Notes from the Multnomah Neighborhood Association meeting

So the meeting last night was not particularly eventful. There's been a "sustainability study" going on in the neighborhood run by a terribly earnest professor from PSU and her students. We had an update on the outcome of their recommendations which can be boiled down to native plants (well, and Kiwi fruit) and rain barrels - more on this later. The interesting tidbit of info from the meeting had to do with our Army Reserve "base". Bet you didn't even know we had one of those did you? I'll admit that for those of you, like me, that grew up on the east coast - Oregon's lack of military in general seems a little strange.... So anyway, our very own outpost of the military-industial-complex, the Jerome F. Sears facility on Multnomah Blvd is being "surplused" by the Department of Defense.

The PDC has been designated as the agency to prepare a base reuse plan (big surpise here) and one of their representatives was at the meeting last night. Parties interested in acquiring and redeveloping this property have until December 22, 2006 to submit their proposals to PDC. The MNA is likely to make a recommendation, as we should, for two reasons: 1) The federal government will waive up to 100% of the fair market value of the property if it is redeveloped for certain community-beneficial purposes such as low income housing, police or fire and 2) this is a PRIME piece of property and any commercial developer who doesn't bid on it is an idiot - so expect a lot of interest from anyone looking for a seriously nice LARGE location for development in Southwest. I'm not a land use guy, so zoning and stuff pretty much zones me out, but if you're into that sort of thing, more info is here on PDC's housing development page. Hmm.... housing development...... If you think you want to be involved, or have your voice heard in this process, better come to next month's MNA meeting.

And yes, despite the presence of a large sign in the photo that clearly says "Jerome F. Sears", the captions on th photos on PDC's page are reversed.