Trying to Find the Balance on Nature, Trees, Development, and Climate

The front page today features a story on the dying trees in the Oak grove transplanted for the new Costco. For a combination of reasons this has seemed like a real failure.

Front page today

But rather than being an argument for better balance with both/and, for smarter development and better accommodation for mature trees, critics of the Costco and tree loss seem to argue more one-dimensionally against development.

Meisner believes the gridlock and traffic tied to the shopping center will put children, cyclists and pedestrians in the surrounding neighborhoods at risk. Keeping the trees, she said, was a way to keep some semblance of nature in the neighborhood, contrasting the “behemoth of a box store” that is Costco.

But the traffic and danger from the slightly smaller shopping center tree advocates seemed prepared to accept would not have been very much less. The all-or-nothing nature of the argument here is misleading. With the way Kuebler is built out, any auto-oriented shopping center is going to offer dangers for "children, cyclists and pedestrians." It's matters of degree and quantity, not of radical qualititive difference.

The way "nature" figures into the argument is also interesting, and more far-reaching.

A Gas Station Preceded Lipmans, on Costco, and Harmful Tire Dust - Bits

The Sunday paper had a nice historical note about the Cinnamon Bear and downtown Lipman's store, now remodeled into the Liberty Plaza.

On Lipmans and the Cinnamon Bear, Sunday paper

But what was there first? Like other downtown corners, it had a gas station at one time.

The corner Liberty and Chemeketa
before Lipmans, 1939
(Salem Library Historic Photos)

In Before/After sets you can also see the moderne remodel of the Steusloff building and the Electric Apartments.

City Council, September 28th - Costco

City Council convenes on Monday, and they will deliberate on the proposed Costco for the development on Kuebler near I-5.

There is a massive dossier on the project. To the litigants, of course, the minutia will seem necessary and useful, but it has also seemed like we have allocated a disproportionate amount of attention to this project and particularly to some parts of it, especially since the goal of critics is not to kill the project, but just to make it a little bit smaller.

• On jobs and economic development: Amazon warehouse jobs pay much less than Costco jobs, yet so much firepower has been directed at this Costco project rather than the Amazon one.
• On traffic impacts: The differences between a big strip mall and an even bigger box Costco do not, in the end, seem very significant, and these differences may being overstated by critics of the project.
  
• On trees and siting the box: It is surprising how much the "NW Plan," which retains the Oak grove, has been resisted by the development team. It's a big box, and how is the disposition of the box on the site away from Kuebler so important? Give the neighbors the trees and move on.
• On costly parking mandates: But our minimum parking requirements interfere here with tree preservation, and it is our parking requirements and cultural expectations for plentiful parking, not tree preservation goals, that should be adjusted. 
• On fossil fuel infrastructure: Additionally, we should be permitting no new gas stations. Why are we building new gas stations?! They will be stranded assets very soon! Isn't this the biggest problem here?
  

Gov. Brown has signaled she will follow California

Anyway, others will have more to say and will be more informed about it. It just seems like we are missing the forest for some trees here.

Council will take no public comment and this is for deliberations only.

Salem's First Attempt to Preserve Oaks? Parrish Grove Effort Failed 100 Years Ago

Nearly 100 years ago Salemites talked about saving a "beauty spot" associated with the Parrish DLC, an Oak grove, and Mill Creek.

The "Parrish Grove" area
between Capital, D, Union Streets, and the railroad on 12th.
1905 Birdseye map, via Library of Congress, notes added

May 23rd, 1922

With a new round of deliberation on the proposed Costco in South Salem this summer, the on-going assessment of the Oaks in Bush Park, and the lack of urban parks along our creeks, it is a little interesting to look back nearly 100 years at what might be the first attempt at Oak grove preservation here in Salem.

Before Parrish Junior High was constructed in 1924, the area just south of it held a lovely Oak grove.

Two years earlier a group of Salemites submitted a proposal for "one of Salem's beauty spots, the oak grove at North Mill creek and Capitol street." They felt it should not be subdivided into lots, sold off, and developed, but instead should be a park or playground.

Ultimately they were not successful, and the area became the Parrish Grove addition, a fascinating pocket neighborhood wedged in between the school, the railroad, the creek, and Capital Street.

I don't know that there are direct lessons here. It is possible to wish they had been successful; the area would have made a very nice park on the creek. With the railroad, the schools later, and then orphaned a little by the Capitol Mall as it grew, a park might have been a better use for that particular area, now about a square of four small, undersized blocks. But that may be visible only in hindsight, and it was reasonable to develop it as housing also. Some of the oaks still appear to be there, and as we face the exigencies of climate, we should be thinking more about housing and oaks, rather than one or the other. It is also possible to think that the current neighborhood achieved a compromise between tree preservation and new housing.

We need to Center Autoism in Tree Canopy Conversation and Analysis

Yesterday, Salem Reporter published a dive into our recent reports on trees in Salem. In "Salem is more shaded than ever, thanks to city tree projects but gains are uneven" they published a map of median incomes by census block that showed a correlation between richer areas and better canopy coverage, and poorer areas with sparser coverage. (That's a key to the piece, so click through to see it!) What prompted it was likely this map in the City's report also grouped by census block.

Urban Tree Canopy Assessment (Dec 2019)

The comparison is useful, but not likely complete. Though the City's comments also alluded to zoning, the piece did not include a zoning map, and that seems like a relevant detail. There's a stew of variables, some of them causal, more of them correlating or confounding. Income is an important one, but it may be more of an effect.

City Council, December 10th - Costco

The Costco appeal at Council on Monday has lots of interest, and there will be plenty of people writing and talking about it.

From here, it has seemed like most of the problems stem from the 2007 zoning change and associated approvals. That was the real point for leverage. Maybe someone will develop a new critique that sticks, but in a very general way it seems like once you grant the terms in the 2007 approval, there's plenty of room for a big box.

A lot of the criticism focuses on the idea that the neighborhood was promised a smaller-scaled development, a "community shopping center."

In 2007 they intended a "community shopping center"

But this at least in part trades on a quibble with the meaning of "community." We might see that word and think small, fine-grained, local retail.

But as it occur in the 2005 Comprehensive Plan, "community shopping" is distinct from "neighborhood shopping," and what many critics of the Costco plan really seem to want is for that parcel to be developed as "neighborhood shopping."

In the context of the 2005 Comprehensive Plan, "community" means wider community, perhaps even regional community, and not the smaller-scale of "neighborhood."

In the 2005 Comprehensive Plan,
"community shopping" is not small
(via University of Oregon)

But the 2007 approval did not specify "neighborhood shopping"; it specified "community shopping."

Just in broad terms, any shopping center on Kuebler just off I-5 would be oriented for intense autoism and a regional draw.

In the Neighborhoods: Open Streets Salem and Costco out South

The Grant Neighborhood Association meets on Thursday the 7th, and at last month's meeting they learned more about the September Open Streets event that will use the Winter-Maple Greenway again.

Final Report for 2017 - Mayor's Ride

The discussion was notable in no small part because it was the first public announcement, as far as I know anyway, of its new director (job announcement here):

Emily Loberg, the director of the event, was present to present information about the September 22nd program. Open streets is observed internationally and the Portland Open Sundays Parkways is part of it. Streets are closed to motorized traffic and activities, food and entertainment at various venues invite participation from bike riders and pedestrians. The goals are to support diverse modes of transportation, make the streets safe and accessible to all , and to play, create and celebrate neighborhoods. It promotes community connections with new ways to meet up and participate in the arts, theater and dance. It supports and encourages local businesses.

The event will begin at 11:00 am and continue through 3:00 pm. The route will be along the Maple-Winter Street Bikeway, through Highland, Grant and Cando neighborhoods. The busier intersections will be monitored by professional flaggers or police officers. There will be four activity hubs at: Highland School, Broadway Commons, Grant School and the Salem Saturday Market. Each will also have information booths.

Volunteers are needed for planning, including: activities at each hub; food and refreshments; food truck outreach and participation; school parent club involvement with fundraisers, perhaps by selling snacks; organization of activities, such as ping-pong, basketball, soccer, yoga, lawn games; performances by choirs, bands, dance troupes, theater groups; traveling events along the route; and, providing transportation to the event. Neighbors are encouraged to think outside the box for ideas of what to include. Volunteers are also needed to distribute fliers, set ups the night before and morning of and, of course, as always, cleanup. The event is pet-friendly and will have activities for all ages.

More information is available at openstreetssalem.org

This is great news. You might remember Emily from the news story about her cross-country trip back in December 2016.

Kuebler Interchange Attracts Shopping Center Interest

You might already know about the Pactrust development at 27th and Boone Road. It's been in the works for a few years now. You will also remember the attempt to spec a diverging diamond interchange for Kuebler and I-5. There's lots going on here.

27th and Kuebler is attracting shopping center interest
(Pactrust already zoned CR - commercial retail,
map via City of Salem Zoning)

And just kitty-corner from the Pactrust project, there's a new shopping center development proposed on a parcel of land zoned for residential agriculture. It's also very near to the new State Police facility site.

Over at SCV and the Morningside Neighborhood Association they've been talking about it for a couple of days now.

Pactrust Center already in the works (red CR zone above)
via SCV and Morningside

New proposed center (currently zoned RA)
via SCV and Morningside

Do we need another of this kind of big-box, big-parking-lot, car-dependent shopping center?

Or would we be better served with neighborhood-scaled commercial centers more like what is envisioned for the Fairview projects or the old Pringle School?

And will any development here be required to improve the bike lanes and sidewalks on Kueber - full separation would be very useful here!

The unapproved project would be dependent on a zoning change, so there's at least some leverage there to reshape the project to be less hideously auto-oriented. Currently it's "residential agriculture" and would need to be changed to "commercial retail" or something like it.

But without a command-and-control type planning system - which we don't want - there's not much of a way to steer commercial development away from these green fields to the Fairview redevelopments or Pringle School project instead.

So with the way our zoning is currently configured, there's not a great deal of opportunity for walkable small-scale neighborhood commercial development. In the absence of that, big-box parking lots seem to be the primary alternative.

This will be something to watch.