Gifts on a spring walk

Taking a walk in the hills above my house this afternoon, I seemed particularly attuned to signs of good deeds. Perhaps I was inspired by the spring-like day and nature’s own budding gifts.

Why should human beings be any exception as natural gift givers?

The first sign was a fairly decent looking T-shirt carefully draped over a bollard in Council Crest Park. It was on prominent display just in case the owner came back looking for it.

Then, leaving the park, I passed a water fountain (a gift from the parks bureau, I assume). On a chain at its base, a neighbor had attached a metal bowl intended for dogs to slurp from after romp in the park. A nice gesture.

Along Fairmount Boulevard, someone left a stylish pair of reading glasses on the spur of a telephone pole. Again, the finder had hoped the owner might recover the glasses on a return jaunt.

Not much farther down the windy road, I encountered an elderly man picking up litter. He grasped an abandoned plastic bottle and packet of peanuts. He even dumped the peanuts on the edge of the road. “For the squirrels,” he explained after I thanked him for helping keep the roadway clean.

Finally, I got my turn.

A young woman in a pick-up truck slowed to ask directions to West Linn. No small task because West Linn is about 15 miles to the south. She had been visiting a friend in the hills and was utterly lost.

“Believe me, it happens here,” I said.

“My GPS isn’t working,” she said pointing to her smart phone, suddenly made stupid by the hilly terrain.

So I gave her directions from the still functional global positioning device in my head and sent her on her way.

Afterwards I worried briefly whether technological assistance is replacing face-to-face help, keeping us in a cocoon of isolation.

But I decided not to let the thought bother me. Why let technology intrude on the streak of human gifts my walk had given me?

Eyesore for an Eyesore on Council Crest

Only a team of bean-counters, engineers and bureaucrats could pull off the project that is taking shape in the middle of magnificent Council Crest Park.

I wrote about this tower project when it was first proposed. It is turning out as ugly as I had imagined.

What’s happening is that one Erector-set ugly monstrosity (on the right) is being replaced with a virtual twin (on the left). A construction crane is in the middle.

All this in the name of emergency communication, which shouldn’t justify ugly.

A great opportunity was lost at Council Crest. A graceful, arching tower would have been a landmark admired from miles around.

What we have is an eyesore — a symbol of a city lacking vision.

Towering Monstrosity, Part III

I almost didn't hie myself downtown this morning to the hearing on the new "erector set" emergency communications tower planned for exquisite Council Crest Park. The high cards always seem to be in the hands of the "experts" and the land-use attorneys at these hearings.

Then I reread the approval criteria for the 43-story-high tower and the cavalier dismissal of one particular criterion (more on that later) by the Bureau of Developmental Services staff. It made me angry enough to snap on my crash helmet, mount my trusty Chinese "Milano" motor scooter, and scoot right down to the hearing.

In the convenience shop on the ground floor of the planning building, I bellied my way into a discussion that Jim Thayer, president of the Southwest Hills Residential League, was having with staff from the Portland Bureau of Technology Services, the folks pushing for the "erector set" design in one of Portland's most beloved parks.

Seems Jim had read my objections here (and here) on "Red." As an alternative I had proposed that the city use a windmill tower instead of the "lattice" design to give the tower some artistic pizazz. The technology services guys didn't like the idea. It didn't help my cause that The Oregonian carried a story this morning that one of the towers at a wind farm near Wasco had snapped over the weekend killing a construction worker.

The tech guys said the 20-story wind towers weren't high enough for emergency communication and homeland security (read "protection against terrorists").

All I knew was that Council Crest Park and those who view the West Hills from all over the city deserve better than one ugly tower replacing another corroded, 50-year-old ugly tower.

And I thought I had found the language in the official criteria to make my case, namely: the project should "enrich neighborhoods and the southwest community as a whole with ample accessible and well-maintained parks and open spaces. Preserve and enhance the natural habitat features of Southwest Portland's parks and open spaces...."

I seized on the words "enrich" and "enhance." The new "lattice" tower would do neither. It was just more of the same utilitarian ugliness. Unworthy of a Portland etc.

In January, when the city tech guys visited the Hillsdale Neighborhood Association, the neighbors were cool to the plans for just this reason.

So I thought the criterion had merit as an arguing point until someone in the pre-hearing klatch muttered that a stronger, corrosion-free emergency communications tower was "enriching" and "enhancing" because it would help fight terrorism (and, presumably, evil)

Uh-huh.

Somehow I didn't think that was what the criterion's authors had in mind.

Never mind.

Interpreting the authors' intention will be up to the hearing's officer, one Gregory Frank.

Staring into a hearing room microphone, I laid out my case, for the record, to Officer Frank.

Several others from the SWHRL neighborhood were present, but only two spoke (one was Thayer), but they were concerned only about what would happen to access to the park during construction. Privately, one neighbor speculated to me that the tower might prove a hazard during an earthquake because it could topple unenrichingly and unenhancingly onto the life-sustaining neighborhood water tank.

But I was the only one to invoke civic pride and beauty through my suggestion that the clunky "erector set" tower would in no way "enhance" or "enrich."

For some reason I'm hearing Ronald Reagan's line to Walter Mondale (or was it Jimmy Carter?) being applied to me, "There he goes again."

Yep, there I go again.

The record on this matter will be left open for another three weeks until Sept 14 (thanks to Water Bureau objections — Don't ask. You don't want to know, but it was weird, as Frank noted, to have one city bureau delay action on another's project.)

So y'all are invited to comment by writing to Hearings Officer Frank, at 1900 SW Fourth Avenue, Rm 3100, Portland, Or 97201. The case file number is LU 07-137780 CU ZE.

And you got it right, they don't take e-mail. In so many ways, Portland is still in an erector set state of mind.

Towering monstrosity

The city is on the verge of replacing the ugly 439-foot, lattice communications tower on Council Crest with another equally ugly one (think Erector-set ugly).

Unless neighbors step up with a better idea (think "sculpture") at a hearing to be held Monday, August 27, at 9:00, 1900 SW 4th Avenue, we are stuck with this antennae-laden monstrosity in one of Portland's most cherished parks.

Bureaucratic tunnel vision is missing a great opportunity. The staff report is about as imaginative as an I-beam. The report, which is worth reading, imperiously and mindlessly blows off serious neighborhood concerns.

Interestingly, beautiful towers are popping up all over the state — in the form of windmills. The sleek stanchions topped by turbines and blades seem perfect for the new emergency communications tower. And because they are clearly being mass produced, they may be cheaper than the spindly folly planned for Council Crest.

If blade noise isn't a problem, the tower might even incorporate a wind-power generator, which would help the environment, set a civic example and produce revenue (how about for undergrounding utilities?).

Certainly the idea is worth investigating.

If you can't attend the hearing, you can e-mail your comments to the senior planning officer on the case, Sylvia Cate, referencing the Council Crest tower.

(Thanks, by the way, to Deb Scott's blog, Stoney Moss, for alerting me to the hearing.)