Working toward plan

Local government officials, downtown stakeholders and Portland residents spent Tuesday discussing needs, wants and challenges for the downtown area.

A look at the results will be presented Thursday night.

A day-long series of focus groups and an evening open house led by design and planning firm Rundell Ernstberger Associates were the first steps in a three-day process that is part of Portland Redevelopment Commission’s push to update its redevelopment plan for downtown Portland.

“I feel like we got a pretty good cross section … not only in our focus groups, but tonight. … There was a lot of agreement across all of the focus groups and what we’re seeing tonight,” said Portland Redevelopment Commission consultant Ed Curtin of CWC Latitudes during the open house at John Jay Center for Learning. “To me that’s, in a way, reassuring. There’s a pretty common understanding of what some of the issues are …”

Some of the challenges and needs brought up during the focus groups — they included business owners, Portland Main Street Connect, elected officials, redevelopment commission members and other community leaders — and at the open house were flooding, housing, trails and empty/dilapidated downtown buildings. Among the key strengths of the downtown area were its assets — John Jay Center for Learning, Jay Community Center, Arts Place, nearby parks, etc. — and its small-town charm.

As part of preparation for this week’s work, Rundell Ernstberger Associates looked at existing plans for the community, considered what was already in place and where there might be gaps in terms of public policy, and surveyed the condition and use of downtown buildings. The information gathered was turned into display board for the community to review Tuesday. Attendees then went through a series of exercises that allowed them to identify what areas are most important to improving the downtown and what might best fit in the city.

“What we wanted to do was to understand what they thought the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities were for downtown,” said Cynthia Bowen, a partner at Rundell Ernstberger Associates. “Where they thought the downtown could be in the next 10 to 20 years. All with the idea of helping us understand what could be for the future and what we needed to address. …

“We want to make sure that we are identifying things that are in line with what people want for the future …”

The Rundell Ernstberger Associates team and Curtin will spend Wednesday reviewing all of the information gathered and then creating a presentation of recommendations and findings. Thursday will be spent revising a first draft of a redevelopment plan for downtown Portland, and it will be presented to the public at 5 p.m. Thursday at John Jay.

“And we’ll see what people think of the concept that we come up with,” said Bowen. “And then based on that feedback we will go back and refine and continue to develop.”