100 years ago the election was heading into the home stretch. The morning paper, the Statesman, was all in on Calvin Coolidge and started running ads and also supportive editorial content for him.
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| October 19th, 1924 |
The afternoon paper, the Capital Journal, did not support Coolidge. On Halloween in 1924 they were starting to wrap with a note on the Klan.
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| October 31st, 1924 |
Repeatedly over the fall they had highlighted Klan support, riffing on the popularity of the slogan, "Keep Kal Koolidge."
Here's some great news!
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| D.A. White Seed building (2010) |
The new owners of the D.A. White Seed building on Front Street at State have started a file at the City with a proposal to rehab it for office space.
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| Basement and first floor concept plans |
That would be so terrific. It's been neglected for so long, and just about any use that keeps the shell and structure intact would be a boon to downtown. Heck, by now anything is better than a dilapidated ruin.
The process is just starting and structural engineering, as opposed to any aesthetics of design, has always seemed like the main barrier. It needs a lot of work. It's easy to imagine any number of decision points where the project fails to pencil out. There's still a ways to go before any construction.
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| Outside the Historic District (City of Salem) |
Significantly, the building is not within the Downtown Historic District and will not have to go through the usual historic preservation process and set of requirements. On the one hand, the developer will have more freedom to alter the building; but on the other hand, more cost effective solutions than straight-up restoration may be available. The initial set of drawings includes only the floor plans, and not any elevations of the facade. So it will be interesting to see how much of that is preserved.
But someone is trying something finally!
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| The first announcement in December, 2023 |
Earlier the SJ had reported on intent to rehab, but at that time it seemed a little remote and improbable. This latest step is meaningfully more substantial.
Good luck and best wishes for great success! This will be fun to follow.
In light of reluctance to advance a concept for new City revenue in a "Livability levy," City Council on Monday has an opportunity to think more about the system of property tax exemptions.
On the agenda is a proposed renewal of an Enterprise Zone for E-commerce. But the Staff Report says, "There have been no E-commerce Zone
applicants between 2020 and the date of this resolution." This looks like real evidence the City doesn't need it!
Council should take the opportunity to think more critically about the benefits of these exemptions.
Also on the agenda is the quarterly business development report, and its vagueness and generality is also evidence that we don't think critically enough about the costs of inducements to new and existing business.
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| When will the Enterprise Zone expire? |
The report, previously text only, now has photos and more snazzy design. It references instances of property tax revenue "once the...Enterprise Zone incentive has ended," but no indication that the exemption is definitely going to end. Businesses will sometimes create an expansion for a new round of exemption, churning things so they remain exempt.
An entry on a different business and set of incentives says
It is located on the newly-constructed Logistics Street SE. Logistics Street SE also provides new multi-use path connectivity through the centrally located 100 acres of wetland area.But the whole Mill Creek Corporate Center area is utterly car-dependent, and "multi-use path connectivity" here is theoretical and Potemkin show, not anything in reality for real people.
The quarterly reports should be more analytically detailed and read less like the puffery of a press release. They don't actually have enough information for Council to think critically about trade-offs and about real success and real failure.
With Fairview on the mind, in research a new project emerged for the last parcel. Last month a revived project there initiated a file with the City.
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| 2004 concept plan and 2024 proposed plan |
The New Project is just Houses
The new project is a ways away yet, and it retains the same ownership,
Simpson Hills LLC and the name Fairview Hills. It is also associated
with Holt Homes, a large home-builder with sites in Washington and Oregon.
It's for 552 single detached houses over about 102 acres, with a street pattern that mostly goes downhill rather than across the hill. The green space roughly corresponds to the greenspace in the 2004 concept (see image at top). The zoning is "Fairview Mixed Use," with nearly all of it in a "mixed intensity" (aka "medium intensity") overlay.
The mixed-intensity area comprises primarily residential uses, along with a mix of small-scale neighborhood commercial, employment, and public services uses. Buildings will be a mix of one-story to three-story detached, attached, or stacked housing types sited on smaller individually-owned lots with private yards and street and/or alley access, or larger lots under multiple or separate ownership with shared street and/or alley access. Townhouse development is appropriate at the higher density range.
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| Simpson Hills 2012 Refinement Plan (detail) |
At Lindburg Road the lower half of an earlier concept from 2012 (itself a modification of the 2004 concept plan) had more apartments and townhomes, and more of a parking lot than street system. It also had a little commercial cluster. It's density was a little over 13 homes per acre.
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| Proposed street, alley, and path system Green runs downhill, blue dashed across the hill |
This new Fairview Hills deletes all that and reverts to more conventional patterning with streets and single lots — though there are several alleys also for garage access. Interestingly, not all blocks have an alley.
Even though there was nobody on them, the stoops on New Strong Road were cheery. So many front porches and stoops directly greeted the sidewalks all throughout the Fairview redevelopment, and it's great to see.
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| Stoops on New Strong Road path |
Just one block west, the final segment of New Strong Road looked to be complete, and soon would be opened.
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| New Strong Road is complete and nearly open! |
It will be terrific to be able to walk or roll from Pringle Road into the interior without having to be in the street on Reed Road with its 45mph speed limit.
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| Close to the same view in July 2023 |
But the multiuse path already looks obsolete. If ebikes and e-mopeds are cruising along at 20mph or more, connections to the front entries to homes are conflict points. Imagine taking the final step from a stoop and — wham! — a collision with a person on a motorized kind of bike.
You might say, "well, if a person is using an ebike or e-moped they'll have sense enough to be in the street with other motorized traffic."
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| via Reddit |
"Sure they will."
The Historic Landmarks Commission meets tomorrow, Thursday the 17th, and they'll be considering lighting on two of the three agenda items. New signage for the Elsinore would be a great addition!
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| Approve new retro blade sign |
The Elsinore Theater proposes a set of front entry, marquee, and facade improvements, the most notable of which would be a retro neon-style blade sign. Like the one on the Grand a block north, this would be a cheery addition to the night in downtown!
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| Makes the night more cheery (via Cherriots) |
There are some other ornamental restoration details also, including some gothicky filigree for up high. (Here's a good early view with it.)
On these the Staff Recommendation is for approval.
You can see some of the historic illuminated marquees, including the Elsinore, in the history wrap on the vault at the Courthouse on High and Court.
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| "Salem's Theatrical History" at High and Court (2019) |
But on one detail Staff recommends denial.
The City's "Walk to a Park" campaign last week didn't seem to generate much comment on social media. The way they promoted it is weird, and a walk around the perimeter of the Fairview project illustrated the problems.
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| via FB |
The City published a list of "Walkable Neighborhood Parks."
About it they said:
Salem has 93 parks, most of them neighborhood parks! In honor of this day, we've created a series of maps showing the parks available in each Salem Neighborhood so that you can walk to a park near you today! Download your favorites and take them with you on your mobile device to explore Salem parks near you.
It's just a data dump! They show all of the areas designated for "parks," including future parks, and it was unvetted by a human who might actually walk to each park area and verify that it is indeed walkable and indeed developed as a park.
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| This is a lot of nonsense! |
The "parks" on the perimeter of the Fairview redevelopment, Braden Lane Natural Area, Reed Road Park, and Fairview Park, are all undeveloped. Fairview Park at least has some very minor signage, and might slip in on a technicality as a real park, but Braden Lane and Reed Road are not anything you'd walk to and should not count as a park. They are unsigned, lack any access from the primary roads that border them, and look more like "no trespassing" situations.
The maps lack legends also. The dark green must be improved parks, the hatched line must mean future parks, and the lighter green some kind of "walkshed." But you have to decode this! If the City wants these to be usable, they should delete the unimproved park areas and provide a legend.
They also need to add a sidewalk layer and auto speed layer. Assessing walkability without these is useless.
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| 2020 Sidewalk inventory (SKATS) |
Reed Road Park is the most forbidding.
Walking south-ish on Battle Creek there is no sidewalk. When the sidewalks starts up again, at Southhampton the sidewalk is totally overgrown with brush and bramble.
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| Sidewalk hidden and totally overgrown Reed Road "Park" in background |
After walking in the bike lane, with cars zooming by at 40mph and more, you reach Reed Road and might cross into the "park," but it's totally overgrown, and there's no park signage.
That didn't take very long. On the 25th of last month the "Cannery" redevelopment for the former Truitt Bros. site went before the Hearings Officer. The Hearing attracted no opposition and the project was not contested. A few people offered comments or questions on some details, but no substantive objections. Despite it being a complicated project, with the Willamette River Greenway and the railroad bisecting Front Street offering real constraints, the Hearings Officer was able to adopt the Staff Recommendation and approve the project in a straightforward way. At Council on Monday is the approvals as an information item. Since no one raised any great objections at the Hearing, any appeal seems improbable. The smooth sailing was surprising and nice to see!
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| Along Front Street, looking northwest (updated project website) |
Previously:
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| Part of Condition 15 (options 1 & 2 omitted) |
The 10-foot path along the river seems narrow, and the relation between the conceptual design work for the "street improvements" in condition 15 and the $2.7 million RAISE grant has not been explicated. The conceptual design work now adopted will determine elements for the RAISE grant work and narrows its possible outcomes, quite possibly in non-optimal ways. The City really should discuss this relation more. The cart sure looks like it's before the horse here.
Separately, it looks like some kind of strand lumber, mass timber, or other newfangled wood products will be used in the construction and this will be interesting to follow.
On the whole the project is exciting.
Bullets for the rest:
Addendum, October 15th
Salem Reporter adds more in "Cannery redevelopment project gets green light from city."
The tone on the path and bike connectivity is odd.
The development will have more spaces for bikes than cars, with 439 bicycle parking spaces, and 422 for vehicles — most in a garage....
A greenway path will run the length of the property next to the Willamette River. That will provide space for bikes and pedestrians.
“We just didn’t want to have bikers riding up next to trains and cars,” Michels said.
Though it’s beyond the scope of the project, Michels said he’s hopeful neighboring property owners could eventually extend a greenway path along the river to connect the Front Street corridor to Riverfront Park.
There's just not room on a ten-foot path for a lot of bike traffic and foot traffic, especially if table dining is right there with people having to cross the pathways often. It's great there will be good bike parking, but if there's no connectivity on Front Street, it will be a total island with a bike path to nowhere.
Separately they note "Rogue Brewing has signed a letter of intent to occupy the brewery space."
(Also compare the paint scheme change between the image here and the image at SR! The mansard roof got a lot darker, and more brooding.)
Completely unrelated research turned up this dismaying episode of enthusiasm for eugenics right here in Salem in the late winter and early spring of 1935. Even though sterilization laws remained on the books and active for decades, it had seemed like general interest had diminished some after the 19-teens and twenties, with Bethenia Owens-Adair's death in 1926, but this was not in fact the case.
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| February 12th, 1935 |
The Marion County Health Officer had arranged for a German exhibit on eugenics to be displayed at the YMCA.
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| February 10th, 1935 |
The early press says the exhibit was "famous," and only that it was from Dresden, from the Deutsches Hygiene Museum.
Willamette Professor S. B. Laughlin and the Rector of St. Paul's Episcopal, Rev. George Swift, endorsed it.
Yesterday Salem Reporter published on a welcome sign drivers keep hitting.
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| via FB |
They say,
Since 2021, the sign has been struck at least once a year....“There has been no official determination for why the sign is frequently damaged,” according to Trevor Smith, spokesman for Salem’s Public Works Department....The frequent damage to the sign began a year after it was built [in 1994].
Seemingly, it's a mystery why it happens.
But this is centrally a refusal to see, an instance of autoist blind spots.
Zooming out just a pinch, you see the sign at an intersection of stroads, overengineered for speed. The southbound continuation of River Road operates like a slip lane and even a highway exit lane.
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| Going South: Big stroads, overengineered for speed |
Drivers are going at high rates of speed here.
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| Going North: "Do not enter" and sweeping curve (rubble from a previous crash also!) |
In the other direction, there's a stroad with a sweeping curve and the "straight" movement is into that one-way slip lane.
The spandrel, the unused triangle in which the sign is mounted, is a result of engineering roads for speed and capacity.
Last minute lane decisions are a likely cause of at least some crashes. The problem to solve is high speed, and the solution is much slower speed. This is a drivers, driving, and car problem, not a sign location problem.
Even if the compound intersection is tricky, slower speeds allow drivers to parse the intersection and make unrushed decisions.
We might also compare it with similar "roadway departure" crashes.
The contractor continues to make progress with the striping for the new crossings on middle Commercial. The bike crossing between Alice and Vista is filling in, and it's odd!
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| Left Turn Lane from Liberty to Commercial |
The original concept drawing showed only one bike lane.
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| Concept: Crossing in front of the landscape median |
What appear to be the changes:
There appear to be some trade-offs here, and the logic of the new striping detail is not exactly wholly legible. It seems overcomplicated. We'll see how it turns out in practice. Maybe what seems confusing now will resolve into clarity later.
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| October 3rd, 1924 |
Over at our Strong Towns group, there's a bit of talk about exclusionary zoning, and it uses a Portland exhibit, drawing on Portland materials. But we have evidence for it right here.
The City's running a fun contest to name the new narrow and electric street sweeper, especially useful for bike lanes and other constrained spaces.
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| via FB |
An obvious joke that multiple people have made is on the vacuum cleaner brand.
But of course it can point also to Salemite and former President Herbert Hoover.
What better way to honor his time in Salem?!
Before he presided over the disaster of the Depression, as Secretary of Commerce he prompted new traffic laws and zoning laws, a real development in our autoism, which we are finally starting to unwind now. The street sweeper is a real detail in support of the transportation and zoning changes in our current process of reform.
Even before his time as Secretary of Commerce, Hoover was known for practical things like the European Relief and Rehabilitation Administration right after World War I. His management of food relief saved people's lives.
Before that, he was a mining engineer, all about digging and scooping and clearing.
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| "Hoover's boyhood days in Salem," April 3rd, 1920 |
And in Salem he was aloof and not broadly liked. Equally, he did not seem to like Salem.
Naming the street sweeper after him alludes to the full ambivalence and ambiguity of his career, genuinely useful, but also with a lot of crap, and only much later after his time in Salem attracting a kind of local parasocial affection by his celebrity and political prominence.
Do it, City of Salem!
The Policy Committee for our Metropolitan Planning Commission meets on Tuesday the 24th to adopt the new Metropolitan Transportation Safety ...
