Newcomer's Handbook for Moving to and Living in Portland: Including Vancouver, Gresham, Hillsboro, Beaverton, Tigard, and Wilsonville

by Geon, Bryan

  Having finished the hard work of choosing a name, Lovejoy and Pettygrove platted a 16-block grid the same year. The city grew rapidly, and at the time of its incorporation in 1851 covered just over two square miles. Portland had a series of early rivals, including Oregon City, Sellwood, and Linnton, but it eventually emerged as the center of trade for the Willamette Valley and the largest city in the Northwest. The first of three transcontinental railroads to serve the area reached Portland in 1883, and this crucial connection cemented the city’s status as a major trading center. The population of Portland and its surrounding areas nearly tripled during the 1880s, and the first streetcar lines reached the Eastside during that decade.

  A series of annexations beginning in the 1880s extended the city’s size and population dramatically. In 1891, Portland consolidated with the cities of East Portland (incorporated in 1870) and Albina (incorporated in 1887). Despite an economic slowdown in the 1890s, Portland remained the largest city in the Northwest until the early 20th century, when Seattle (spurred in part by growth during the Klondike Gold Rush) surpassed it. By 1900, Portland had a population of nearly 100,000.

  The Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition of 1905 had 1.5 million visitors and marked the beginning of Portland’s greatest wave of growth and prosperity. In 1906, the Eastside population surpassed that of the Westside, and by 1910, the city’s population had more than doubled, to 207,000. In 1915, Portland absorbed the cities of St. Johns (incorporated 1903) and Linnton (incorporated 1910), and the shipbuilding industry attracted more workers during the First World War. The twenties saw another wave of growth on the Eastside, and even the Depression, which spawned Hoovervilles in locations like Sullivan’s Gulch and under the Ross Island Bridge, did not halt the city’s expansion. By the eve of the Second World War, the city had a population of more than 300,000.

  The war kicked Portland’s growth into overdrive. The Kaiser shipyards built more than 1,000 ships during the war, and the demand for labor was intense and not confined to Portland proper: 38,000 people worked at the Kaiser shipyard in Vancouver, Washington, and the population of the metropolitan area increased by one-third during the war years. Housing was in short supply; a few small houses were built on vacant lots in the old Eastside neighborhoods during the war, but most workers were placed in huge housing projects like Vanport, located in North Portland at the present site of Delta Park. Vanport was the largest public housing project ever built in the United States, with some 40,000 inhabitants. A massive flood in 1948 destroyed Vanport, and its residents, many of whom were African-American, were relocated to other parts of the city.

  After the war, the pent-up demand for housing drove a wave of suburban expansion that has lasted for more than half a century. Portland’s population actually declined slightly during the 1950s. The Interstate Highway System encouraged development in areas that were formerly well outside the metropolitan area. In 1950, the three largest suburbs on the Oregon side of the river—Gresham, Hillsboro, and Beaverton—had a combined population of less than 11,000; today, more than a quarter-million people live in these three cities. Clark County also experienced rapid population growth in the postwar years. The population of the city of Portland has continued to grow since the 1960s, but much of this growth is due to annexation of unincorporated areas of Multnomah County east of Portland.

  In the early 1970s, state land use laws mandated the creation of an urban growth boundary (see “Urban Planning,” above), which helped channel and restrain suburban growth. At about the same time, a grassroots effort by local community activists killed the Mount Hood Freeway project, which would have bulldozed large sections of Southeast Portland to make way for a freeway to Gresham. The transportation dollars that had been earmarked for the freeway instead went to several smaller-scale road projects and to the development of Portland’s first light-rail line. The decisions made in the 1970s and 1980s have literally shaped Portland and earned it a worldwide reputation as a leader in land use and transportation planning. It remains to be seen whether Portland can maintain that reputation in the face of financial constraints and continued growth.

  For Portland keeps growing. New residents, often drawn by the region’s beauty and vaunted high quality of life, continue to arrive. Presumably you are one of them. Welcome to Portland. Please help us keep the character and livability of this special part of the world intact.

  Neighborhoods and Communities

  The neighborhood and community profiles below are intended to help you get a feel for the character of each Portland neighborhood or suburban community. There is no substitute for scouting out a neighborhood in person or meeting face-to-face with a knowledgeable local real estate agent, but these introductions will let you know what to expect.

  City of Portland

  Boundaries: North: Columbia River; West: Beaverton; Cedar Mill, West Haven, West Slope, Raleigh Hills, Garden Home (unincorporated Washington County); Tigard; South: Lake Oswego; Dunthorpe (unincorporated Multnomah and Clackamas counties); Milwaukie; Clackamas (unincorporated Clackamas County); Happy Valley; East: Gresham; Unincorporated Multnomah County; Area: 145 square miles; Population: 610,000

  Oregon’s largest city is, above all, a city of neighborhoods. Portland’s Office of Neighborhood Involvement (http://www.portlandoregon.gov/oni/) officially recognizes more than 90 neighborhood associations, although the names and boundaries of the “official” neighborhoods don’t necessarily correspond to commonly used neighborhood designations. Every one of these neighborhoods is unique. Many Portland neighborhoods began as small communities located outside the city limits, while others sprang into being along new electric streetcar lines in the early 20th century (just as new developments today sometimes follow freeways), and these older neighborhoods tend to have a distinct and cohesive feel. Neighborhoods developed in the postwar, automobile-oriented era are generally more homogeneous, but they are not nearly as interchangeable as their detractors would have you believe.

  The Willamette River cleaves Portland into two very different realms, the Westside and the Eastside, and many Portlanders swear that never the twain shall meet. Some people consider it a minor sport to mock the denizens of the opposite side of the river with crude stereotypes—Westsiders are rich, conceited, materialistic, and car-bound, Eastsiders are methhead yokels, flag-burning communists, or bike Nazis—that in most cases are simply false. In fact, wealth and poverty, crime and security, liberals and conservatives, are found in every quadrant of the city (albeit in varying concentrations), and the two halves of Portland have much more in common with one another than either half does with, say, Houston. In short, don’t let mean-spirited stereotypes cause you to write off entire sections of the city; explore without preconceptions, and determine for yourself what neighborhood feels like the best fit.

  A final note on Portland neighborhoods: East Burnside Street forms the official boundary between Northeast and Southeast Portland, but most people (including the Office of Neighborhood Involvement) consider the less surmountable Banfield Freeway (Interstate 84) to be the informal boundary between them. This chapter follows the unofficial convention.

  The West Side

  Downtown Portland and Environs

  Boundaries: North: Interstate 405; Burnside Street (west of 405); West: Interstate 405 (north of Burnside); Washington Park; South: Interstate 405, Sunset Highway (US 26); East: Willamette River

  Downtown Portland

  Neighborhood Association: Downtown Portland

  Downtown Portland is generally understood to encompass the city’s central business district and the immediately surrounding area within the Interstate 405 loop and south of Burnside Street. Downtown occupies the west bank of the Willamette River, on the site where the city was founded in 1845. This former riverside clearcut—the original Stumptown—has been the commercial and cultural heart of the city and of Oregon as a whole for more than 150 years.

  Today, downtown is a mix of new and old buildings on sites with evolving
uses: Pioneer Courthouse Square, the city’s innovative “living room,” was by turns a school, the opulent Portland Hotel, and a parking lot. Most downtown structures are commercial or civic in nature—office buildings, retail stores, courthouses, etc.—and while the area remains reasonably vibrant even after business hours, relatively few people have chosen to live here. Until very recently, the few housing units in the heart of downtown tended to fall into the “transitional” or residential hotel category, with a few notable exceptions (such as the luxury condominiums on the upper floors of the KOIN Center [Tower]). A few new market-rent apartment and condominium towers have been built or are under construction in the core area, however, especially in or near the so-called Cultural District along Broadway and the South Park Blocks, home of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts, the Portland Art Museum, and the Oregon Historical Society. For its few residents, this neighborhood offers not only the eponymous cultural offerings—art, theatre, movies, and more—just footsteps away, but also some of the city’s best restaurants, such as local stalwart Higgins (www.higginsportland.com).

  Downtown Portland

  The Cultural District overlaps the once-forlorn West End, a region located roughly between Park Avenue and Interstate 405, which is now perhaps the hottest, hippest part of downtown. Traditionally, somewhat shabby subsidized housing has been the residential norm in this area, which also features several historic churches, some low-rent office and retail buildings, and various bars and parking lots. In the past few years, this area has undergone rapid redevelopment, spurred in part by the dramatic evolution of the Pearl District just across Burnside. Apartments are being spiffed up, new condominiums are rising, and trendy boutiques, restaurants, bakeries, food cart pods, and other interesting businesses like Living Room Theaters (www.livingroomtheaters.com) on 10th Avenue have colonized the area. Also on 10th, the Safeway supermarket, once locally known as the “scary Safeway” because of its many mentally ill or drug-addled customers (who have not entirely gone away), has been reconstructed as the centerpiece of the mixed-use Museum Place complex; the spiffy Eliot Tower condominium building is just across the street. The beautifully restored Central Library, unquestionably one of the finest historic library buildings on the West Coast, stands proudly down the street. Wind turbines sprout improbably (and largely symbolically, given Portland’s low average wind speeds) from the roof of the ultra-modern Indigo@TwelveWest apartment tower. The Portland Streetcar, which trundles along 10th and 11th Avenues, arguably has helped spur investment in the area.

  Cultural District

  The edgy, quirky Ace Hotel (www.acehotel.com) on Stark Street has become an unexpected darling of the travel press, and anchors the northern portion of the West End, which includes the “Burnside Triangle,” one of the less salacious names for the triangular wedge between West Burnside Street and Southwest Alder Street. (The Burnside Triangle has long been a center of the Portland gay community.) Despite the rise in the West End’s fortunes, the area still features a dwindling number of surface parking lots, a few derelict buildings, and more than a few panhandlers, but the physical structure of the neighborhood, at least, is rapidly changing.

  Portland State University dominates the south end of downtown, which has accordingly been dubbed the University District. Much of the housing in this end of downtown is intended for and occupied by students, with all that implies for the condition of, and noise level in, buildings. The extension of the Portland Streetcar through the PSU campus to the South Waterfront district, the new MAX lines along the transit mall, and the growth of PSU’s physical plant have all encouraged the construction of new condominiums, apartment buildings, and academic buildings in the area, and some of the more dilapidated structures are being demolished.

  University District

  Between PSU and the Willamette River, the southern end of downtown was a vibrant residential zone until the early 1970s, when it was razed in the name of urban renewal. This area includes the Keller Auditorium, a few small parks, various nondescript office buildings, and several semi-upscale residential towers, some with magnificent river and mountain views. Along the riverfront, adjacent to the RiverPlace hotel and a small marina, are several condominium complexes; these include both low-rise traditional condos and newer condo towers with views of the river, the city skyline, and the Marquam Bridge looming just to the south.

  Downtown Portland is possibly the only part of the city in which having a car is not merely optional but a positive liability. Ongoing construction projects periodically wreak havoc with automobile traffic; moreover, because downtown Portland was platted before the rest of the city, the streets are not oriented to true north, but instead to magnetic north. (The reason for this is unclear, although presumably early planners tried to plat numbered streets to run parallel to the waterfront along the Willamette.) As a result, the corners where east-west downtown streets intersect Burnside are acute angles; a number of interesting wedge-shaped, mini-Flatiron-style buildings occupy the resulting oddly shaped lots. These corners may be picturesque, but they can be difficult to navigate. Fortunately, downtown Portland is pedestrian-friendly; assuming you can endure the ubiquitous and often creative panhandlers, the poorly timed lights, and the confused suburbanite drivers trying to focus on navigating instead of looking out for pedestrians; new aluminum directional signs help orient touristic foot travelers. Downtown is also the hub of the region’s transit system, with frequent bus, light rail, and streetcar service within downtown and to other parts of the city. Downtown Portland has an abundance of retail shops of all kinds, but they are scattered throughout the city core rather than concentrated in one small area, although the West End is starting to generate a critical mass of boutiques. In addition, other than the Safeway there are no large supermarkets in the downtown core; you may need to drive or hop on a bus or the streetcar to buy groceries. If you’re looking for a densely urban environment with plenty of residential options and amenities, high-end boutiques galore, and hip restaurants on every corner, you might be happier in the Pearl.

  No one moves to downtown Portland for its wide open spaces, but several parks nonetheless provide opportunities to stretch your legs, get some fresh air, and maybe witness a drug deal or two. Waterfront Park and the leafy South Park Blocks are downtown’s prime parklands, but smaller parks like the Plaza Blocks, between 3rd and 4th Avenues near the county and federal courthouses, provide additional oases of green in the heart of the city. The parks also provide a home for several farmers’ markets. (See www.portlandfarmersmarket.org for details.)

  Goose Hollow

  Neighborhood Association: Goose Hollow

  Goose Hollow is a social and topographical transition zone between relatively flat downtown Portland and the loftier and more genteel precincts of the West Hills. The neighborhood was once dotted with grand Victorian- and Edwardian-era homes, many of which are still standing; most of these structures have been divided into condos or professional offices, but a few remain in use as very impressive single-family homes. (Most of these older homes have enough historical or architectural significance to warrant a formal name, e.g., The McMaster House on SW Vista.) At the south end of the neighborhood, Gander Ridge and Vista Ridge, which form the rims of the “hollow” for which Goose Hollow is named, contain an abundance of older homes and winding streets that are more reminiscent of Portland Heights. Lower down, a wave of building in the 1920s left a legacy of attractive old-fashioned apartments, especially near Southwest Vista Avenue, while later apartment construction resulted in a crop of high-rises, some with magnificent views.

  Goose Hollow

  Many of the neighborhood’s historic buildings were lost to the wrecking ball in the 1960s, especially in the lower part of the neighborhood, which is now largely devoted to non-residential uses, including the Providence Park stadium, Lincoln High School, a few manufacturing facilities and auto-related businesses, and the exclusive Multnomah Athletic Club (if you want in, make friends with a member a
nd take a lottery number). As proximity to the Pearl District and downtown has become more desirable in recent years, some new condominium projects have sprung up, especially in the vicinity of Providence Park and along Southwest Jefferson Street.

  With a few exceptions, most notably the Goose Hollow Inn (www.goosehollowinn.com) owned by former Portland mayor Bud Clark (who gained minor celebrity as the flasher in the popular “Expose Yourself to Art” poster), the neighborhood lacks much in the way of dining or shopping except along the fringes, close to Interstate 405 or along Burnside. Nonetheless, it is a quick stroll from almost any point in Goose Hollow to the tantalizing offerings of downtown Portland or Northwest 23rd Avenue. (Keep in mind that your walk home will invariably be uphill.) Moreover, transit service is very good: several bus lines pass through or along the edges of the neighborhood, and the Westside MAX light rail line passes right through Goose Hollow, with stops at Providence Park, Kings Hill/SW Salmon, and Goose Hollow/SW Jefferson.