Salem Reporter on Downtown should Examine Drive-to Model

Yesterday Salem Reporter published a story on downtown health, "The problems and promise of downtown Salem."

At Salem Reporter

With the photo they highlighted, the first impression was the traffic sewer of Commercial Street at its intersection with State Street. The street was the center and the buildings a little incidental.

The story summary focused on "people coming into their stores" and the photo emphasized downtown as a drive-to destination like a mall. Driving was normative. Driving is what makes downtown.

But the story undercut a good bit of that and some other themes might have been given even more prominence.

[Dino Venti is] hopeful the housing developments downtown will bring in more foot traffic. He’s also looking forward to larger developments, including The Cannery which will add 382 apartments, a brewery, restaurants and retail north of downtown.

“I’m optimistic about downtown,” he said....

[T. J.] Sullivan said that the investments in housing downtown make him feel optimistic.

“The more people we get living downtown, the more eyes you get on the streets, the more there is a sense of safety. And the more people that are right there, for ready-made consumers for the downtown businesses,” Sullivan said. 

The most important thing for downtown is the increase in residents, in treating downtown as an actual neighborhood and not as a drive-to destination and mall.

"Foot traffic" really means foot traffic. Walking, not driving, is the key!

The Cannery Project at the Hearings Officer Tonight

The Cannery redevelopment for the former Truitt Bros. site is at the Hearings Officer tonight, Wednesday the 25th. The project generally looks like a good addition to Salem, but it also still seems uncertain and complicated.

Previously:

• "Questions on the Cannery Proposal" (2023)
• A little, and links to more, on an historical homage, "A Mansard Roof for the Cannery Project"
• On the disposition of surface parking, "Latest Version of Cannery Project Retreats from Walkability, but may offer More Housing"
• And on Front Street, "Questions on Front Street"

The project is for 382 homes in three new apartment buildings and for 422 off-street parking stalls, 291 of them in a basement garages under each building.  The City eliminated minimum parking requirements last year, but we still have maximum limits, 930 stalls in this case. So 422 is very much a middle quantity of parking.

Newer renderings: 1914 building, food hall,
mansard roofs, interior driveway, river path
(updated project website)

There's also some adaptive reuse for buildings along the river, conceptually assigned to food and wine businesses. Riverside dining, perhaps!

We've already discussed the Mansard roof on the main buildings along Front, and in the packet are revised drawings for a tasting room on the interior of the lots, and food hall and market along the river. 

The oldest building is retained with few modifications, and currently the concept is for a tasting room and perhaps even a small winery or brewery. (There may not be enough room to deliver grapes and such at the site, and also the wine industry is currently experiencing a contraction with an oversupply of grapes and wine inventory, so this is very much a detail not to attach to.)

Adaptive Reuse: Tasting room

For the food hall and market concepts, these would use structural elements from older existing buildings but not maintain much else of the buildings themselves.

A Safety Plan too Aspirational and Questions on Front Street: At the MPO

The Policy Committee for our Metropolitan Planning Commission meets on Tuesday the 24th to adopt the new Metropolitan Transportation Safety Action Plan.

Ticketable: On Commercial between Hoyt and Rural

The MPO did not in the end incorporate more of an emphasis on system speed and legal, lawful posted speed, which are often too high and too lethal for an urban area. They focused more on speeding above the posted speed.

Previously:

• "Salem-Keizer Transportation Safety Plan needs more on Speed, not just Speeding"
• "Public Comment Calls for more Attention to Speed and Speeding in draft Safety Plan"

The edits from the August draft to the September final version are mostly small.

Perhaps the most consequential set of edits undercuts the document as any kind of "action plan."

Merely a "guiding framework"

The plan doesn't actually commit the MPO or its members to doing anything. It is mainly aspirational, merely a "guiding framework" and list of "recommended strategies." It's more hope than plan.

New Buffered Bike Lanes on Commercial an Improvement, but not Game-Changer

The new bike lanes on middle Commercial are almost done, and in a preliminary way they are a solid incremental improvement for those who already bike, but not enough of a change to induce new trips by those who don't already bike.

Buffer helps with passes from large vehicles

Zooming up the hill on a throttle-bike

The buffer helps with spacing from large vehicles, and a person zooming up the hill on what looked like a "throttle bike," basically a small moped, seemed certain to appreciate it. (But it's a reminder our current bike lane configurations are not adapted to passing at multiple speeds: A person laboring up the hill with a strictly pedal bike, a person pedaling with a battery assist, and a person who does not need to pedal operate across a broad range of speeds, 20mph difference or more.)

City Council, September 23rd - CATC, new Code for Housing, Legislative Priorities

At Council on Monday is another appointment to boards and commissions pleasant to note.

Beth Schmidt teaching transit use
in front (via MWVCOG and FB)

Our Safe Routes to School Coordinator, Beth Schmidt, looks to join the Citizens Advisory Traffic Commission. 

After an initial focus on walking, the Safe Routes program has returned to its roots in bicycle safety education for kids, and has also piloted new transit training for kids. The bus is truly liberating, there is already the youth pass program, and it's great to see this expansion.

Hopefully with new voices CATC can continue to move away from its historic focus on parking and autoism. (And perhaps, as with some other boards and commissions there will be thought to eliminating the word "citizens," which has an unfortunate exclusionary history in some contexts.)

At last week's special meeting for appointments to the Planning Commission, the entire slate was voted in, and even Councilor Julie Hoy, who had seemed skeptical, joined the 8-0 votes.

Council will also hold the second reading for enactment of code changes to "reduce impacts of development standards, processes, and fees related to housing development." They continue to seem like technical fixes and changes on the margins, incremental improvements, and nothing that is going to prompt great, abrupt change.

A few previous notes here, but nothing very lengthy or detailed:

• "City Council, September 9th - McGilchrist Culverts"
• "Gussie Belle Brown Apartments at Former General Hospital Site in for Site Plan Review"
• "City Council, July 8th - Conservation Area at Former General Hospital Site"

via the former Twitter

As an interesting footnote, just before being appointed to the Planning Commission, Ben Fryback commented to Council in support of point access block construction, which services apartment blocks with a single stair and/or elevator, and without the need for long hallways allows for much greater flexibility and efficiency in floor plan, allows for more windows for natural light and cross-ventilation, and also makes odd-sized lots easier to develop. Last year the Legislature directed a start to planning for them, and it would be great if there was a way for Salem to get ahead of the process. The City Staff response to the Fryback testimony was "The City could explore this type of housing as part of the Housing Production Strategy project." This could be a terrific initiative for new Commissioner Fryback to lead!

• For a longer discussion from a couple years back, see at Slate, "The Single-Staircase Radicals Have a Good Point." 
  

Also on the agenda are two sets of legislative priorities for 2025.

From Marion Blackberry to Marionberry and a Quilt in Salem: History Bits

With the announcement earlier this week of the new baseball team name, artfully quibbling on berries from Marion County generally, and on Marionberries specifically, it prompted a closer look at the cultivar.

The announcement pamphlet, Feb. 1957
(Oregon Raspberry & Blackberry Commission)

The first time it appeared in the papers was in the Oregonian on December 6th, 1956. There is it identified as the Marion Blackberry. This was continued in the pamphlet formally introducing it in February of 1957.

First news, December 6th, 1956

December 31st, 1957

In the March of 1958 a headline writer abbreviates Marion Blackberry to Marion Berry, and the piece also refers to "the Marion" several times.

March 12th, 1958

It wasn't until the mid-60s that the term "Marionberry" really starts appearing. Then something happened around 1980 for the usage to flip and Marionberry to prevail in a wider shift. One candidate is a new product or new marketing effort by one or more fruit processors. But it seems like a bit of a cultural shift and there were many independent agents, farmers, marketers, and consumers, making decisions on which word to use. It may not be possible to locate any single cause. But the name, and not just the cultivar, also has a history. It may also have peaked around 2010.

Dominant name changes c.1980

Separately, yesterday online the Oregonian published "Quilt may finally be finished after patterns, printed in The Oregonian a century ago, mysteriously donated."

Ian Davidson Named new ODOT Bicycle and Pedestrian Program Manager

Though ODOT does not seem to have made a formal announcement, in the agenda for the next OBPAC meeting there is a pleasant kind of Easter egg.

On a summer 2023 ride (FB)

Ian Davidson, whom you will know from Salem Bike Vision and the Cherriots Board, is listed as the new Bicycle and Pedestrian Program Manager. (It's listed with "pedestrian" first, and perhaps this is not an accident. But historically it has been "bicycle" first.)

OBPAC agenda for this month

ODOT had announced the recruitment in May, and it's good to see it filled.

Interestingly, Davidson seems to have more of a background as administrator in government, and not a background as engineer or planner, like previous occupants of the position. This may be significant for ODOT upper management and the way they see the job.

Until Jessica Horning maintained a base in Portland, first Michael Ronkin and then Sheila Lyons maintained a base in Salem, and hopefully this will return with Davidson. Portland might be the leading bike city in Oregon, but Salem needs all the help it can get, and other cities, except perhaps those with large universities, have problems more similar to Salem's than to Portland's.

At the same time, institutionally ODOT has ensured that OBPAC and the programming associated with it remained very marginal. They have input on statewide project funding in the tens of millions of dollars per year, but little input on larger projects. Freight interests and cars always are primary. Getting incrementally larger tiny slices of the pie is nice, but these remain tiny slices. There are larger structural and institutional changes that need to be made at ODOT and even the OTC in order to make the Bicycle and Pedestrian Program something more than signalling and amenity on the margins.

It's the cars, driving, and their speeds that need adjustment.

There are other issues, too. 

Ebikes and scorching is an increasing problem.

It will be interesting to see if focus at ODOT shifts to protected bike lanes or to sidewalkification and multi-use paths.

And there is ODOT's appetite for more funding for mega-projects and how better funding for walking and rolling will fit into any new Legislative program in 2025.

All in all it's a moment with challenge and with opportunity.

Congratulations to Davidson, and Good Luck!