DAB Looks to end Downtown Parking Garage Subsidy; EOA-HNA Draft Reports Out

Tomorrow in the municipal acronymic pile-up, DAB and EOA-HNA meet!

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You can't really see them at this size, but clips from the September minutes of the Downtown Advisory Board have some interesting tidbits:

• Starting in 2017-18 the Board recommends that there be no more subsidy for capital expenses on the parking garages downtown. The subsidy will taper, and the allocation for 2016-17 will be less than half of the usual amount. This is likely to hasten a longer-term solution to the problem of funding downtown parking.
• In addition to the light and other improvements at Union and Commercial, the DAB is recommending work, principally striping bike lanes, on the High/Church couplet  as well as eliminating several sets of dual-turn lanes. (Though the notes say "Union Street Family-Friendly Bikeway" and "High/Church One-Way/Two-Way Conversion" both labels are a bit misleading. The preliminary steps would involve paint and striping only, and still leave the real family-friendly and two-way conversions for later. See here for more on the Union Street details.)
• There's also a cryptic allocation for a "Riverfront commercial facility." It's from the Downtown Strategic Action Plan and is still more general concept than detailed proposal or plan.

Here's the "short-term" chart from the final and adopted mobility study recommendations. With this funding plan, more than half of the "short-term" recommendations would be funded, leaving only work on Winter and Cottage Streets.

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Though they aren't highlighted, many of the dual-turn lane reductions are also included, but some of the ones in the table are outside of the downtown urban renewal zone's boundaries, and would not be funded by DAB and Urban Renewal Funds.

That's real progress - though of course so much more is possible!

Meeting agenda and packet is here.

The Board meets Thursday, October 23rd, from 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm in the Kalapuya Conference Room, 295 Church Street, Ste 201.

EOA-HNA - Too many 20th Century Assumptions!

The draft reports are out on the EOA-HNA and the advisory committee also meets on Thursday:

• Draft Housing Analysis
• Draft Economic Analysis
• Draft Housing Implementation Strategy
• Draft Economic Implementation Strategy

Yeah, sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.

The reports are long and a little tedious.

(Oh wait. That's like this post maybe. Regardless, the reports need more pretty pictures! In the meantime, here's a musical interlude...


Back to the regular programming...)

If there is a high-level criticism, it's that climate change isn't discussed in housing, and in the jobs study it's relegated to an appendix - and even there it's mostly in the footnotes. Climate change is noted, but doesn't call for any actions. It's a potential wrinkle, not a transformative event that summons our highest creativity and power.

Climate Change: There's a consensus,
but we're not actually going to factor it into our analysis
or try to do anything about it.

Other than trying to do a better job of making strip malls accessible to people on foot and on bike, there's also not a real discussion of transportation and likely changes. The land-use and transportation nexus is not fleshed out.

Overall, the thing feels yet bound by assumptions and methods from the last century. It's not a real leap into the 21st century and what jobs and housing are going to look like in another generation.

It is striking that Sightline yesterday cited a brand-new State of Washington set of traffic projections.

via Washington State Ferries
Transportation Revenue Forecast, October 2014
(Sightline link broken)

When are we going seriously to talk about land use and transportation and greenhouse gas?

Between McGilchrist and Madrona are lots of fallow land

Also interesting: A map of undeveloped (dark brown) and underdeveloped (orange-brown) land in Salem. There's an amazing band of old fruit orchard land, which was developed mid-century under County standards (that missing sidewalk donut again), that could instead have small-plex multi-family housing and make a meaningful dent in increasing density!

Sizable undeveloped orchard land off of Ewald

This is repeated throughout the city, though more expected the farther out you go, and is evidence that steps toward increasing density without large-scale demolition or building on the edges is not just possible but relatively easy. But it requires neighbors not to go into full-on NIMBY mode.

The studies look like an incremental improvement, but they call for additional task forces, studies, and zoning changes; and they still look bound to 20th century assumptions rather than to likely 21st century conditions.

Have you read them? Maybe you have a different take?

The EOA-HNA meets Thursday the 23rd at 5:30pm, in Pringle Hall, 606 Church Street SE.

Update, October 29th

Here's a note from a couple of days ago.

Time limits are working!