Below is the message John Charles sent to TriMet board members on August 9, 2011. This comes one day before they vote on Resolution 11-08-58, which is the resolution “Authorizing TriMet to Acquire by Purchase or by the Exercise of the Power of Eminent Domain Certain Real Property Necessary to Construction of the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Project”.
Board members:
Before you vote on Resolution 11-08-58, I encourage you to stop by SW Lincoln Street tomorrow morning on your way to the Board meeting, and spend a few minutes enjoying the tranquility of this neighborhood. It has all the mixed uses that Portland planners love – residential, commercial and retail businesses, transit service (bus line #17), and two great pedestrian paths – along with more than 65 stately shade trees that were planted some 50 years ago as part of Portland’s first urban renewal project. Please visit the beauty shop that you will destroy with property condemnation, and talk with some of the clerks inside who are very distressed at what is about to happen.
Then imagine all the beautiful trees getting clear-cut by TriMet contractors on or before September 15. Imagine the entire street being blown up and widened to accommodate a slow, noisy light rail line. Picture a big light rail station in the middle of the block, with all the aesthetic glamour of light rail stations such as those located at East Burnside and 102nd, 122nd, 148th, or 162nd; or perhaps the station at North Interstate and Killingsworth, or the Beaverton Round.
Try and remember that even though Urban Renewal is supposed to be used to clean up “urban blight”, most light rail stations create urban blight. And remember that part of your light rail project is being financed with Urban Renewal dollars.
To truly understand the significance of the Milwaukie project, you need to go out to the neighborhoods and see how construction will actually affect them. It is not enough for you to stay above the fray. Light rail is not an abstraction, or just a series of drawings on a board. Light rail affects real people. You need to be aware of that before you pull the trigger and wreck their street.
The staff report is disingenuous when it states, “The business on site, Ed Wyse Beauty Supply, will not be directly impacted by construction. The building will not be affected and no relocation is required.” Of course it will be affected. It is a land-locked site. Customers cannot get to it from the west, south or east. Once you take their street frontage and have construction materials piled right up their front door, they will slowly twist in the wind and then go out of business. We saw this repeatedly on Morrison and Yamhill on the first MAX line, and again on North Interstate.
Don’t kid yourselves that your project is making some kind of surgical intervention onto Lincoln Street. You will be putting the Candlelight Café and Budget Rent-a-Car out of business directly (near 5th Avenue), and the Ed Wyse Beauty Supply out of business indirectly. You can’t pass the responsibility off.
Before you vote, I hope you will be able to state publicly for the record, in your own words, WHY you are doing this. If some businesses must be ruined and beautiful trees mowed down, what greater good is being sought? I don’t have an answer; I hope you do.
Sincerely,
John Charles
