Why no Streetcar Commercial Districts in Salem?

Over at our Strong Towns Group they linked to a recent video by Ray Delahanty, aka "CityNerd," on the largely intact streetcar era commercial districts and congenial urbanism along the former lines in Portland.

Like nearly every city, the greatest streets and neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon exist where the long-abandoned electric streetcars ran. Today we're touring Portland's east side to find remnants of that age and talk about why its lingering impact is so important.

CityNerd on Portland's streetcar hubs

Delahanty highlighted the storefronts lining the sidewalk and tight to it, and also pointed out how often the hubs and corridors were anchored by old movie theaters. He started with the Hollywood district at 42nd and Sandy.

CityNerd on movie theaters anchoring hubs

Why isn't there more of this here in Salem?

One suggestion was that we didn't do enough to maintain "the compact street grid that predates the automobile."

Here's a friendly amendment. We may not appreciate the difference in size between the two cities. Salem was never big enough in expanse or in population to support those outlying neighborhood hubs and commercial corridors that in Portland lingered on in urban form and in zoning to be celebrated today.

Portland was over 10x the size of Salem c.1920

A century ago just as the streetcar era was ending, Portland's population and street grid was so much larger, an entire order of magnitude larger.

Portland's 1920 population of about 260,000 is about the same size as the current population inside our Urban Growth Boundary, the cities of Salem, Keizer, and unincorporated Marion County combined. So consider a streetcar system serving that whole area!

Salem has mostly preserved the walkable street grid. Nearly every street on that 1917 map is still around today. 

If by "maintain" we mean maintain the existing street grid from the streetcar era, Salem actually did that mostly. The streets were often widened and one-way couplets imposed on many of the busier streets, so it was modified. But the rectilinear grid itself was retained in the street system.

But if by "maintain" we mean continuing the grid pattern into new development, that we did not do very much, and we transitioned to a ramified hierarchy of local-collector-arterial streets.

Streetcar system, early 1900s
(Interpretive panel, State & Liberty)

Above all, though, our grid is so much smaller. The population wasn't great enough and the distances were generally not far enough away to support meaningful centers outside of downtown. Crucially, by the time the edges, the outer terminus neighborhoods for each line, really got going with development, we were in the auto age.

Still, there are a few vestiges of smaller commercial pockets. At the segment of State Street just east of 12th, at Center and 17th, on Broadway north of downtown, and even along Edgewater. These retain streetcar era elements, but much of them were built in the auto era.

Two buildings that post-date the streetcar era, but yet still carry on some of its characteristic form and spirit are the two old Safeway buildings on Broadway near the intersection with Market Street.

Two old Safeways a block apart

Christo's is in one of them, and it opened in 1937.

Christo's Building: First Safeway on Broadway,
but only in use for a very few years

Christo's: August 6th, 1937

Even though it was for a chain and was very much in the auto era, it's still similar to the buildings Delehanty praises on old Portland streetcar lines. If we had contiguous blocks of them, we'd be in business!

Christo's: Used to be a house on the alley

But our autoism demanded parking lots, and this building did not have one. There was a house immediately behind the building on the alley. (Later it was demolished.)

To modernize equipment and layout, as well as enlarge the total square footage, Safeway constructed a new store a block north. Northwest Hub is there today. It has a small parking lot on the south side along Market Street. It opened in 1941.

Safeway at 1230 N Broadway - The Hub now

NW Hub: March 21st, 1941

So if a decent building form could still happen in 1937, even with the same basic box and storefront, by 1941 a parking lot was necessary. It remains today along Market Street.

The same exact pattern and time frame happened with the State Street Safeways, one on 13th without a parking lot, and the one on 14th with a parking lot.

Parking lots ruined any chance we might enjoy unbroken rows of nice, walkable storefronts. The weird spacing on 12th/13th south of Mission Street testifies to this. The storefronts are just too far apart to constitute a real walkable urbanism.

The most promising streetcar type commercial hub was our own Hollywood district, anchored by a movie theater.

March 2nd, 1927

It opened in 1927, right at the end of Salem's streetcar period. It was a full mixed-use concept with apartments, and it was much plainer than contemporary downtown theaters like the Capitol and Elsinore. But it did anchor a real neighborhood and walkable commercial district.

Unfortunately we Urban Renewaled it out of existence, and this is the one great instance in Salem of Urban Renewal actually destroying a neighborhood.

In the end, Salem wasn't big enough for the same kind of streetcar era commercial districts that lingered on in Portland. If we had been bigger, our grid would have gone out farther, the outer neighborhoods built up more, and on the edges there would have been some bigger streetcar commercial districts. But a primary reason we don't have more of it on our mostly intact streetcar era inner grid is parking mania. Parking lots, the lawn and driveway zoning pattern, and autoist spacing generally hollowed out our urban form and denied the walkable promixity to support concentrations of storefronts.

For more see:

• Grocery History in Salem
  
• Zoning History in Salem
• A profile at the Seattle blog, the Urbanist, "Meet Ray Delahanty, the Guy Behind CityNerd" 
• And the Ann Niles Active Transportation Lecture, which brought him to Portland a month ago