After nearly a decade faced with a month-to-month lease on Portland’s busy Southeast Foster Road, Matthew Micetic sought stability. So, he’s moving his business.
But Micetic, owner of Red Castle Games isn’t leaving Foster, the diagonal thoroughfare that carves through Southeast neighborhoods between Lents and Powell Boulevard. He’s doubling down.
Micetic said he’s poised to sign a long-term lease in a separate building eight blocks east of his current shop, a deal he says could keep him in the neighborhood for at least a decade, and potentially up to 24 years. He also bought property on Foster.
All of the moves represent confidence in Foster’s long-term development. Micetic likes the changes he is seeing all around him.
“I think this is really good for my business,” Micetic said Thursday.
By this, Micetic means the city’s long-awaited $9 million project to eliminate a travel lane in each direction, add bike lanes along a 40-block stretch, upgrade traffic signals, install six new mid-block pedestrian crossings and flashing beacons and plant nearly 200 trees in the sunbaked area.
Transportation officials, local business owners and neighborhood representatives gathered Thursday at the Portland Mercado to celebrate the end to a project that started in earnest six years ago but came after at least four years of community members clamoring for changes.
“I know it’s been a long time coming,” Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who oversees the transportation department, said at a press conference to commemorate the occasion. “I hope it was worth the wait. It looks like it, it’s beautiful.”
Foster is one of the city’s designated most dangerous streets, a high-crash corridor that sees a higher number of crashes than other streets. According to the most recent traffic counts, just east of SE 69th Avenue, Foster saw an average of 8,663 cars and trucks headed westbound each day and 9,039 traveling eastbound.
It’s also a part of town that’s seen dozens of new businesses pop up in the past few years, and city-backed urban renewal projects fueling a building boom in the Lents Town Center near Interstate 205.
Chris Warner, Portland’s transportation director, said the city’s mission is to help Portlanders get around safely, easily and sustainably. He said the Foster project does all three.
Many of the changes are designed to make Foster safer.
According to the city’s Vision Zero map, five pedestrians died between 2007 and 2016 on the stretch of Foster between Powell and 92nd Avenue, and at least 24 more were injured. Seventeen motorists were seriously injured during that period. Thirty-four cyclists were injuring on that stretch as well.
Micetic knows the driving dangers all too well. In 2015, a driver slammed a car into his storefront, smashing the building and making news headlines citywide.
When the street project was first announced, Warner was chief of staff to then-transportation Commissioner Steve Novick. They said the project was overwhelmingly backed by locals, aside from a few businesses that worried about the loss of the travel lanes. Additional frustration came from commuters who drive in from east Portland and elsewhere and use the street to cut through.
But Portland tried to work with the businesses along Foster to make changes palatable. They kept on-street parking. They tweaked the project.
Micetic said the majority of businesses he talked to support the changes, though some viewed the lack of two travel lanes as a negative, equating the vehicle traffic to business dollars.
“It’s not going to work for everyone,” he said.
But Micetic doesn’t think that dynamic is true anymore, and he added foot traffic or bike traffic will help local businesses like his that cater to families.
At the news conference, Allen Rowand, president of the Foster Area Business Association, said he viewed the changes as another part of the street’s “evolution” toward becoming “a destination than a throughway.”
The street already has some notable destinations, like the city and Hacienda Community Development Corporation-backed Portland Mercado.
Shea Flaherty Betin, the Mercado’s director, said the food cart hub, and Latino public market and business incubator were already bringing community together on the busy street.
“I’m excited to see more families biking to our massive festivals and events, or to see more folks walking on our new sidewalks to grab an empanada, or some coffee, or a sangria in the evening,” he said.
-- Andrew Theen
503-294-4026
@andrewtheen
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