Tonight! Open House on Granny Flats

Whoops! In the excitement of the past week, missed the Open House tonight on "granny flats."

flier

From the City:

Join us for an open house Tuesday, November 29 at the Salem Public Library to talk about accessory dwelling units (ADUs), commonly known as mother-in-law apartments. The City of Salem is considering allowing these smaller housing units in the city as a way to expand housing choices in Salem.

We want to know how you think ADUs should be regulated in Salem. Your input will be used to help develop a recommendation for allowing ADUs in the community.

Public Open House
Date: Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Time: 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.
Place: Salem Public Library, Anderson Rooms
585 Liberty Street SE, Salem, OR

Here's the presentation from the meeting earlier in November and the notes from that meeting.

(Maybe there will be more to say later.)

Update, December 2nd

Notes on Parking from Open House

The meeting notes are now posted, and as a reader points out below, there was meaningful sentiment against requiring additional off-street parking.

Cheer Yourself Up, Read about Emily's X-Country Trip!

Though it hasn't hit the print edition yet, there's a very nice piece online on Emily Loberg's trip across the continent.

In June, Emily Loberg readied her 1985 rebuilt touring bike and set out on a 5,350-mile solo journey.

Her months-long adventure would take her over the Cascades, near two oceans, across the Great Plains, up the Continental Divide and through 15 states.

"This has always been a life-long dream of mine — to bike across the country," said Loberg, who was 24 when her journey started. "I bike everywhere I go. My dad taught me how to ride a bike when I was 5 ... It's always been a big part of my life, and I love to travel."

Go read it!

Boodle deserves Revival! Grifter Too

You might remember a few years back that Portland Brewing/MacTarnahans had a summer beer oddly named "Grifter."

Grifter IPA

It wasn't a great image, the brand didn't stick, and the beer was retired after not too long.

But it turns out they were way ahead of the curve.

Doggerel posted at the Bank against
the publisher of the Capital Journal
(February 13, 1904)

The whole constellation of words around the "confidence man" and the "spoils system" is ready for a revival, and a favorite here is "boodle."

"Two souls with but a single thought"
Bosses Thomas C. Platt and Richard Croker eyeing the spoils

Cartooning at the end of the Gilded Age, Homer Davenport and his work remain relevant, sadly enough.

Ride-Booking Companies as the Number One Mayoral Priority?

A little while back, a video with Mayor-elect Bennett was making the rounds.

The video's supposed to be light-hearted, and so we shouldn't place too much stress on it. At the same time, it ostensibly offers a statement of Mayoral priorities, and so it's not something to ignore completely.

The council-related events of last week overtook it, though. Maybe now we can revisit it a little.

Food is a distraction also: At the drive-thru coffee shack

Just overall, this thing about conducting interviews in cars is a little disturbing. As a pop culture phenomenon, carpool karaoke and its successors is amusing - but let's be clear that it's also a formal instance of distracted driving, no matter how careful is the driver.

Again, it's meant to be light-hearted, but this style and form reinforces our propensity for dangerous driving, and suggests driving is no big deal, that drivers can conduct any number of other activities while driving. There's nothing outrageous here, it's important to say, but it very nicely expresses our current norms and cultural expectations for a certain inattentiveness on the road. This is normal, banal, perfectly acceptable autoism. But it's actually dangerous.

As for substance, the Mayor's number one priority? Uber.

Frankly, that's a little bizarre. Of all the things to say as number one, that's it???

Pseudo-Science vs. Real Science at the MPO: Greenhouse Gas Workshop

If we haven't killed ourselves off in some slow-developing or sudden extinction event, historians from the future looking back on our era will write about our enthusiasm for cars and the way we embraced the pseudo-science and social engineering in hydraulic autoism. They will be impressed with the pseudo-scientific metrics of volume/capacity ratios and levels of service, as well as our tolerance for long and sedentary commutes, and equally amazed with our repudiation of actual science in rising greenhouse gas emissions, their effects, and our careless response.

The Policy Committee for our Metropolitan Planning Organization meets on Tuesday the 29th, and there are several meaty matters on the agenda. At the top of the list is a two hour work session after the meeting proper to discuss greenhouse gases and what the State and MPOs should do.

From the agenda:

The Advisory Committee on Metropolitan Transportation Planning and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets has held five meetings between May and November 2016. Commissioner Brentano and Mike Jaffe have represented SKATS on the committee and provided updates to the SKATS Policy Committee. The Advisory Committee has consensus on several of the initial target issues and is having its final meeting in December....

Because of the complexity of this GHG target setting issue, the Policy Committee requested a 2-hour workshop to review the work and consensus recommendations of the Advisory Committee. SKATS staff will provide a presentation about the target setting process assisted by staff from the Department of Land Conservation and Development. After the Policy Committee has asked questions and discussed the issue, they are requested to provide Commissioner Brentano and staff with any direction they believe is appropriate for the final meeting of the Advisory Committee in December and/or LCLD’s meeting in January 26-27 to adopt targets.

City Council, November 28th - A Right-sized Undercrossing Again?

Council meets on Monday, and in order to accommodate overflow capacity, the meeting was moved to Loucks Auditorium at the Library. Subsequent developments have rendered the matter moot, and since we will be left mainly with the denouement on that civic drama now, important it is, it does not seem useful to have further comment here.*

Other things on the agenda really had not been important in that context, but now that they are bumped up, from here the principal matter now at Council is the set of proposed amendments to the West Salem Urban Renewal Area for the Second Street-Marine Drive extension and undercrossing.

A smaller, scaled-down undercrossing plan?

The actual text of Exhibit 1 is very interesting.

Marine Drive in the TSP is a mid-sized "collector street" and in the Salem River Crossing it has tended to grow even more and to become something of an expressway - though in order to secure assent, the SRC has in many ways exploited some ambiguity and traded on vagueness, sometimes acting like Marine Drive was just a collector, other times like it was an urban highway.

In these proposed URA amendments, Second Street is twice labeled a "local street," a smaller classification for neighborhood streets.

That seems like an important definitional switch.

Secondly, the amendments discuss an extension of Second Street to Patterson only, and not a continuation east of Patterson into Wallace Park and then turning north to Glen Creek.

Thirdly, this avoids the troublesome matter of any demolition on the Union Street Railroad Bridge and trestle.

If there is no chicanery here, this could be a right-sized project worth supporting again. In important ways it seems to revert to an earlier concept and phase. (See here, here, and here.)

It will be interesting to see more discussion on this latest concept, but with these changes, it now seems like it merits support more than opposition or doubt.

1916 Thanksgiving Grocery Ad Shows Frequent Corner Stores

The Thanksgiving ad from 1916 shows part of the network of old neighborhood grocery stores. I don't think there's any great lesson here, but it is interesting to think about how they were spaced more for walking distances than driving distances.

November 27th, 1916

Here are the businesses and addresses keyed to the current map of Salem.

• Poisal & Shaw Grocers - Miller and Commercial
• Edwards & Corey, Dealers in Fresh and Cured Meats - 1885 State Street
• F. P. Harlan, the Yew Park Grocery - 12th and Leslie
• Schmalyried's Grocery, "The Little Store" - 484 N. Church Street
• Ward K. Richardson, "More Cabbage" - 2395 Front Street
• Elk Restaurant - 333 State Street
• J. B. Cooley Grocery - 1275 North Church Street
• Melwood Grocery and Feed Store - 2590 Fairgrounds Road
• C. S. & C. E. Welborn - 1601 Center Street
• The Highland Grocery - 746 Highland Avenue
• The Capital Street Grocery - Capitol and Union
• J. G. Schmid - 19th and Oak

Hardly any of the storefronts remain, and most of the lots have been redeveloped, either with newer houses or with larger commercial development. While it's not possible at the moment to dive very deeply into any of these, as corner grocery stores in the context of pre-autoist neighborhoods a few are immediately interesting.

Ward Richardson's cabbagery is located on Hickory and Front, right in the footprint of the Salem Alternative. It would have been ruralish in 1916. Melwood's would have been in the old Hollywood neighborhood before urban "renewal," and Harlan's near the train depot before the Hospital razed everything in that neighborhood. The Highland Grocery is right by the old Herbert Hoover house. Schmid's is on the old Geer line. Streetcar routes are nearby many of them, too.

The ad, with its gauzy, swirling pilgrim figure, I read as influenced by art nouveau. If you love design and art history, maybe you'll be able to characterize it better. It's a striking contrast from the more conventional, and somewhat grim, iconography of 1915.

November 20th, 1915

Maybe with war on the horizon, the chopping block wasn't so funny any more.