Ever since Lisa Ortquist’s youngest child was an infant, she’d heard chatter about a new park planned for Northeast Portland’s Gateway District.
It took a decade, but Gateway Discovery Park opened last August, a gem of a place in the heart of the oft-ignored neighborhood.
Today, Ortquist said, her 10-year-old enjoys riding a bike to the park.
“Now we can do that safely,” Ortquist, who owns an accounting firm based in the neighborhood, said during a news conference Thursday to celebrate the completion of another long-planned project – a $5.6 million effort to add protected bike lanes, multiple flashing pedestrian crossing beacons and a public plaza on a 10-block of the Halsey and Weidler couplet.
“It’s just making our neighborhood feel a lot safer,” Ortquist said while at the plaza as grounds crews watered newly planted trees behind her. The space on 112nd Avenue between Halsey and Weidler is to be the east-facing gathering place and entrance to the neighborhood.
Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, city transportation leaders and other Northeast Portland business owners gathered to recognize the project, funded largely by the city gas tax and $1.6 million from the city’s urban renewal agency. In some places the city built new transit islands for bus riders, where the protected bike lane runs between the island and the curb, a type of transit stop rare to Portland but common in Seattle.
Eudaly said the overall project was all about safety, and safer streets mean “healthier and more connected communities.”
A lack of traffic enforcement citywide has led Portlanders to take risks behind the wheel, she said.
“Slow down, stay alert and observe all traffic laws,” Eudaly said. “Please stop endangering your fellow community members. There’s nowhere you need to go, and nothing you need to do while driving that’s more important than other people’s lives or your own.”
Like the park, the road project is a long-time coming.
Chris Warner, Portland Bureau of Transportation director, thanked the neighborhood for their patience through the years. The city in 2014 outlined an investment plan and vision for the neighborhood project.
“We’re just getting started,” Warner said, citing other bike and safety projects coming to east Portland.
Portland rebuilt curbs throughout the stretch of commercial districts and installed new traffic signals at 102nd Avenue. Northeast Halsey Street was repaved as part of the five-month construction project.
The city also rebuilt a section of 103rd Avenue to make it primed for farmer’s markets or street fairs. The new concrete street is easily closable for events and newly planted trees.
Transportation officials noted the bike lanes and street projects are complete in time for this weekend’s Sunday Parkways, which will run through the commercial district. Sunday Parkways typically draws a crowd of at least 20,000 people to the car-free event.
“We can’t wait to show it off this weekend,” Warner said of the street.
-- Andrew Theen
503-294-4026
@andrewtheen
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