City Council, January 14th - Crosswalks and Green Bike Lanes

Council meets on Monday the 14th. Councilor Leung will be sworn in for the first time.

Five Crossing Safety Projects
Project estimate is now at $566,220

On the agenda are a couple of intergovernmental agreements with ODOT for walking and biking projects. One is a set of five enhanced crosswalks, some with additional bikeway components on the Winter-Maple Greenway at Pine Street and Fairgrounds Road. These are scheduled for construction in 2020. The very first estimates totalled about $250,000. Once the projects were scoped in more detail, the final estimate and contract was for $566,220. For two reasons this seems unlikely to be sufficient now. These were priced several years ago (notes from 2015 and 2016), and since then construction costs have risen. Additionally, the crossing on Fairgrounds is not a simple one, and though the City has not commented on this directly, it seems almost certain that the project will be phased and that the budget here will only afford partial construction.

There is a second agreement for signal enhancements and green bike lanes, but the project description is still a little vague:

Typical enhancements include intersection lighting upgrades, traffic signal equipment upgrades, the installation of protected/permissive left-turn phasing, and the installation of green bike lanes to alert motorists of the potential presence of bicyclists. One or more of these enhancements will be incorporated at each intersection identified above.

I think this is from the last round of All Roads Transportation Safety funding. Based on that 2016 description, here are the sites for green bike lanes:

• D Street and Lancaster Drive
• Market Street and Lancaster Drive
• 12th Street at Fairview (see the awkward bike lane transition in the new striping here)

But some projects from that 2016 list are not on this most recent list: The Commercial-Vista Corridor projects and Broadway at Pine Street.

The Staff Report does not explicitly reference the ARTS program, and it is unclear how directly the projects in this agreement follow from the ARTS list. (This is a way that transportation funding is rather opaque and mysterious to non-insiders.)

Restaurant concept for 245 Court Street, with some zig-zags

In the information items is a modification to the single-story retail space on the east side of the residential block at the 245 Court Street project.

City Council, November 13th - Public Bike System and the Airport

Council meets on Tuesday following the observance of Veterans Day on Monday. They've got transportation projects great and small to consider.

Most interesting here is the small one, "bike share," a public bike rental system. (As with "ride share," there's not really much sharing going on, and it's a ride rental. It is interesting that ride-hailing and ride-booking have become standard for the TNCs, but "bike share" is hanging around. The term also seems inaccurate.)

After word came out in the Bicycling Magazine rating from 2016, and then the SJ wrote a feature later in the year, it's been a winding road. But here we are finally.

Three park sites, one at the transit center

They've been talking about six or seven total stations for launch, but right now at Council there are four only, all in public areas.

Two would be in Riverfront Park, near the playground and Carousel as well as at the Union Street Bridge. A third would be in Bush Park near the Winter Street parking lot, and a fourth at the downtown Transit Center.

Exclusive franchise for Riverfront Park

Most interesting is that the proposed contract includes an exclusive franchise for operating in Riverfront Park.

Design Review for 245 Court at Planning Commission Tuesday

Here's a nice, short thing to observe! The Site Plan and Design Review for the mixed use project at 245 Court Street is at the Planning Commission next week on Tuesday the 2nd and, as these things go, the Staff Report is brief, finds no problematic elements, and recommends a straight-forward approval.

Storefronts along Court Street

A screened parking garage area along Front Street

The whole quarter block from above

There's a five-story, 40-unit apartment block on the corner along Front Street, and a single-story storefront on Court Street and the alley. Along Court Street the apartment block has a leasing office and lounge. All the parking is in back or under the apartment block, and is accessed off the alley. Bike parking is split between private, secure storage inside the building, and public racking in the little courtyard between buildings. At the Court Street sidewalk the buildings greet the street with windows and activity, and the screened parking area is along Front, which is the much less pleasant sidewalk anyway.

Really, you couldn't ask for anything more. This is a terrific project for downtown. (Previous notes, including some history of the now-demolished Safeway building, here.)

More on 148 North Liberty as Early Fred Meyer

December's storm postponed consideration of the storefront restoration project for the Engelberg Antiks building last month. It's on the agenda for the Historic Landmarks Commission this month. (The agenda and Staff Report's not up yet, however. Here's the Notice.)

Fred Meyer at 148 Liberty St NE,
undated but no earlier than 1938
(Salem Library Historic Photos)

The building remains a small source of fascination, and it is poorly documented in our downtown Historic District. There is a photo from the 1930s or 1940s, but it has not been dated. We can now date it to no earlier than 1938. The local story of Fred Meyer here and of the building itself is a little interesting, and with the help of some additional research by a blog reader (thank you!), maybe we can start to flesh out more of it. Some of it is secure, some is more conjectural. The outlines seem clear but you might be surprised how windy and braided are some of the details!

Here's an annotated clip from the 1926 Sanborn Fire Map for the half block on the east side of Liberty Street between State and Court. In the upper left is the newly restored McGilchrist and Roth block. The Book Bin's building is on the right. The old Fred Meyer is addressed on it as 140 N. Liberty, but today we use 148 Liberty NE.

1926 Sanborn Fire Map
(Comments in red added)

The Historic District uses a date of 1915 for construction, but in tentative way I want instead to propose 1908.

There is an announcement in September of 1908 for a new building and opening of "Ye Liberty" Theater.

Opening Announcement, September 9th, 1908

Unfortunately for us, Salem was a small town, and it was not necessary to give any addresses! People knew how to find stuff.

Shortly thereafter, in 1910, notice about a business in the Roth building next door confirms the location of Ye Liberty Theater.

City Council, October 24th - 245 Court Street

Council meets on Monday, and the Urban Renewal Agency has a one-item agenda, to confirm an Urban Renewal grant for the 245 Court Street project.

Preliminary Concept for 245 Court Street
(Notes added) - via CB|Two

So there's lots to be cranky about right now at the City. But here's some good news.

The Urban Renewal Agency looks to sign off on "$740,000 in Riverfront-Downtown Urban Renewal Area grant funds to partially fund construction costs for a to-be-built 43,000 square foot mixed-use commercial building at 245 Court Street."

Especially in comparison with the Rivers Condos just across Court Street, there's a lot to like about this project:

• Choices about how to greet the sidewalk are right! The storefronts face Court Street rather than Front Street. The facade at the Front Street sidewalk will mostly be screening for some covered parking tucked under the building. If you have to sacrifice one of the sides to the parking garage, the Front Street side is the right one.
• There's also a small plaza between the two buildings.
• The existing Safeway will be modified, basically cut in half for modern storefronts, and not completely demolished.
• Parking will be accessed off the alley and be screened from the sidewalks by buildings.

Basically this is all you could ask for. (Except for the unrealistic wish for no parking at all!)

And, considering that the City approved a $750,000 grant for a Nursing Home at the Boise site (see below for final approvals on site plan), this is also a better targeting of urban renewal subsidy.

It'll be interesting to learn about any substantive complaints or criticism. Mostly it looks like exactly the kind of project that will enhance downtown.

Pioneer Trust Bank: Mid-rise perfectly scaled here
The 245 Court will be to the same scale

The project is still in a preliminary phase, so there may yet be changes before final approvals. (Previous note here.)

Other Notes

• Since there's the proposal for an oversized and overbuilt Police Station on the ballot, it is interesting to see the details on a renewal of the "Automated Biometric Identification System." The current system covers fingerprints and palm prints, but the renewal "provides for future upgrades to the system that may include other biometric data services including, but not limited to, retinal scanning and facial recognition."
• House-keeping rule changes for Council meetings, including advancing Council start time to 6pm and moving up submission deadlines for inclusion on formal agenda.
• A new Railroad Quiet Zone for the Portland and Western Line along River Road and Front Street. It would affect the entry to Minto Park and the State Stret and Court Street entries to Riverfront Park. Union Street would not be included. There is no list of modifications, but the total dollar amount is not large, so hopefully there will be no major impacts to walking and biking access to the parks.
• A minor appeal on the Pembrook Apartments, chiefly over the location of some balconies and ancillary claims about "privacy."
• The Information Report on approval of the Nursing Home complex at Boise.

Postscript, Nov 3rd

CANDO transcribed the Mayor's skepticism at Council of the little plaza and what looks like a vision of downtown that is a playground for the wealthy:

At last night's meeting of the Urban Renewal agency, CB2 Architects presented their design plans for a cool new "mixed use" development on the corners of Front and Court Street that will use urban renewal funds and bring 40 units of 1 and 2 bedroom rental housing to downtown. (CANDO officially endorsed this project at its last meeting.) The response was nothing short of enthusiastic, except the Mayor had a concern:

I notice that a landscaped plaza is planned for the open area between the two structures and will provide both private and public open space? Well, being one of the Chairs of the Mid-Willamette Homeless Initiative and dealing with so many of the issues of the homeless in downtown, and the many vagrancy problems that we are facing, I'm concerned about any amount of public space...I'm sure you don't want to build it like a fortress with gates and walls, but as a downtown resident, there are moments when I feel like I would like to live behind gates and walls. It's just a reality of the environment that we have downtown.

It seems the Mayor "just wanted to be certain that we weren't imposing upon you a responsibility to provide public space in order to receive grant funds." In response CB2 said, "We have not put any thought into how we are going to control the homeless people."

New Downtown Housing Proposed for Corner of Front and Court

Here we go, there's no drive-through coffee shack for this corner!

Old Safeway at 245 Court - time for redevelopment!

Last month at CANDO there was talk about a new downtown housing project proposed for the corner of Front and Court downtown. Application for design review was just filed with the City this week, and the Downtown Advisory Board meets next week and will consider a grant application for $740,000 Urban Renewal funds to support the project. They're moving fast!

From the Urban Renewal application:

The redevelopment proposal [currently estimated at $9 million total] comprises a 43,790 square foot mixed-use building with 40 residential apartments on four floors over parking, ancillary uses and commercial space. The retail building is designed as a one story building of approximately 2,180 square feet. Parking is provided in an open garage and a surface lot that is tucked behind the buildings...A landscaped plaza is planned for the open area between the two structures and will provide both private and public open space...

Corner of Court and Front

The project site, approximately the quarter block at the northeast corner of Front and Court, is a parking lot with the early 1940s Safeway, and it seems likely the old Safeway will be demolished. No matter. The lot is just outside the downtown historic district, so it's not protected by that, and new housing is an unambiguously higher use for the land than repurposing the old grocery store shell, which had been remodeled already for offices. It has been vacant for a while anyway, and didn't seem to be in very high demand. Housing will be great. The small plaza and disposition of the parking sound appropriately urban.

Christo's and Capital Market: Old Safeways Still Useful, Tell Development Story

Even a fragmentary history of Safeway in Salem is far, far beyond our scope here at the moment. Without better documentary evidence, it's hardly possible develop any narrative.

But city phone directories can give us a faint sketch of the history, and it turns out it's pretty interesting. As shopping moved from on foot to by car, the building forms and locations changed too, conforming to auto-logic over human scale. This is not a novel insight, of course, but the history of Safeways in Salem show it with particular clarity.

Safeway on corner of Court and Commercial, 1938
182 North Commercial Street was 3rd iteration
The building is the Breyman block of 1874,
also known as the "White Corner"
Salem Library Historic Photos

Enter the Market - Late 1920s

As best as I can tell, Safeway first came to Salem between 1926 and 1930. They opened shops in downtown buildings and the addresses bounced around a fair bit. They include 162, 270, and 182 North Commercial Street. One outpost at 1980 North Capitol Street was also opened.

Nationally, Safeway was already a large chain. It went public in 1927 and by the early 1930s had over 3,000 stores. The entry into the Salem market coincides with this growth phase. (See wikipedia and a long history at Groceteria for more.)

The period is a fertile one for change, obviously: It is the same time streetcar service ended in Salem and is also the end of stock market bubble and beginning of the Great Depression nationally. Ferment and then catastrophe brought lots of transitions in housing, transportation, and shopping.

It seems likely that the store on North Capitol Street was the first auto-oriented store. I don't know, though, if it was new construction or represented a reuse of an older building. The other stores downtown were in pre-auto storefronts, like the Breyman block of 1874, representing city development that dated from the 19th century or right at the turn of the century.

This is a transitional period, Safeway hasn't settled into a pattern, and is not so interesting for us. It may be that Safeway was always auto-oriented and had to wait for things in Salem to catch up. The next period, which represents particular configuration and set of solutions, is very interesting!