Tilikum Crossing Unveils Portland’s Innovation Quadrant
September 11, 2015
By Art Pearce, Portland Bureau of Transportation Policy, Planning and Projects Group Manager
The opening of Orange Line and the Tilikum Crossing will be a day of excitement with speeches, music and crowds of transit enthusiasts. While a crowded train isn’t my normal idea of a good time, I understand that these moments of celebration are important to help connect Portlanders to our changing landscape and reward ourselves for the meetings and traffic detours we endured along the way.
For those of us with a planning or economic development lens, this project is most significant in demonstrating our continued commitment to centering the region’s growth around high-capacity transit investment. Tilikum Crossing – and the new roads, paths, rail lines and developable lots that have accompanied its realization – aims to address our ever-growing congestion, spur economic development and reduce climate impacts.
This investment is also an important mechanism to attracting growth close in to the center of the region where it can be best served by transit and active transportation infrastructure. Improving opportunities for job growth in the inner city will reduce the demand for additional infrastructure spending regionwide, reduce transportation costs for Portland residents and reinforce regional efforts in land use and climate action. We know that employees and residents close in to the Central City drive 36 percent fewer miles than the regional average. Locating jobs and households within the Central City is associated with a 29 percent carbon footprint reduction over alternative locations within the metro region.
Understanding the rare opportunity to build momentum and leverage federal funds that light rail transit projects provide, the City of Portland has been a key partner and investor in the development of the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail project. The City also led the completion of the Central Loop Streetcar connection onto the Tilikum Crossing and a series of connective roadway, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure investments that make the resulting redevelopment possible and connect the LRT line to the surrounding transportation system.
In South Waterfront, Portland amended the overall transportation strategy for the district to reflect the final light rail alignment, reconstructed temporary streetcar tracks into an urban street on Southwest Moody and created Portland’s first two-way cycletrack between the new bridge, the aerial tram to Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) and Waterfront Park.
Design has started for Southwest Bond Avenue, which will be constructed in 2017. Once completed, it the street will function as half of a one-way traffic couplet with Southwest Moody and complete the major circulation needs for that portion of the district. District streets are raised to match the elevation of the Tilikum bridge abutments and aid in the redevelopment of the surrounding former brownfield sites.
On the east side of the river, Portland led the relocation of Southeast Water Avenue to enable the streetcar connection onto the Tilikum Crossing, create new developable parcels and to better separate new transit and bicycle connections from essential freight movement in the surrounding industrial district. We also partnered with TriMet to create an off-street bicycle and pedestrian connection parallel to the transit line creating a new low-stress link for residents of inner Southeast.
Together these projects on both sides of the river knit the transit investments into the fabric of the existing City and also begin to demonstrate how the mobility of the city has been forever reshaped. For instance, because of this larger package of investments, a family in inner Southeast will now be able to bicycle together from their home to the river trail system and to civic events in the Central City without traveling on a busy street. This will be equally important to residents from around the city where these new bicycle and pedestrian facilities remove a network barrier that previously kept them from comfortably accessing OHSU or the Central City for their daily commute.
Portland has also been reworking its land use vision and resulting zoning for districts surrounding the new transit lines and is partnering with property owners on the redevelopment of key sites. South Waterfront is about to experience its second transformation with the expansion of the OHSU campus, new collaboration with Portland State University through the Collaborative Life Sciences Building and upcoming Knight Cancer facilities on former Schnitzer Steel land. Zidell is now in development agreement with the City for the redevelopment of their property as well. Both redevelopments are coming after at least 20 years of redevelopment planning of these former industrial brownfield sites. The light rail project was the linchpin public investment required to produce this long-awaited transformation.
The Central Eastside is equally on the cusp of its own perhaps more startling transformation. Still centered on employment and the value of close-in industry, this area will combine new technology sectors and classic trades to redefine industry for the modern era. Oregon Museum of Science and Industry Is preparing to serve as a science and technology education resource hub through expansion on its transit-adjacent parcels. PCC Climb Center continues to provide training in health industry and small business skills to prepare the next generation of workers. This coming transformation in the Central Eastside also has the potential to bring the silicon forest into urban Portland and to leverage all the attributes that attract and retain the creative class.
This new package of transportation infrastructure connects these institutions and the surrounding districts with seamless light rail, streetcar and bus transit connections and world-class cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. This will help transform Portland’s DNA to support new economic growth. The opening of the Tilikum Crossing on Sept. 12 is not just the opening of one transit line or bridge but an unveiling of the next chapter for Portland. We titled the vision of this remade portion of Portland the “Innovation Quadrant,” a concept grounded in the belief that there is value in connecting Portland’s research and education institutions (OHSU, PSU, OMSI and PCC) with the technology sector and craft trades in the Central Eastside, a connection that can foster the research laboratories and “maker test garages” for innovation. These institutions have now agreed to more formally collaborate to make the vision of an Innovation Quadrant a reality and have begun taking steps to integrate their work. This evolution is essential to maintaining the Portland region’s competitive edge as a top-tier city for the future.
The countless hours of work by Metro, TriMet, City of Portland, Portland Streetcar and Portland Development Commission staff in developing and following through on this plan (however hard the process can be at times) is testament to the shared vision and the resolve of agency staff and elected officials to shape the future of their City. Equally impressive is the level of participation from community members who volunteered their time to advocate for this investment, attending a sea of night meetings to ensure that the final design of investments followed through on our commitment.
Already we are hearing “What’s next?” Regional partners are rallying to that call on with Southwest Corridor and the Powell-Division Transit and Development Project. However, it is important to remember that the results of our labor in fostering Portland’s Innovation Quadrant have only just begun and will require continued careful nurturing and public investment for years to come.