Riverbend Phase Two at Planning Commission Tonight

At the Planning Commission tonight the 3rd is a proposal for the second phase of a horizontally mixed-use project at Riverbend and Wallace Roads in West Salem.

Second phase to the north with apartments;
also expands the southern half shopping center

Just in general terms, this kind of thing has been envisioned for nearly 20 years in the West Salem plan.

This kind of thing is in our plans

But the NIMBY is strong, and neighbors are using it in two ways:

• To leverage the failure of the SRC to stop the project
• To leverage the project to restart the SRC

Lots of squawking

But the shopping center, with access to downtown or east-side businesses more constrained, may actually be more competitive without the SRC. As we have continued to build capacity across the river, on its own West Salem has failed to generate new retail and other commercial destinations. The Neighborhood Mixed-Use zoning from nearly a decade ago remains unused. Continuing to supply new cross-river capacity for drive-alone trips seems to drain demand for new commercial activity in West Salem itself.

Now with four-plex legalization also, new neighborhood-scaled and walkable commercial pods in West Salem may be supported in ways they were not before, and the lack of new cross-river capacity for drive-alone trips will help support them. There's likely a silver lining here.

That's not what the neighbors want to hear, but that's a reasonable perspective from high altitude.

The Hearing seems likely to be continued, and any decision seems sure to be appealed, so there will probably be more to say. (Previous notes on Phase One here.)

The Planning Commission meets at 5:30pm tonight in Council Chambers at City Hall.

Addendum, Saturday

It looks like the Planning Commission approved the second phase.

The architect's comments on "15 minute neighborhoods"

On FB a discussion of 15-minute neighborhoods prompted this response by the project's architect and planner.

He's right that it represents progress towards the goal of 15- or 20-minute neighborhoods, and it's important to recognize this.

But the idea that it "has arrived" is overselling things a fair bit.

Adjacent density is probably not yet sufficient to sustain a walkable, 15-minute neighborhood. Four-plex legalization might help some with this. The commercial pod will at the start be more like a strip mall and its kind of retail, and there won't be a grocery store there. The "pedestrian walks" will be through slack greenspace, not along building fronts. It's still a little Corbusierian, we might say.

By itself, this kind of development does not create the 15-minute neighborhood ex nihilo, nor does it exert sufficient gravitational force to change the larger neighborhood. And a classic 15-minute neighborhood is along an old streetcar line on a collector or minor arterial, not on a giant state highway stroad like Wallace Road. More changes will be necessary to realize a 15-minute neighborhood fully.

This is a start, but it's not the completion.