Eliot Neighborhood Association
Land Use Committee
Minutes for May 9th, 2016

Submitted by Allan Rudwick, Chair

Meeting was called to order by Chair Allan Rudwick at 7:10 PM

Attendance was taken via sign-in sheet and a quorum of the Committee was present. Paul, Laurie, Allan, Montse and Phil were in attendance

Grant Warehouse low-income housing project

PRCI is in the early stages of development of this project at the former Grant Warehouse site at MLK and south of Ivy.  Unlike last month, they had 3-D renerings and mentioned exterior materials (brick mostly) with Vinyl windows.

The site is zoned Rh, which allows a building up to 75 feet tall.  A 5 story building is planned.    Retail is allowed up to some maximum of the floor area.  The floorplan is U-shaped facing MLK with a courtyard and parking in the rear.  The current plan is for retail spaces on the north and south corners on the MLK face with the entry lobby and community space in-between.  A total of 80 rental units are planned: a mix of 1-bedroom, 2-bedroom, and 3- bedroom.  There will be parking spaces for 28 vehicles plus a loading space behind the building.  A play area is also planned for the courtyard.  Units will be for residents at or below 60% of median family income with some units targetted at below 30% MFI.  See this chart to understand what that means.  There will be 2 large retail spaces, which might be broken up into a series of smaller spots internally.  They are providing bike parking of more than 1.1 per unit although they are counting people bringing bikes into units into that total.  There was a discussion of how many cars are likely to be parked at the site and they mentioned that other projects that they have constructed often have unused parking spaces which encouraged them to go ahead with this plan of slightly more than 1 parking space per 3 units.  Parking will be free for residents.

Motion to support street trees on MLK side of the building passes 5-0

Other topics

Motion to send a letter to PBOT complaining about the “ugly” and “cheap” diverter at Rodney and Ivy passed.  Something more like at 16th and Tillamook with landscaping was desired.

Pollution concerns in the neighborhood brought about a lively conversation.  It seems Portland is way behind other cities in terms of regulating polluters which encourages dirty industry to stick around.  Some places in the neighborhood are involved including a site at N Williams and Cook (with pipes on site for remediation an old laundromat that dumped chemicals on-site).  Local laws would make this easier to enforce – Paul Van Orden mentioned that he did this type of work for 20 years in New Jersey and they used odor laws to get in the door of polluting sites and then went from there.

NE 7th has made it into the Portland TSP plan as an option (currently 7th or 9th instead of just stating 9th would be the route).  Numerous neighbors spent a lot of time on advocacy around this issue.

Meeting was adjourned at 9:15 PM