Old Town Has 90-Day Plan To 'Rebuild And Reopen' The Community

PORTLAND, OR —Many areas in Portland have been hit hard by the two years of the pandemic. Perhaps none as badly as Old Town.

With many businesses shut down – either temporarily or permanently – the place started to resemble a ghost town. Of course, except for the increasing amounts of homeless encampments, drug deals, and gun violence.

"Old Town is in crisis, and everyone who is living or working here is suffering," the chairwoman of the board of the Old Town Community Association, Jessie Burke, said.

"We need immediate help, immediate relief."

Burke was speaking at a news conference to unveil what the OTCA says is a 90-day plan to "repair, rebuild, and reopen the Old Town" community.

"Old Town is ground zero," she added. "A place to come and see the real underbelly of our city and county priorities.

"The place to come and experience the breakdown of the systems that exist."

Burke said that when they first approached the city for assistance, they asked her and the association to come up with measurable metrics that they can reach.

The OTCA divided their goals into three basic categories: safety, cleanliness, and accessibility.

Some of the goals:

SAFETY

• Funding for additional lighting;
• Police officers know the name of at least one person at each business or home; and
• Reduce property crimes by 50 percent

CLEANLINESS

• Increase public trash bin pickup to daily;
• Remove all untagged and/or abandoned vehicles from public parking spaces after 24 hours; and
• Have PBOT repair all damaged red lamp posts.

ACCESSIBILITY

• Reduce unauthorized tent count by one-third;
• Make sure that all sidewalks have 60 inches of walkway clearance to be ADA compliant; and
• Remove the planter at NW 2st and Davis to make it easier for visitors to access the Smart Park Garage.

"As Portland's oldest neighborhood, home to immigrants who overcame decades of discrimination and indignity, and today, home to so many who are fighting just to stay alive, we must do whatever we can to respond to the crisis of humanity unfolding around us," Lan Su Chinese Garden executive director Elizabeth Nye said.

"We must do it today."