Comment of the Week: Rose Quarter Confidential

This week’s Comment of the Week was in response to a nudge from one reader for BikePortland to do a “deeper dive” into the motivations of the principal players involved in the Oregon Department of Transportation’s I-5 Rose Quarter freeway expansion project. It was written in response to BikePortland’s recap of a Willamette Week piece exposing ODOT’s expensive efforts to bring the community on board.

Jonathan demurred to the nudge, but another reader, ITOTS, wasn’t buying it. What followed was a powerhouse of a comment, framed as a suggestion to Jonathan for how to write the story. (Maybe ITOTS should write a book, Rose Quarter Confidential, or something.)

Let’s start with the comment:

Here’s a start, Jonathan.

The different players and their motivations aren’t hard to see; their alignments and interactions flow quite naturally therefrom:

• ODOT wants to build something to address recurring congestion resulting from a combination of a geometric deficiency and too many cars.

• Many of the HAAB [Historic Albina Advisory Board] members (representative of much of the Black “old guard”, including Sen. Lew Frederick) want to pursue “restorative justice” through construction jobs and training for their community members.

• AVT [Albina Vision Trust] wants to convene community members and articulate/realize a vision of “restorative justice” via Pearl District-style redevelopment that creates wealth-building opportunities for its community members through new housing, leveraging a receptive public sector to more easily get access to developable land.

• NMF/Sunrise [No More Freeways] doesn’t want more cars and their attendant greenhouse gases and air/noise pollution in the central city.
• 
The City of Portland wants to be seen as a good agency partner to ODOT while maintaining some of its street cred among climate, equity, and active transportation advocates.

• The state government wants to see its priorities (the rose quarter) acted upon while still being seen as supportive of racial justice.

• USDOT wants to be seen as (financially) supporting Democratic priorities such as restitution for past harms especially those perpetrated in part by the federal government and especially priorities for demographics they are hemorrhaging support from (Black men).
• 
Rip City Management is afraid of changes that may affect the Blazer’s relationship with Portland.

• Phil Knight wants to purchase the Blazers.

• Portland Public Schools needs a new/renovated headquarters.

These dispositions have been pretty stable over the life of this project.

Taking these orientations and winding back the clock to 2017, it wouldn’t be impossible to predict the major shifts in the saga:

• ODOT allying itself with a contingent of the Black community that wanted construction jobs – as a shield against climate and livability protests (Holt was part of the glue for this increasingly unhappy marriage);

• AVT calling their bluff and advocating for expanded caps to provide land for their emerging vision;
• 
PBOT’s public (but not behind the scenes) rejection of the project following climate/livability protests and AVT’s pulling of support when ODOT didn’t budge;

• Governor Brown swooping in to bring AVT and PBOT back to the project by requiring ODOT to include expanded caps;

• an influx of money from Knight to bolster AVT’s vision for the district;

• Rip City Management drawing out the design process;

• ODOT sending the $450M Rose Quarter money to the I-205 project;

• the agreement between PPS & AVT to acquire the Prophet site;

• a now-flush AVT winning ODOT a federal grant for cap $$$ (exactly replacing the $450M ODOT reallocated) followed by AVT becoming agnostic about the highway project.

Who wants to bet on what comes next?

Thank you ITOTS, whew. You can read ITOTS’s comment, and some other interesting takes, under the original post.