May 2008
neWS
The Southwest Portland Post • 5
Hillsdale, South Portland reach compromise over Naito Parkway plan
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By Lee Perlman
The Southwest Portland Post
Hillsdale Neighborhood Association
chair Don Baack, and longtime South
Portland neighborhood activist Jim
Gardner, say they may have an agree-
ment to end a long-running dispute
about the proposed South Portland
Circulation Plan.
The plan, conceived in the late 1970s,
would shrink Southwest Naito Park-
way between Arthur Street and Bar-
bur Boulevard from a freeway to a
neighborhood collector, with standard
intersections at local streets, two traf-
fi c lanes, on-street parking and lower
speed limits.
The plan would also simplify the
spaghetti maze of access ramps at the
west end of the Ross Island Bridge. This
would at least reduce some of the road
barriers that have divided the neighbor-
hood since the 1950s, and free up land
for other uses.
Baack has consistently opposed the
project, saying that it would cause
through traffi c to shift to Barbur and
interfere with road access to much of
the rest of southwest Portland. In ad-
dition, the current plan would replace
the current direct connection to the Ross
Island Bridge with a more roundabout
and time consuming route.
Although City Council agreed in
principle to implement the project
(without allocating funds toward its
estimated $50 million cost), Baack has
continued to argue against it.
Baack has long called for two interim
steps: to retain a direct connection from
Barbur to the bridge, and to re-engineer
Naito so that if can be converted into
“pro time parking” (wherein parking
lanes become traffi c lanes during rush
hour) if city and state traffi c engineers
deem this necessary to handle traffi c
demand.
Baack has made a tentative agree-
ment with Gardner to cease active
opposition to the project in exchange
for these concessions. Gardner told his
board that the bridge connection would
have the positive effect of reducing the
amount of through traffi c on neighbor-
hood streets.
Board member Connie Crookham,
who lives near the bridge, agreed. “I
would love to remove the ramps and
be able to cross Naito, but I agree with
Hillsdale that sending cars north (to get
onto the bridge) would equal a failure
that no one would go for,” she said.
As to the pro time parking, Gardner
said that city engineers are likely to rec-
ommend this regardless. “I don’t think
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we’d be giving up much,” he argued.
“This gets an active opponent out of the
picture, and reduces the impulse for the
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city to do nothing.”
The matter is crucial, Gardner said,
because City Commissioner Sam
Adams, in charge of the Office of
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he said. “This is a prerequisite for any
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sort of federal
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South Portland land use chair Jim
Davis, who lives in Hillsdale, disagrees,
and in March he went to Hillsdale’s
meeting to debate the matter with
Baack. “I’m tired of our neighborhood
being a through route to other commu-
nities,” he said later.
Most South Portland board members,
with the notable exception of Davis,
seemed to agree with Gardner, but no
vote was taken at the April meeting.
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Baack told The Post that he is waiting
for South Portland to take formal action
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before taking the matter to his board.
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Meanwhile, the project suffered at
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least a temporary setback when Port-
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land Mayor Tom Potter failed to include
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funds for the environmental assessment
in his draft city budget.
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