City Council, March 13th - Second St NW and the Charmless Concrete Bunker

On Monday Council looks to confirm the cancellation of part of the railroad easement along the former Salem, Falls City & Western line, now Second Street NW, west of Wallace Road.

Salem, Falls City & Western Line, 1915 USGS map

There were alternate universes in which this might have been a path and trail extension from the Union Street Bridge, but a street with limited bikeway provisions will have to do. 

The scope of the easement cancellation is a little ambiguous. The legal agreement itself suggests termination at Patterson. The "project location map" with the Staff Report is for the whole Second Street project and might seem to suggest termination at Gerth. But as I read it, the actual easement in question here is between Patterson and Wallace.

Patterson to Wallace
Formerly private, this section is becoming a road

A decade ago and more, connectivity on this segment of Second Street seemed a very distant prospect. Of course it still lacks a crossing, at-grade or grade-separated, on Wallace Road, and the City still seems to have designs for connecting Second Street with Marine Drive, very much compromising the path connectivity to the Union Street Bridge. But it's a partial connection even with those qualifications.

It will be very interesting to see ultimately how it all turns out.

Other Items

There are several First Readings on the agenda, but as First Readings they are still more preliminary than substantive.

Far bigger than the easement, but nothing on which there is anything new to say, is First Reading of the proposal to eliminate parking requirements citywide. Council will hold a Public Hearing later. The debate on it is sure to get shouty, but it will be a great improvement once enacted. 

Overlay zones on or near south Commercial
(City of Salem zoning map)

There's also a First Reading for deletion of the various overlay zones immediately along the Commercial Street corridor from the Cemetery to Mission Street. (Also the "initiation" agenda item which essentially duplicates the Staff Report.)

From the Staff Report:

The proposed changes to the zoning map aim to... [encourage] housing and mixed-use development or redevelopment near frequent transit service....The MU-I, MU-II, and MU-III zones allow buildings up to a maximum height of 65 feet, 55 feet, and 70 feet, respectively. However, the overlay zones limit the maximum height of buildings to 35 feet....

The standards contained in the overlay zones reflect the priorities at the time they were created. These overlay zones were implemented in the 1980s as part of a planning effort to prepare for the widening of Commercial Street SE. At the time, some portions of the land abutting Commercial Street SE were zoned for residential development, but as the street was widened, the City recognized the importance of rezoning this land for commercial uses. These overlays were established to mitigate any new adverse effects on residential land near this corridor that might result as land converted from residential to commercial uses abutting Commercial Street SE....

The existing overlays in the SCAN neighborhood, however, are unique in that they go further to limit development potential along Commercial Street SE by limiting height and requiring additional setbacks adjacent to certain streets. Similar overlays do not exist elsewhere in Salem along mixed-use corridors that also abut residential areas. [italics added]

SCAN has resisted the changes as harming neighborhood character, but would a mixed use apartment block really be any worse than a car dealership or car wash, and associated parking craters? 

More residents, more homes! And in turn that will prompt more walkable businesses along Commercial Street.

The likely move by Council is to advance the matter to a Public Hearing, and there will be more analysis and debate then.

Previously, see:

• On a debate just previous from last fall, and related, on MU-III vs MU-II zoning, "City Council, October 24th - Zoning on Commercial, Deceptive Airport Estimates"
  
• And on the move to consider the overlay zones, "City Council, November 14th - Overlay Zones and Video Promotion"
• And debate in 2018 on building height in the State Street Corridor Study, here and here, which seems likely to echo in this debate.

The Charmless Concrete Bunker gets a Public Hearing for designation as a local historic resource. This seems very unlikely to be contested, but we can still grumble some here about process and the hype.

Here's a resident displaced unwillingly and some of the homes demolished or moved for the Civic Center. One story suggests there were 23 owners involved, some with multiple lots.

Homes moved or demolished for Civic Center
February 9th, 1969

More cheerily, a note may have used "sun dial" loosely as metaphor, but it also raises the possibility that what we now call Peace Plaza had a functional sun dial in it. Maybe there will be more to say about that!

Before The Probe: Was this originally
a functioning sun dial?
September 12th, 1971

See recently:

• "Designating the Civic Center as Local Historic Resource: At the HLC"
• "City Council, February 27th - Civic Center and downtown Parking"
  

Bullets for the rest:

• There are a couple of items in new Legislative positions, and the City so far is silent on the Bike Bus Bill and the Streetcar concept.
• Councilor Julie Hoy proposes to term limit the chairs and vice-chair of Neighborhood Associations. In minutes and agenda over the years, any problem has seemed to be not so much entrenched leadership as not enough people interested in leadership and general membership in the associations. Elections for chairs have rarely seemed competitive. Maybe there's a problem with mentoring, but as we've seen with recent consolidation of adjacent Neighborhood Associations, general participation numbers is the problem. Term limits does not seem likely to address this. In any case, the proposal seems strange. Councilor Hoy didn't want to support Vision Zero and this is her inaugural issue? Maybe it's a trial balloon for other, more extreme kinds of proposals. It will be interesting to see how much support there is.

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A Footnote and Digression

Not on the agenda at all, but related to the railroad matter on Second Street, the City just published another promo video for the bond projects, this one for the Pringle Creek Path between Mirror Pond and Riverfront Park.

At youtube

People seem excited, which is nice, but also understand the video to say the project is ready to go.

But that's not at all the case. The director of the video did not move camera from this spot just at the eastern edge of the Commercial Street bridge. It was very confined and contained.

A decade ago, before demolition

If they had moved to the western edge of the bridge, to look through the chain link fence and out over the "bench" that's been created for the path, they would see the railroad trestle.

January SPRAB draft minutes

At the January Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, the City struck a very different tone, saying the railroad was a "substantial hurdle" and that "it's hard for the City to move forward."

Additionally, the City has not yet identified all the funding for the project. The bond allocation was supposed to provide only part of it.

If the City has finally resolved things with the railroad, they should say so; if not, which seems more likely, the video is very misleading.