updated 02/10/03

Intersection Repair photos

Sunnyside Piazza recently received a grant from the City of Portland’s Community Initiative Small Grant that will help us install Phase II: corner trellises, together with planters that will act as curb extensions. We’ll be working on this Phase for the next few months, and are planning to install the new pieces on Saturday, May 10th when we re-paint the intersection during the Village Building Convergence. We’re working with public artists Brian Borrello and Matt Cartwright on these and other installations (such as images of salmon and other cultural symbols on the sidewalks in front of participating houses).

On February 6th, the kiosk got a solar-powered lamp to add some life and light to the Piazza. The lamp is actually a series of 3 LEDs powered from a battery charged by a solar panel set in the kiosk’s eco-roof.

Work on the mosaic art wall and community kiosk continues, construction of which began during the Natural Building Convergence in May. We ARE starting to plan next phases of the Piazza at the same time, though - the sidewalk awnings may arrive sooner than you think! Join in the organizing (or just show up on site any weekend) and help us build our Piazza sooner - there’s plenty to do! Also be sure to check out the Sunnyside Public Places Master Plan effort that has spawned off the Piazza.

Sunnyside Piazza gets its second coat of paint THIS SATURDAY, MAY 10th! We’ll also be constructing a BULLETIN BOARD on-site out of natural building materials as part of the Natural Building Convergence. Please stop by and lend a hand!

Sunnyside neighbors came out in force on Saturday and installed the first phase of Sunnyside Piazza - the giant sunflower motif painting on the interesection asphalt!

We’re still raising funds to cover the costs of the paint and paint materials, as well as to build up a fund for future installations (which include sidewalk trellises, planters and more!). If you’d like help out with the effort, or donate to the fund, you can contact the neighborhood coordinators through City Repair at 503-235-8946.

Keep your ears open for neighborhood celebration in the new Piazza sometime in October!

We’re set to paint on Saturday, 9/22! Here are the notes from our meeting on Sunday, 9/16:

Sunnyside IR meeting @ Lisa & Jan’s house

- YES, it looks like we’ll be able to paint on Saturday, 9/22! - We will have a Pre-Painting Meeting (and possible sign-making workparty) on Friday 9/21 at Lisa & Jan’s house at 8pm. - City will clean street day before - PDOT will do speed counts before and after - We’ll have the City Repair T-Horse and one (or more) of their towers there

- We’ll make a special effort to raise money there on Saturday. - We’ll run donations through City Repair so folks can get tax write-offs. Checks should be made out to “The City Repair Project” and have “Sunnyside Piazza” in the MEMO field. - Renee will coordinate fundraising (does she know this yet?) - Jan and Renee will front the money for the painting supplies and paint. They will be reimbursed through donations received (thru City Repair), and possibly some grant money that CR is looking into.

- We need flyers, telephone outreach, an outreach display, handouts, photos, etc. — Lisa will put together a lot of this and will do some photography. Jan and Dvorra will help with distribution. Holly will help make phone calls. — Flyer will tell people to bring: brushes, rollers, painting clothes, kneepads/small pillows, donations, potluck food, musical instruments, candles, etc.

- We’ll have an HQ area, with tables and a City Repair tower, for: — information/outreach — taking donations — painter check-in — painting supply central — food central

- The outreach display and signage in general should include: — general information on the project (why we’re doing this, what process we took to get here, how to get involved, next steps, etc.) — blow-up and details of the design, esp. the mathematical aspects and relation to neighborhood culture — donations

- paint: big 5-gallon buckets of Yellow, Orange, Green, etc., plus a little Black for touch-up

- Renee has already done a lot of prep work for painting - folks will check with her before going too far on planning.

- Dvorra and Renee will put together the ‘painting kits’ (roller, brushes, tray, rags, tarps, buckets, etc.)

- Core painting crew will do pre-painting and early morning painting to mark down the radii and curves of the design (13 lines, 20 columns)

- There was a discussion re detailed hand group painting vs. just painting a big yellow field w/ black outlines for the arcs. We decided that having the whole group involved in the painting was better for building community, and creating a more interesting and higher quality aesthetic.

- Keyan (and Brian Borrello) will coordinate the painting of the design. An instruction sheet will be made, and we’ll have an orientation in the beginning. They and others will also be floaters, helping newcomers learn what to do & how to do it. (We could also have Logistics Table for this and for storing supplies, etc.)

- We’ll paint in shifts - it gets tiring. No concern that we’ll have too many people.

- Handwashing area on Lisa & Jan’s planting strip.

- Krysten (SE house) will make cookies! Jan will work on getting food donated by local businesses for painters. City Repair also work on donated food.

- Flyers will tell people to bring potluck food, musical instruments & candles. - T-Horse will be there, with lights, for free chai & tea - Some folks were concerned that we’re all maxxed out, so we shouldn’t put too much energy into coordinating a party/entertainment. We decided we would NOT go into getting a band, amplification, etc. - Dvorra will talk to a musician friend re performing - Charla will talk to Dances of Universal Peace

WEDNESDAY 9/19 ??? - City Council passes approving ordinance on their consent (no discussion - ie, no need for us to be there) agenda.

FRIDAY 9/21 ??? - City will clean the street for us! 8:00pm - Pre-Painting Meeting & Sign-Making @ Lisa & Jan’s

SATURDAY 9/22 7:30am - Setup — set up the roof camera! — block the streets — sweep the area — pre-painting work

8:00am - Core Painting — painting of arcs & curves — set up info tables/displays — set up logistics area (paint & washing supplies) — set up refreshment area (snacks, water, music) — City Repair tower(s), stages delivered

noon - Group Painting — painting of yellow-orange areas — painting of outer leaves area — T-Horse arrives, operates

5:00pm - PARTY! — pack up and clear away the painting supplies — neighborhood potluck and celebration (we’re trying to get various musicians to be there)

9:00pm - Clean-Up — pack up the info tables, etc. — sweep-up

- IDEA: collect sunflower heads and have them in baskets on the sidewalks and corners! - ~ SE 16th & Main there’s a cluster of houses that also has sunflowers on their facades

Key neighbor organizers met with Jillian Detweiler of Commissioner Charlie Hales office on Sunday 8/5 to review the Intersection Repair process and City requirements. The results of that meeting are:

• Saturday 9/22 (pending City approval) is the day to paint Sunnyside Piazza! The Sunday and weekend after are our rain dates.
• we will have a Sunday brunch meeting this week on 8/12 at Lisa & Jan’s house to finalize the design and start organizing final signature gathering.
• Jillian will review certain design and process details with PDOT and others this week, allowing the neighbors and City Repair to submit the design proposal to the City in late August.

We had a short-notice but very fun block party on Saturday 7/28, where we presented the preliminary design of Sunnyside Piazza that came out of last month’s workshop and got to know more of our neighbors. Responses to the project idea and design were overwhelmingly positive!

On Sunday, June 24th we had a small workshop with the neighbors who have been involved so far to create a preliminary design of the Intersection Repair. With this design we’ll have somethign ‘concrete’ to work with for outreach, and to lay a foundation for a final design that involves the whole neighborhood. Look below for notes from that workshop!

The block party has been postponed until later in the summer. Watch this space for dates for the block party and an upcoming Community Design Workshop.

Community Design Workshop @ Sunnyside Church

PRESENT: Griff, Renee, Hollie, Chris, Kerrie, Sarah, Alexia, Keyan, Mark, Suki, Daniel, Saskia, Charla

- why we’re here, how we got here - goal for this workshop: Create a preliminary design of the Intersection Repair so that we have something ‘concrete’ to work with for outreach and to lay the foundation for a final design that involves the whole community

Overview: What does it mean to create a “sense of place”? (10 min.)

We had identified four different issue areas (Usage, Graphic, Traffic, and Environment), and formed two small groups each tackling two of the areas.

- USAGE and GRAPHIC: Hollie, Griff, Mark (designer), Suki (graphic artist)

- TRAFFIC and ENVIRONMENT: team: Renee, Chris, Kerrie, Alexia (designer), Keyan (designer)

The small groups discussed different issues (see Appendix below), and with the help of the designers sketched out ideas for designs and projects.

We reassembled the large group to share the results of the small groups, and then let the ideas bounce off each other, combine or morph. Here are the main ideas that came out of this process:

- GRAPHIC ideas:

• sunflower mandala graphic
• a maze, or labyrinth graphic
• a graphic that is a window in time, looking under surface of street
• sunflower graphic, asymmetrical design

- EXPERIENCE ideas:

• a “spiral journey” around the space
• planting themes for corners: colors, smells, tactile, etc.
• gateways on each corner - “portals”

- SPACE ideas:

• treat intersection asymmetrically (because opportunities for planting, use, etc. are NOT symmetrical)
• not just pretty objects: a cohesive Place
• instead of curb extensions, use big planters (cheaper and quicker) for now – “We don’t want more curb, we just want to be able to hold the intersection.”
• use power pole to hang things, information
• only the NW corner of the intersection seems to make sense as a place for a public Community Board

- ENVIRONMENT ideas:

• small in-ground uplights to mark the space – candlelit feel, inspire sense of respect (precedent: Pied Cow)
• lighting can be used to influence behavior (tree shade from streetlights can encourage illicit activity; intimate lighting can encourage quieter passersby)

- OTHER ideas/observations/concerns:

• form an alliance with Zupans, others to get trash/recycling cans installed and maintained (bigger and better than ‘Clean Belmont Project’)
• difference between a) marking what’s already there, and b) creating space for pedestrians to occupy
• disabled access
• 34th is now bike lane, so minimal need here
• visibility

Alexia, Keyan and Mark will take the sketches and ideas from this workshop and use them to create the preliminary designs. The group had different feelings about whether they should produce one merged design, or two or three different designs so people could see different ideas. They will meet the coming Wednesday and submit drawings to the group (via the City Repair website, initially) as soon as possible.

These are the discussion point suggestions given to workshop participants to seed some ideas.

- USAGE discussion points:

o- How will people occupy the space?
o- What will people do in the space? What could happen there?
o- How will kids use the space after school?
o- How will people use the space in summer or winter?

- GRAPHIC discussion points:

o- a sense of center
o- making crossroads
o- establishing a community identity
o- what might the intersection look like in the future?

- TRAFFIC discussion points:

o- How will pedestrians, bicyclists and car drivers use the space? What are their needs?
o- Traffic calming ideas (curb extensions, raised platform or crosswalks)
o- Other ways to attract peds/bikes, discourage through-traffic

- ENVIRONMENT discussion points:

o- More room for planting: wider planting strips?
o- Community identity reflected in consisted trees, flowers
o- Reflecting the environment: underground streams, birdfeeders, fruit-bearing trees
o- Stormwater treatment.

PRESENT: Griff, Renee, Kevin (Capstone), Patty, Hollie, Daniel (City Repair), Simon , Mike, Richard

- Introductions

- We reviewed the project to-date

## INTERSECTION REPAIR PROCESS - Daniel reported on coming changes to Intersection Repair process following City Repair meeting with Commissioner Hales’ office last week:

 o- we NO LONGER need to get approval of 80% of households within a 2 block radius of intersection
 o- we WILL have to get approval of enough households within a roughly equivalent area -- THIS is what provides us with the flexibility to NOT, for example, cross Belmont for our 80%. What matters is that we have done a "credible outreach process". Whether it's credible or not is decided by the City Traffic Engineer, with input from the City Commissioners
 o- This means we can do the project on a sort of to BE ABLE to do it this way, though, City Repair needs to submit a NEW ORDINANCE for the City Council to pass. For various reasons, we've been told the best way to do this would be to:
    }- present the new ordinance to City Council in LATE JULY
    }- have a PRELIMINARY DESIGN and a PETITION OF SUPPORT from the neighborhood
    }- have a few neighborhood RESIDENTS attend.

- Everyone agreed that it was best to take this “fast track” than to let the process take longer:

 o- "we're better of doing it quickly"
 o- "don't want to cramp it in august"
 o- "preliminary design workshop will bring out more people"

- We discussed what would need to happen in order to have all these pieces in place by the end of July.

 o- begin gathering block party signatures this weekend -- distribute survey at the same time to introduce people to the idea
 o- preliminary design workshop during the week of 6/18-25 to get a basic design out that we can use for promotion, "make it concrete"
 o- neighborhood block party soon after, probably Saturday 6/30; start collecting signatures of support with the preliminary design
 o- second design workshop mid-July to involved more people and refine design
 o- try to finish collecting signatures of support from neighborhood by late July
 o- a few residents, together with City Repair, present design and ordinance to City Council meeting (probably Wednesday 7/27 2pm)
 o- if all goes well, we'll shoot for painting in late August!
 

- Who’s doing what about this:

 o- Renee and Kevin are finalizing survey; Renee, Richard, Griff and Katie will be taking them out with the block party forms to the neighbors.
 o- Daniel will call designers, architects, etc. in the neighborhood to figure out the best day for the preliminary design workshop (week of 6/18)
 o- Griff, Renee, Hollie and Daniel will coordinate preliminary design workshop
 o- Daniel will check 6/30 block party day with SE Uplift
 o- (I don't have down in my notes who's going to coordinate the block party!)

## COMMITTEE UPDATES - Intersection Committee: last mtg was more than a month ago, they produced those excellent base drawings we saw at the last meeting at Lisa & Jan’s house - Garden/Plants Committee: Lisa went to a plant design class, they talked about encouraging consistent materials (bricks, cobbles) in planting strips - History Committee: not really meeting; Patty’s been doing some research and working on a mural at 34th near Stumptown - Crime Prevention/Safety: has been meeting, themselves and with SE Uplift neighborhood crime person (Marsha Dennis). They’ve putting together a proposal for neighbors to do “Neighborhood Watch” trainings in the Fall - Cleanup Committee: Alexia and Keyan, but they’re not here

#end#

PRESENT: Jan, Griff, Shawn, Lisa, Renee, Jon, Daniel, Chris, Kerrie, Holly) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - NEXT MEETING - Jan and Lisa will be in and out of town the next few months, so Griff will take on scheduling and possibly hosting the next meeting

- Jonathan and Keyan made up a beautiful intersection basemap, complete with trees, sewer holes, curbs & parking strips, etc.(they measured the intersection by hand!)

- ORDINANCE - Daniel clarified specifics of the formal Intersection Repair process, still being drafted with City Repair and Commissioner Hales’ office:

> we need CONSENSUS of HOUSEHOLDS and OWNERS of the properties immediately on the intersection (the four corners)
> a "household" is/are the tenant/s in each unit of a building (ie, the family in a single-family house, or each apartment resident(s) in a multi-plex). Each household has one "vote". A business tenant is considered equivalent to one household
> we need 80% APPROVAL (ie, not opposed, and not necessarily support) of HOUSEHOLDS within a two block radius.
> we are still working out with the City if there's a way to adjust the two-block radius requirement so that it does not extend over a major dividing street, such as Belmont. Commissioner Hales' office seemed positive about this.

- SURVEYS - Daniel will connect Capstone students with neighborhood group to get working on developing and distributing surveys. Lisa W., Renee and Sarah (Chris’ sister) will be the neighborhood contact people.

> the survey will be a little different from Lair Hill and Tabor Flats surveys because of different needs/issues in this neighborhood

- we talked about block parties, and here’s the timeline that people wanted to see: > 1st block party: poss. June 9th – use chalk to mock-up ideas for intersection design; distribute and collect more surveys > (intermediate time – complete final surveys and initial design workshops) > 2nd block party : poss. July 21st – start in with actual structures and paint > Griff will find someone to organize these events > This timeline is possible if the group we really starts cracking on surveys, collecting signatures, and planning design workshops. > We need to be comfortable that we have adequate SUPPORT (via via surveys/signatures) and INPUT (via design workshops, etc.) from residents within a two-block radius of the intersection before we start in with paint and construction.

- [answering some questions that came up in the meeting, we’ve found that:

> SE Uplift (our Neighborhood Coalition) feels there's no problem in doing two block parties so close together
> Sabrina Freewynn is our Community Coordinator at SE Uplift
> Daniel is still research costs of construction/installtion of longer-term intersection treatments
> City Repair continues to work with Commissioner Hales' office on finalizing the formal 10-step process

RESULTS from March 24 neighborhood meeting

- DECISION: We decided that we had sufficient support and committment to move ahead with the project. - DECISION: The next general meeting will be Saturday April 28th, 10am at Jan & Lisa’s house. - ACTION: Daniel will set up a email listserv. - ACTION: We formed subcommittees:

 o- Intersection Committee
 o- Garden/Plants Committee
 o- History
 o- Crime Prevention/Safety
 o- CleanUp
 o- Media/Flyer Development
 o- Liaison with Neighborhood businesses

. 1) WELCOME. . > quick introductions . > quick review of process that’s happened until now . 2) ASSESS. . > review and clarify roles of neighbors, Neighb Assn, City Repair . > review ideas and concerns that have previously been raised . > assess our resources, needs . > assess neighborhood situation: other projects, other challenges . 3) DECIDE. . > make a CONCRETE DECISION on moving forward . (up until now we’ve only had exploratory meetings) . 4) ACT. . > identify immediate actions to do . (ie, surveys, spring beautification, traffic calming initatives) . > identify longer-term actions to do . (ie, neighborhood event, work parties) . > assign tasks

- ACTION: We started mapping out who lives where in neighborhood and what they do. - ACTION: Lisa will do a write up for the next neighborhood newsletter - ACTION: Lisa and Jan will contact remaining owners/renters on corners - ACTION IDEA: Have neighborhood police officer Charlie Brown come talk to us and update us on neighborhood crime situation. . > Chris or Richard suggested this; not sure who will follow-up - PROJECT IDEA: dog poop bag dispensers - PROJECT IDEA: Write a grant to get professional arborist to advise and possibly work on neighborhood cherry tree pruning. . > Katie and Lisa said they would work on this; Katie will talk to Parks.

BACK to Sunnyside Piazza