Regreening Portland - Together Green

Re-greening East Portland & West Gresham

July marks the one-year anniversary of Audubon Society of Portland’s East Portland satellite office at Leach Botanical Garden.  The new office staffed by Urban Conservationist Jim Labbe and new East Portland Community Coordinator Bich Trinh allows us to significantly extend our conservation education and advocacy in East Metro communities. East Metro’s new urbanizing communities like Damascus, Springwater, and Pleasant Valley and rapidly redeveloping neighborhoods like Rockwood, Lents, or Gateway will accommodate much the region’s future urban growth. That growth creates a variety of challenges and opportunities for fostering urban neighborhoods where people and wildlife can flourish together.

One of those challenges is maintaining and expanding access to nature for everyone.  The Coalition for a Livable Future’s 2006 Regional Equity Atlas (www.equityatlas.org) identified neighborhoods in East Portland and West Gresham as the most park and natural area deficient in the Portland-Metro region. These communities host some amazing natural assets including Johnson Creek, the Columbia Slough, and the numerous East Butte natural areas. However, most these neighborhoods have relatively poor access to these natural features and to neighborhood parks due to low street connectivity and a history of poorly planned development and inadequate investment in parks. Consequently, a number of recent community plans have identified the need to improve access to parks and nature, especially as new growth and development threaten scarce urban greenspaces. In existing developed areas, this same growth and redevelopment also provides an opportunity to integrate nature back into the urban landscape with new parks, neighborhood greenways, greens streets, tree plantings, ecoroofs and other green infrastructure improvements. In East Portland and West Gresham we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-green and re-nature the urban landscape from the ground up as it redevelops into more compact, walkable urban neighborhoods.

Regreening Portland from the Ground Up- a new conservation project launched from our new East Portland office- is one of the ways Audubon Society of Portland is working to expand access to nature where it is most deficient. Supported by funding from the Collins Foundation and National Audubon and Toyota’s Together Green program, Regreening Portland from the Ground Up currently involves two projects, one in Gresham’s Wilkes East and Rockwood Neighborhoods and another in Portland’s Powellhurst Gilbert Neighborhood. 

Land acquisition and improvements at Nadaka Nature Park is expanding access to nature for over 4700 residents, mostly in Rockwood Town Center. © Lee Dayfield, leedayfieldphotography.com

Nadaka Nature Park and Garden Project

In 2009 Audubon Society of Portland worked with the Wilkes East Neighborhood Association, Trust for Public Land, and the City of Gresham to purchase a 2-acre undeveloped parcel known as the Nelson Property. Thanks to funding from Metro and East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District (EMSWCD), the successful acquisition of the Nelson property provides a key connector from park-deficient Rockwood Neighborhood to a difficult to access 10-acre natural area previously known as the Nadaka Open Space located just north of NE Glisan. Nakaka Open Space was purchased in 1995 with voter-approved funds from Gresham’s 1990 Open Space Bond Measure but remained fenced with only limited access to the north for over 12 years. With the purchase of the Nelson Property, people are now able to access the Nadaka natural area from the south, providing new neighborhood access to nature for over 4700 residents mostly in the Rockwood Neighborhood and Town Center. Since opening last October, the Nelson Property provides a safe, nature-rich route to school for many HB Lee Middle School students.

Schoolchildren at Nadaka Nature Park this spring after the southern access opened. © Lee Dayfield, leedayfieldphotography.com

Audubon Society of Portland continues to work with local advocate Lee Dayfield, the Wilkes East Neighborhood Association and other community groups on the Nadaka Nature Park and Garden Project. The project brings together diverse community organizations to develop and maintain a community garden, orchard, rain garden, natural meadow, restrooms, and nature-based play area on the Nelson Property. Existing and potential partners include City of Gresham, Human Solutions, Rockwood Action Group, St. Aidens Church, Eastrose Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, the Columbia Slough Watershed Council, and Verde. Potential capital funding for improvements could come from the City of Gresham, Metro, EMSWCD, and State Parks.

When built, the neighborhood park will provide a “front door” to the combined Nadaka Nature Park & Garden providing a stronger linkage to the Rockwood Town Center, one of the youngest, most diverse, and most populous 2040 Town Centers in the Portland-Metro region. The new garden and natural features will also be within ¼ mile walking distance from Human Solutions's new Rockwood Building that will provide 47 new units of affordable rental housing units when completed this year. By linking expanded access to nature with permanent investments in affordable housing, the Nadaka Nature Park and Garden Project realizes a key strategy of the Coalition for a Livable Future’s Equity Action Agenda to make access to nature more equitable in perpetuity.

Powellhurst Gilbert Neighborhood Regreening

In the Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood we are working with Mark White, Dolores Wood and the neighborhood association’s Greening Committee to identify and pursue opportunities to improve access to nature. The project is guided by three goals:

1.  Refine the park and nature access mapping conducted for 2006 Coalition for a Livable Future Regional Equity Atlas and conduct outreach in the community to identify opportunities to maintain and expand access to nature.

2.  Build local leadership to expand the constituency for urban parks, natural areas, and related green infrastructure, especially among people of color and youth.

3.  Develop one viable community-driven park or green infrastructure project that permanently expands access to nature while helping advance community development goals.

With the help of Portland State University geography graduate students Courtney Shannon and Imran Qureshi, we are currently finishing draft maps documenting park access and identifying opportunities to maintain or expand access to nature in the Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood. We will be out tabling at various East Portland events and festivals this summer (see list below) engaging the community in identifying places where people can or could access nature and experience a strong sense of place in their neighborhood.

Outreach to youth include trips to East Portland natural Areas. Photo by Jim Labbe

We are making a focused effort to engage youth of color in East Portland by partnering with ROSE Community Development Corporation’s (CDCs) Leander Court Community and the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization. Youth from both IRCO and Leander Court will join us on two special outings to Leach Botanical Garden along Johnson Creek and to Big Four Corners Natural Area along the Columbia Slough (Special thanks to Audubon education staff Abraham and Andrea Constance for helping lead these outings). All these summer outreach events will culminate in a “Neighborhood Regreening Bike and Walking Tour” Saturday September 24 that will tour various opportunities to expand access to nature in the neighborhood. We hope to identify projects that have strong community support, align with Audubon’s mission and will help expand access to nature in perpetuity. In the future we hope to collaborate with Portland Parks and to leverage resources to support Commissioner Nick Fish’s E-205 initiative to improve park access in East Portland.

Culturally and Biologically Diverse Neighborhoods

Urban development and redevelopment can displace both people and wildlife. A key challenge in East Portland and West Gresham will be implementing projects that link community development goals for affordable housing and transportation, access to nature, and conservation in order create and maintain both culturally and biologically diverse urban communities in the future.  If we are successful, future generations of Portlanders will grow up with nature a part of their daily lives and with strong ethic of community and environmental stewardship.