More streetcar! More schlock!
In Portland, there's always the next real estate development scam. While we await the "Albina Vision" farce, we also learn that they're gong to extend the streetcar in Northwest by a mile and a half and slap up some apartment bunkers nearby. I'm sure the city's taxpayers will be paying part of the freight for the new "projects" as well as the entire tab for the choo-choo action.
Confoundingly, the end point of the proposed streetcar extension woud be the failed Montgomery Park office complex, recently sold at a fire-sale price. The construction cost for the streetcar – at this point, of course, a liars' budget – is estimated at $120 million. As one of my readers has pointed out, that works out to something like $15,150 per foot of track.
And it's hard to see who would want to live where they're talking about building the apartments. The super-busy interchange of I-405 and U.S. 30 makes access to the groovier parts of Northwest difficult, and there's no way that corner can ever be made pedestrian-friendly. Maybe they need an aerial tram.
I'll be amused to see how the Socialists and other far-lefties on the City Council react to this proposal. Obviously, there is nothing in it for three of the new council districts. But I'm sure there will be many coats of equity-wash applied, and before you know it the tax money will start to roll out to our ever-present developer weasels and construction goons.
A desire named Streetcar.
ReplyDeleteAnd to think the city has huge, imminent budget problems, impacting its ability to provide basic services.
ReplyDeleteKind of poetic that, as planned, it doesn't quite reach the failed office complex.
ReplyDeleteI think it makes it to the failed parking lot.
DeleteFuture development of the ESCO properties seem to be a major part of the new trolley car tracks.
ReplyDeleteAnybody else remember the Vaughn street ball park
DeleteWhere that blue line runs along Roosevelt Street, Roosevelt Street currently does not exist.
ReplyDeleteAt least Wilson Street won't have to be renamed (unless the new mayor turns out to be a racist).
I thought Woodrow was already extirpated.
DeleteI think Wilson was an early Portland physician, not “Woody” the President.
Deletehttps://slabtowntours.com/streets-of-the-alphabet-district/
Good thing. Guilt by association!
DeleteJust homeless up in that wasteland now.
ReplyDeleteDoes Rukiah Adams get a piece of this too?
ReplyDeleteI left town two years ago in disgust. When a medical matter or some other need brings me to Portland I continue to use that area of NW as my favorite garbage dump. Oh, well. I can give it so long as Portland does itself a still deeper and uglier injury. Hope Tina is re-elected and ranked choice voting proves impossible to remove.
ReplyDeleteMost of all I hope and pray the the city's educational institutions remain defiantly woke, weak, and anti-white. Portlandia, you go grrl!
Hits the mail on the head!
DeleteKind of ironic that progressives gaslight progress.
DeleteThat part of the NWest is now on the "density" block--none other than our governor says we should be cramming more people into smaller spaces. Just a coincidence that the construction unions who endorsed progressive machine candidates will make out like bandits. Better there than in the bum-dump neighborhoods in the east side.
ReplyDeletePutting some slippery steel rails on 23rd is about the only way to make that street worse than it already is.
ReplyDeleteThere's a reason why a whole lot of traffic uses 25th to get from Vaughn to Lovejoy in order to get the tunnels on Cornell, even though it's riddled with "traffic calming" like the little fake roundabouts that can't possibly be used as roundabouts, and the speed bumps.