The Eliot Neighborhood Association Board approved a proposal to give small grants (up to $100) to neighbors who want to host a block party or other outdoor event in the neighborhood.
Because we know that the foundation of neighborhoods is actual neighbors, we want to do what we can to encourage people meet their neighbors.
Hosting a block party in Portland can be as easy as filling out a block party permit to close a street, or you may not even want to close a street for whatever reason. Some things you might need to think about: printing flyers to tell your neighbor about the event. Getting some road closed signs. Organizing some food or activities. We hope you will consider taking this step towards building a relationship with your neighbors.
Allan Rudwick – Co-Chair Mike Warwick – Co-Chair Andrew Champion – Recorder Anders Hart – Guest
News
The Stop N Go Mini Mart at N Williams & Stanton was shut down 3/3/25. The store’s proprietor faces multiple felony narcotics and firearm charges.
Zeal Apartments on Williams—a ten year effort—appear to be open.
Letter of Support for No More Freeways (NMF)
Anders asked that we write a letter to Metro in support of NMF. The committee collaborated on a letter articulating its position that the Rose Quarter freeway expansion suits neither the priorities of Eliot as a neighborhood nor Oregon as a state.
From the Albina Vision Trust and The City of Portland, an invitation to look at planning in southern Eliot (Lower Albina)
Portlanders—join us for Envisioning a Reconnected Albina: A Kickoff Celebration! Come meet with project partners to learn more about how the Reconnecting Albina Planning Project (RAPP) will create urban development strategies that center restorative development for Portland’s Black community and reconnect the physical fabric of the Lower Albina, Lloyd, and Rose Quarter areas.
The Eliot Neighborhood Association and others are putting on another legal clinic Friday, February 28th from 10am – 2pm. Advance Sign-Ups are encouraged
Text of the Flyer: FREE EXPUNGEMENT AND BARRIER REDUCTION LEGAL CLINIC FRIDAY, FEB 28,10-2PM CASCADIA HEALTH: GARLINGTON CENTER 3036 NE MLK, JR. BLVD. Services Offered for lower-Income* Multnomah County Residents: Criminal Record Expungement Eviction expungement Reducing felonies to misdemeanors Waiving fines and fees (on parking, traffic, and criminal related fines) Driver’s license reinstatement Warrant lifts Business and legal advice for small businesses Brought to you by: ELIOT NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION CASCADIA HEALTH LEGALLY BOUND THE METROPOLITAN PUBLIC DEFENDER’S OFFICE
The City is having an open house for the Boise & Eliot Parking Management district they are proposing to create. This area would not see any immediate parking permits or meters, but parking time limit signs are proposed for 2025 and an evaluation of those may lead to more tools being used within the district.
Here is a map from December of the proposed district.
If adopted, the City will create a Stakeholder Advisory Committee to manage the district which will have an open application. It is expected that some people who have been advising so far will stay on to help advise the implementation but new spots will be available as well.
— The Eliot Parking meter area is being proposed to be merged into a larger Boise-Eliot Parking Management District that will include all of Eliot west of NE MLK, Jr Blvd. Note that this will not change anything currently but will create a meeting space to discuss issues along the Williams corridor. There will be an open house at BEH Elementary Sunday, January 26th https://www.portland.gov/transportation/parking/boise-parking/events/2025/1/26/boise-eliot-parking-management-plan-open
Board Meeting The next ENA Board meeting is delayed for MLK day to the 4th Monday of the month (1/27) in observance of Martin Luther King Jr Day
We invite community members to share your thoughts and concerns by using the Pin It, Portland: Reconnecting Albina interactive map. The map is open for input until January 15.
Pin it, Portland: Reconnecting Albina
Your input on the Pin It, Portland: Reconnecting Albina map will help project staff identify assets, opportunities, and challenges in the project area. To share your thoughts and concerns, add a pin to a desired location within the project boundary, insert your comment, and select one of the following categories in the tool:
Arts & Culture
Community Space & Public Facilities
Environment & Climate Resilience
Health & Safety
Housing
Land Use & Zoning
Transportation
Wealth Building
Other
Portland looks forward to hearing from you!
About the Reconnecting Albina Planning Project (RAPP)
RAPP is a two-year project to create restorative urban development strategies to reconnect the physical fabric of the Lower Albina, Lloyd, and Rose Quarter areas. The project is a collaborative effort involving the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS), Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), Prosper Portland, in partnership with Albina Vision Trust (AVT).
This week, the existing steel plates and boulders will be removed temporarily from Dawson park for off-site restoration work. The installation of the updated plates and renovated boulders is expected to occur between April – May 2025 to avoid the busy summer season in the park. None of the removal or installation work will impact use of the rest of the park’s amenities.
To make the most of Leaf Day, Move your car. Your car will be outside of the zone if it is:
east to NE 7th or farther
west to Vancouver or farther
North to Fremont or farther
South to Broadway or farther
I know that this is a pain, that many of your neighbors may not do it and that it is disappointing that our LEAF Day is so late in the year, but it is the only one day that the city is going to sweep our streets all year.
Suggestions from PBOT:
One day before. Rake the leaves you want picked up into the street one day before your scheduled Leaf Day pickup.
Tree leaves only. Use regular yard bins for twigs, branches, needles, grass clippings, and other debris.
Keep one foot of space between your pile and the curb for storm runoff and to make it easier for our sweepers. Also allow plenty of clearance between your pile and any vehicle left parked on the street.
Trim your trees to leave 11 feet of clearance. Make sure you trim any low-hanging tree limbs over the street so our equipment can get as close to the curb as possible and get the best clean. Learn more about tree pruning and permits here.
Move vehicles and other objects off the street. Whenever possible, allow plenty of clearance between your pile and anything left parked on the street. Leaf Day service districts are small enough that you should never have to travel more than a quarter mile to park a vehicle outside the boundaries of a Leaf Day district.
Help your neighbors. People are still working from home in large numbers, with vehicles parked longer. Check in with your neighbors so everyone remembers to move their vehicles on Leaf Day.
This month, ODOT issued a press release claiming the agency intends to start construction in the summer of 2025 on the proposed Rose Quarter Freeway Expansion Project despite ODOT only possessing 40% of the needed funding for the entire project and numerous legal hurdles in their way. The press release is designed to give this project as currently designed an air of inevitability, with ODOT issuing statements like “The I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project was created by the local community, City of Portland and ODOT working together to plan for changes coming in the future of inner north and northeast Portland. By building new separated bike lanes and wider sidewalks, improving the highway and creating new roadway connections, the project will create a better connected community, a more reliable I-5 and support economic growth.” (ODOT press release, 2018).
In a presentation to the Oregon Transportation Commission (OTC) this month, ODOT admitted that with their current available funding, they are limiting the scope of the project. Their ‘phase one’ would be minimal changes from the current I-5 travel patterns, but they would almost entirely to double the width of I-5. They hope additional funding arrives from the 2025 legislature to build the community components desired by the Eliot Neighborhood and others, but there is no guarantee that funding for these elements will be delivered any time soon (or ever).
Let’s be clear – thanks to the advocacy of Albina Vision Trust and other local partners to win a historic $450 million grant from the federal government, ODOT already has enough funding to build the caps over the freeway without the expansion. But ODOT is cynically spending this money upfront on their freeway expansion plans with the intent to beg for an additional influx of hundreds of millions of dollars in the upcoming 2025 legislative session, a tall order considering the legislature’s need to prioritize finding billions of new dollars of revenue to invest in basic maintenance and preservation of ODOT’s existing deteriorating roads statewide. This prioritization of investment in freeway capacity over the highway caps at a time in which the state legislature is clearly not capable of promising this additional influx of revenue jeopardizes the likelihood our neighborhood receives the positive transformative changes we were promised. We will, however, get the years of construction impacts of this project, the increased vehicle emissions, and the additional cars on our streets making the neighborhood more hostile to local residents for years to come.
In my testimony to the OTC this month, I reminded the Commission that the Eliot Neighborhood has consistently asked for a few basic things in this project: – Change traffic patterns to help businesses thrive – Reduce car traffic on local streets – Improve transit – Reconnect the urban fabric around the area – See usable pedestrian-scale buildings in and around the project area – Have walkable and bikeable routes to cross the highway without interacting with cars – Reduce air pollution
Meanwhile, the funded project will:
Widen I-5 south of the Rose Quarter
Ignore all ramp reconfigurations the community asked for and keep the status quo
Remove the hancock overcrossing
Remove the clackamas overcrossing
Keep the overbuilt freeway cap width, leading to the need to lower the roadbed and cause major disruptions to traffic
Remove the most desirable building locations from the caps
Widen I-5 north of the rose quarter
Widen I-5 in both directions through the rose quarter
The Eliot Neighborhood Association has therefore continued to serve as co-plaintiffs on multiple state and federal level lawsuits to stop this project as currently designed. We, along with advocates from No More Freeways and other groups believe that ODOT didn’t fully comply with federal environmental law that demands they look at alternatives to freeway expansion in our neighborhood.
Even if ODOT hosts a ceremonial “groundbreaking” ceremony next year to commence construction, the agency still faces numerous financial and legal hurdles to completing this project, and the Eliot Neighborhood will continue to use the tools at our disposal to demand that ODOT deliver a project that in line with our communities needs and values. Any Eliot resident who wishes to get more involved with opportunities to talk to our elected officials and legislators should reach out to me at lutcchair@eliotneighborhood.org; the upcoming year represents a critical opportunity for us to organize and stand up for our neighborhood, and we’ll need all the help we can get.
This isn’t over, but ODOT wants you to believe that it is.
Eliot Neighborhood Posts go to facebook, our email list, bluesky, and nextdoor. Do you have another site you would like us to cross-post to? Are there any topics you want us to cover more? As always feel free to reach out at info@eliotneighborhood.org with suggestions
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P:NW describes itself as “a campaign for abundant housing and climate-friendly communities in the heart of Portland.”
Campaign is in response to city’s housing crisis, attributed to downzoning of the city, with the goal to upzone the city’s inner eastside to resemble older parts of the city, with for street scale apartments, corner stores, et al to reduce the need for automobiles.
The current subject area does not include but is immediately east of Eliot, in part to limit displacement.
P:NW asks for LUTC support at upcoming NECN.
Warwick asserted that land, labor, and materials remain expensive, and that P:NW’s proposal differs little from local RIP2 and statewide zoning changes. Rudwick suggested that expanding beyond city corridors would reduce competition for multifamily zoned lots. Mike countered that it is a rounding error in the overall development cost.
Warwick moved to support P:NW at NECN, Champion seconded, 3-0 in favor
Updates
Event Parking Pilot
No news
Kerby Project
City may apply for Reconnecting Communities grant to study
News
Next release of Eliot News targeted to precede October general meeting.
Developer Presentation: 2416 N Flint Ave (at N Page)
Number of proposed lots for land division or planned development review:
Proposal Description: 19 unit (8x 2bd2ba, 8x 2bd1ba, 3x studio), 5 Story building with vehicular parking below (6 spaces: all w/ charging, 1 ADA) and rooftop deck.
Zoning of site: CM3d
Amount of square feet of new building area: 14,995 SF
Attendees weighed different possibilities for improved ground level programming within limits of code and site geometry constraints with a garage.
Common spaces are FAR exempt
PPS – Heidi Bertman
PPS is assessing the value of its Prophet Education Center property for redevelopment. Relocating district ops may prove more difficult than initially anticipated.
Status of Tubman is remains up in the air.
Event Parking Pilot
Allan testified before Portland City Council onJune 5th. Pilot advanced to the next phase of approval.
Kerby
Allan is pitching the Fremont Bridgehead to District 2 candidates, but still needs a grant and leading agency.
Allan shared draft of proposed permit parking area. Residents on block faces adjacent to permit area are eligible for permits.
The Portland Trail Blazers are a primary reason for the permit area but appear uninterested in directly funding permits. Indirect contribution through ENA may be possible.
Kerby Ramp/Fremont Bridgehead
Allan plans to reach out to city council candidates about the project and hold another site walkthrough.
Letters
Williams & Fargo
City is working with the new contractor for the construction site at Williams & Fargo to bring the sidewalk into compliance.
OHSU
OHSU replied affirmatively about working together post-Legacy merger but there hasn’t been much action.
NE 7th
General conversation: studying traffic diversion, progress on the greenway appears stalled.
Eliot Neighborhood 