Kenton business owner fights to save carfree street plaza

By all accounts, Ryan Born, owner of the Mayfly Taproom in Kenton, has been a model Portland business owner and street plaza steward. Since the City of Portland’s Covid-era public plaza first opened outside his corner location on North Interstate and N Fenwick in April 2021, he’s hosted hundreds of community events in the street.

So he’s shocked and disappointed that the Portland Bureau of Transportation recently told him they will need to remove the plaza later this year.

“Help Save Fenwick Plaza” was the all caps headline of an email and Instagram post Born sent out yesterday to Mayfly’s thousands of fans. “We need your help!!” it read. “PBOT is planning to remove the plaza this fall and we need to show them the positive impact that it has had for our neighborhood!”

Born says he was told by a PBOT representative during a July 1st meeting they intend to remove the Fenwick plaza — which extends between N Willis Blvd and N Interstate Ave — and reopen the street to cars and drivers this fall. They’ve offered to keep one lane open for car users and the other for dining tables, or continue it as a pop-up weekly or seasonal plaza space — but none of those options appeal to Born. As he understands it, the plaza doesn’t meet PBOT’s criteria for a full street plaza and there’s currently no business permit available that covers full street closures.

Just what exactly that criteria is, has yet to be shared by PBOT.

Part of the issue here is that PBOT in in the midst of transitioning the plaza program from pandemic pilot to a permanent part of the agency’s portfolio. That process began in March 2022 with a press conference in a plaza downtown where former PBOT Director Chris Warner told news cameras, “We really want to keep this going and create a new Portland.”

Then commissioner-in-charge of PBOT, Jo Ann Hardesty, said in a speech that, “Every neighborhood should have a welcoming place where community members can get together and enjoy each other… so that we can use our streets for people, not just for automobiles.”

Born is frustrated because he feels like he’s managed a model plaza on a street that doesn’t serve much automobile traffic and he hasn’t been told what it would take to meet PBOT’s requirements to make it permanent.

“We were informed by PBOT that we do not meet their criteria as a ‘public’ plaza,” Born shared in an email to BikePortland. “We then asked them for copies of their criteria and we were told that ‘it doesn’t yet exist but we don’t imagine that you will meet the criteria when it is written.'”

I’ve asked PBOT to clarify their position and justification for threatening to close this plaza, but have yet to hear back.

There could be several issues at play here.

PBOT might feel like the adjacent land use at the N Fenwick location doesn’t meet requirements for a “public plaza” because the only thing that borders the plaza is Born’s taproom. PBOT’s 2023 Street Plaza Annual Report states, “Not all parts of Portland are suitable for street plazas. Plazas fare best in dense, walkable urban spaces near main streets and commercial areas. Auto-oriented areas and major transportation routes in Portland tend to be less suitable for plaza uses.”

The Fenwick Plaza also isn’t within one of the “neighborhood centers” identified in Portland’s 2035 Comprehensive Plan — a designation that applies to areas with a mix of high population and mixed-use activity.

Born rejects the idea that his business is the sole beneficiary of the public right-of-way. He doesn’t require people to purchase anything to use the plaza and he doesn’t collect fees from vendors at events. Born claims to have collaborated with over 60 small businesses in the past six months alone. And the Kenton Business Association Board sent a letter to PBOT on July 16th that supports that contention. “This plaza has taken an unnecessary, and often dangerous, connector street and turned it into a hub for our community members and a draw for residents throughout the metro area,” reads the letter (which was also signed by the Kenton Neighborhood Association).

PBOT might also be acting from budgetary concerns. The federal Covid relief funds from the federal government that paid for the launch of the plazas ran out last summer, so now PBOT is faced with how to integrate 18 plazas into their annual expenses.

When I met Born in person during a visit earlier today, he said he’s spent thousands of dollars of his own money to make Fenwick Plaza a success. He seems willing to do just about anything to keep the street carfree. “This has been a huge part of my business,” he said. “It’s why we’re still open and we’ve had hundreds of customers already reach out to PBOT to show their support for it.”

I’ll update this story when I hear back from PBOT.

— In related news, PBOT has just released their annual street plaza summer survey.