Could attempts to scale back the Columbia River Crossing and Hayden Island's Safeway end up creating a new local or arterial bridge -– one connecting the island directly with North Portland's Expo Center and Kenton neighborhood? Since the Sentinel first reported the proposed 22 lanes of freeway spaghetti [pictured below] that the CRC would build on Hayden Island, a storm of controversy has arisen over the proposal.  [The Sentinel's consistent editorial position on the CRC has been to build a bridge of grander design and more modest scale.]

A CRC meeting on Monday night, two proposals surfaced that would greatly reduce the number of traffic lanes crossing the island. At least one proposed redesign would move a massive tangle of freeway interchanges off the island and create a local traffic bridge for Hayden Island. The local bridge would create a street grid for the largely suburban pod-style street system west of I-5 and allow Islanders and North Portlanders to get in and out of the community without having getting on the freeway.

Jantzen Beach Supercenter more or less hates the idea. So does Diversified Marine, a sizeable tug-and-barge service company that says a new bridge might wipe out precious deepwater harbor along Marine Drive.

On the table Monday: two new concepts to shrink the great gray wall of highway on- and off-lanes that would slice through the island and likely wipe out Safeway. (See pages 6-8 for maps of this PDF of the various plans, or here for the biggest plan, known as the "locally preferred alternative.")

The Columbia River Crossing’s Independent Review Panel faced harsh testimony Wednesday night at the Expo Center in North Portland from residents, environmental groups, and anti-toll critics.

A few voices expressed support of the $3.6 billion mega-project, but the panel, made up of freeway and bridge engineers from around the country, faced overwhelming discontent with the project from the small crowd of die-hard citizens in attendence.

“Welcome to Oregon,” Ron Buel said to Chairman Thomas Warne and the rest of the panel in perhaps the evenings most biting testimony. “Now please take your rubber stamps and go home!”

Buel’s testimony echoed that of Stop the CRC Coalition member David Osborn, who also labeled the experts as a “rubber stamp panel” while protesting the first meeting of the IRP earlier that day. But Osborn also accused the panel of deliberately keeping a low profile on the public’s opportunity to provide testimony.

“No one in this region knows this meeting is happening,” he testified, pointing out the meeting was announced only 48 hours prior. “How is that increasing public engagement?”

Margaret “Peg” Johnson, president of Jantzen Beach Moorage, Inc., defended the public outreach of the project and urged the planners to continue their work. “We welcome any alternatives that lessen any impact on Hayden Island, but we’ve got to move forward.”

Johnson added that the current air quality from the existing clogged freeway is causing some of the worst in the city to linger in North Portland. She reasons a larger bridge would prevent cars from idling and keep them moving.

 
Protesters picketed the first meeting of the Independent Review Panel of the Columbia River Crossing project (CRC) this morning outside the Expo Center.

About a dozen members of the grassroots organization Stop the CRC Coalition held up signs and banners denouncing what they call a “rubber stamp panel” of experts appointed by the governors of Oregon and Washington to assess the fundamentals of the $3.6 billion project.

“This is a 1950s approach," said David Osborn, holding a sign that read, “Mobility for People Not Cars! No CRC!” Osborn believes the process has been flawed from the beginning, by what he says included limited outreach to the public and a refusal to hear alternative designs.

“12 lanes gives us increased capacity at an incredible cost,” he said. “This moves us away from our sustainability goals and doesn’t strive to create livability.”

Osborn and his coalition denounce the panel of experts, that consist primarily of bridge and freeway engineers, because they are not evaluating the planning process itself.

The latest CRC project update says the panel will “assess the implementation plan for the CRC project, review the financial plan for the project [and] review and evaluate post-construction performance measures.”

Since the Sentinel reported in October of last year, Hayden Island residents have been battling with CRC stakeholders over the massive project that could bring up to 21 lanes of concrete to the island and sink its major east/west roads up to a dozen feet underground.  Residents have fought to keep the island's livability on the radar as the CRC plans continue to waffle. 

Today, HiNoon activist and political candidate Ed Garren reports that the Oregon Department of Transportation has delayed adoption of a planned freeway interchanges until August. See below:

FROM EMAIL FROM ED GARREN

Thanks to the combined efforts of a lot of dedicated people, the Oregon Department of Transportation has decided to delay the adoption of a design for the Hayden Island I-5 interchange (for the new Columbia River Crossings Project) until August. This will give us more time to work on solutions for the interchange that will better serve the stakeholders on Hayden Island.

As the first person who started out three + years ago, challenging the CRC to recognize the special needs of Hayden Island, and as a Co-Chair of the Hayden Island Plan, I am very proud of the residents of our island who have come together to assure that our livability issues are not ignored.

The big picture of what a new North/Northeast urban renewal area will look like will be revealed tonight at Billy Webb's Elk Lodge. Whether or not the Rose Quarter will be a part of that picture won't come into view until this summer.

Tonight, the Portland Development Commission hopes to start wrapping up its plans to consolidate the neighborhood's two urban renewal districts. But an earlier request from the mayor to plug the Rose Quarter into the new SUPER renewal district is being taken off the table.

This will decouple both large scale renewal projects in the pipe for the area: the URA merger, and the redevelopment of Memorial Coliseum and Blazer's Live District.

The announcement will be made at this evening's meeting of the PDC's North/Northeast Economic Study Area.

Hayden Island is North Portland’s hidden resort community. Fringed in floating homes, furrowed with townhomes, its eastern residential areas are quiet, beautiful and in the perfect location.  However, the center of the island — I-5, the Interstate Bridge and Jantzen Beach SuperCenter — has been at the crosshairs of traffic and development controversy for years.

For a river/island community of roughly 2,100 people, Hayden Island has seemed overpopulated with woes these past few years, perhaps due to its place at the center of the bi-state metro area.

Hayden Island residents have made some headway in their drive to make the Columbia River Crossing project focus more on their livability through several key engineering adjustments.

 At last month’s CRC Project Sponsors Council meeting, CRC Transit Manager Steve Witter spoke about the numerous meetings between the CRC and various Hayden Island citizen groups that took place in the wake of December’s PSC meeting, where residents spoke out against the CRC cost-cutting project refinements.  

Intended to shave $650 million off the project’s $4 billion budget, the refinements were seen by island residents as going against the livability requirements of the city’s own Hayden Island Plan, primarily by choosing a project design that would cut the island in half and bulldoze its only grocery store and pharmacy.

EDITORIAL

preview from February street edition

[Original draft of the Golden Gate Bridge pictured right]

CRC needs a more modest scale and grander vision.

The political and economic ground that the Columbia River Crossing project has been built on is turning into quicksand. The process of trying to appease, and build consensus around a project this large and important has turned into a fools’ errand, as factions retreat into the safety of their core interests.

This paper has been an unswerving advocate for a new bridge across the Columbia – but one that does more than simply move people and freight. What we have in mind is a bridge that will become an icon for the region and the nation. 

After Hayden Islanders raised holy hell at a December meeting about Columbia River Crossing project refinements they felt would destroy the island's livability, CRC has been making nice. According to multiple CRC staffers, they, along with representatives of the Oregon and Washington Departments of Transportation, have been meeting on a regular basis with island residents to assuage their concerns about how the plans for a new I-5 river crossing will impact them.

Case in point: the upcoming Open House on Hayden Island, where CRC staff will be on hand to explain the improvements to the island's transit, pedestrian, bike and vehicle traffic plans. Read on for more info:

(Apologies for the lack of original photo; the camera had a tragic malfunction. Instead, we give you this glorious image of the New Jersey Turnpike.)

"The Giant Pool of Money." It's the name of This American Life's seminal show on the housing crisis, but it's an equally fitting description of today's Columbia River Crossing Project Sponsors Council meeting in Vancouver.

At the meeting, the Council debated a conceptual finance plan and tolling study that outlined where the billions to fund the massive bridge project could come from. They did so in light of the letter sent on Tuesday by Portland Mayor Sam Adams, Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt, Clark County Commissioner Steve Stuart and Metro President David Bragdon calling the current cost and scope of the project "unacceptable."

CRC Transit Manager Steve Witter also gave a presentation on adjustments to the CRC project refinements that caused an uproar among Hayden Island residents at the December PSC meeting. While the overall message was that CRC staffers and the Hayden Island community have worked together to find solutions that preserve the island's livability, City Council candidate and Hayden Island activist Ed Garren contended that the voices of the manufactured home community were still not being heard.

 Well, that was prescient. Just as we were looking over the handouts for Friday's Columbia River Crossing Project Sponsors Council meeting, we check our Inbox and what do we find but a letter to Governors Christine Gregoire and Ted Kulongoski from Portland and Vancouver Mayors Sam Adams and Tim Leavitt, Clark County Commissioner Steve Stuart and Metro President David Bragdon demanding more local control over the CRC bridge project.

The letter gets right down to business, stating that while the quartet - all of whom sit on the PSC - still supports building a new I-5 bridge across the Columbia River, they "believe that the cost, physical and environmental elements of the project as currently proposed pose unacceptable impacts on our communities." That's a nod to the concerns expressed at the Dec. 4 PSC meeting by protestors, most notably Hayden Island residents, who feared that the current cost-saving project refinements would cost them their only grocery store and, in the words of City Council candidate Ed Garren, "destroy livability on the island."

The local leaders also propose that the governors create and enforce specific performance goals, as well as devising a financing plan that looks out for taxpayers and road users (it's notable that they didn't just say "motorists"). They want to ensure that this project will not "cannibalize funding for other priority projects in the coming decades."

This should make for a very interesting meeting on Friday. 

The full letter is here (PDF).