt, Alberta, Webster, Sumner, Emerson, Church, Jarret, Jessup, Simpson, Holman, Dekum, Bryant, Morgan, Buffalo, Holland, Stafford, Baldwin, Farragut, Terry, Winchell, Watts, and Kirkpatrick streets were all dead-ended on both ends by I5. If it takes us $1 billion to connect one street, I don’t think we will find the $36 billion required for all of North Portland.
Such a good point, blum. The caps seem totally performative to me – we’re spending billion$ on symbolism.
If James Posey doesn’t want the caps, I don’t think we can have much confidence that they will heal the community.
Building a billion dollar cap is a little silly when there’s so much surface parking in the area, ripe for better uses.
I also wonder about the maintenance situation. What does it cost to ensure the structural integrity of a freeway cap? Will it end up being a situation like freeway bridges that go way too long with deferred maintenance until they’re on the verge of collapse? That $1bn doesn’t tell the whole story.
Yeah, by my calculations there’s something like 9 or 10 acres of parking lots in just in the area between I5, Broadway, MLK, and Multnomah. Doing the cheapest possible caps (to improve noise/pollution in directly adjacent area) and buying every parking lot in the area to give to AVT for a ceremonial dollar would probably be cheaper and more impactful than the current plan.
“ Will it end up being a situation like freeway bridges that go way too long with deferred maintenance until they’re on the verge of collapse?”
Knowing ODOT, and judging by the rest of Portland, I would say yes. Probably.
Jonathan, do you know whether the renderings include the planned highway expansion? I thought that NE Flint was supposed to get demolished to accommodate the expansion, but it looks otherwise in these pictures.
Yes, they do though probably not to scale. The nice diagram with the houses also doesn’t show the new plan for a crazy flyover off ramp at the south end to Weidler
Two buildings are being built (the one at Flint and Hancock that’s now near completion, and the just-starting Albina One building at Wheeler and Dixon extending to Flint) that sort of negate the closure of Flint because they block the extension of Dixon that was supposed to replace Flint.
You’re thinking of the original design, which removed Flint entirely. They’ve changed the design significantly since then, and the Flint bridge will be reconstructed but will still be part of the street network.
It does not look like there was any discussion about air and noise pollution? This looks all nice and good in these visualizations, but the reality is that being on the caps (as near the highway) will not be pleasant and could have negative health effects for those who live there. I also find it striking that a daycare would be there (and I think there is a daycare currently right next to the highway), given what we know about the negative effects of air pollution due to highway proximity and health / development of young children.
Restricting contracts by race seems pretty risky, especially given the small pool of potential minority-owned contractors in Portland.
The Black owned contractors for this project are partnering with Bechtel for the work. It gives them experience on a large project, but with the support and back up of a large national firm.
Wrong. It’s a joint venture with Hamilton and Sundt.
If the City did a similar project for South Waterfront, I wonder how well it’d go over if Italian contractors were given sole preference for a taxpayer funded project?
It wouldn’t be so different than lots of existing and historical contracting basically everywhere. It’s patronage, but with more socially palatable language. I don’t have super strong feelings about patronage, I mean sure it’s bad, but I think the project itself is more important to discuss than who the contractors who work on it is.
Seattle’s efforts to cover up I-5 bore fruit IMO. However I-5 caps there connect two vibrant, dense neighborhoods. A land bridge between Memorial Coliseum and MLK hardly compares.
$1BN is $28,000 for every Black person in Portland – or about a house downpayment for a couple using low-barrier first time homebuyer mortgages. Alternatively, $1BN is probably about $150,000 for every Black person in Portland under 18 y/o – or about the cost of a college education and then some. Is creating the most expensive per square foot raw “land” in the country actually the best use of $1BN to benefit Portland’s Black population? Or is it just an example of how we can justify anything except direct transfers to populations and individuals in need?
Very into that last paragraph. Really hope that happens!
Freeway caps are like lipstick on a pig. A few blocks may or may not be improved. Seven acres of “restored land” is nothing compared to the thousand acres of new parking lots, urban sqprawl, and street/highway widening in the metro area that will result from the Rose Quarter widening. Time to stop widening I5 and every one of the city and county streets which the widened freeway will feed. Put the money into bike and pet infrastructure
and just about everyone, regardless of race, color, creed, or income will benefit. ODOT, oil companies, mega consultants like Rose Quarter’s HDR and the IBR’s WSP, plus a handful of highway contractors are the real “minorities” who will suffer. It is about time the scoundrels do.