A new perspective on Hillsdale

When our neighborhood, with its commercial center, was awarded a Main Street designation last year, those who chose us for the program did so, in part, because we had a problem. A major commuter thoroughfare, Capitol Highway, cuts through the shopping district. It is both an asset and a liability to our neighborhood. It brings commuter business to the area, but it floods the Town Center with disruptive and, at times, dangerous automobile traffic.

No single event underscores the problem better than JPMorgan Chase Bank's interest in building a new branch here. This week, in an editorial in the Hillsdale News, I shared my perspective on the problem. Here's what I wrote:

Even though we say we live in a place called Hillsdale, it really is two places.

One I'll call a wide place in the road - at the top of the hill.

This Hillsdale is a dynamic, traffic-rich place defined by 32,000 work-day commuters passing through it. From the standpoint of merchants, large retailers (including banks) and commercial property owners, it is a strategically significant commercial strip.

Significantly, the patrons of the wide place pass through and don't identify with Hillsdale as a community because they don't live here.

Which brings us to the second Hillsdale, the place where you and I live. To us it is a community with a commercial center at its civic core. It has our three schools, our library, our Farmers Market, several locally owned shops, a few places to worship and a few to imbibe.

Most importantly, it is where we - 7,400 of us - reside nurtured by friends and neighbors.

It is home.

For easy reference let's refer to the two Hillsdales as the "wide place" and the "community."

Until quite recently these two Hillsdales got along fairly well. For 20 years, a couple dozen of us made plans for the "community" Hillsdale. We actually redrew the map and created a Hillsdale neighborhood. That status gave us some official standing with various governments including the City, the County, Metro, the School District and Tri-Met.

Meanwhile, some with commercial interests were also figuring out how to take advantage of the "wide place" Hillsdale.

Since its founding last year, the new Hillsdale Main Street, to its credit, has tried to balance the interests of both Hillsdales.

It hasn't been easy, particularly in light of JPMorgan Chase's interest in and single-minded motives for building a branch here.

Chase's first proposal, designed for commuters, predictably ran afoul of the desires of the neighborhood association and the Hillsdale Town Center Plan, which is aimed at promoting commercial in-fill and pedestrian, bike and bus transit.

After that setback, Chase has returned to the drawing board.

Let's hope the big bank will confer first with the community before it puts pencil to paper. To be successful, it should please BOTH Hillsdales and so unite them.

It can be done.

For the record, I'm not in favor of building another bank here. We have two plus an ATM for a third in the Town Center. Several other banks have branches nearby. Chase's presence is as near as the Burlingame Fred Meyer.

Despite my opposition, I'll offer Chase some advice about how to succeed in getting approval to build in the Town Center. It starts by treating our two Hillsdale's as one.

Zoning calls for a building more than twice as large as the one Chase originally proposed. Chase wanted a smaller building to make way for more parking. It actually reserved nine of 21 spaces for its nine employees, assuming they would ALL drive to work. Does that sound like Portland or Hillsdale to you?

For Chase's proposal to pass muster, it should adhere to existing zoning and then use just part of the big, possibly two- or three-story building for a small Chase branch.

But what about the leftover space? you ask.

Now here comes the challenging part, particularly for Chase, which seems innovation-averse. Rent the rest to a diversity of businesses. Or simply lease it to a developer to sub-lease.

I already know the criticism of my proposal. An earlier effort to lease space in a multi-use commercial building failed to attract tenants.

Here's where the creative part comes in. Until the economy improves and tenant interest resumes, Chase should donate - or make available at a nominal fee - the space to the community. We could use a community art gallery. The Hillsdale Main Street program could use a prominent location with space for its numerous meetings. The Hillsdale Community Foundation could open a small book store and stock it with donated books. The Hillsdale Bicycle Coalition might open a bike repair cooperative. SW Trails could open an information center for hikers. Hey, how about a little competition for the banks by renting to a credit union?

The list is only limited by our imaginations.

So how about it Chase? Can you get out of your Wall Street mind set and "think local."

By serving two Hillsdales you could help create one.

City to reject JPMorgan Chase's plan for Hillsdale

JPMorgan Chase’s efforts to open a branch here in Hillsdale has received a major blow.

The City of Portland, through its Bureau of Development Services, has informally told Chase officials that the bank’s proposed plans for the branch will be denied. Douglas Hardy in the BDS Land Services office, shared his conclusion with Chase and Hillsdale neighborhood leaders.

While the formal reasons for the rejection haven't been drafted, the bank's proposed "adjustment to zoning" was expected to be found incompatible the City Council-approved Hillsdale Town Center Plan.

The plan, approved in November 1997, resulted from hundreds of hours of citizen volunteer effort.

The Hillsdale Neighborhood Association, which unanimously voted to reject Chase's plans, submitted its formal letter of objection to BDS yesterday.

Chase had wanted to build a building with less than half the footprint required by City code. The resulting extra space was to be used primarily for extra parking.

The Hillsdale TC Plan calls for pedestrian, bike and bus-transit orientation on new projects.

The City’s denial leaves Chase with three options.

1. Proceed with the current proposal, have the City formally reject it and then appeal to a citizen board. If anything, the board seems less likely to approve the plan.

2. Revise the old plan and resubmit it. But Chase is already on record as saying a larger branch won’t work on the site. (Chase’s neighborhood opponents want a large multi-use building on the site, but Chase has maintained that it isn’t in the business of “development” and building a multi-use structure that would have space for other businesses).

3. Drop plans for building a branch on the old gas station site and back out of the lease deal.

My guess is that Chase will take the third course and pull out of the Town Center. It will still have a Hillsdale presence at a nearby branch at the Burlingame Fred Meyer when the shopping center reopens in late October.

If Chase does drop its Town Center plans, the Hillsdale Main Street program must step forward and do what it was designed to do: Revitalize the commercial area, including this vacant site.

Main Street must help the property owner, Wardin Investments, lease the site to a developer sensitive to community desires and aware of the Town Center Plan. A Hillsdale consortium of investors and businesses would be best.

Meanwhile, a group of us have convened to try to attract a credit union to Hillsdale. If we do, we might (note I said “might”) have a source of funds for an investment consortium. A credit union branch might also be an anchor tenant among two or three businesses in the new multi-use building.

Chase: Too big to succeed in Hillsdale?

Last night’s Hillsdale Neighborhood Association meeting (above) bored in on Chase Bank’s efforts to build a branch in Hillsdale.

Three Chase representatives present got an earful. Indeed, throughout the day in various conferences and meetings, the Chase reps heard why Hillsdale isn’t exactly welcoming the big bank’s plan with open arms.

“You kind of caught us off-guard,” said Chase VP Greta Pass.

And therein lies the problem.

Will the Chase bureaucracy and line-of-command be able to respond to what the bank’s little delegation learned on their visit?

The fact is that Chase is up against a seasoned, savvy group of local folks, several of whom are no strangers to land-use law in Oregon.

Many have been devoted to planning Hillsdale’s future for two decades.

As they see it, Chase, which carries a lot of baggage to begin with, has acted as if Hillsdale were some sleepy, rube-inhabited burg.

With no advance word to anyone in the community, the bank is asking the City for an “adjustment” in the zoning that the local group helped hammer out 15 years ago. Chase wants approval for a building less than half the size required by zoning.

The reason? More parking for home-bound commuters.

But several Hillsdale plans (and there have been at least four) have noted that Hillsdale is a transit district (with seven bus lines) that should invite bus riders, not more cars. It is also a pedestrian district that sorely needs more and better sidewalks and pedestrian connections between businesses on the north side of Capitol Highway, where the bank wants to be.

Planning documents also call for higher density next to the bus lines. Accordingly, they recommend mixed-use buildings of more than one story.

Either Chase officials didn’t read the plans or ignored them. Chase wants one use (a bank, even though two others are just feet away.) It also wants a single story.

A Wall Street outfit of this size is apparently use to ram-rodding its proposals through planning agency bureaucracies. Why scope out the community in advance?

So Chase is off to a bad start.

The question now is whether this big corporate ship wants to change direction in the suddenly choppy waters of Hillsdale.

The HNA last night asked Chase to delay its “adjustment” filing for two months. The Chase delegation said they would have to take the request to “superiors.” Not a good sign.

But it’s a start. If the superiors turn out to be truly superior they will accept the recommendation. If they don’t, HNA has vowed to oppose the “adjustment” request.

Assuming Chase higher-ups agree to the delay, both the bank and the community need to use those two months to sit down and come up with a project that both sides can accept.

It’s a great opportunity for Chase to craft a “Hillsdale Initiative” that can be replicated throughout Oregon, where the bank wants to build three or four dozen branches in the next few years.

As Chase’s Greta Pass told the group last night, Chase considers itself “under-branched” in Oregon compared to its competition.

She also told the group that her bank wants to be a “good neighbor.” Whether Chase is seen as “good neighbors” on ribbon-cutting day and those that follow, depends on what Chase does now — long before ground is broken for construction.

Will Chase suddenly be able to “act small” the way competitors like Umpqua and a few other banks and credit unions do in Portland?

Or is Chase simply too big to succeed in Hillsdale?

Chase-Community Compact needed

Here is my Hillsdale News commentary on the unfolding story about JPMorgan Chase's proposal to build a branch in Hillsdale. For the story itself, go to hillsdalenews.org.

Communication is equal parts sharing of views, attentive listening and keeping an open mind.

But first you have to get everyone in the same room.

And if agreement is the objective, they need to be willing to meet again and again.

That desperately needs to happen here in Hillsdale as sides line up over Chase Bank's push to put a branch on the old gas station site next to Baskin Robbins.

The atmospherics surrounding Chase's surprising filing for City approval is already tense, to say the least.

We may disagree about the bank's plans, but the need for harmony and progress is such that we can't disagree over the need to communicate.

As things stand now, the community has less than two weeks to comment to the City about the proposal - this in a month when neither business nor neighborhood associations meet.

An "emergency" neighborhood association meeting has been called for Tuesday, August 9 at 6 p.m. at the Watershed building.

That's a beginning. Chase officials, to their credit, plan to attend to answer questions.

I believe they need to do more than that.

I have a proposal which I've shared with some members of the Hillsdale Main Street Board. It doesn't pretend to be a silver bullet, but it might provide a framework for a solution, better use of the lot, an attractive building and a stronger community.

Call it "The Chase/HIllsdale Community Compact plan.

Under the plan, Chase would extend the comment period until bank officials and community members can forge a partnership. The Chase-Community partners would jointly draft the compact, a document that identifies shared objectives and pledges to meet them.

After that, the representative compact group would come up with an agreed upon site design and structure. The discussion leading up to the compact should include, but not be limited to: mixed use building occupancy, more than one story, transit-pedestrian orientation, affordable housing, sustainability, community needs (meeting room, financial support, gathering places), architectural integration with adjacent properties, undergrounding utilities and streetscape aesthetics, local lending and on-going Main Street involvement and cooperation.

I'm sure others will add to the list.

After the inevitable give and take of next Tuesday's meeting, the essential next step should be to establish a framework for moving forward.