No Light Rail in Vancouver!

“Vibrant” Is a Word We Want to Use in this Vision

Mar 24

2008

The real estate market is tanking, and government-subsidized downtown booms are busting. But Gresham — Portland’s largest suburb, with more than 100,000 people — has a plan.

The new plan is going to make downtown a “vibrant” place by making it “the focus of the community.” Yeah, right. Downtowns haven’t been “the focus” of major cities since the 1960s. A focus, yes, but not the focus.

How will they do it? Why, with public/private partnerships, of course. In other words, subsidies. In other words, tax-increment financing.

Better times: The Rockwood Fred Meyer before it closed.

Gresham has such a great track record for these plans. Take a look at the list of Gresham’s urban renewal plans for the Rockwood neighborhood, which go back to the early 1990s. In case you haven’t heard of it, Rockwood is the neighborhood where much of the light-rail crime has been taking place.

The neighborhood used to be “focused” on Fred Meyer’s, a major retail chain in Portland. (Fred Meyer invented supercenters years before Sam Walton got into retail.) But that particular Fred Meyer store closed after the light-rail line was built. Why? Too much crime.

So much for the benefits of planning. Now planners are going to do for downtown that they did to Rockwood. That should turn out well. Just be glad you aren’t a Gresham taxpayer.

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Reprinted from The Antiplanner