Montgomery Park Area Plan - MPAP

[MarkDaMan]

From the Portland Mercury: https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/202...IRxThp4ZXxfS7pcjkfS0OK3SPcTKdHbXKNn7BBJ0

May 8, 2024 at 11:15 am
Industrial Northwest Redevelopment Plan Includes Streetcar Extension and Housing
The Montgomery Park Area draft plan envisions a new neighborhood in an underutilized part of the city.
TAYLOR GRIGGS


A rendering of the Montgomery Park plan, complete with streetcar extension. CITY OF PORTLAND

Northwest Portland has seen significant changes over the last several decades. The Pearl District and Slabtown neighborhoods, formerly dominated by industry, are now some of the city’s chicest enclaves—with an impressive number of affordable housing developments and public transit options to boot.

But Northwest Portland's transformative projects have mostly remained south of NW Vaughn Street, leaving a lot of formerly-industrial land underutilized. Enter the Montgomery Park Area Plan (MPAP), a joint venture out of the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) and Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS). The plan proposes land use and transportation changes to effectively create an entirely new neighborhood west of Highway 30 between NW Vaughn and NW Nicolai streets.


The plan area. CITY OF PORTLAND

For public transit enthusiasts, the MPAP’s biggest draw is its proposal to add 1.3 miles of new Portland Streetcar track alongside NW 23rd Avenue to Montgomery Park. But what good is a new streetcar line if there’s no destination to travel to? That’s where the land use changes come in. Ultimately, planners envision a neighborhood with thousands of new housing units, more job opportunities, increased green space, and other amenities.

That’s a stark contrast to what the area looks like today. Right now, the Montgomery Park plan area is defined by its eponymous building, the historic warehouse and the former home of the Montgomery Ward department store. The building is now best known for its iconic roof sign and housing the Adidas Employee Store. ESCO steel’s main production plant used to live just east of the Montgomery Park building, but since it closed in 2015, its former site is now mostly just a vacant lot.


(Mostly) empty parking lots in the NW Industrial Area. TAYLOR GRIGGS

The entire plan area has an abundance of pavement dedicated to car parking, most of which is hardly used. Compared to the hustle and bustle on NW 23rd just a few blocks south, the site surrounding the Montgomery Park building feels desolate, even in the middle of the day.

But all that is set to change.

What’s in the plan?


A potential new layout for NW Roosevelt. PORTLAND STREETCAR

While the Montgomery Park Area Plan proposed draft was just released in April, the plan has been in the works for a long time. Leaders from PBOT, Portland Streetcar, TriMet, and Metro have been considering parts of this plan since 2009, and the planning process really ramped up over the last six years.

Through that process, MPAP planners came up with the land use concept for the site, proposing the area be zoned for both industrial and transit-oriented, mixed-use development, on the east and west sides of Highway 30 respectively, buffered by NW Nicolai Street.

The MPAP draft proposal states the concept “strives to preserve active industrial land by limiting land use changes east of Highway 30.” The land use concept is also designed to “minimize conflicts between the new mixed-use area and existing heavy industrial areas” north of NW Nicolai Street using an “employment zoning buffer area” with a broad range of employment uses (beyond industrial) but no housing.

“Overall, the concept balances the need to retain industrial lands and jobs with the opportunity to create a vital new transit-oriented, mixed-use neighborhood with significant public benefits such as additional affordable housing and affordable commercial space,” the plan states.

The streetcar extension would run along NW 23rd Avenue and circulate through the plan area on a one-way parallel couplet along NW Roosevelt and NW Wilson streets. The plan also proposes extending NW Roosevelt, NW Wilson, and NW York Streets, as well as NW 25th Avenue, into the project area and eliminating the current “superblocks” which block connectivity in the area. Some of these streets will see other infrastructure changes—for example, the plan proposes building protected bikeways on NW Roosevelt and NW Wilson from NW 23rd to 26th Avenues, alongside the new streetcar track.

On NW Vaughn Street—which will serve as the transition street into the new Montgomery Park neighborhood from the south—the city wants to encourage more tree planting and will attempt to minimize freight travel through the area. Already, PBOT has placed new crossing infrastructure along NW Vaughn to make it safer to cross the street by foot or bike.

Vision for a burgeoning neighborhood

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