The Portland Bureau of Transportation has a laudable history of working with community groups to help bring road projects to life. The “Better Naito” protected bike lanes on Naito Parkway began as a demonstration project. So did the carfree plaza on SW Ankeny and 3rd and the recent NE Broadway Pave and Paint. Now, a project that aims to reimagine South Sheridan Street and connect the campus of Oregon Health Sciences University to a thriving preschool, could take these city partnerships to the next level and set an important precedent for community-led projects.
PBOT Director Millicent Williams appeared at City Council last week to inform members of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee about some of this work. “Our ability to continually improve the transportation system and respond to community-identified needs is foundational to building trust with Portlanders,” Williams shared.
“As downtown and the South Waterfront have grown, the conditions of Sheridan Street have only worsened.”
— Bodo Heiliger, International School of Portland
A few minutes later, that trust-building was on display as Bodo Heiliger took to the mic. Heiliger runs the International School of Portland (ISP), a 400-student preschool sandwiched between I-405, Naito Parkway and Harbor Drive (see map below). The one connection between the school and South Waterfront is South Sheridan, a street Heiliger said, “Has long been the street that time has forgotten.” “As downtown and the South Waterfront have grown, the conditions of Sheridan Street have only worsened,” he continued. “A jumble of incomplete sidewalks, missing bike connections, a freeway exit ramp and minimal traffic control right in the heart of a school zone make this area treacherous for our three-year-olds walking hand-in-hand to school.”
Heiliger came to City Hall as part of a panel of partners working to remake Sheridan into a safer, more pleasant street. He and several volunteers at the school have taken advantage of an innovative program developed by nonprofit urbanism group Better Block PDX and the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University. They host open calls for project ideas, then wed them to student planners and engineers. Chosen ideas become a capstone project for Master’s program students, who then create design and engineering plans that tee the projects up for construction.
ISP parent and school volunteer Ryan Mehan submitted the concept to Better Block and PSU in spring 2024. It was accepted and has since been developed into the 30% design stage — a key step toward getting built.
Today, Sheridan is shrouded in overgrown ivy and darkened by highway lanes that rumble overhead. It’s a street people use as quickly as possible and its value as a place for OHSU staff to park cars barely outweighs its general sketchiness. I had no idea there was a large, thriving preschool just yards away until I watched Mehan, Heiliger and others testify at City Council Monday.
“To see small children have to navigate that area, it just gives me, you know, a nightmare!”
– Olivia Clark, city councilor
One of them was Paula Cano, a mom of two students (ages 3 and 7) who attend the school. Cano, who’s also head of early childhood development at ISP, and her husband (an OHSU employee) bike their kids to the school every day. “Right now it is not safe,” Cano told the councilors. “Our own faculty and staff often share with me the fears of simply walking down Sheridan to get a cup of coffee. There’s blind curves, missing sidewalks, poor lighting, and a lack of bike lanes make it frightening for adults — let alone our young students.”
That will all change once the Reimagining South Sheridan Street project becomes a reality. The plan is to update the street with continuous sidewalks, safer crosswalks, an all-way stop, and dedicated bike lanes. “We’ve long sought to create safe space for active transit along the block,” Mehan shared at the council meeting.
But just how to approach such a big project felt out of reach to Mehan, until he learned about the Better Block PSU program.
Better Block’s Ryan Hashagen has been on the ground floor of several exciting projects that began with someone like Mehan. Hashagen feels the Reimagining South Sheridan project could play a role in finally cementing the Better Block PSU program at the City of Portland. Up until now, PBOT has worked on the projects, but they’ve done so outside any formal guidelines or program structure. To get projects like Better Naito done, PBOT staff would bend existing street permit programs into new shapes to allow a demonstration, and then provide other assistance in whatever way they could cobble it together. But with the continued maturation of the Better Block PSU program, combined with the respect it has built at PBOT over the years, a new city council and form of government; and a project that has support from such high-profile partners as ISP, OHSU, and the Downtown Neighborhood Association — Hashagen thinks Reimagining Sheridan could set a precedent.
His goal is to firmly ensconce the program at PBOT so that community-led projects have an even more accessible path toward completion. That would take some sort of city council action and funding to make it real — and given the politics of the moment, where road safety and transportation planning advocates have numerous allies on City Council — that might happen sooner than we think.
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Olivia Clark (who happens to represent the district this project is in) has visited the project site. “I stood there and watched cars just rip through the stop sign, like they ignored it.” she recounted at Monday’s meeting. “To see small children have to navigate that area, it just gives me, you know, a nightmare!”
Clark was clearly interested in seeing this project through. She asked an OHSU representative how they’d feel about removing the parking to make room for the planned bike lanes. When given a supportive response, she turned her attention toward Better Block (a group she seemed impressed by). Upon being told by a PBOT staffer that Better Block is a community organization that’s ready and willing to step up and assist, a light bulb seemed to go off in Clark’s head.
“So [Better Block] is really a resource for us to consider working more with,” she stated. (I could imagine Hashagen smiling and nodding deeply as she said that.)
Now, if PBOT can just find a reliable way to fund it, they will have the administrative infrastructure in place to develop community ideas into real projects relatively quickly.
