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

by Geon, Bryan

  Inner Southeast Portland

  Neighborhood Associations: Brooklyn, Buckman, Hosford-Abernethy, Kerns

  The neighborhoods of inner Southeast Portland—the zone extending east of the Willamette River to roughly 28th Avenue—are a pastiche of tight-knit, generally laid-back urban environments where the neighborhood coffee shop is just around the block and there’s always a new up-and-coming band at the bar down the street. These neighborhoods have perhaps the highest hipster quotient in the city, and (or but, depending on your point of view) also boast the country’s highest percentage of residents who commute by bicycle.

  Inner Southeast

  The blocks closest to the river make up the Central Eastside Industrial District, a district zoned for commercial, warehouse, and light industrial use. In many ways it is the city’s workshop, with many “artisanal” industries—tile makers, lampwrights, microdistilleries, specialty food companies, etc.—headquartered here, along with some less sexy but equally necessary businesses, like store fixture and used office furniture stores. Some worthy bars and eateries appear among the warehouses; cheeky, popular Bistro Montage (www.montageportland.com) lurks, troll-like, under the Morrison Bridge approach ramps, while the Produce Row Café (www.producerowcafe.com) has a popular outdoor beer garden. Formerly grimy Water Avenue is home to trendy Boke Bowl, the Bunk Sandwich Bar, Hair of the Dog Brewery, and Clarklewis restaurant. The stretch of East Burnside east of the bridge has gone from being a sketchy auxiliary skid row to hosting a bevy of upscale, trendy establishments, like the neo-mid-century Doug Fir Lounge (www.dougfirlounge.com) and celebrated restaurant Le Pigeon (www.lepigeon.com). This area has been unofficially rechristened as Lower Burnside (or, if you must, LoBu).

  The Industrial District is also home to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), which sits along the river almost directly beneath the clunky double deck of Interstate 5’s Marquam Bridge. Unfortunately, Interstate 5 cuts off the rest of the Inner Eastside from its riverfront; the only river access between OMSI and the Steel Bridge is the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade. Opened in 2001, the Esplanade is a partly-fixed, partly-floating bike and pedestrian walkway that runs between the Hawthorne and Burnside bridges. Signs indicate where the main east-west streets would run (if they weren’t on the other side of six lanes of roaring traffic). The Industrial District is essentially an industrial reserve, intended to maintain space where high-wage businesses can start and grow close to the city center, and housing developments are not allowed. Still, a few old Victorian houses, many of them beautifully (and colorfully) restored, linger poignantly among the industrial facilities and warehouses.

  A few blocks in from the river, apartment buildings and other residential buildings start to become more common. In the Kerns and Buckman neighborhoods, to the north and south, respectively, of East Burnside Street, prewar walkup apartment buildings and duplexes mix with many old single-family homes and a crop of two-story 1960s-era apartment complexes randomly scattered through the neighborhoods; the latter have provided affordable housing for two generations of young people. A flurry of loft and apartment building construction is beginning to radically transform the streetscape along the main thoroughfares; because these buildings often lack adequate off-street parking, and the new residents are not as car-free as the developers would have people believe, finding on-street parking is becoming a problem in some areas. Kerns and Buckman both feature abundant commercial zones, including popular bars and restaurants. In particular, the intersection of East Burnside and 28th Avenue draws visitors from around the city to its strip of businesses, including boutiques, wine bars, acclaimed restaurants like Ken’s Artisan Pizza (www.kensartisan.com), and cafés; the strip has been dubbed “Restaurant Row.” For some reason most of the restaurants cluster on the east side of 28th. The second-run, multi-screen, deco-style Laurelhurst Theater is also at this intersection. A smaller commercial zone at Glisan and 28th includes popular Cuban restaurant Pambiche (www.pambiche.com) and the funky Laurelthirst Public House. The Buckman Portland Farmers’ Market (www.portlandfarmersmarket.org) is held at Southeast Salmon Street and 20th Avenue on summer Thursday afternoons and evenings. Historic Lone Fir Cemetery, between Stark and Belmont Streets, is the final resting place for many of Portland’s early movers and shakers; it also serves as a de facto greenspace for the surrounding neighborhood. For an impromptu history game, walk among the graves and try to match the names on headstones to Portland street names. The range of amenities, diverse housing options, and proximity to downtown Portland by bike make these neighborhoods popular choices with young singles and couples. Buckman and Kerns tend to be less popular with families and older couples and singles, in part because of the relative lack of parks, the somewhat transient young population, and the many busy thoroughfares that traverse these neighborhoods. Prices and housing options vary widely, although bargains are few; the vacancy rate is the lowest in the city, but average rents are not as high as the low vacancy rate might suggest.

  Just south of the Buckman neighborhood, and north of Brooklyn, lies the Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood, the most well known portion of which is Ladd’s Addition. South of Hawthorne Boulevard, between 12th and 20th Avenues, Ladd’s Addition smashes the street grid of Southeast Portland with a series of diagonal streets and circles that slice the neighborhood into a group of circles, triangles, quadrilaterals, diamonds, and other shapes that would make any high school geometry teacher drool. The neighborhood has five rose gardens: a large one in the central circle, with four smaller, diamond-shaped gardens. Unfortunately, virtually no one from outside the neighborhood gets to see these gardens, because to the uninitiated they are impossible to find. On the plus side for residents, the confusing street layout ensures that few drivers try to take short cuts through the neighborhood, and those that do rarely attempt a second incursion. (The lack of car traffic makes the streets of Ladd’s Addition a popular route for bicyclists, and there are frequent pulses of bike traffic down Ladd Avenue during morning and evening rush hours.)

  Ladd’s Addition

  The story behind the neighborhood’s unusual geometry is that the developer, William Ladd (who was posthumously responsible for Laurelhurst, Eastmoreland, and several other notable Portland neighborhoods) supposedly sought to emulate Pierre L’Enfant’s design for Washington, D.C., on a small scale. Ladd’s Addition was platted in 1891, but due to an economic downturn no homes were built until 1905.

  The homes that were built in Ladd’s range from petite bungalows and Spanish-style homes with red tile roofs to enormous Arts and Crafts homes, with some postwar ranches and Cape Cods thrown in for chuckles. A few older garden court–type apartments can also be found here. The neighborhood has become very expensive, although a few choice houses in the neighborhood still await restoration (which doesn’t mean they’re cheap). The elm-shaded streets and grand old homes, combined with its location just over a mile from downtown Portland, make Ladd’s Addition one of the most sought-after places to live in Southeast Portland. Needless to say, houses do not linger on the market here.

  Most residents are either retired or are high-income professionals, including professionals with children. (The neighborhood’s Abernethy Elementary School has an innovative curriculum and is highly regarded.) While the heart of Ladd’s Addition is residential (barring the Palio Dessert and Espresso house on Ladd Circle, at the very center of the neighborhood, if you can find it), the entire neighborhood is within easy walking distance of the shops, restaurants, and cafés on Hawthorne Boulevard and on Division and Clinton Streets. In 2009 the American Planning Association named Ladd’s Addition one of America’s top 10 “Great Neighborhoods,” citing its historical character, unique design, and bike- and pedestrian-friendliness. Indeed, Ladd’s Addition represents a sort of idealized Portland—a leafy neighborhood of single-family homes, but within walking and biking distance to everything—that has become increasingly had to find in reality.

  Colonial Heights

  The
gently rising area to the east of Ladd’s Addition is known as Colonial Heights. The neighborhood’s name does not refer to the houses themselves; while there are a few Dutch colonial houses in the neighborhood, the bulk of the housing stock is bungalows, English-style cottages, and other styles from the 1920s and 1930s, with a fair number of infill 1950s ranches mixed in. The neighborhood has an unusual number of churches, but is otherwise generally residential; as in Ladd’s Addition, however, the shopping zones along Hawthorne Boulevard and Division Street are within a short walk of any point in the neighborhood. Colonial Heights does sit on a small hill, and some homes have peek-a-boo views of downtown Portland and the West Hills. In general, home prices here are lower than in Ladd’s Addition, but higher than some of the nearby neighborhoods to the east and south.

  The Clinton Street neighborhood centers on the cluster of restaurants, bars, cafés, and the Clinton Street Theater (www.cstpdx.com) at Southeast 26th and Clinton, but the area popularly identified as Clinton Street reaches as far west as 12th Avenue. (Although Division Street is a main thoroughfare and carries substantially more traffic than Clinton Street, the prewar streetcars ran along Clinton, and locals continue to use the old name for the neighborhood.) The neighborhood housing stock consists mostly of small to mid-size bungalows with small but often lovingly landscaped yards, along with some 1960s apartment buildings and a smattering of warehouses and other commercial buildings, especially in the western end of the neighborhood. Many of the older homes have been renovated, while some haven’t seen a paintbrush in decades, although the former now outnumber the latter. A few modern condos, townhomes, and commercial buildings have gone up in the neighborhood, not all of which are to residents’ liking, and new businesses are opening up and down Clinton Street and on a few intersecting streets.

  Clinton Street

  New businesses have cropped up on Division Street, too, most notably the New Seasons supermarket, which is credited with helping spark the neighborhood’s renaissance. The Seven Corners intersection, where SE Division, SE 20th, and SE Ladd all meet, is sometimes called the Seven Corners Progressive Vortex because of its concentration of progressive businesses. Just south on 21st, the venerable People’s Food Co-op (www.peoples.coop) supplies the neighborhood with organic produce and bulk foods; the store also hosts one of the city’s few year-round farmers’ markets. Further east, Division becomes a restaurant row, lined with some of the city’s most-lauded restaurants. (See “The Hawthorne, Belmont, and Division Street Districts” below.)

  South of Powell Boulevard, historic Brooklyn began its existence in the 19th century as a working-class, largely Italian enclave centered on the neighborhood’s extensive rail yards. The Italians are mostly gone, but the rail yards remain, and, between freight trains to the east and truck and commuter traffic on McLoughlin Boulevard to the west, this triangle-shaped neighborhood remains a transit hub. Brooklyn contains some warehouses and light industrial buildings, along with a few bars and restaurants and the Aladdin Theater, one of the best places in the city to see live music, on Milwaukie Avenue, but the bulk of the neighborhood is residential. Homes here range from grand Victorians and cute bungalows to apartments and a few postwar ranches. Many of the larger homes have been converted to multi-family use, and more than half of Brooklyn residents are renters. The neighborhood is a demographic mixed bag, with a mingling of families, singles, childless couples, and long-time elderly residents of widely varying income levels, which reflects its wide appeal to everyone from Aunt Petunia to international guitar gods. (Ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr bought a house here when he moved from England to Portland to join indie band Modest Mouse.) Despite the neighborhood’s working-class roots, the single-family houses for sale here don’t boast working-class price tags: the average home price is somewhat higher than the city average. Prices are increasing in Brooklyn much faster than in most Portland neighborhoods, perhaps driven by the new MAX light-rail line through the eastern part of the neighborhood that is slated to open in late 2015.

  Brooklyn

  All the Inner Southeast neighborhoods are within a 5-minute drive or 10-minute bus trip or bike ride of downtown Portland. The CL streetcar line from the Lloyd District to OMSI runs along MLK Jr. Boulevard (southbound) and Grand Avenue (northbound); an extension across the Tilikum Bridge to the South Waterfront District is scheduled to open in late 2015. The new MAX light-rail line to Milwaukie, also slated to begin service in late 2015, will include a Brooklyn station at SE 17th Avenue and Rhine Street.

  Laurelhurst

  Neighborhood Association: Laurelhurst

  The imposing sandstone arches that mark the main entrances to Laurelhurst suggest that the neighborhood is special—or “high-class,” as the Laurelhurst Company promised in its circa 1910 promotional materials. From the beginning, Laurelhurst was intended to be a relatively exclusive district. The company, a spinoff of the Ladd Estate Company (which was responsible for creating the Eastmoreland, Westmoreland, and eponymous Ladd’s Addition neighborhoods in Southeast Portland), hired the Olmsted brothers to design the neighborhood’s sinuous streets, and enforced a minimum home cost to keep the riff-raff out.

  Nearly a century later, Laurelhurst is still one of the most sought-after (and thus expensive) neighborhoods on Portland’s Eastside. Home prices are comparable to prices in Alameda and Eastmoreland, and Laurelhurst’s demographics and general feel are comparable to those neighborhoods in many respects. Laurelhurst is entirely residential, and the overwhelming majority of homes are single-family detached houses built between 1910 and the Second World War. Architecture runs the gamut of prewar styles, from foursquares to tile-roofed Spanish colonials, although bungalows of various sizes and configurations are the most common house types. Although many of these houses are quite grand, and some are bona fide mansions, lot sizes tend to be relatively small. Laurelhurst has an active neighborhood association that maintains constant vigilance, watching for developments that might affect the neighborhood’s livability.

  Demographically, Laurelhurst has a high concentration of affluent professionals, and the neighborhood is a mix of long-time residents and young families; many of the latter are attracted by the quality of the neighborhood’s Laurelhurst Elementary School. Another attraction is Laurelhurst Park, which is sometimes referred to as the Portland equivalent of New York’s Central Park. That comparison overstates things, but the park is undoubtedly lovely, and features a spring-fed lake, mature trees, a playground, and tennis and basketball courts. (Like Central Park, however, Laurelhurst Park is not entirely safe at night, although the neighborhood itself has a relatively low crime rate.) Laurelhurst’s other notable landmark, Coe Circle, at the intersection of Northeast Glisan Street and César E. Chávez Boulevard, contains a gilded statue of Joan of Arc. Just west on Glisan, Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church hosts a popular Greek Festival each October.

  Laurelhurst

  Laurelhurst’s curving streets are generally quiet, but busy Burnside, Glisan, and Stark Streets, and César E. Chávez Boulevard (renamed from 39th Avenue in 2009, not without controversy) all cut through or border the neighborhood, and Interstate 84 runs along the northern boundary. While these major thoroughfares bring traffic and noise concerns, they also ensure that the neighborhood is well-connected, with plenty of transit options. Several bus lines serve Laurelhurst, and the Hollywood/42nd Avenue MAX stop is a short walk away; downtown Portland is about a 10-minute drive down Burnside or on the freeway. There are no restaurants or other businesses within Laurelhurst proper, but most homes are within walking distance of at least one of the nearby business districts in Hollywood, the Belmont district, Burnside Street west of 32nd Avenue, or the restaurant row on Northeast 28th Avenue.

  The Hawthorne, Belmont, and Division Street Districts

  Neighborhood Associations: Richmond, Sunnyside

  Hawthorne Boulevard was known as Asylum Avenue until the late 1880s. Although a few people still call it that, presumably tongue-in-cheek, it is kno
wn today as the heart of the Hawthorne District, a strip of restaurants, bars, cafés, and many kinds of shops that stretches for nearly 30 blocks from the vicinity of Ladd’s Addition toward the base of Mount Tabor. Sometimes described as Portland’s “Bohemian” neighborhood, or the Portland equivalent of Haight-Ashbury, Hawthorne has nonetheless lost much of its countercultural vibe in recent years (and, for that matter, the neighborhood has few immigrants from the Czech region of Bohemia). Yes, there are head shops and Grateful Dead–themed pubs along Hawthorne—and if there’s a less attractive store logo than the prone-ancient-bearded-dwarf-hippie-with-bong picture that announces Smoking Glass, we’ve never seen it—but they are overwhelmingly outnumbered by a diverse host of other businesses.

  Hawthorne District

  There are far too many interesting establishments along Hawthorne to flag just one or two examples, but the heart of the business district is at 37th and Hawthorne, a spot that used to be called karma corner because you would inevitably run into old acquaintances (or boy- or girlfriends) there. This is still a danger, thanks to attractions like the Bagdad Theater and Pub on the southeast corner, or the Powell’s Books branch on the north side of the street, which pull visitors from all over the city. The business district continues east of 39th Avenue/César Chávez Boulevard as far as 50th Avenue, although development is less dense here. The trendy bars at the upper end of Hawthorne are popular destinations for pub crawls; this stretch of the street is sometimes referred to as the Stumble Zone, for obvious reasons.