Morningside, SCAN, Parks - Bits on Fairview, High Street, Sustainable Cities

Though meetings are slowing down and wrapping up for the year, three meetings this week had surprisingly interesting meeting agenda and packets.

Fairview Park, Fairview Hills, The Woods

Morningside Neighborhood Association meets on Wednesday the 13th, and they'll hear a "Fairview Hills Refinement Plan Presentation." 

A decade ago the "Fairview Hills" plan was called the "Simpson Hills" plan, and then it went on hiatus. 

Simpson Hills July 2012 Refinement Plan (detail)

With a lot more now built out at Fairview, including immediately adjacent areas, it's reasonable to suppose the owners, or new owners, want to revive the project. It will be great to learn more about this.

They'll also hear a brief update on Fairview Park planning.

At the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board (more below on it), it sounds like sentiment for the park might be shifting in favor of fewer hardscaped recreation features and for more trails, trees, and open space. 

But there's already the plan to keep "The Woods" as natural space. A more built-up park, with splash pad, ball field, volleyball/pickleball court, things like that, to complement it is reasonable, especially since it will be a "community park" for wider use, not just a neighborhood park intended for local use.

That will be something to follow more closely as it develops.

Previously:

• A few notes on the Simpson Hills project (basically all from 2012)
  
• On Fairview Park in 2016 and this summer.
• And at the City's "Park Planning" page, there are links to an existing conditions map and a historical timeline map with building footprints of the demolished structures.
  

Speed radar on High Street at Bush Park

SCAN also meets on Wednesday the 13th. In the minutes for last month were several items to note.

On the former UGM/Saffron site it sounded like the first round of proposals didn't yield a strong enough one, and they reopened it?

Block 50, the former site of the Union Gospel Mission, owned by the City has a second round of RFQ and RFP reviews. The reviewers are the Mayor, City Councilor Stapelton, and City Councilor Nishioki. Block 50 is regarded as the front door to downtown when people drive over the Center St. Bridge. [link added]

Maybe we'll learn more about this later.

On photo speed and red light enforcement:

[The Mayor] was asked why Salem doesn’t use speed cameras. Salem’s municipal court doesn’t have the capacity to handle more tickets. He is more interested in changing the behavior of drivers than issuing tickets.

Education and Encouragement?! The problem is our autoist culture valorizes speed and speeding. A local education and PR campaign is not going to make a dent in it. This committing to a feeble and impotent approach. Very disappointing.

• See at Strong Towns, "Why Transportation Nudges are Stupid" for some more on the weakness of PR campaigns.
  

Councilor Nishioka discussed the role of parking reform. It is so great to hear a sitting Councilor say this! New downtown housing is happening because we are prioritizing homes for people over homes for cars.

Councilor Nishioki shared her experience developing the mixed use building at the corner of State and Commercial Streets. The requirement to have 1 ½ parking spaces per residential unit made developing apartments on that site too expensive. When that requirement was eliminated, she was able to partner with a developer to build a mixed use building featuring studio apartments. The target market is students and medical professionals. [link added]

The SCAN transportation subcommittee appears to have landed on a formal recommendation for High Street. It is terrific!

SCAN requests the City of Salem take four actions concerning High Street SE:

1. Change the designation of High Street SE from a collector street to a local street in the Salem Transportation System Plan from Trade Street SE to Fairview Ave. SE.
2. Designate a family friendly bikeway on High Street SE from Vista St. SE to Leslie Street SE with a connection to the bikeway on Church Street SE at Leslie Street SE.
3. Implement effective traffic calming measures for High Street SE as outlined in the Neighborhood Traffic Management Plan.
4. Implement “20 is Plenty” on the entire length of the family friendly bikeway.

Interestingly, the City suggested that would involve a change at Mission:

The traffic light at High and Mission Streets has a long red-light interval for traffic on High St. to deter traffic from using High St. If High St. is reclassified as a local street, City staff have indicated that the traffic light might be removed.

I don't understand this part. Is it a punitive move? If High Street becomes a better bikeway, people using it will still need help sometimes crossing Mission Street. A better approach would be to retain the traffic light, but program it so it is activated by demand, not on any fixed timing cycle. When no people are queued up to cross, it remains red on High and green on Mission. Treat it like a HAWK signal.

Crosswalks on Oxford and Church
Main entry to South High

There was also a report on

the traffic study conducted by DKS Engineering after the school remodel project [at South Salem High School] was complete....It was a commitment by the district to study the effect of the remodel project on traffic in the area after the project was completed. Work was done in February 2023.

Here is a summary of the recommendations (click to enlarge).

Potential traffic calming

It's just so disappointing that the School District didn't incorporate more for walking and biking into their bond projects, doing this kind of analysis and planning much earlier in the process. This was a genuine failure.

December 10th, 1923

The Parks and Recreation Advisory Board meets on Thursday the 14th and there are several items of interest in the meeting packet.

In the November minutes is news that "consideration of Heritage Tree designations of the Lower Oak Grove in Bush’s Park are being postponed pending discussions with tribal governments." It may be that the City got a little ahead of themselves and assumed tribes would be grateful. It will be interesting to learn more. (Previous notes here.)

In other materials was a note that the amphitheater hosted 40 formal events in spring, summer and fall.

Parts of the Edgewater path really suck!

In a summary of letters of interest for the SPIF program, the West Salem Neighborhood Association want to add signage for the "Edgewater Parkway." CANDO wants to add some benches or other amenities to the forthcoming Pringle Creek path between Mirror Pond and Riverfront Park.

The Edgewater path is awful. It has blind corners, hidey holes for malefactors, and parts of it are overexposed to Highway 22. (At least the railing is in the proper place.) It really feels like efforts to promote it are attempts to get people on bike out of the way, out of the bike lane on Edgewater itself, and not any sincere attempt to provide a useful, comfortable, and attractive bikeway.

Advanced LEGO skills!

In what might be the first fruits from this year's Sustainable Cities Residency, there are photos of a prototype bandstand:

Students from Oregon State University’s Wood Science and Engineering and University of Oregon’s Architecture department have been working in interdisciplinary groups to design a kit of parts building system that can be quickly deployed and then disassembled to be reused in other locations. A final design review for the University of Oregon/Oregon State University Timber Tectonics course was held on December 1st. At the review, the students unveiled a prototype of their design for a pavilion for Highland Park in Salem. While the course will conclude following the preparation of a final report, the City may elect to carry forward the design concept.

This is neat.

Above is a note from 1923 about tree planting. It is interesting to see how they conceived the funding, directly apportioned to abutting property owners, and the list of trees.

The passage of laws in the course of the next twenty-five or thirty years making some uniform system of tree planting in the parking spaces [curb strip] just as much a part of the street improvement as paving, and the assessing of the cost on the property facing, is an almost certain advance to be made in the west....

Professor [Arthur L.] Peck made a trip about the city this morning looking over a number of Salem's streets....He advised the planting of the English Hawthorne, a small and beautiful tree, along South Commercial Street, where the parkings are very narrow. The Mountain Laurel, a very attractive and distinctive tree, was advised for South Liberty. Other varieties of trees were recommended as being excellent were the Oriental Sycamore, Norway Maple, Scarlet Oak, and the common Dogwood.