Gateway Neighborhood Park

Federal grant gives Gateway Neighborhood Park the go-ahead

A new park for the Gateway neighborhood, long identified as one of the city's most park-deficient districts, will take a step closer to reality with a $200,000 Brownfields Clean-up Grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), awarded in August 2009 to the Portland Development Commission (PDC) for site clean-up.

PDC and Portland Parks and Recreation (PP&R) are partners in the Gateway Neighborhood Park site at 10506-10512 and 10520 NE Halsey Street, which they acquired last winter. Environmental assessments of the four-acre site revealed contaminants on the southern property that require remediation. The EPA grant funds will go toward cleaning up the property and obtaining a No Further Action determination by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, which will essentially give the site a clean bill of health. Ultimately, PDC and PP&R expect the site to be transformed into a three-acre park, with one acre of supporting, complementary redevelopment.

Acquisition of property in Gateway for a park has been a priority since the inception of the Gateway Regional Center Urban Renewal Area (URA) in 2001; the Gateway Neighborhood Park will be the first public park added to the district in the past eight years.

"A new park is always good news, but a new park in an area that has so few is really good news," said Bob Earnest, chairman of the Gateway Program Advisory Committee. "It's another step in the right direction for Gateway," he added.

The Gateway Neighborhood Park project includes deconstruction of a commercial building and redevelopment of the site as a public park. The environmental clean-up is expected to take place between December 2009 and April 2010, followed by master planning January to December 2010 and park improvements from 2011 to 2013.

PDC has published a draft Analysis of Brownfields Cleanup Alternatives and draft Cleanup Plan to describe the remediation activities for the future park site. The public is invited to view these documents and submit feedback and comments on the cleanup alternatives. Complete information can be downloaded from the PDC website at http://www.pdc.us/gatewaypark. Direct all questions to Justin Douglas, 503-823-4579 (voice) or douglasj@pdc.us (email).

An extensive public outreach and participation effort will be included in the master planning effort to determine the most appropriate features and design to serve park users.

PDC and PP&R are committed to keeping the public informed about this project and to seeking stakeholder feedback regularly through Gateway Program Advisory Committee (PAC) meetings, and as invited, at other community meetings. PAC meetings are open to the public and posted on the PDC Gateway Urban Renewal Area webpage calendar at: http://www.pdc.us/gateway