Gary Davenport was the first of 21 speakers to present (document attached) to the new City Council on January 10 in a meeting pertaining to the new Parking Study released by Joe Zehnder and BPS. Mr. Davenport told the City Council of some of the issues that Overlook has faced and some problems with City zoning and the BPS Parking Study. Following the presentations, Mayor Hales directed Joe Zehnder and BPS to come up with proposals in 1 month pertaining to providing minimal ratios for onsite parking in proposed ‘no parking apartments’, higher parking space to apartment unit ratios for those areas where several of the structures are congregating close to each other (like Richmond) and a new permitting program for neighborhoods close to new apartment structures similar to that proposed by Donald Strump in a recent Oregonian Editorial. (http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/01/portland_should_consider_overn.html)

Following is Mr. Davenport’s tesimony to City Council:

Hello, my name is Gary Davenport, and I represent Overlook Neighbors for Responsible Growth. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today. 

The Parking Exception and Type II Design Review combo will soon cause irreparable harm to our neighborhoods. It ignores the uniqueness of our neighborhoods and uses an administrative checklist to remove all judgment and guesswork from the approval process. According to Joe Zehnder, the Parking Exception potentially affects over 70,000 of our city’s lots. Developers of these 30-50,000 SF structures avoid a complete design review because of a single footnote in a table that lets them opt out if any residential units are planned.  The Contact with Neighborhood Requirement is a disaster. Immediately following a presentation by the developer, residents, often hearing of this for the first time, are expected to immediately set aside their shock and rage to come up with meaningful requests that a developer can then legally ignore. Developers, unwilling or afraid to face residents, frequently send their architects for the presentations instead. It’s no surprise that a few unscrupulous developers have jumped in to erect cheap no-parking apartments for the sole purpose of maximizing profit, all in the name of urban renewal.

 In preparation for our meeting with the architect on Nov 1, we set aside our anger and frustration and drafted a positive vision of a no-parking apartment that might integrate into our neighborhood. We hoped the document might serve as a blueprint to help the city and other neighborhoods explore new solutions. We sent it to our developer, City Council, BPS and BDS. As we feared, our developer responded with a couple of small, minor adjustments, none of which addressed any of our main concerns.

 In November, BPS released its Parking Study. It confirmed that about three quarters of tenants would own cars. As expected, BPS proposed no solutions and failed to address the impact on homeowners and businesses. The study spoke of how far a tenant might have to walk to get to their cars but made no attempt to quantify the impact these buildings and extra cars will have on the safety, traffic, character or livability of our neighborhoods. Despite overwhelming testimony in opposition to the study, the meeting closed with the planning commission saying that a moratorium was off the table and assurances that no significant changes would be made. The Oregonian got it right the next day responding to the commission with their lead editorial, “Damaging Portland’s Livability”.

 Meanwhile, our clock is ticking. Our developer has submitted permit applications on December 2nd and is pushing hard for approval.

 Neighborhoods continue to push forward: Richmond and Kerns have both filed LUBA lawsuits. LUBA is reviewing both cases and judgments will come soon. Beaumont and Overlook have each met with a land use attorney and are waiting to see if permits will be granted. Overlook has formally requested site visits from each of you and has been conducting site visits and interviews with the press.

 All said, we remain hopeful that the new Council will work with us and move into the solution space. We ask you to immediately stop issuing permits to projects seeking the Parking Exception and work with us to find responsible interim solutions.

Any changes to no parking apartments pertaining to an onsite parking minimum will, unfortunately, likely apply only to new permit applications submitted following passage by City Council, not affecting permits already applied for (like Overlook). However, ONRG continues to look for other legal solutions.

ONRG Meets with Oregonian Reporter,Casey Parks

Saturday Jan 19, a feature article (http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/01/overlook_residents.html)  appeared on OregonLive and as the feature story in the Community News section of the Oregonian by North Portland Oregonian reporter, Casey Parks based on her a recent interview and site visit with ONRG activists Gary Davenport, Kevin Campbell and Tom Morris.

On November 13, 2012, I was the first of 30+ people to testify before BPS Director, Susan Anderson and members of the Portland Development Commission (PDC) regarding a recently released Parking Study pertaining to new apartment projects with no on-site parking. The meeting was well-attended with members of the media, press and at least 200 attendees. Following is my testimony:

Hello, my name is Gary Davenport. I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I was one of five neighborhood representatives who addressed City Council on this issue in early Sept. I live one block from a proposed 66 unit building with no parking on the NE corner of Overlook Park.

Today, I’ll comment on the parking study, make some suggestions for improvements and make an important final request. For me, the parking study has  4 key findings:

• First, the most useful metric: Over 70% of apartments tenants will own cars.
• Second, Tenants can usually find parking within 1 ½ to 2 blocks.
• Third, Developers who don’t provide onsite parking will somehow charge less for apartments… How so? Developers are businessmen who want to make money. How do you ensure they will charge less for units with no onsite parking than those with parking?
•  Fourth, and the most egregious finding is what is completely left out of the study: What is the impact that these buildings have had on adjacent homeowners and businesses? I ask, ‘Aren’t these the parties most affected?’

To that end, I have some questions:

• Which neighborhoods have been most impacted?
• What are the biggest challenges adjacent homeowners and businesses have faced?
• Have homeowners or businesses left or sold properties because of the apartments? If so, how many? Why?
• Have real estate prices been affected?
• Have neighborhoods been left more unsafe? Any rise in crime rates? More traffic accidents? Safety of our children impacted? Bicyclists?
• Can service trucks and emergency vehicles still efficiently accomplish their tasks?

You get the idea. The current parking survey is a good first step, but I suggest that it needs to be expanded to include surveys that measure the impact on neighborhoods, adjacent homeowners and businesses.

• I suggest that we ask Neighborhood Associations to conduct these surveys. This will promote transparency, help neighborhoods to abate their concerns of being cut out of the process and likely provide a far richer dataset.
• We should put a review process in place by conducting impact studies over time, when specific milestones are reached; Take studies when construction is completed,  after buildings have filled with tenants, conduct annual reviews to better understand long term effects.
• Finally, I have one final very important request.  The combination of granting a parking exception for developers pursuing the Community Design Standards process with its poorly conceived ‘objective standards checklist’ opens the door for unscrupulous developers to ignore neighborhood impact and effectively cut neighborhoods and those most affected out of the review process. We strongly suggest that any project requesting a Parking Exception require a full design review to ensure that the interests of all affected parties will be considered.

In preparation for our meeting on November 1st with architect Don Sowieja of the Myhre Group, members of ONRG took a new look at our situation. If high density urban infill is indeed here to stay, we asked ourselves the question, “What would a successfully-implemented transit-oriented structure look like?” In that spirit, we drafted the document, Requests for Wally Remmers, ran it by members of ONRG, members of the Overlook Neighborhood Association, got their feedback, and sent it to Don Sowieja, one day prior to our meeting on November 1^st.

The November 1^st  meeting consisted of Mr. Sowieja’s presentation followed by a very positive, point-by-point review of the document. Mr. Sowieja was very appreciative about our approach, saying the document was thoughtful, well-written and enormously helpful. He also seemed very agreeable to much of what we asked for. However, it also became clear that two key areas required Mr. Remmers’ input: One, expansion of number of units set aside for the disabled, aging and families (50% of the units). Two, incorporation of sustainable practices and use of green materials. We repeatedly requested that Mr. Remmers meet with us to discuss these areas, but we have not heard from him yet as of this date. We continue to hope that Mr. Remmers will meet with us and anxiously await his and Mr. Sowieja’s written response.

For more insight read Requests for Wally Remmers. It has also been sent to members of City Council, Charlie Hales, Steve Novick, City Planner Joe Zehnder and Directors of both BPS and BDS.