13th Avenue closures send mixed messages
Who benefits from private use of street?
Historic Northwest 13th Avenue was central to early Portland shipping, warehousing and industry.
It still has an important role in commerce today, though instead of being a place where men worked hard all day, the street is now commandeered by temporary structures where revelers drink and dine well into the night.
The city of Portland not merely tolerates but promotes the potential of entertainment to make 13th Avenue an engine for revitalizing the Pearl District.
Tensions between historic character and temporary structures; noisy bar patrons and the disrupted sleepers in nearby condominiums; hospitality venues and retailers; and cars versus pedestrians reflect the complexity of issues the community juggles.
Yet, in a city known for silos of isolated jurisdiction, the Portland Bureau of Transportation alone sets the rules, and PBOT considers Northwest 13th Avenue a jewel in its Street Plaza program. The program puts plazas first, while motor vehicles come in second at best. Traffic is banned on two blocks of the street so privately controlled dining facilities can sprawl across most of its width, their further extension limited only by the fire department’s need for an aisle to reach emergencies.
What began as a temporary tactic to save urban life and enterprises during the pandemic has taken on a grander purpose, as reflected on the city’s website:
“PBOT's Public Street Plazas are community-oriented public spaces where business and community activities are clustered, using the full width or part of a city street. Rather than just a place to pass through, these sections of city streets become neighborhood destinations.”
From the agency’s point of view, it’s working.
“Street plazas have been embraced by communities as outdoor spaces to socialize, share a coffee or a meal, enjoy music, or simply sit and relax with others.”
Photos on the website show children playing in the sun, shoppers strolling and diners socializing.
For Debbie Thomas, owner of a commercial and residential real estate company located on 13th Avenue, all the flowery rhetoric is countermanded by two words, “street closed,” at either end of the blocks where plazas bloom.
The message repels potential customers of all other types of businesses, casting doubts that doors of retailers may be likewise closed.
Thomas is one of a growing number of community members who say the idyllic vision for 13th Avenue has gotten out of hand, that the street has purposes more vital to the community than boosting one type of business.
Who asked for this?
Furthermore, many are saying the whole scheme was foisted upon them without their consent.
“Who the hell asked for this?” Thomas said.
She is one of a chorus of business and property owners along the street who say they weren’t included in a five-year dialogue in which PBOT, academia and the neighborhood association incubated a shared but narrow vision.
“We didn’t get notification of any of this,” Thomas said.
Al Solheim, who owns several buildings on 13th, underwrote the application that put the street on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. He chaired the advisory council that wrote the design guidelines adopted by the City Council in 1996.
“Everything that’s been done has been done without the engagement of property owners,” Solheim said. “Never has anyone, to my knowledge, asked their opinions or sent them notices.”
For that he blames PBOT and the Pearl District Neighborhood Association Planning and Transportation Committee. Accommodations to current problems can be worked out, he said, but the process must involve collaboration and the guidance of urban planners.
The plaza program “has been jammed down peoples’ throats,” he said.
Solheim’s discontents go beyond the street plazas to a wave of street diverters, intermittent one-way streets and bike lanes across the district.
“Just because you’re a PBOT planner doesn’t mean you should be planning a reconfigured street,” he said. “PBOT should be responding to a well-thought-out plan instead of just slap-dashing along.”
“Best street in U.S.’
Solheim has been singing this tune since 2019. That’s when a Portland State University class led by a Seattle architect proposed the Pearl Promenade Project to “make Northwest 13th Avenue the best street in the United States.” Josh Meharry said devoting the street to pedestrians and community programming was “far and away the best opportunity.”
Solheim heard the initial pitch and advised restraint, warning of unintended consequences and the need for professional evaluation, not merely the energy of activists. He reminded early dreamers that businesses on the street had not been included in the discussion.
But a PBOT planner in 2019 assured that “this is very early in the process,” that changes proposed would be temporary and would have to withstand engineering review. Similar reassurances were offered as 13th Avenue’s transformation gained momentum. The pandemic elevated saving restaurants to the top of recovery priorities, a spot they have not relinquished as the economic pressures continue to force eateries to close.
Ramzy Hattar, owner of River Pig Saloon and Papi Chulos, which both have large street dining structures on 13th, said that appearances to the contrary, “we’re struggling” financially and in dealing with extraordinary crime problems.
While the street structures and their patrons are visible signs of life, negative effects on retailers are less obvious.
Dan Bozich, president of Urban Works Real Estate, spelled out the consequences of a restaurant-centric approach to 13th Avenue in a 500-word document.
The plaza approach, which includes banning traffic on two blocks of 13th (between Everett and Flanders and between Glisan and Irving streets) is no longer appropriate, Bozich wrote.
“While these temporary permits and accommodations were necessary to sustain restaurants and bars in the district at the time, we are now feeling the negative effects of the 13th Avenue street closures long after the pandemic restrictions have been lifted. Not only have these blocks remained closed to vehicular traffic for four years, their closure has also affected general travel and parking ability in the Pearl District as a whole.
Bozich wrote that street closures and other traffic restrictions make it difficult for customers to park near 13th Avenue.
“As a result of the street closures, retail businesses feel the impacts of frustrated consumers and lack of consumer activity in the district. The Pearl District is home to the largest concentration of high-end furniture stores in the city. Retailers such as Design Within Reach, Room and Board, Joybird and Blue Dot are suffering from lack of customers willing to drive into the district to shop. Similarly, clothing retailers Filson, Revolvr and Keen are among the many businesses expressing dissatisfaction with the lack of parking and drivability in the neighborhood.”
Residents of Irving Street Lofts suffer a different kind of dissatisfaction from the street plazas.
Chris Hahn is president of the homeowners association at the 86-unit Irving Street Lofts, the first large-scale conversion of a warehouse into residential use in the Pearl District in 1989. Hahn’s problem is not so much the plaza installations themselves but the late-night patrons who congregate in the vicinity until and after the last bar closes at 2 a.m. “driven by a dining experience or alcohol and playing music and partying.”
“People here like the idea of local establishments on Northwest 13th, but not the idea of noise, garbage, puke, pee, etc.,” he said.
“Don’t conflate that behavior with the plaza,” countered David Dysert, chair of the PDNA planning committee.
Dysert called the nuisance activity primarily a police problem.
‘It’s not working’
But attempts to keep a lid on blowback have broken down. Sarah Figliozzi, who supervises PBOT’s plaza program, has called a series of meetings with 13th Avenue community stakeholders.
“We’re not meeting our goals,” Figliozzi told nine people who attended last month’s meeting.
She admitted that the program had been guilty of not making changes as issues arose and quick corrective action is now imperative.
“We want to focus on what we can do now,” said Figliozzi, before running down a list of problems on the block between Hoyt and Irving streets (the most problematic of the two plaza blocks) identified at the first meeting: Lack of a central vision, excessive size of the plazas, poor plaza design, nighttime noise impacting neighbors and lack of parking.
“That closure is not working,” plaza program coordinator Megan Doherty conceded. “Everything is on the table.”
Four options to modify that block were presented. The two drawing most favor at the meeting were the most modest, returning parking to the northern half of the block and reducing the dining structures to the width of a parking lane.
“We’re not looking for consensus,” Figliozzi said, just input on things that could be implemented within six weeks.
While she agrees with charges that the plaza program did not consider 13th Avenue’s wider policy vision, that issue cannot stand in the way of more immediate fixes.