Rights of Way

Tonight: final public meeting for Libbytown freeway ramp removals

2013-06-10T06:21:00.000-04:00

Tonight at the Clarion Hotel near the Portland Transportation Center (on bus line 5) from 6:30 to 8:30 pm will be the final public meeting of the "Libbytown Circulation Study," which I'd written about previously here.

This will be the final meeting before the consultants present their recommendations to the City Council for endorsement. Word has it that they'll propose removing most of the connecting on- and off-ramps to Park and Congress Streets (shown in red below), except for the northbound on-ramp from Park Ave. This would open up acres of land for transit-oriented redevelopment.

Other positive elements of the plan would add sidewalks on both sides of Fore River Parkway to the bus station, shrinking the intersection of Fore River Pkwy. and Congress Street, new traffic calming, improved sidewalks, and landscaping elements on Congress and Park, and new, high-comfort bikeways that would connect the bus and train station to Deering Oaks Park and the Bayside Trail.

The public will have additional opportunities to weigh in on the plan when it goes to City Hall, but if you've got a free evening, consider coming down to Libbytown tonight to see what's in the works and express your support for a significant pruning of freeway infrastructure.

Also tonight at City Hall: bikeshare planning forum

2013-05-08T10:32:00.002-04:00

There's actually a double-feature of public meetings for city-changing sustainable transportation initiatives tonight at City Hall. In addition to the hearing to remove freeway ramps in the Libbytown study (which I'd mentioned yesterday), we'll also have planners in town from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to help Portland set up a public bikesharing system (previously blogged here in February; more details in today's Press Herald).

The bikeshare public forum will be upstairs in the State of Maine room this evening from 5:30 to 7. The Libbytown meeting is happening in the basement level, Room 24, at the other end of the building. Stop by both!

Public hearing on Libbytown freeway ramp removals

2013-05-07T09:21:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow, the Libbytown Traffic and Streetscape Study holds a public workshop at Portland City Hall, Room 24, from 5 - 8 pm (entrance is off Myrtle St. on the east side of City Hall). Displays illustrating the proposed changes will be available from 5-6:30 pm and 7-8:00 pm for comments, with staff available to answer questions. A presentation on the neighborhood conditions and the proposed changes will take place from 6:30 - 7 pm.

This study is a pretty big deal: it proposes to remove multiple freeway ramps that connect to Congress and Park at the western gateway to the city, immediately adjacent to our bus and train station (in fact, the cruddiness of this intersection was one of the first things I blogged about when I first moved to Portland years ago).

All of the alternatives under consideration would sell off acres of empty space currently occupied by looping freeway ramps and make that real estate available for transit-oriented infill development, like housing or offices. All alternative would also install high-quality, separated bikeways to connect the bus and train station to downtown Portland, plus better sidewalks and calmer, smaller streets throughout the neighborhood.

Doing these things would be relatively cheap, and could be implemented in the next few years, but only if these ideas receive public support.

Here's my personal favorite option, alternative 1b (note the conversion of a freeway ramp into a bike path, which could extend all the way into Deering Oaks Park and ultimately connect to the Bayside Trail):

Click here for a more complete view of the alternatives being proposed.

The Social Life of Congress Square

2013-04-30T07:00:00.000-04:00

In their pitch to the City Council, the architect for the Eastland Hotel's development proposal for Congress Square included a number of points from William H. Whyte's book "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces," a brilliant empirical study of what makes successful city parks work.

There's a great film version of "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces" that illuminate Whyte's theories with detailed footage of New York's Seagram Plaza circa 1980. It's a lot of fun to watch, and not just because it offers a filmed version of the people-watching that attracts us to good parks. Whyte's observations and photography also brilliantly illuminate how subtle elements of design — things most of us don't consciously notice — can have tremendous impact on how public spaces are used.

Any Portlanders interested in Congress Square and its future should treat themselves to spending an hour with this film. Enjoy!

William H. Whyte - Social Life of Small Urban Places from Robin van Emden on Vimeo.

New proposal for Congress Square

2013-04-25T09:50:00.000-04:00

My colleague Randy Billings has a good write-up of the Eastland Hotel's updated plan for Congress Square Park, including a couple of renderings.

I want to withhold most judgment until I see more details of the plan, but my first impression is that this is at least a big improvement over the last proposal we saw last summer — and probably an improvement over the status quo. It looks like the main question for the city now will be whether we want to hold out (and pay) for something better.

Bayside development in perspective

2013-03-25T09:29:00.000-04:00

Last week the Planning Board approved the rezoning plan for the Federated Companies' ambitious "Midtown" project.

Some neighbors complained about the size of the project. Its first phase will include 196 units of housing, 97,000 square feet of retail space, and 720 parking spots. Sure, I've said before that there's too much parking. But just for some perspective, here's what it would look like if the city cancelled this project and allowed developers to build all that stuff in the suburbs instead of in a central-city neighborhood.

Here's the Falmouth WalMart: it's 92,000 square feet and surrounded by about 600 parking spaces...

...and here are about 150 units of housing in the Pleasant Hill "neighborhood" of Scarborough (there's at least another 300 paved parking spaces scattered in there, but let's gloss over those for now).

The two aerial views above depict roughly a half square-mile of what used to be lovely Maine farmland. The proposed Midtown project proposes to fit a similar amount of human-habitable space inside one large city block, which ought to look something like this:

But hey, if you think that City Councilors should cancel this project and pave the way (quite literally) for more sprawl in the suburbs, by all means you should let them know before they vote on the rezoning proposal at their next meeting.

India Street planning open house this Saturday

2013-03-14T07:50:00.000-04:00

If you live anywhere in the East End, consider dropping by the Maine Jewish Museum this Saturday to share your $.02 about the future of the India Street neighborhood. Some details from one of the project's consultants:

The Sustain Southern Maine regional planning grant (for more information go to our website) includes a series of "pilot community" locations where we work with local officials property owners, business owners, and residents to look at their neighborhood and its potential to absorb portions of the regions projected growth. One of these centers is the India St. neighborhood. Together with the City of Portland and the India St. Neighborhood Organization, we will be having a public open house on March 16th at Maine Jewish Museum to solicit public input which will inform the project going forward. This will include a visual preference survey, a walking tour, and talks from the Portland Society of Architects and Greater Portland Landmarks.

Drop by anytime between 12:30 and 5:30. The walking tour goes from 1:30 to 2 pm, from 2:30 – 3 pm the Portland Society of Architects will give a presentation called “How new and old architectural styles look amazingly cool together,” and at 3:15, Greater Portland Landmarks will give a presentation on “India Street’s evolving role in Portland’s commerce.”

Portland Bike/Ped Advisory Committee meets tonight

2013-03-11T07:28:00.001-04:00

The city's bike and pedestrian advisory committee meets on the second Monday of each month at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall room 209 (that's upstairs, just to your left as you get to the top of the grand staircase at the front entrance).

I'm being taken out of town on a business trip, so tonight's meeting will be chaired by Jen Claster. Among the topics of discussion this month:

Implementing the city's new "complete streets" policy
How to get better, sheltered bike racks at the Portland Transportation Center
The Libbytown study (you can find more background material, including concept sketches, on the city's website).

Another choice for Congress Square

2013-03-04T23:09:00.001-05:00

As many readers of this blog undoubtedly already know, the task of improving the mediocre public space at Congress Square has had the attention of a city-appointed advisory committee for some time now, and the new owners of the Eastland Park Hotel have pitched a proposal to buy most of the park's real estate from the city and turn it into a ballroom for conventions and events.

Unfortunately, the Eastland Hotel's proposal has galvanized the debate. On the one hand are out-of-town hedge fund managers who want to convert public space to private use. On the other hand are suburbanite activists who are treating this half-acre of downtown Portland like it's Yosemite Valley. The goal of creating a higher-quality public space that benefits the entire neighborhood has been mostly lost in the shuffle.

So thanks to Clifford Tremblay, an architect who recently moved to Portland, for trying to change the conversation. Clifford pitched these ideas for Congress Square at a Portland Society of Architects "Drink 'n Crit" earlier this winter (I was on the design jury while he presented this concept and I'll try to paraphrase his pitch here).

Courtesy of Clifford Tremblay

Clifford's proposal consists of two fundamental elements: activating the center of Congress Square by inviting through-traffic, and activating the edges of Congress Square with new uses and friendlier edges.

As for the first challenge — getting more people into the center of Congress Square Park — Clifford proposes a new diagonal orientation for the park, to encourage cut-through foot traffic from Congress to High Street (see site plan above). The center of the park would become a secondary pedestrian-oriented street, defined by a row of trees and a water feature. Clifford makes the point, echoing a number of other architects and members of the citizens' advisory committee, that the current park's sunken design, with several steps leading down into the park from Congress and High, should be eliminated. Clifford would level the park with Congress Street, and relocate a more modest set of stairs leading up to the park to the western edge of the site.

Courtesy of Clifford Tremblay

The second crucial aspect of Clifford's proposal — and again, it's an idea that's been echoed by several architects, business owners, and neighborhood activists — is that the edges of Congress Square need to be more porous in order to invite more public use and public ownership. The sketch above shows a view of Clifford's proposal from Congress Street, with the Eastland hotel in the background. Note the active sidewalk dining on the eastern side of the park (this building, the former "The Kitchen" restaurant, is supposedly under contract to become a new haute-cuisine restaurant). The northern corner of the park, currently a no-man's land of bleak shrubs, is here transformed into a more inviting — yet still relatively secluded and quiet — spot for tables and a performance stage.

At the rear of the site, Clifford has optimistically suggested new windows and awnings to the Eastland Park Hotel's facade (currently a blank wall painted with a mural). Last of all, note the previously-mentioned lack of stairs between the sidewalk and the park. Sure, it's just a Sketchup drawing, but it looks a lot more inviting, doesn't it?

The primary strength of the ballroom proposal from the Eastland is that it provides an economic development boost to this part of the city. Still, what they're pitching isn't nearly good enough to overcome the opposition's strident concerns over the loss of open space. I don't particularly agree with those concerns, but from a purely pragmatic perspective, the owners of the Eastland need to do a whole lot better in terms of their own designs (a preliminary and pathetic example of which is pictured at left) if they really want to convince the public to surrender the less-than-perfect status quo.

This is valuable real estate in the heart of the Arts District. What if the City built — and collected rent on — a row of small artists's studios built to screen the Eastland Hotel's blank walls? What if the City leased park space to the new restaurant on the Congress Street side? These new uses could generate new rental revenue to support park renovations, while adding to the park's vibrancy as a public space, and improving property values in the surrounding neighborhoods. The Eastland Hotel's current proposal frankly can't compete with these possibilities.

This is still public space, and Portlanders absolutely should demand a higher standard of design. Thanks to Clifford Tremblay for changing the conversation in the right direction.

Bayside update

2013-02-26T21:03:00.000-05:00

The Federated Companies' proposal for the old scrap yard in Bayside continues to be refined. They're currently seeking a zoning amendment that would allow their project to proceed, and they've been tempting planners with some of these tantalizing sketches (from the most recent Planning Board workshop, held this afternoon):

The image above takes some liberties; the green space depicted to the left is actually a paved parking lot surrounded by a chain-link fence. Below: a view of a proposed new plaza along the Bayside Trail, looking from the rear of Planet Dog store southwards towards downtown. The building on the right is a large parking garage with a large first-floor retail space, on the left is a residential apartment tower with more ground-floor retail.

Here are a few of the hoops they'll still need to jump through. Approval for the project is still months away, at least:

Planning Board approval for zoning amendments (hopefully in a public hearing at the next Planning Board meeting, mid-March)
City Council approval of zoning amendments (end of March/early April)
Agreements with the City of Portland regarding the redesign and reconstruction of Somerset Street and title agreements for the Bayside Trail encroachment (unknown timeline)
Planning board workshops for subdivision and site plan
Planning board public hearing and approval of subdivision and site plan
Execution of Purchase and Sale agreement, transferring land ownership from City of Portland to Federated Companies
Financing and building permits

Reviewing the city's planning memos, I'm encouraged to see that city staff share the concerns that the developers might be building too large of a parking garage.

The proposed Phase 1 would set aside 221 parking spaces for a 196-unit apartment building (plus 191 spaces for retail uses, plus 200 spaces for city-mandated 'public' parking, plus 68 spaces for existing businesses like Trader Joes and Whole Foods). This is far in excess of the other successful market-rate apartment and condo developments currently being built (the Bay House and the proposed West End Place, both of which only have 0.8 spaces per apartment).

The last project to propose parking at a 1-to-1 ratio, the Newbury Street Lofts, proved to be an aesthetic disaster and financially unworkable. Buyers and renters are generally unwilling to pay the rents necessary to finance this level of parking in Portland, a city where substantial market demand is coming from households looking to get rid of their cars in one of the only New England cities where it's possible to do so. I'd hate to see a similar fate befall this project due to unreasonable parking expenses.

That said, my concerns are somewhat allayed by the possibility of reducing the parking planned for Phase II, when two more apartment buildings are planned. It still strikes me as a bad financial decision to build dubious infrastructure up front, but ultimately it's up to Federated to assess those risks and deal with their consequences.

The other sticking point is that Federated is proposing to encroach on the right of way of the Bayside Trail for a short stretch east of Chestnut Street, while also adding to the public right of way with wider sidewalks on Somerset Street on the other side. While this is of some concern to everyone, it seems like the city is ready to demand strong urban design and architecture along the trail side to compensate, and I think it'll be worth it.

I also hold out hope that the developers might strike a deal with the owner of the abutting Planet Fitness parking lot — converting just a few of the trail-abutting parking spaces to compact or parallel parking could restore the Bayside Trail to comfortable width in the pinch-point. But since the owner of the parking lot is Peter Quesada, the same embittered crank who refuses to remove the fence between the trail and Trader Joe's, we probably shouldn't hope for much.

Freeway deconstruction: now in progress

2013-02-19T06:00:00.000-05:00

To anyone who doubts whether Portland will ever be rid of Interstate 295 through downtown and along our Back Cove waterfront: we've already started to dismantle freeway infrastructure from the 1950s. And so far, drivers have hardly noticed the difference.

In the 1950s, before Interstate 295 existed, the original Veterans Memorial Bridge was built with a freeway-like on- and off-ramps on either side of the Fore River to carry high-speed Route 1 traffic. Here's a road map of the area from 1957, when the Route 1 expressway was brand-new:

Here's a view of the grade-separated off-ramp on the South Portland approach that existed until early last year:

And here's what it looks like now. Fewer lanes, a cheap stop-sign controlled intersection, and a nice wide new path for bikes and pedestrians:

Has South Portland become choked with traffic since losing one of its oldest freeway spurs? No, it hasn't been.

The biggest impact to losing a freeway spur has been that thousands of residents of South Portland's neighborhoods now have safe and convenient access to the West End of Portland by foot or by bike.

And this is only the beginning.

The loyal opposition

2013-02-18T14:25:00.001-05:00

Today's Press Herald has a story from my colleague Tom Bell about Westbrook resident Brian Peterson, who is very worked up about the city's efforts to update its unsustainably expensive, 1970s-era highway infrastructure for the 21st century.

Peterson is grumpy about recent efforts to convert State and High Streets back into regular 2-way city streets, as they were before the mid-1970s.

I certainly don't agree with much of what Peterson says. But I think it's an excellent article that, in spite of its subject, ends up strongly supporting safer, smaller streets.

Because outside of Peterson's, all of the quotes — and all of the fact-based evidence presented in the story — supports the two-way conversion of State and High, and continued "road diets" elsewhere in the city. For instance, City Councilor Dave Marshall:

"Since the Fore River Parkway was completed in 2005, connecting Exit 5 of Interstate 295 with West Commercial Street, traffic volumes on High and State streets have declined, with traffic at some intersections dropping as much as 20 percent, said City Councilor David Marshall, who chairs the council's Transportation, Sustainability and Energy Committee."

"By moving traffic to the Fore River Parkway, motorists no longer have to drive though the two densest urban neighborhoods in the state," Marshall said.

Peterson's arguments, on the other hand, are as follows (these are his quotes from the story):

"It's crazy."
"It will shut the city down."
"Portland constantly is being voted one of the most walkable cities in America. How walkable does it have to be?"
And finally, a 40-year-old Portland Press Herald article, from 1973, in which a state traffic engineer said that converting the streets to one-way streets will relieve "major safety and capacity problems across the Portland peninsula in the north-south direction" (modern computer models would refute this, but if all you're working with is a slide rule, conventional wisdom, and a paycheck from highway lobbyists, it probably made sense at the time).

Compared to the reasonable points of Marshall and others, Peterson's "it's crazy" argument doesn't sound very sophisticated. He has a very long-winded website, if you've got three days to spare and want to read a lot more of the same.

But I've never seen this guy show up at any public meetings, and it's hard to see how he expects to be convincing to anyone who doesn't already agree with him.

I do wish that Bell had asked him whether he'd be willing to pay more to maintain wide roads, since the current fiscal climate, coupled with declining traffic in general, is what's really driving the trend of road diets. I wonder this guy would be willing to pay an extra $1 or $2 a gallon at the pump in order to help pay for the upkeep of his crumbling 1970s-era highway paradises?

Is this your bike?

2013-02-18T11:42:00.000-05:00

Someone left this bike, sans rear wheel, on the sidewalk outside our house in East Bayside a few weeks ago. I corralled it in the backyard for safekeeping before more parts got stripped off it. Anyone recognize it? Leave a comment if you do.

City Hall likes bikesharing

2013-02-12T18:02:00.000-05:00

I just returned to Portland after a long weekend in Quebec, where, as you may be aware, the pioneering "Bixi" bike-sharing program debuted in Montreal 2009 and has since licensed the technology to several other cities, including Boston.

So I missed last Friday's news that Portland's new planning director, Jeff Levine, had of his own initiative landed an Environmental Protection Agency grant to investigate the feasibility of starting a bikeshare system here in Portland.

From the city's press release:

Bikeshare is a program in which bicycles are made available for shared use. The program is designed to provide free or affordable access to bicycles for short-distance trips in an urban area as an alternative to motorized public transit or private vehicles. Bikeshare programs help reduce congestion, noise and air pollution and support sustainable growth that encourages local economic development while safeguarding health and the environment. As a part of the technical assistance provided, EPA staff and national experts will hold a one to two-day workshop in the city focusing on the Planning for Bikeshare tool, which will explore the potential of establishing a bikeshare program in the community.

According to Tom Bell's report in the Press Herald, the grant will bring in business planners from Alta Bicycle Share, the company that manages most of the nation's largest bikesharing systems, including Boston's "Hubway", using technology licensed from Montreal.

This is only a feasibility study, which means that an actual bikeshare program is probably years away still.

Nevertheless, Portland seems to have the kinds of characteristics that should lend itself to bikesharing: tourists, mostly safe streets downtown, and a bike-friendly density of population, jobs, and services. While bikesharing's North American debuts happened in big cities like Montreal, Washington, DC, and Minneapolis, it's increasingly spreading to and succeeding in smaller cities like Boulder, CO and Spartanburg, SC. Even tiny Pullman, Washington (population 29,799) has 120 shared bikes in its Washington State University-managed "Greenbike" system.

Portland also may benefit from its relative proximity to Hubway in Boston. Rather than roll out its own system from scratch, the city might want to approach it as a self-contained expansion of the Hubway system, to create a northern outpost of the same network with unique local sponsors.

Doing so would give Portland's network a pre-existing base of customers, who would be able to use their same membership card to hop on a bike and ride downtown as soon as they arrive at the bus station, and it would give Portland-based riders the chance to use the same system when they travel to Boston.

Expanding Hubway to Portland might also allow Portland to save on startup expenses by building on existing technology and expertise. Some of that expertise might come from city planner Jeff Levine, the very same fellow who applied for the grant. Jeff was working in the Brookline, MA City Hall when that city welcomed its own expansion of Hubway stations.

If we could convince intermediate cities like Biddeford/Saco and Portsmouth to sponsor their own small networks, Hubway might even become the nation's first intercity bikesharing network to allow for weekend bike tours (it's a 130 mile ride, give or take, with Portsmouth conveniently located near the halfway point).

So, even though I was a few days late on this story, I'll be keeping a close eye on it and will report on this blog when the actual planning study gets underway.

In the meantime, I plan to write a short note to Jeff Levine and his boss, city manager Mark Rees (mrees [at] portlandmaine.gov), to congratulate them on the grant and to thank them for taking this initiative.

Donald does right by the East End

2013-01-17T21:26:00.000-05:00

As reported in the Forecaster and Press Herald, Donald Sussman, the owner of several lots along Hampshire Street in East Bayside, has shelved his hybrid parking garage/condominium development proposal in order to re-evaluate his development options.

The 2-level parking fortress at the base of this project wasn't merely aesthetically clunky and hostile to the neighborhood's sidewalks — it also turned out to be a ball-and-chain to profit margins for the high-priced condos above. A competing project down the street, the Bay House, also went under construction this fall — but it will include 20% fewer parking spaces per unit, and will thus offer lower costs to buyers for a similar-value home.

Not reported in the newspapers was another possible motive for this decision: the imminent final planning effort for the Franklin Street corridor. City Hall has reportedly selected a preferred planning/engineering team to work with, and a contract could be signed any day now to finally begin the planning effort that will result in a shovel-ready construction plan for a new, reconnected Franklin Street.

That plan is almost certain to reduce Franklin to a smaller 2-lane street between Congress and Commercial. That, in turn, will free up a lot of surplus city-owned real estate on either side of the new street. The new Franklin Street could end up giving Sussman 10% to 20% more developable land to work with on this same site — and that, in turn, will give his developers more room to screen parking inside the lot, provide rentable, active ground-floor retail spaces, and offer more attractive terms to condo buyers.

That's a smart return on investment for waiting a year or two. And it makes it likely that the neighborhood will end up with a better-designed building, with active ground-floor uses that (unlike a parking garage) will engage the street and improve surrounding property values.

I should add a final disclosure: I've begun a day job at the Press Herald, which means, in a very indirect way, that I work for Donald Sussman (who is the paper's majority owner). Obviously that won't prevent me from lamenting his taste in architecture in this blog.

Nice bikes for sale

2012-11-28T12:53:00.000-05:00

If you're missing Portland Velocipede, two things for you to check out:

Fab.com is having a sale on Public Bikes for the next two days.

Rivendell Bicycle Works also sells nice things.

And while you're shopping, how about a bike map?

Waterfront Forecast: Blander with an 80% Chance of Burned Beans

2012-11-21T12:50:00.003-05:00

Planning documents from the city's Historic Preservation Committee reveal plans for the peninsula's third Starbucks, on Commercial Street at the corner of Market.

Funny how the virulent retail infection from Seattle thinks it can expand in the middle of a crowded market of better coffee. I wouldn't be surprised if they're opening a shop at this location in a bid to follow the lawyers who decamped from Monument Square for the old Cumberland Cold Storage building a couple years ago.

Anyway, one more place for tourists to refresh themselves as they tour the charming, expanding ruins of Portland's working waterfront.

A New Spring Street by 2015?

2012-11-20T11:40:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, on one of those crisp fall days when a cruise ship was in town and the sidewalks in the Old Port were packed, I was walking down Middle Street near Canal Plaza when a group of tourists in front of me suddenly stopped, and one of them said, "Well, I guess that's the end of the shopping area. Let's turn around."

Of course, they weren't at the "end" of downtown. The local shops and restaurants of the Monument Square and Free Street area were just a block ahead of them, and the galleries of the Arts District were just beyond that.

But the intersection of Temple and Spring Street in front of the Nickelodeon Theater raises its middle finger to foot traffic. It sends a clear visual message to tourists to turn around and take their money back towards the cozy cobblestone streets that they just left behind.

The city is taking steps to make these two streets, along with Free Street, more hospitable to foot traffic and economic development. Last week, a relatively low-budget city planning effort unveiled its proposals for rebuilding the length of Spring Street downtown, between the West End and the Old Port.

The plan's biggest feature is in narrowing Spring Street to 2 lanes, and getting rid of the median barrier, in order to encourage economic development and reduce the street's long-term maintenance costs to the city.

The plan also addresses the diagonal crossing that everyone makes on the way from Monument Square to Lobsterman Park, in front of the Nickelodeon Theater. To address the pedestrian traffic there — and perhaps entice more Old Port tourists to venture across Temple Street towards Monument Square — the study committee proposes turning the block of Temple Street between Free and Spring/Middle intersection into a "shared space" where cars would be required to slow down to a crawl and yield to pedestrians and bikes.

They also want to reconnect old cross streets like Cotton, Cross, and Oak, and install a contraflow bike lane to let people ride up Free Street, from the Old Port to Congress Square.

Here's an image of the concept as it stands right now (click for a larger version):

As it happens, the Maine DOT has budgeted a few hundred thousand dollars to repave Spring Street in 2015. If the city can agree on a solid plan, the money that Augusta saves by paving two lanes instead of four could be re-budgeted for better sidewalks and crosswalks, and for removing the concrete median barrier. And if the city deeds some of the real estate from the extra-wide street to adjacent landowners, they could generate new property tax revenue that could help pay for additional improvements.

If the City Council signs off on these plans, detailed engineering and design documents would need to be created by 2014 for construction on the new street to happen in summer 2015.

Good Riddance, Joe Lewis; Planning Board Has Openings for Better Planners

2012-10-29T12:57:00.000-04:00

Joe Lewis, the chair of the Portland Planning Board since 2008 and a big fan of building subsidized parking at the expense of affordable housing, has tendered his resignation (as the Bangor Daily News reports, Lewis was apparently more ashamed of having his sex life made public than he was about forcing nonprofit housing agencies to spend millions of dollars on unneeded parking garages over the past four years).

There's actually a total of four positions on the Planning Board opening up next month. This is a great opportunity to create a more progressive Board, and in turn, a more sustainable approach to zoning and land use in the City of Portland.

This is an ideal opportunity for architects, planners, businesspeople, housing advocates, real estate professionals, and other enthusiasts of high-quality urban design. Here's the job description:

The Portland Planning Board has responsibility to recommend adoption and amendments to the comprehensive plan of the City of Portland, and to advise the City Council and Departments on implementation measures for the plan. The Board has jurisdiction to hear, review and approve applications for development including site plans, subdivisions, street vacations, shoreland zone, and other regulations governing development as appropriate. The Planning Board makes recommendations to the City Council on applications for zoning text and map amendments, contract rezonings, and amendments to or substantial revisions of the Zoning Ordinance.
Additional information is available in the City Clerk’s office, on the City’s website at www.portlandmaine.gov or at 874-8677. Deadline for submission is November 2, 2012. Please send a resume and cover letter to Appointments Committee Chairman, c/o Katherine L. Jones, City Clerk, 389 Congress Street, Portland ME 04101 or klj@portlandmaine.gov.

Portland's new Bicycle and Pedestrian chapter of the Comprehensive Plan

2012-10-28T17:25:00.000-04:00

Please note that this meeting has been rescheduled to November 5th due to Hurricane Sandy.

The Planning Board's next meeting, on Monday the 5th, will workshop the rough draft of Portland's new Bicycle and Pedestrian chapter of the Comprehensive Plan (download the PDF here).

The plan includes a map of planned citywide bike routes, cyclist safety education initiatives, and a framework of "quality of service" engineering standards that will set measurable benchmarks for safer streets and sidewalks. This Planning Board workshop will be a chance for the Board and citizens to offer feedback and suggestions before the document goes to the City Council for formal adoption, which will give it legal force as a component of the city's comprehensive plan.

Why I Care About Housing

2012-10-24T20:52:00.001-04:00

These are the chief reasons why I care about housing policy — and specifically, why City Hall needs to do a lot better when it comes to building more housing in-town:

As an environmentalist, I'm most concerned about global warming and our addictions to fossil fuels. In Maine, a lot of our electricity already comes from renewable sources, and we're making good strides on energy efficiency in buildings. Moving more people closer to where they live and work — into neighborhoods where they can walk and bike to run most errands, or, at the very least, drive much shorter distances — is the most effective thing we can do at the local level to make a dent in oil addiction.
More in-town residents means more sales for local businesses (plus more local businesses starting up to serve residents: see Reny's, for instance). I don't think that it's any coincidence that the boom in new restaurants and storefront occupancy downtown has coincided with the rapid rise in gas prices during the past 8 years: people living downtown earn similar wages as people from the suburbs, but because they don't spend nearly as much of their paychecks on cars and gasoline, they have a lot more disposable income to spend in the neighborhoods where they live (and not at the Maine Mall).

The more housing we provide in Portland, the more we'll shift regional household spending away from Big Oil corporations and towards local businesses.
And as a corollary to the above point, more local businesses, and more foot traffic on local streets, means that our streets and sidewalks become more vibrant, safer, and more interesting.
Last but not least, I'd like Portland to remain an egalitarian place for everyone to live. A place where the working poor and recent immigrants can find opportunity and secure a measure of economic security.

The city's recent inflation in housing rents is a big threat to those ideals. Turning people away isn't a solution (unless you're OK with Portland suffering from the same kind of gentrification-onset blandness that ruined places like Cambridge and Brooklyn — and while a lot of shitheads are perfectly OK with that, I don't consider myself a shithead), and we should be pleased that there's an increasing amount of demand to live in-town.

But if demand is rising, then the only reasonable way for the city to combat housing price inflation is by aggressively expanding the supply of housing that's available here.

I know that some of this blog's readers are more interested in architecture or bike infrastructure, but I hope that these points will convince you to be concerned about the city's housing policies, too.

I'm posting this this evening because earlier today my biweekly column in the Portland Daily Sun addressed the city's new plan to tackle homelessness in Portland. This, too, is a big issue that affects the security and sense of vitality in Portland's downtown streets and public spaces like Congress Square. The visibility and lousy treatment of our homeless population reflects poorly on our city. As I write in the column, the city's new plan is a good first step — but it also needs to come with meaningful commitments to the city's social services, and to building more apartments citywide.

Bike/Ped Advisory Committee meets tonight

2012-10-15T14:58:00.001-04:00

The Portland Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee meets this evening at 5:30 pm in Room 24 of City Hall (in the basement level near the Myrtle Street entrance). As always, new faces are welcome, so come drop by and learn more about some of the exciting plans in the works to improve Portland's streets.

Please note that, while we typically meet on the 2nd Monday of each month, today's meeting was rescheduled due to Columbus Day last week.

On our agenda:

5:30 pm - welcome and introductions
5:35 pm - brief updates:

Spring Street study (Corey)
Martin's Point Bridge project
Brighton/Falmouth/Deering study update
new Munjoy Hill bike lane!

5:45 pm - Meet Jeremiah Bartlett, the city's new Transportation Engineer

6 pm - Nominate rep. from PBPAC to Libbytown Traffic and Streetscape Study citizens' advisory committee

6:10 pm - Discuss candidate studies for funding under the regional "urban planning work plan" listed here).

6:20 pm - Open Streets Update (Jen and Zach)

Next Neighborhood Byway: Fore River to Deering Center

2012-10-03T23:37:00.000-04:00

PACTS, the regional transportation funding and planning agency, is set to approve a small batch of construction projects for the 2013 and 2014 construction seasons. There are some small changes being planned for Woodford's Corner that could widen sidewalks and make marginal improvements to the streets in that neighborhood, based on the Transforming Forest Avenue Study*, and some street reconstruction projects. There's also a proposal to extend the new Veterans Memorial Bridge path from its current southern terminus on South Portland's Main Street, in a bleak district of car repair shops, half a mile further to Broadway at Cash Corner, a bleak district of fast food joints.

But the most exciting project being proposed is one that would extend the city's first "Neighborhood Byway" from Deering Center and Woodford's Corner southward through Libbytown to the Thompson's Point transportation center and the planned sports arena/office complex, along existing low-traffic neighborhood streets (view a map here).

Most of the project's modest budget would go towards traffic calming, and particularly towards shrinking the size of jumbo intersections along the way to give bikes and pedestrians shorter, safer crossings of major roads like Brighton Avenue and Congress Street. The main idea is to make those big, busy streets feel less intimidating, and reduce their impact as barriers that prevent neighborhood residents from walking and biking to the bus & train station on Thompson Point, or to errands in Woodford's Corner.

For instance, where Sewall Street currently meets Congress near the Portland Transportation Center, the crosswalk is currently 70 feet long (longer that the crossings of the much busier Washington Avenue on Munjoy Hill). The Byway plan would move the curbs to create shorter crossings and improve the streetscape with new landscaping:

Moving north towards Woodfords Corner, the crossing of Brighton Avenue would also be improved for bikes and pedestrians with new crosswalks with median refuge islands, which will also help slow down traffic along this length of Brighton:

And finally, where the new Byway meets Woodford Street, there are plans for additional refuge island crosswalks plus — between the two islands — a short center-turn lane for bikes to negotiate the jog from Beacon Street to the contra-flow bike lane on Nevins (which, in turn, connects to the existing Neighborhood Byway to Deering Center to the west, and to the Ocean Avenue bike lane to the east):

Additionally, the entire route would get new wayfinding signage, similar to the signs that went up in Deering early this spring. If all goes well, this might go under construction late next summer, or in 2014.

* As several have suggested, Transforming Bits of Forest Avenue But Not the Parts With Four Lanes of Traffic and not the Drive-Thrus Either and Actually Not Transforming Most of It, Really But Can We Have Our Massive Consulting Fee 'K Thanks Bye might have been a better name.

"Bay House" under construction — a smart growth housing milestone for Portland

2012-10-01T16:43:00.000-04:00

I'd had my doubts whether it would come together — the developers were under a deadline to begin construction by the end of September or else lose their zoning approvals — but late last week a couple of diggers showed up and broke ground on the Bay House, the first large market-rate, mixed-use apartment building to go up on the Portland peninsula in decades.

I spoke with Alex Jaegerman from the city planning office this morning, and he told me that the Bay House is having an official groundbreaking tomorrow. They've also taken out a performance guarantee with the city — meaning that, if the project shuts down at this point, the banks will be on the hook for site stabilization and sidewalk reconstruction.

Since that's something that the lenders definitely want to avoid, it's sort of seen as a point of no return, and a sign that the developers have a real construction loan in hand and are really committed to building the thing.

It'll be a welcome addition to my neighborhood, and a more than welcome addition (94 new rental apartments) to Portland's strained housing supply.

The a-park-ment

2012-09-21T16:39:00.001-04:00

Today is Portland's first participation in the global Park(ing) Day event. Jess and I, with Morgan Law of Kaplan-Thompson Architects, built this "a-park-ment" on Fore Street. It's been a fun day with lots of well-wishers dropping by and enjoying the new public space:

The a-park-ment is meant to draw attention to the city's housing shortage by noting the fact that a single parking space occupies roughly as much real estate as a small studio apartment (our structure, pictured above, actually didn't use the full length of a standard parking space).

Old news to anyone who reads this blog, but if City Hall sold its surface public parking lots — just a small fraction of the city's government-owned parking — for redevelopment, the real estate could contain over 20 new buildings the size of the new Oak Street Lofts building in the Arts District, with nearly 800 new housing units, which would generate an additional $1.25 million every year in new tax revenue for the city.

Just sayin'.

I've written a more detailed report with a lot more photos of the city's six inaugural Park(ing) Day parks over at the LiveWork Portland blog.