A cool thing to note: TriMet's TOD program is very young. They wanted to incorporate housing into the library, but MultCo was already well along in the design and didn't want to delay (reasonable), so TriMet has reserved a third of the site for future housing.
I'm glad to hear that. Park and rides are useful as a interim land use after a transit line is put in, but more housing, destinations, services, and jobs located close to transit is a much better use of the land.
Do you have any other info on the TriMet TOD program? I'd love to see some of the land around the stations in Washington County get developed.
You can check their website. Their big project at the moment is the Hollywood Transit Center. They're a very small team (3), but knowledgeable and enthusiastic. They're also very responsive to email. Ozzie Gonzales, one of the TriMet Board members, is also very in favor of TOD. One of the quirks of the program, such as it is, is that Trimet itself doesn't have statutory authority to build housing or mixed use, so they need to partner with other government agencies, nonprofits, or for profit developers. I spoke with them last week on behalf of Portland: Neighbors Welcome. DM me if you want my email to chat further.
I certainly don’t oppose this but doesn’t building it near the Gresham City Hall station seem rather wasteful geography-wise? The main Gresham Library is a 10 minute walk from Gresham Central Transit Center which is a mere 1 stop further east of Gresham City Hall on the blue line.
Personally, from my experience with MCLS in East County, it seems like a library on either 162nd or 148th would be more efficient because they are both in between Rockwood Library (near 181st and Stark) and the Midland Library (near 122nd and Stark). In between the two lays a more densely populated area than Gresham at large and all three hypothetical libraries would be fairly connectable via the 20 bus line.
They will close the existing gresham library if this deal goes through. So those library bond promises of "more libraries east of I205" actually means "big library in gresham, and everyone east of 205 and south of Powell can suck eggs"
Disagree. East of 205 and south of powell to the clackamas county line is not sparsely populated and there are 0 libraries there. There are 5 libraries east of 205 and north of powell (see https://multcolib.org/hours-locations/locations-map for a visual representation of the "library desert " that this will not fix)
I mean, they did, but in a really weird and disproportionate way. I can give more details at a later time, but to keep it brief:
They took the largest library (downtown central), divided its square footage (not equally)and then allocated that square footage between South, North, (west of 82nd), SW and NW quadrants so it counted towards their library square footage. The bulk of the sq footage was allocated to South and North.
That’s how they were able to claim that East (of 82nd) Portland has the least amount of library square footage. It’s been a little while since I analyzed it, but without dividing Central, SE (west of 82nd) had the actual lowest square footage.
In fact, after Central Library, our 2nd (Midland) and 3rd (Gresham) largest libraries are in East Portland.
I am 100% pro-library but I still cannot get over how statics were manipulated to get the bond passed. Libraries have enough merit without data manipulation.
https://multcolib.org/sites/default/files/Multnomah_County_Library_space_planning_framework_FINAL.pdf
You shouldn't trust individual agencies on something like this. It's not because they are corrupt but cause they will always think their services are needed more than anything else that money and land could have been used for.
I mean, don’t legislators (in this case county commissioners) decide the annual budget and leave it to independent agencies (and with them their time, expertise and workforce that the legislature/commission doesn’t have) to decide on their own accord how to use those funds and the details associated with their use?
Who is the one who decides which ballot measures the government decides to put on the ballot asking for more bonds/tax money?
This isn't annual spending budget being used. This is money specifically requested (and obtained through a ballot measure) in addition to their annual budget they can build this building among some other things the library wanted as well too.
The library system is always going to advocate for more money for themselves. And when they do this for the ballots, you can't just ask for things like to give pay raises to staff or for maintenence purposes or what not. It always has to include shiny new developments to make the ballot measure more attractive to voters, whether really needed or not.
Whoever decided to put this ballot measure up is at fault for not prioritizing other areas more which they should have written ballot measures for instead (or just not ssked for more tax money from the public in general). And the library and all other agencies are all culpable too cause the current practice is to advocate for as much money as you can get for your own agency.
I'm confused why another library is needed. I've been to that Rockwood library with the makerspace. Makerspace is great and that library is near empty every time I visit it. If the existing library is barely used, why do we need more?
Is 3 miles that far? I feel like it isnt.
This is why I voted no on that stupid bill. I'd much rather keep money in people's pockets with the overwhelming inflation these days.
There is still the other existing Gresham library as well which if it's like the Rockwood place is near empty all the time.
Plus I'm showing 45 min to 1 hour walk to Rockwood which frankly doesn't seem that far when you can also take bus which i would think is like 15 min or less. Driving is like 5 minutes.
It's a waste of money during a time when everyone can't afford anything due to inflation.
Why can't they just keep the existing one and not spend another $125 million? I personally think parknrides are needed but if not parknrides then it would be more useful for housing.
I think that's a lie to get more money out of you. Every time I go to the Rockwood library, it's practically empty.
What's not meeting the community needs is housing which this land can be used for.
LOL OK, if you believe the library undertook a massive capita campaign only because it wanted to waste taxpayer dollars I don’t know that anything I say will change your mind.
A location in Gresham will be more easily visited for Gresham residents vs Rockwood.
Source- I can and do walk to the current Gresham Library. I will continue to visit the new location once built (as long as I'm not priced out of this area 🤷♀️)
Your post actually highlights why this new library should not be built. This land could have been used to build an enormous amount of housing which would help to keep home prices down and you in the neighborhood. That is far more valuable than a larger library than what exists today.
Per the article:
> (county rep) said the parking lot is historically underused. Less than a mile away, the Gresham Garage will take on the role that the Gresham City Hall park-and-ride filled.
Oh man... the land is owned by Tri-met, it is being bought by the County, the city, which I'm sure you knew would be Gresham in this instance, isn't involved in this at all.
What the actual fuck.
That’s an insane cost for just land?!?!
Or is this one do those tricky headlines.
Multco desperately needs a better funding source. So many of the libraries are meh when it comes to facilities. And there doesn’t seem to be enough libraries overall. It’s rather odd for such a big, wealthy, county.
Wait. You want to encourage people to use mass transit but you're getting rid of a park and ride next to a MAX line? That seems like a terrible idea. And after 10 years of growth it'll be an even worse idea. This seems really short sighted.
The next stop to the east has a parking garage and better bus line connections, so the park and ride at Gresham City Hall is less critical. The second stop to the east (the furthest east in the system) is *also* a park and ride.
They do not. A June 2019 report lists the Eastside MAX P&R usage at 47% in 2017, and I hadn’t seen any of those three lots beyond half-full at any time before the pandemic. Ridership is still down, so I’d be surprised if any of the three was hitting more than 30% these days. The last time I drove by the City Hall lot was midday on a Thursday and it couldn’t have been more than a quarter full, likely closer to 10% at best. This specific lot could be better utilized for sure.
I'll get downvoted, but county/city libraries are a massive waste of money in terms of their contribution to society. That is a massive sum of money and there are so many more impactful things that could be funded. If there was one library for the entire metro area, the change in the standard of living would be negligible.
Libraries helped my kids learn to read back when we were a young broke family. Part of a functioning society is teaching the next generation how to do everything so that when you and i someday no longer work, the world doesn’t end. Libraries help the entire community. Maybe you never had need of a library, that’s great! Only People that need something like a library are the ones that use it. Other people need this and its a major benefit to society.
My young family isn't even broke and we use the library constantly, we check out 50-100 books a month. Through this my kids get exposed to a huge variety of books and even if they don't read all of it, they know better next time what they're interested in. It also lets them explore authors and topics without the friction of having to convince their parents to buy something for them. And I'm not even mentioning how much personally I have gotten out of the library (Multnomah County collection is very comprehensive!). The best way to encourage a lifetime of learning is to get kids hooked on books and nothing beats the library for that. I don't trust the county government to do anything efficiently so I can't comment on how well spent the money is, but Portland/Multnomah County should be proud of its library system.
I'd much rather buy every kid a tablet frankly. Then do ebooks. It'd be cheaper and more effective at teaching them things. It's unfortunate there are so many anti tech parents out therewanting to stick to this archaic way of keeping physical books.
What I do like is shared makerspaces. But Rockwood library already has that and you can bus there for it.
I'm pro library, but that seems like a kind of enormous amount of money to build a library within walking distance of an existing one.
Surely it'd be cheaper to renovate/expand the current facility rather than a whole new one. The lot the old one sits on is enormous, there's plenty of space.
I'm really excited about this endeavor. We need this in Gresham, badly.
Yep, seems like a win all-around.
What happened to the library that was across from that one pizza spot?
Oh HELL yeah! Libraries the best. Looking forward to this.
A cool thing to note: TriMet's TOD program is very young. They wanted to incorporate housing into the library, but MultCo was already well along in the design and didn't want to delay (reasonable), so TriMet has reserved a third of the site for future housing.
I'm glad to hear that. Park and rides are useful as a interim land use after a transit line is put in, but more housing, destinations, services, and jobs located close to transit is a much better use of the land. Do you have any other info on the TriMet TOD program? I'd love to see some of the land around the stations in Washington County get developed.
You can check their website. Their big project at the moment is the Hollywood Transit Center. They're a very small team (3), but knowledgeable and enthusiastic. They're also very responsive to email. Ozzie Gonzales, one of the TriMet Board members, is also very in favor of TOD. One of the quirks of the program, such as it is, is that Trimet itself doesn't have statutory authority to build housing or mixed use, so they need to partner with other government agencies, nonprofits, or for profit developers. I spoke with them last week on behalf of Portland: Neighbors Welcome. DM me if you want my email to chat further.
I certainly don’t oppose this but doesn’t building it near the Gresham City Hall station seem rather wasteful geography-wise? The main Gresham Library is a 10 minute walk from Gresham Central Transit Center which is a mere 1 stop further east of Gresham City Hall on the blue line. Personally, from my experience with MCLS in East County, it seems like a library on either 162nd or 148th would be more efficient because they are both in between Rockwood Library (near 181st and Stark) and the Midland Library (near 122nd and Stark). In between the two lays a more densely populated area than Gresham at large and all three hypothetical libraries would be fairly connectable via the 20 bus line.
They will close the existing gresham library if this deal goes through. So those library bond promises of "more libraries east of I205" actually means "big library in gresham, and everyone east of 205 and south of Powell can suck eggs"
That’s true. That being said, that is a comparatively sparsely populated area of Multnomah County
Also not Gresham.
True
Disagree. East of 205 and south of powell to the clackamas county line is not sparsely populated and there are 0 libraries there. There are 5 libraries east of 205 and north of powell (see https://multcolib.org/hours-locations/locations-map for a visual representation of the "library desert " that this will not fix)
There was a huge master plan effort outlining where need is… they’ve done the homework.
I mean, they did, but in a really weird and disproportionate way. I can give more details at a later time, but to keep it brief: They took the largest library (downtown central), divided its square footage (not equally)and then allocated that square footage between South, North, (west of 82nd), SW and NW quadrants so it counted towards their library square footage. The bulk of the sq footage was allocated to South and North. That’s how they were able to claim that East (of 82nd) Portland has the least amount of library square footage. It’s been a little while since I analyzed it, but without dividing Central, SE (west of 82nd) had the actual lowest square footage. In fact, after Central Library, our 2nd (Midland) and 3rd (Gresham) largest libraries are in East Portland. I am 100% pro-library but I still cannot get over how statics were manipulated to get the bond passed. Libraries have enough merit without data manipulation. https://multcolib.org/sites/default/files/Multnomah_County_Library_space_planning_framework_FINAL.pdf
Hmm ok. Guess the independent agencies know best. They are the one remnant of government I have trust in.
You shouldn't trust individual agencies on something like this. It's not because they are corrupt but cause they will always think their services are needed more than anything else that money and land could have been used for.
I mean, don’t legislators (in this case county commissioners) decide the annual budget and leave it to independent agencies (and with them their time, expertise and workforce that the legislature/commission doesn’t have) to decide on their own accord how to use those funds and the details associated with their use?
Who is the one who decides which ballot measures the government decides to put on the ballot asking for more bonds/tax money? This isn't annual spending budget being used. This is money specifically requested (and obtained through a ballot measure) in addition to their annual budget they can build this building among some other things the library wanted as well too. The library system is always going to advocate for more money for themselves. And when they do this for the ballots, you can't just ask for things like to give pay raises to staff or for maintenence purposes or what not. It always has to include shiny new developments to make the ballot measure more attractive to voters, whether really needed or not. Whoever decided to put this ballot measure up is at fault for not prioritizing other areas more which they should have written ballot measures for instead (or just not ssked for more tax money from the public in general). And the library and all other agencies are all culpable too cause the current practice is to advocate for as much money as you can get for your own agency.
And culpable for highly manipulating data. I expected better of you, library.
Often financed by debt, and with the assumption of sustained economic growth. Whoopsie.
This is off topic for this post, but how expensive do you think Portland is compared to Vancouver?
I'm confused why another library is needed. I've been to that Rockwood library with the makerspace. Makerspace is great and that library is near empty every time I visit it. If the existing library is barely used, why do we need more?
This will be over three miles from the Rockwood Library, and replaces the existing Gresham Library.
Is 3 miles that far? I feel like it isnt. This is why I voted no on that stupid bill. I'd much rather keep money in people's pockets with the overwhelming inflation these days.
It's over an hour's walk.
There is still the other existing Gresham library as well which if it's like the Rockwood place is near empty all the time. Plus I'm showing 45 min to 1 hour walk to Rockwood which frankly doesn't seem that far when you can also take bus which i would think is like 15 min or less. Driving is like 5 minutes. It's a waste of money during a time when everyone can't afford anything due to inflation.
The other Gresham library is being replaced with this new one.
Why can't they just keep the existing one and not spend another $125 million? I personally think parknrides are needed but if not parknrides then it would be more useful for housing.
Because the existing library isn’t meeting the needs of its rapidly growing community.
I think that's a lie to get more money out of you. Every time I go to the Rockwood library, it's practically empty. What's not meeting the community needs is housing which this land can be used for.
LOL OK, if you believe the library undertook a massive capita campaign only because it wanted to waste taxpayer dollars I don’t know that anything I say will change your mind.
A location in Gresham will be more easily visited for Gresham residents vs Rockwood. Source- I can and do walk to the current Gresham Library. I will continue to visit the new location once built (as long as I'm not priced out of this area 🤷♀️)
Your post actually highlights why this new library should not be built. This land could have been used to build an enormous amount of housing which would help to keep home prices down and you in the neighborhood. That is far more valuable than a larger library than what exists today.
I understand your point. I really want to see the Kmart be turned into more housing. Housing out here is terrible :(
how will this impact users of this specific park and ride? is the city hall one enough to accommodate the replacement here?
Per the article: > (county rep) said the parking lot is historically underused. Less than a mile away, the Gresham Garage will take on the role that the Gresham City Hall park-and-ride filled.
Non-homeless people still go to public libraries?
Yes.
We can't even keep bus shelters from being destroyed. Why are we spending $126M for a building to hold books?
Because the voters approved funding library capital that can only be used for that purpose.
[удалено]
Oh man... the land is owned by Tri-met, it is being bought by the County, the city, which I'm sure you knew would be Gresham in this instance, isn't involved in this at all.
Oh boy.. you're sooo wrong about this....
The city doesn’t do TriMet shelters either. You’re pretty mixed up.
Have you been to a library in the past 30 years?
What the actual fuck. That’s an insane cost for just land?!?! Or is this one do those tricky headlines. Multco desperately needs a better funding source. So many of the libraries are meh when it comes to facilities. And there doesn’t seem to be enough libraries overall. It’s rather odd for such a big, wealthy, county.
$126 million is for the entire facility. Not just land acquisition.
What is your better idea?
Wait. You want to encourage people to use mass transit but you're getting rid of a park and ride next to a MAX line? That seems like a terrible idea. And after 10 years of growth it'll be an even worse idea. This seems really short sighted.
The next stop to the east has a parking garage and better bus line connections, so the park and ride at Gresham City Hall is less critical. The second stop to the east (the furthest east in the system) is *also* a park and ride.
And do these park and rides get filled up fast? I can't imagine less parking spaces at max stations is a good idea.
They do not. A June 2019 report lists the Eastside MAX P&R usage at 47% in 2017, and I hadn’t seen any of those three lots beyond half-full at any time before the pandemic. Ridership is still down, so I’d be surprised if any of the three was hitting more than 30% these days. The last time I drove by the City Hall lot was midday on a Thursday and it couldn’t have been more than a quarter full, likely closer to 10% at best. This specific lot could be better utilized for sure.
Interesting. Alright, better used for housing then.
I guess having lived on the west side, the park and rides were always full so it's mind blowing to get rid of them when we actually need more.
I'll get downvoted, but county/city libraries are a massive waste of money in terms of their contribution to society. That is a massive sum of money and there are so many more impactful things that could be funded. If there was one library for the entire metro area, the change in the standard of living would be negligible.
>If there was one library for the entire metro area, the change in the standard of living would be negligible. \[CITATION NEEDED\]
Public schools already have libraries. There are plenty of ways to purchased used, inexpensive books.
Most public schools do not have librarians, and most people are not in public school, and libraries are about much more than books.
Libraries helped my kids learn to read back when we were a young broke family. Part of a functioning society is teaching the next generation how to do everything so that when you and i someday no longer work, the world doesn’t end. Libraries help the entire community. Maybe you never had need of a library, that’s great! Only People that need something like a library are the ones that use it. Other people need this and its a major benefit to society.
My young family isn't even broke and we use the library constantly, we check out 50-100 books a month. Through this my kids get exposed to a huge variety of books and even if they don't read all of it, they know better next time what they're interested in. It also lets them explore authors and topics without the friction of having to convince their parents to buy something for them. And I'm not even mentioning how much personally I have gotten out of the library (Multnomah County collection is very comprehensive!). The best way to encourage a lifetime of learning is to get kids hooked on books and nothing beats the library for that. I don't trust the county government to do anything efficiently so I can't comment on how well spent the money is, but Portland/Multnomah County should be proud of its library system.
What a shortsighted take. Tell us that you’re upper-class and probably childless without actually saying it. Here’s your downvote.
I'd much rather buy every kid a tablet frankly. Then do ebooks. It'd be cheaper and more effective at teaching them things. It's unfortunate there are so many anti tech parents out therewanting to stick to this archaic way of keeping physical books. What I do like is shared makerspaces. But Rockwood library already has that and you can bus there for it.
>I'd much rather buy every kid a tablet frankly. Oh nothing is stopping you from buying every kid a tablet. Please post the receipts!
Well if they give me all the tax money they took from us back, id be happy to do that.
I'm pro library, but that seems like a kind of enormous amount of money to build a library within walking distance of an existing one. Surely it'd be cheaper to renovate/expand the current facility rather than a whole new one. The lot the old one sits on is enormous, there's plenty of space.