Planning for a mixed-use future
Daily Journal of Commerce, July 30, 2014, by Inka Bajandas
Portland officials hoping to guide anticipated surge of private development
Eric Engstrom, center, a principal planner with the city of Portland, speaks about the proposed draft of the 2035 Comprehensive Plan, as Kevin Martin, left, technical services manager for the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, and Dylan Rivera, communications manager with the Portland Bureau of Transportation, listen. (Sam Tenney/DJC)
Portland’s updated comprehensive plan is geared to respond to a mixed-use development boom expected to continue.
City planners this month released a draft of the 2035 Comprehensive Plan – a long-range look at anticipated growth and development in Portland over the next 20 years. The effort updates the current comprehensive plan, adopted in 1980, to reflect the increasing popularity of mixed-use developments along commercial corridors.
The updated plan is based on a Metro forecast that Portland will gain 200,000 residents between now and 2025. In response to that influx and shifting demographics, about 65 percent of construction in Portland is multifamily – mostly mixed-use buildings. That percentage is expected to increase to 80 percent by 2035, according to city projections.
The updated comprehensive plan will encourage more such development in areas like east Portland to create walkable urban neighborhoods. A focus on mixed-use development in neighborhood commercial districts, like Hillsdale and Hollywood, fits with city goals to promote more sustainable infill projects that provide housing for the city’s growing population, planners say.
“It’s much more about talking about the development in places than land use,” chief planner Joe Zehnder said. “We hope to guide the private investment.”
In parts of the city where mixed-use development has surged, such as Southeast Division Street, planners also hope to better respond to neighborhood concerns about the size and scale of projects with new zoning regulations.
The Mixed Use Zones Project will create zones catered to recent development trends. It also refines the updated comprehensive plan’s emphasis on growing mixed-use centers.
“Our whole growth strategy relies on the development of mixed use,” Portland principal planner Eric Engstrom said. “There is not a lot of buy-in in neighborhoods about this type of development.”
The project is being paid for via a $380,000 construction exercise tax grant from Metro. The new zones should be ready to go before the Planning and Sustainability Commission in mid-2015 following hearings for the updated comprehensive plan in late September.
Currently, the city uses commercial and central employment zones that were created in the 1990s, when car-centric developments and lower-density commercial projects were more common. These zones allow for residential use, but are vague about the parameters, creating uncertainty among neighborhood residents about what sorts of mixed-use development city code allows, Engstrom said. A new palette of mixed-use zones will be more specific and incorporate community feedback on the preferred design of mixed-use projects, he said.
“Our general thought is (the zones) can be beefed up to better reflect what type of buildings that are happening today,” Engstrom said.
This could include design standards on building heights, floor plans of the residential stories and requirements for ground-floor retail and windows, Engstrom said. For instance, ground-floor retail could be required on core commercial streets like Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard or in areas like Multnomah Village in Southwest Portland, he said.
In the future, city planners may consider creating guidelines for the design of mixed-use buildings going up in different neighborhood centers, Zehnder said.
“We want to have a value package that comes with the center,” he said.
Last month, city officials hosted a series to community walks to gather feedback on mixed-use development. Neighborhood concerns included the height of mixed-use buildings and how they relate to strictly residential areas, the scarcity of on-street parking and a boom in mixed-use construction that has chocked up traffic in areas like Southeast Division, Engstrom said. During the walk along North Williams Avenue, residents voiced worries about gentrification and asked city officials to offer incentives for affordable housing development in the neighborhood, he said.
In addition to seeking community feedback, the city hired San Francisco-based urban planning firm Dyett & Bhatia to conduct a national survey of best practices in mixed-use zoning.
“There is a lot of innovation in new zoning code over the last decade, and I’m sure there is more we can learn from other cities,” Engstrom said.
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Key ideas to ponder:
Where should mixed-use development go? What are the economic conditions that make mixed use successful? Is this a good land use plan for the next century (buildings and land use patterns will last longer than 2040)? What might we be missing when mixed-use becomes the de facto plan for the metro area?
"It’s much more about talking about the development in places than land use,” chief planner Joe Zehnder said. “We hope to guide the private investment.”
This could include design standards on building heights, floor plans of the residential stories and requirements for ground-floor retail and windows, Engstrom said. For instance, ground-floor retail could be required on core commercial streets like Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard or in areas like Multnomah Village in Southwest Portland, he said.
In the future, city planners may consider creating guidelines for the design of mixed-use buildings going up in different neighborhood centers, Zehnder said.
Who gets to decide what each city gets to look like, what the density should be, and how and where it should grow? Are cities becoming the equivalent of neighborhoods in a bigger city framework?
“Our whole growth strategy relies on the development of mixed use,” Portland principal planner Eric Engstrom said. “There is not a lot of buy-in in neighborhoods about this type of development.”
What happens to property rights and neighborhood livability when the plans are implemented?
"Neighborhood concerns included the height of mixed-use buildings and how they relate to strictly residential areas, the scarcity of on-street parking and a boom in mixed-use construction that has chocked up traffic.."
And - who is funding or subsidizing the growth that the Central Planners have in mind for us? What will this do to our basic services, fees and taxes?
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