Conceptual drawing of cap looking southwest from NE Tillamook toward the river. (Source: ODOT)
Just two days after the Biden Administration announced a $450 million grant to construct highway caps above I-5 through the Rose Quarter, the advisory committee that is largely responsible for making it happen held a meeting. Members of the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Historic Albina Advisory Board (HAAB) gathered on Zoom Tuesday. The group aired feedback on the grant news and watched presentations about the caps and other details from project staff.
HAAB meeting on Zoom with ODOT Director Strickler on bottom right..
I found the meeting very enlightening and figured you might too. Below I’ll share some of the slides and other things I took away from it…
Slides shown Tuesday that give us a sense of where the cap will go and its size in context.The plan is for one continuous cap (also called a “highway cover”) that would stretch over I-5 from the corner of NE Tillamook and Flint south to NE Weidler (see images). The cap, which is estimated to cost about $700 to $900 million total (about half the project total) would fully restore the street grid of North Flint, Vancouver, and North Williams (north/south) and N Weidler, Broadway, Hancock and Tillamook (east/west). The cap would add about 7 new acres of land to the Rose Quarter.
In addition to still being about $1 billion short on the project (which includes widening I-5 between I-84 and I-405 in addition to other surface street changes), ODOT has to address at least one high-profile HAAB member who is very skeptical that the money will be spent in a way that directly benefits Black people. A top priority of the HAAB is to use this project to rebuild wealth that was stolen from the Black community when the freeway and other developments were built. HAAB member James Posey is well-known in Portland as a former mayoral candidate and co-founder of the National Association of Minority Contractors of Oregon. He’s also president of the local chapter of the NAACP.
When ODOT Director Kris Strickler stopped into the HAAB meeting to thank members for their help in securing what he referred to as the largest grant ODOT has ever received from the federal government, Posey seized the opportunity to express skepticism about who will see benefits from the investment:
James Posey (Photo via Linkedin)
“I hate to be a naysayer… but the truth of the matter is there are a lot of people that are concerned that very little of that money will go into the hands of the Black community. Some of us are concerned that we’ve seen this movie before… And you know, we use the HAAB and Black faces all over the place and at the end of the day, Black people will receive very little benefit from this project. I would recommend that you all put in place a Truth and Reconciliation committee to look at every one of the dollars that come from it and see if in fact we are maximizing the participation of African Americans, which you all are selling, don’t make no mistake about it. You’re using Black people. You’re using this community, and some of us feel like we’re going to be played.”
Posey wants to make sure Black firms, contractors, and other Black Portlanders directly benefit from the construction of the new highway caps. ODOT has never led a project like this before and even their work with the HAAB thus far as been unprecedented. Whether or not they can continue to meet the every-growing expectations of the community is a big unanswered question.
What type of development should we expect on and around the caps? At the meeting Tuesday, a Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability staffer shared several buildings and public space projects they believe are good precedents. Among them were: Vanport Square in Portland; the Fruit & Flower Child Development Center on the Portland Community College Rock Creek Campus; the Sherman Phoenix Marketplace in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Pop Courts community plaza in Chicago; and the Louisa Flowers housing block in the Lloyd Center.
Speaking of construction, a member of the Rose Quarter project team presented at the meeting that the type of development that would be possible on the highway cover will be “limited” due to various necessary offsets and other structural issues. Strength of the cover and whether it would be strong enough to be “buildable” and hold large buildings was a major point in contention before the “Hybrid 3” option was agreed to. So there’s no question multi-story buildings can be built, but what ODOT was saying in the HAAB meeting is that it won’t be a free-for-all in terms of what gets built and where.
According to project staff at Tuesday’s meeting, the northern and southern edges of the cap will have different load ratings due to the length of spans across the freeway and strength of girders. One-story buildings “with some constraints” would be possible in those areas and three-story buildings would be feasible in the middle portion of the cap (roughly between NE Weidler and Hancock).
The staffer also went over a number of reasons buildings would have to be offset from bridge joints, “free edges,” utility access points, and so on. They are clearly trying to manage expectations.
“Black ownership matters, ownership not only of the land but beneath our feet, but the development processes that shape these spaces.”
Governance of the cover will also be a big issue. As it stands today, ODOT would own all the land created by the cover (since it’s over one of their freeways). This means anyone who owns a building or does business on the cover must have a special lease or governance agreement with ODOT.
At the Oregon Transportation Commission meeting today, Albina Vision Trust members and ODOT are set to begin the first formal, public discussions of a joint workplan agreement that will establish the governance of the caps going forward. In previous work from the project’s Independent Cover Assessment (ICA), ODOT has referred to the need to form a new commission that, ” would have the authority to plan, monitor, manage, and oversee future development activity on the highway cover and any remnant land created by the I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project.” They called it the Black Historic Albina Cover Development Commission
“While such a commission should be formed by a legally binding agreement that requires the coordination and cooperation of multiple levels of government and community stakeholders, its decision-making power would sit with Black community members and representatives,” reads a 2021 report from the ICA.
Albina Vision Trust is in the driver’s seat in the future of that commission. At the HAAB meeting Tuesday, AVT’s JT Flowers said their work plan proposal,
“is rooted in a principle that’s very foundational to the work that we do, which is that ownership matters, that Black ownership matters, ownership not only of the land but beneath our feet, but the development processes that shape these spaces matter, and it’s going to be vitally important for us as a community to make sure that we are driving and shaping this work from top to bottom, not just as we build the highway cover, but as we start to imagine what could be built on top of it and for whom that development centers.”
A slide that will be shown at today’s OTC meeting says the governance resolution will, “determine if Albina Vision Trust can have access and rights to 1) future lease(s)/easement(s) for developable air rights on the highway cover; and 2) ownership and development rights for surplus property associated with the Project.”
This is all fascinating new ground for ODOT and the agency finds itself in a very odd position. They don’t have any money or political support for the freeway widening part of their plans (especially with tolling off the table), while AVT continues to build tremendous power and influence. And since AVT has made it clear in past statements they don’t need the freeway expansion to realize their vision, ODOT’s influence and necessity seems to be waning. Maybe in the end, AVT will be in charge of cap development, the City of Portland will manage the surface street changes, and ODOT will be reduced to nothing more than a landlord.
Learn more!
— Don’t miss Lisa Caballero’s excellent interview about freeway caps with developer Matt Edlen.
