Studio Davis was selected by Home Forward, a Portland housing authority that constructs and operates affordable housing communities, to perform a comprehensive study of transportation and parking impacts that will result from a proposed redevelopment of an existing affordable housing community in the Richmond neighborhood of Southeast Portland.
This was a bit of a novel take on the standard-issue transportation impact study (TIS), which is typically conducted as a requirement to support a land use application of some sort. Home Forward’s proposal in this case is actually allowed outright under the zoning, but they elected to provide a transportation study anyway as a courtesy to the neighborhood, to show what impacts might be experienced locally and solicit some steps they could take to minimize them. So this was a fantastic opportunity for us to get out and do some focused field work in the neighborhood, ultimately crafting a plain language narrative honing in on important issues of safety and access, rather than doing the computer modeling and code-oriented narrative that are usually the backbone of a TIS.
With a site along Clinton Street, a Neighborhood Greenway that’s near and dear to my heart, and a few blocks from the FX2, Tri-Met’s interesting new (BRT-lite?) service model, the site has plenty of potential to operate without significant automotive or parking impacts. We look forward to seeing this redevelopment, which will provide nearly 100 new deeply affordable units where they’re badly needed.