Portland’s street plaza program continues to see uneven progress. On the same day we saw exciting progress on the new carfree plaza coming to Southeast 37th and Hawthorne, the Portland Bureau of Transportation announced they will pull the plug on their plaza on Northwest 13th Avenue.
In a rare public statement where PBOT’s frustration seeped through the text, the agency shared yesterday they will reluctantly give up the existing carfree plaza on three of the four blocks of NW 13th between NW Everett and Irving. “Due to three businesses’ lack of compliance with design guidance and numerous site challenges, PBOT has determined that these spaces have not succeeded as Public Street Plazas,” the city wrote, citing, “Ongoing problems and community complaints with operations, over privatization of the right-of-way, and low public satisfaction were,” as reasons for the decision.
Those four blocks were turned into a public plaza with outdoor dining and a driving ban in the summer of 2020, as PBOT grappled with the spread of Covid-19 and restaurants jumped at the chance to expand seating into the open air. Now PBOT will restore two-way driving access between NW Flanders and Irving, and focus on making the block between Everett and Flanders into a fully pedestrianized space.
This loss of carfree space downtown is a major blow to Portlanders who dream of a city that caters to people and not their cars. NW 13th — home to the monthly First Thursday street festival — has long been eyed for its possible as a pedestrian-only corridor. In 2017, the Pearl District Neighborhood Association and Portland State University teamed up with Rethink Streets to publish an action plan for NW 13th that aimed to, “Refocus the street around the pedestrian, placing all other modes as secondary to the experience and comfort of those walking on the street.”
Ironically, PBOT themselves wanted to maintain this multi-block plaza, saying in their statement they have “regrets” about its removal. But it appears PBOT couldn’t find a policy or political path to save it.
PBOT says the seating and patio structures installed by River Pig, Papi Chulo’s and The Star, do not comply with the city’s plaza requirements. The structures were too large and walled-off to the public, instead of being open and welcoming to all. PBOT says they gave the businesses ample notice to dismantle or change the structures, but even after four deadline extensions to make it happen, the businesses took no action. “The unwillingness of these businesses to do anything to change their installations to address community concerns forced us to take steps towards enforcement,” PBOT Public Information Officer Dylan Rivera shared with BikePortland today.
With no compliance from business owners PBOT plans to fine the businesses $500 per day until the structures are removed. They will then re-open the three blocks to parking and driving for the first time since 2020.
PBOT appears to have made every effort to make this plaza work. “PBOT did not take the decision to remove the NW 13th car-free blocks lightly; in fact we have been trying to avoid this situation for the past year and a half,” Rivera said.
The city has spent about two years meeting with the Pearl District Neighborhood Association (PDNA) and business owners to address issues of access, cleanliness, and safety. Despite these efforts however, the city cited a public survey they administered last year where they heard “dissatisfaction” from over 400 respondents including, “strong opposition to large private outdoor dining structures dominating public plaza space, concerns about late night noise, negative behaviors, and, at times, violence, in the plaza, as well as issues with illegal parking, blocking of emergency lanes, and lack of visibility for pedestrians.”
And similar to what spelled the demise of a carfree plaza on SE Division last month, Portland Fire & Rescue had also raised concerns about the large structures due to fire hazards and access issues.
And sadly, while PBOT said an overwhelming majority of survey respondents liked the idea of a public street plaza, they didn’t like the implementation on 13th. In their statement yesterday, PBOT included a litany of public comments that expressed opposition and concerns about the structures. Most people said the dining structures were simply too large, and instead of contributing to a public plaza, they felt more like expansions of the restaurants onto a public street.
“Outdoor dining should not be so big and closed off from plazas. Should be open and flexible like European styles as in Paris or Barcelona,” one person wrote. “The structures as they exist are imposing and make me feel unwanted as a pedestrian. It’s like I’m walking into their business area, not like they are spilling out into a public’s space.” (This tension between private businesses using public right-of-way has been a sticking point since one of Portland’s first permanent plazas was built on SW Ankeny in 2011.)
There was also strong pushback from some adjacent, non-restaurant business owners as well.
A February 2024 story in The NW Examiner reported on a tension between restaurants, who welcomed using public right-of-way for their private business; and non-dining businesses, who felt the plazas encouraged unwelcome public behavior and the lack of parking and driving access turned away customers. The president of the Irving Street Lofts homeowner’s association told the Examiner that he supports the plaza, but not its, “late-night patrons who congregate in the vicinity until and after the last bar closes at 2:00 am,” who he said are, “driven by a dining experience or alcohol and playing music and partying.” And Debbie Thomas, who owns Debbie Thomas Real Estate on NW 13th, said she was never told about the plaza and never asked for it.
Issues about the plaza appear in meeting minutes of the PDNA as far back as August 2023, when a PBOT plaza program staffer attended a meeting to share an update on “improvements to NW 13th Ave.” A March 2024 meeting referenced “several meetings relating to nuisance issues affecting Irving Street Lofts and the overall impacts of closures and restaurant encroachments on the street.” “Discussions will continue on how to best accommodate pedestrian and vehicular traffic on 13th,” the meeting minutes read. Then in November 2024, the PDNA was warned that the structures would be coming down and that a stakeholder process would begin to “reimagine the future of 13th.”
PBOT has long maintained that carfree street plazas exist only with support from adjacent business owners. In this case, it appears the nearby businesses either failed to believe in the potential of a carfree plaza, were frustrated that PBOT hadn’t figured out how to make it work better, and/or just felt like auto parking and better driving access is more important to their bottom line. Without business support, and with so many complaints from street users and neighbors, PBOT came to this unfortunate decision.
PBOT currently manages 16 street plazas and 575 permitted outdoor dining installations citywide. Just one month ago, PBOT faced the possibility of shuttering their entire street plaza program due to a lack of funding, but Mayor Keith Wilson’s proposed budget kept it alive.
As this situation on NW 13th illustrates, funding isn’t the only constraint when it comes to building world-class carfree spaces in Portland. Like other major shifts in the status quo, it will take that magical mix of political leadership, public support and neighborhood-level organizing that seems to have escaped us in the Pearl District — putting the long-envisioned dream of a 13th Ave promenade further out of reach.
For now, at least.
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PBOT found that the overwhelming majority of opinion was that the plaza should be improved. Now they are using that as justification for doing just the opposite.
The structures as built are walled off from the public and simply much too large. They actually take away from the openness of the street to the general public. It would be nice if the business owners were open to adjusting their patios to make them more inviting for all. But these business owners are simply bad actors and this is the result. It’s hard to build a great street plaza when the business owners have no desire to cooperate or even show the slightest bit of good faith in building a better street plaza.
So they say. I suspect Council will intervene and we will ultimately end up with an improved plaza in the next year or two. But we’ll see.
So make them fix it. It isn’t any harder than making them remove it.
Read the article. PBOT tried to do just that.
I did read it and I don’t think they did, thanks for adding nothing. Considering that enforcing the closure will take just as much coercion as enforcing compliance.
What were all those repeatedly extended deadlines about?
The restaurants had plenty of time to comply, and chose not to.
Right, PBOT issued no fines and extended deadlines four times. I don’t see why they can’t issue a $500 fine per day that structures are out of compliance and leave it to the business owners whether to bring the structures up to compliance or remove them entirely. Instead, they’re requiring removal and opening the street to cars.
I’d guess that the extensions were issued under previous PBOT leadership and the new leadership is choosing to prioritize car access rather than take that step to retain the plaza with code-compliant structures.
Why should PBOT have to do that at all? The owners are adults and PBOT isn’t their mother. If they won’t even try, despite what sounds like a very generous accommodation from the city, then screw ’em. It sounds like they’ve been bad neighbors all around.
Not that it matters, but PBOT has been under the same director since 2023.
This is such a stupid back and forth. The claim is that they tried to make the business fix it and they wouldn’t. So they’re going to make the business remove the structure and revert to cars.
How are they going to make them remove it? Same way they would have made them fix it. It’s not any different. You’re not addressing this obvious option and just pretending nobody brought it up over and over.
Yes it is stupid. I really don’t know why you care. I’m not “claiming” the businesses refused to cooperate, that’s what the story says. Maybe it’s wrong.
Even if PBOT did not try the precise combination of sticks and carrots you wished they did (and have brought up, in your words, “over and over”), it sure sounds like the businesses got a very fair shake. At some point it becomes clear that it’s not going to work and that, as they say, is that.
I imagine part of the issue are any businesses that serve alcohol that have to make relatively hard boundaries for their patrons to comply with OLCC rules.
Does not excuse them getting too big though.
Dots serves booze and you can sit right out on the sidewalk and drink it. Same with Double Barrel and Clinton St. Pub and Real ‘Min Tavern and probably a hundred other places.
Hell, with cocktails-to-go, the whole separation of drinkers and non-drinkers feels like it’s from a more innocent time.
IT will be much better when the street is lined with parked cars!
A frustrating aspect of this is that these specific blocks are extremely pedestrian unfriendly. This isn’t just removing some sort of “community” aspect, it’s actively making life more difficult for people.
My old portland take on 13th was it was very pedestrian friendly–cars new they had to share the road and crawled–i loved walking along it. but truth be told it was more enjoyable to walk on it even with those outdoor seating cubies.
Rainbow plaza was also both pedestrian and cyclist unfriendly when it was a booming plaza with lots of customers during the “pretend to care about COVID” era. Today it’s a windswept ghost town despite the renewed attempts of Bike Happy Hour urbanists to “activate” (gag) it one day a week.
It makes me frustrated that opening the street to cars is the default. If our streets instead defaulted to pedestrians and bikes then this plaza closing wouldn’t mean more car traffic and a deadlier street. I would love if it required the same amount of community input and environmental studies every time they wanted to let cars onto a road that it does to open a street to pedestrians and bikes.
I’d be really curious to hear from the businesses running the patios and get their perspective. I’m really disappointed to see this pedestrian/mixed-use space go away. However, as someone who walks through here pretty regularly (couple times a month, probably), I can say that many of the issues raised are sadly valid. It was not set up as a public plaza with restaurant seating, but rather a fenced off area where only patrons were welcome and folks passing through were treated as a nuisance. I was less bothered by the noise and general rowdiness, but I could see it being a more serious issue if I lived or ran a non-entertainment business in the area.
It does feel like we may not be getting the full story though. I would not be at all surprised to learn that they may have been caught between a rock (PBOT demanding public access) and a hard place (OLCC insisting that alcohol consumption be physically separated). That said, the Ankeny Alley businesses managed to make their ‘plaza’ feel much more welcoming, thanks to lower and less enclosed barriers, and active business entrances (the 13th Ave patios are so closed off, you can’t even really enter them from the street side).
I have trouble believing that the businesses weren’t interested in making whatever changes were necessary to keep the patios. Seems like a lot of capacity and sunk costs to just write off (to say nothing of ongoing fines). Maybe the communication wasn’t as robust as PBOT claims? Or maybe the businesses really didn’t take PBOT seriously (FAFO)? Either way, I agree that it’s a step back for the area and car-free spaces in general. Bummer.
I feel like if they can fine the businesses $500 a day until they remove the structure, they could have fined them $500 a day until they bring it into compliance. Clearly at least those businesses like the extra space.
Always the “emergency access” excuse makes me so mad. You DO NOT need access to all four sides of a building (presumedly with an oversized firetruck) to have sufficient emergency access. It is ludicrous that we cannot make forward progress on things like carefree plazas and simple traffic diverters because of some unsubstantiated nebulous safety concern. That can’t override all other concerns, it is simply status quo bias. We have a perfect unbroken grid of streets now, and simply can’t do one goddamned thing to change that.
“I feel like if they can fine the businesses $500 a day until they remove the structure, they could have fined them $500 a day until they bring it into compliance.“
Yeah this is what I don’t understand. Maybe the regulations regarding plaza structures don’t give the City authority to levy that kind of fine?
Yeah maybe. But “$500 for every day your structure is not compliant” seems like it would give them the option to remove it or fix it.
I guess that is probably still on the table if the restaurants wanted to beg, but it seems odd that it wasn’t explicit.
Perhaps the City feared a third option from a $500/day fine might be for the business to leave downtown.
That’s not it, because their remedy right now, what they’re actually doing, is fining them $500 a day until they remove it.
“With no compliance from business owners PBOT plans to fine the businesses $500 per day until the structures are removed. They will then re-open the three blocks to parking and driving for the first time since 2020.”
So no, they were not afraid of driving away the business.
Or maybe after 5 tries to get compliance, regulators got frustrated and threw up their hands.
These businesses have been warned and warned, they’ve gotten extension after extension – PP&R says they’re a fire hazard, block fire escapes and block access to water.
It’s too bad the businesses that have been benefitting from these failed to bring them into compliance with the rules and ruined it for everyone who likes the car free areas.
I have to say, I am pretty skeptical of businesses’ claims that lack of parking and driving hurt their business in a part of town that is quite annoying to park and drive in. Those dining structures do seem annoying, but what if we just kept those sections car free and put something else there? Some planters with nice plants? Literally anything else other than converting them back to car gutters?
Here’s an idea. Too late for NW 13th, but in the event a similar issue occurs: Since the restaurants decided to, in effect, privatise the public space in front of their restaurant, the public should feel free to use the restaurants’ structures for public use. Stage a bike ride & picnic using their tables, bring in your own food, pull out your guitar and start busking…under the condition that the “protest” will stop when the business complies with the requested use of the public plaza.
There’s no reason these types of spaces have to feel or in reality be closed to the general public. Thats just a choice. Best practice would be what Ritual Coffee Roasters did a decade ago in San Francisco. Actually the current iteration is not quite as good as it used to be. But you can go back in time to look at what it used to be on Google Street View. https://missionlocal.org/2015/09/are-parklets-in-the-mission-really-public/
I believe this is how it already works, at least outside business hours. I’m less sure about the rules in place during business hours.
I meant during business hours. The intent being to inconvenience the businesses that are apparently monopolizing the public space for profit, in order to get them to comply with the repeated requests to comply with PBOT requests.
Or we could just create a set of rules about what structures are allowed and how they are to be managed so the public interest is best served.
There’s no need to rely on a group of harassers to enforce compliance — we already have mechanisms for that. In this case, a series of requests didn’t induce compliance, so PBOT had to resort to something sterner.
It seems to me like this is the system working as intended.
In the current climate, and without adequate signage and patrolling, it’s highly likely that homeless people might take up residence during non-business hours. It’s happened elsewhere in the city and is definitely a disincentive to utilize off-hours spaces.
A modern version of a textbook Tragedy of the Commons effect. It’s too bad as car use does not seem like the optimum use of that space, but then again the way it was set up certainly wasn’t optimized for anyone but the customers of the businesses. Essentially a taking by capitalistic interests, I must have missed the protests about that.
I’d prefer the current conditions to the former ones, even if there’s room for better designed restaurant pods that aren’t so poorly designed. There’s no reason PBOT has to chose between the status quo and giving the space back to cars, they could just remove the existing structures and leave it as a plaza.
If PBOT left those several plazas in place without participation from the surrounding businesses, do you think they would become a vibrant asset to the community? How many food carts could they sustain, and what would the impact be on the people who live in the immediate area?
Passing by or through other plazas around Portland does not make me optimistic that the community will organically make them welcoming neighborhood spots.
I’d prefer a pedestrianized street with no features over a street oriented towards cars, even if there are no businesses participating. Doubly so for NW 13th where the historic railroad car height loading docks function as the “sidewalk” and walking on the street is natural. No one should believe that a business in the Pearl is sustained by a few street parking spots, so I don’t think there’s a strong business case for reopening the street to cars
If that’s what the people who live there want, I would totally support it. However, if it were me, I would not want that at all because we know what happens to unclaimed space in this city.
cotw
“PBOT has long maintained that carfree street plazas exist only with support from adjacent business owners.”
This is the problem right here. I am trying so hard to understand why they couldn’t just take the space back from the restaurants and offer it back to the public at large, instead of turning it back into a two way car street, but I just can’t understand?! The businesses couldn’t play by the rules so that means that the only alternative is…..cars get all of it, again? Is this making real actual sense to anyone else?
Why couldn’t this have just been like the fully public parts of our beloved rainbow road on Ankeny?
Marat,
I think part of the reason has that policy where they will only do these with support from adjacent businesses is a budget thing.
For PBOT to implement a policy/project that a business does not welcome and support, they would need to take a much longer approach that would include more engagement and process. And that type of thing has a much higher price tag than they have for their plaza program at the moment. You always have to remember how funding is related to this stuff. Projects that will be controversial take more time and energy and development from PBOT staff, which takes more money. The Plaza Program is tiny and they can’t afford to do them without buy-in from adjacent businesses.
Even with support of neighboring businesses PBOT still seems pretty anti plaza…
https://bikeportland.org/2024/07/22/debate-over-street-plaza-revolves-around-costs-and-public-benefits-pbot-says-388769
I disagree Bjorn. There’s no case to be made that PBOT is “anti plaza”! I really don’t understand why some folks don’t understand that PBOT is our ally on this. They’ve spend years trying to cobble together a plaza program. And this thing happens on 13th suddenly they’re anti-plaza and we have folks on Instagram posting hyperbolic memes about how PBOT doesn’t care about human lives? It just doesn’t add up from what I know.
PBOT is the government. That makes them inherently constrained in a variety of ways. They are more often than not huge allies for stuff like plazas and carfree space, but they are up against a lot to make those changes. I don’t see any evidence here on NW 13th to say they didn’t try to do the right thing. They reached their limit, which seems reasonable to me. If I find out otherwise, you’ll read about it here.
And yes I’m a bit sensitive about this, because I know what it’s like to be an ally that gets thrown under the bus immediately for one perceived slight or alleged mistake that folks don’t like. I don’t think it helps build the type of movement it takes to make real lasting change to the status quo and I wish more folks would understand this and stop fighting with people and orgs that can help us.
Another part of government is city council, and Zimmerman has repeatedly said he is against plazas and street closures, especially in downtown; he views them as impediments to business, take away parking, and are just open-air drug fairs and homeless camps in the making.
No, a councilor under the new system can’t demand “their” department change course on these, but a hostile councilor during a budget negotiation might get some ‘compliance in advance.’
If PBOT was “pro-plaza”, wouldn’t you expect MTIP and STIP applications and TSP projects at every major intersections and most minor ones, particularly in East Portland, NoPo and Cully, for the past 3 decades? The only one I recall is the jughandle at Halsey and 102nd.
I agree that this is the issue. The tie-in to local businesses is antithetical to public space. I reject the idea that these plazas can’t be successful without business partnerships. I think the primary stakeholders for these spaces should be the public, maybe through a neighborhood association or some other version of some similarly organized group of regular folks.
This is only half true. If there is no reason to be in a public space, there won’t be very many people there. Having a tie-in to a bar, cafe, or other restaurant makes a plaza-style space much more attractive. Good plazas in Europe are typified by sprawling cafe tables and plenty of opportunities for sitting down with a coffee, that kind of thing doesn’t exist without a business selling the coffee.
Sure, there’s situations where private interests aggressively take over public space, but those should be dealt with through specific code enforcement, not by removing street plazas altogether.
PBOT does not seem to understand what a plaza is. They want to take a street and allow a business to use a discrete part of it for their business without any modification to the physical layout of the street or the programming of the street to create an actual plaza. The curbs, Street signs, lighting all remain. The terrible pavement is not upgraded or repaired. THIS IS NOT A PLAZA. PBOT did nothing to create plaza or a public pedestrian space except allow businesses to expand into part of it and close it off to cars. Plaza are spaces designed for people, there are sizes and proportions used to make it feel welcoming and comfortable. Plazas have pedestrian amenities like appropriately scaled lighting, landscape, benches, trash cans, bike racks, drinking fountains restrooms, hierarchies of spaces and wayfinding. NW 13th has only ever been a closed street, calling it a plaza is a misnomer. Blaming the business for not making this a welcoming space fundamentally misses the mark of who is responsible to create the public the realm: the City. PBOT is not at all the right agency to manage this- they do not have the knowledge or the skills to develop spaces for people. Business should not be expected to create public spaces, they are their to activate and support the use of the space. Without a framework and masterplan for the the street, the businesses did exactly what should do- provide a place for their customers within the space offered by the City. I agree that the spaces are slightly over privatized, but I would rather have them over privatized by a restaurant I can visit than a Hummer taking up space.
I am supremely bummed about this. As a delivery rider for B-Line, it was a very reliable way to traverse inner NW Portland with minimal car conflicts – and when there were, drivers were more generously polite on those blocks. The worst transgressions I experienced were deliveries by big trucks blocking the entire width of the plaza by parking across it on the cross street. Now I suspect we will experience a lot more aggressive cut through by drivers that know it’s a straight shot through for them. I hope they at least leave up some of the diverters at least.
It’s worth noting that in their news release, the re-opened blocks will have “shared street conditions”.
> The three blocks between NW Flanders and NW Irving streets will be restored to two-way traffic with shared street conditions.
I assume that means something greenway-like that will be comfortable to bike on.
Those streets were pretty comfortable to ride on previously; I expect the same to be true in the future.
It will be returned to the previous configuration like the before photos. Not very pleasant to walk on.
Pearl District Neighborhood Association is mentioned multiple times. Did you reach out to them to request comment about this story?
No. Not yet.
River Pig got greedy and now they are going to pay the price. FAFO.
Why not suspend River Pig’s liquor license until the patio is removed?
Because PBOT does not control liquor licenses, and the OLCC does not care about PBOT rules. There’s no mechanism to make that happen.
And why bother? The city has a set of well established enforcement mechanisms what will work perfectly well here. If the restaurants won’t comply, PBOT will do the work itself and send them a (highly inflated) bill.
Good luck getting OLCC to take any action other than talking to the license holder “very sternly.” I suppose the city could revoke any use permits if they exist.
Realistically, how are you gonna have open plaza seating in that area?–the old Greyhound Terminal ain’t no Dixieme Arrondisment and the the people living along the 405 aint no Emily’s in Paris ’cause the 405 ain’t no Canal St. Martin.
All the Emily’s are in Paris already, thats all who lives there anyway.
What we’ve got in the Pearl is Bethany who could use detox and a trip to the salon and the dwindling khaki and blue dress shirt crowd.
You’d have to pay someone to stand there the whole time and turn away people like Bethany and ID check all the bros.
Lol Barcelona and Paris–in Paris the cops are on you in an instant for anything anti-social.
I’m glad to see some pushback on the City’s part against outdoor dining structures.
Besides the problems noted about these ones (interfering with street use by others, etc.) many are unsafe as structures. They’re basically temporary structures turned into permanent ones. It’s one thing to, say, put up a tent for a picnic or event in the park. It’s another to pack it with seating, run electricity out to it, hang lights, plug in portable space heaters, etc. and on top of that ignoring accessibility, wind loads, need for reflectors, etc.
My main feeling with these particular ones is the owners got greedy and tried to privatize the street, making people feel like trespassers within public space so blatantly it felt intentional. I have no sympathy for them.
And I’m generally a big supporter of outdoor dining spilling into sidewalks and streets.
This is a bummer because 13th prior to its closure to car traffic sucked, but I think the fact is that as long as these plazas are basically diverters, some cheaply built temporary structures, and a little bit of furniture, there will always be pressures to reopen them and every year you should expect to see some come and go. They feel temporary because they are temporary, and without a meaningful public investment in the space, the nearby businesses dictate their existence and use, which is explicit in the city’s approach. We shouldn’t expect to have nice permanent public spaces without the investment in making nice permanent public spaces.