NE 42nd Avenue selected for new city initiative!

There’s more reason to be excited about community-driven change on Northeast 42nd Avenue. Today, the City of Portland, the Portland Development Commission and Multnomah County announced a joint initiative to strengthen business districts in east and northeast Portland… and 42nd is one of the six identified target areas.

This program, known as the Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative (NPI), gives businesses in the district access to a variety of support tools and aims to build local capacity toward economic development. Though the details will be more thoroughly fleshed-out over the next few months, the NPI appears to be a mixture of Main Street and Urban Renewal, but with the critical caveat that the process is community driven.

Stay tuned — we’ll be updating as we find out more!

Add Your Word to the Alberta Court Murals

At the start of the summer, the members of 42MSC began working away at a project to paint a pair of twin murals at the Alberta Court Crossing — one on the north-facing wall of the Morel Ink Building and another on the south-facing wall of Doggy Business. With more than a little help from the Regional Arts and Culture Council and some wonderful designs from Loey Hargrove of Left Ear Studio, the project has progressed significantly. Now that sanding and priming are complete, we’ll be going full-tilt through September so that the murals will be in place prior to the rainy season. Embedded in the mural will be words generated by community members relating to the project theme, as stated:

The words in the mural reinforce the symbiotic relationship between the commercial district & area residents. What you see in the neighborhood today is a snapshot that sits atop a story. The words in the mural help tell that story.  They may be names, feelings, aspirations or reflections evoked by the ‘Tree of life’. The words are personal reflections by people connected to this place. 

Words will be selected randomly (lottery-style) and screened for appropriateness. Those submitting words are encouraged to explain how their selection relates to the theme. Though many people have expressed interest in submitting phrases rather than single words, be advised that single words are much more likely to be included in the mural, due primarily to size constraints — however, if you’re dead-set on a phrase, please feel welcome to submit.

To make your submission, click here. Add as many words as you’d like, but please fill a separate submission for each word.

2011 VBC – We Need Your Voice of Support!

As many folks who have been to recent community events are aware, one of 42 MSC’s goals is to improve the atmosphere and strengthen the sense of place in our district by enhancing the intersection of 42nd Avenue and Alberta Court. We’ve even made a page dedicated to this effort, though the ideas modeled on the page are really just placeholders for designs that will eventually be created by the broader community. The 2011 Village Building Convergence presents an amazing opportunity for the 42nd Avenue district to progress toward being a more walkable, pedestrian-friendly main street. To the bottom of this post is a video detailing some of the cool things that happen during the VBC.

Click here to lend your support by filling out this very short online form. We are not asking for monetary support, only your moral support.

Some of our 2010 activities…

• We have formalized our mission, value proposition and organization structure
• Michael DeMarco created a wonderful video that describes our vision and challenges, posting it on a blog devoted to city planning ideas
• We held at fun evening event where we heard about the history of 42^nd Avenue and the surrounding area from long-time neighbors.
• We did some informal research on where people from the neighborhood go for their basic goods and services
• We hosted a walking tour of 42^nd Avenue with a Kathy La Plante, National Trust Main Street Center Program Officer, where discussed ideas and challenges.
• We created an intersection development concept called “Alberta Court Crossing”. We applied — didn’t get selected — for an Umpqua Bank community development grant to begin work.
• We had an information table about the 42^nd Avenue Main Street development at a summer event on the street. We had great conversations with local neighbors.
• We attended the City’s first day-long symposium on neighborhood economic development, held at PSU. We continue to participate in follow-up activities with leaders from other community-based organizations.
• We provide leadership around the economic development elements of the Cully-Concordia Action Plan. We have participated in two roundtable discussions with  business district leaders and neighborhood, community leaders, sponsored by the Central Northeast Neighbors coalition.
• We attended the annual conference of the Oregon Main Street Program, gaining access to some wonderful resources and ideas.

Collaborative Mapping!

At our event on the 20th of July at St. Charles Church, we  featured a fun exercise to get people thinking about where they meet their basic needs. Participants were asked to map their primary destinations as follows:

• Blue: Where do you most frequently buy groceries?
• Red: When you go to a restaurant, in what area do you most often dine?
• Green: Aside from your home, where do you most often go for recreational activities?
• Yellow: Where do you most often go to meet your basic health needs?

Destinations were marked with colored stickies -- the green oval is the .5 mile catchment area from the center of the district

The purpose of the exercise was to get people thinking about their needs and how the community might be made into a more complete and walkable place. People who took part were invited to write some of the destinations they’d like to see made available. We hope to keep the dialogue going and draw out more thoughts by featuring the map at different locations throughout the district.

audio slideshow

Hi folks – here’s an audio slideshow I put together to introduce a few of the many urban design challenges toward the northern end of the district. The photos, audio… everything was done today. Additionally, the resolution should improve with time as youtube further compresses the file. Anyway, it’s not a perfect product, but it’s not all bad for an afternoon’s work. Next time, perhaps I can coax someone with a more commanding voice to do the voiceover work. Take a peek and let me know what you think!

-Mike

Working Page

To the right of the screen is a link for 42 WORKS, a private working page for committee members to develop ideas. The link on the sidebar will always be there, so whenever you’d like to share info/ideas that are better off kept private, click there and enter your password. I’ve sent all committee members invites to the page.