This is what I woke up to this morning - A major step backwards for Lents and the City of Portland
Randy and Sam,
Checking my email is the third thing I do every morning...right after pouring a cup of coffee and putting on my glasses. The first thing I read was a message posted to the Lents Community listserv that pretty much ruined my day.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2009/03/major_league_soccer_deal_reach.html
Is this yet more evidence that the city couldn't care less about this community of mid to lower income, ethnically and culturally diverse, and older folks - or that the people in this community couldn't care less about elevating their standing?
As long as our new businesses consist of nail/hair salons, Sprint cell phone kiosks, and bakeries slash euro-nightclubs that never actually open for business, and storefronts and lots go unmanned and unimproved, this area will continue to rot.
And Portland, there is life outside the Pearl and inner Southeast hipsterdom. Too bad no one cares.
Then I read the article and it got even worse.
While I understand that circumstance may have made it necessary to negotiate this deal, I'm still sorely disappointed with the way public process for the site selection was completely dismissed. The hopes and aspirations of the citizens of Lents, East Portland and a very excited group of Little League players and parents were ignored for the sake of promoting a pedestrian approach that puts Portland on par with Kansas City. This move also perpetuates the idea that nothing East of 82nd is worth investing in, especially when the central city has their eye on the project. As I see it, despite all the praise and hype at the February 18 city council meeting, the city of Portland has just failed the first Equity Audit...miserably.
The longer lasting effect of this cycle of disinvestment can be seen in the letter above. This is what I have to deal with every day. You have just exponentially increased the amount of apathy and disappointment in our community. A community that supported having a baseball stadium at Lents Park by a margin of 2 to 1. This apathy and disappointment then filters in to every single public process and project that occurs in the Lents Town Center URA, into BES projects, into PDOT projects...into everything. The amount of time and effort needed just to get people interested in a project is already overwhelming...this just makes it worse. This isn't because people don't care, it isn't because they don't want to see something significant happen in Lents...it's because they've cared and hoped far too many times and been ignored and patronized.
I'm still waiting to see the real deal, rather than rely on a single reporter's account. I still support bringing MLS to Portland. But, at this point, it seems to me that Lents is owed a significant effort on your part. Should this deal go through, with only the Rose Quarter under consideration, it seems to me that it is now your responsibility to promote Lents in a real way, to find 15-20 million dollars worth of significant private investment and a sum of public funds other than TIF comparable to what we would have seen flowing into Lents from the Spectator Fund bonding. This needs to happen now, it needs to be a priority and it needs to receive as much or more effort as you put into wrestling this project away from Lents.
Sincerely,
Cora Lee Potter
Lents Resident
