We’ve all heard about the I-5 Rose Quarter project, the State of Oregon’s plan to widen I-5 and redevelop the lower Albina neighborhood decimated by construction of the freeway. But there’s another neighborhood less than a mile north that also suffered greatly by construction of an interstate.
Today the US Department of Transportation awarded the Portland Bureau of Transportation a $1 million grant to study the removal of an I-405 offramp.
The North Kerby Avenue offramp tore out dozens of homes in the 1970s between N Mississippi and Vancouver avenues and today it funnels freeway traffic into a dense residential neighborhood. Inspired by the Albina Vision Trust and their effort to rebuild the Albina neighborhood near the Moda Center, Boise-Eliot Neighborhood Land Use and Transportation Committee Chair Allan Rudwick began researching the offramp and its impacts. With the backing of the neighborhood and in partnership with the Portland Bureau of Transportation he championed a grant through the USDOT’s Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program.
In a joint statement released today from Oregon’s congressional delegation, the Kerby project was one of three planning grants awarded funding through the Biden Infrastructure Law. The announcement also included $2 million each for the Reconnecting 82nd Ave Community Planning Study and the Tualatin-Valley Highway Community Connections Planning Study.
Rudwick’s Kerby Ramp Redevelopment Project will look to re-establish parts of the Eliot neighborhood demolished by the freeway offramp. It will also investigate redevelopment of the City of Portland’s Albina Maintenance Yard, a large equipment storage facility that sits on land carved out by ODOT during construction of the freeway.
“Receipt of this planning grant would allow the City of Portland to pursue creating acres of new land to be used for parks, affordable housing, and new connections between the two neighborhoods,” reads a project description.
In addition to the $1 million from USDOT, PBOT will contribute a $250,000 local match.
See the project website on the Eliot Neighborhood website for more information.