BPS Releases Draft Report of 82nd Avenue Study

The City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability has released a draft report titled 82nd Avenue Study: Understanding Barriers to Development. According to a post on their website, the goals of the study are to:

  • Update our understanding of 82nd Avenue as a “Civic Corridor.”
  • Identify the most strategic locations for public action or investment support for businesses and property development on 82nd Avenue.
  • Generate policy recommendations to address physical and social needs in the corridor, and address barriers to development while managing equity and social issues.

Many of the recommendations are related to code adjustments, but one of the key near-term action items listed is “Jade District and Montavilla should be highest priorities for placemaking investments. They have some market momentum for the development types envisioned in the Civic Corridor concept (recent and proposed development), including adaptive reuse projects.”

The report lays out many of the challenges faced in redeveloping and improving the 82nd Avenue corridor and offers some possible solutions to be considered by City Council, including the use of a “nodal” approach to redevelopment (as opposed to attempting to redevelop the entire length of 82nd Ave). The reports lays out some of the advantages as well as potential nodal areas:

Some advantages of this nodal development concept:

  • Allows parties to acknowledge the differences in uses, intensity, activities, markets, and character that take place on the corridor;
  • Recognizes that pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use places can be modest in size, especially in early phases;
  • Enables the public sector to focus its investments where they are most likely to have impact and alter development decisions; and,
  • Acknowledges limitations in market demand, and some developers’ preference for investing in pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use places.

The following are typical principles that are used to establish pulse points of development:

  • Identify locations where positive development, place making, or community building is already taking place—build off existing strengths;
  • Identify major activity centers and destinations known by the local or regional community;
  • Use major intersections to create walkable nodes. Look for opportunities on perpendicular streets (in this case, east-west) that intersect with the main corridor. Oftentimes, the best redevelopment opportunities may be oriented towards perpendicular streets, rather than directly on the main commercial corridor;
  • Direct public investments to make higher-value private investments feasible; and,
  • Achieve the type of mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented, transit-supportive, and inclusive development set forth in the Civic Corridor concept.

82nd Avenue is increasingly becoming a corridor with these emerging “nodal” areas.

  • Roseway/Madison-South
  • 82nd Avenue MAX station area
  • Montavilla
  • Jade District
  • Lents
  • Brentwood-Darlington/South of Bybee (or “Springwater”)

If you are interested in guiding the city’s efforts around redevelopment of 82nd Avenue, now is the time to review the report and submit your comments. The public review and comment period goes through March 2019. See the post on their website for a link to the report and for details on how to submit comments.

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