Lents...The Final Frontier... ("We're Thinking Condos")

Lest anyone think that places like Lents are beyond the reach of the PDC's unrelenting effort to up-value  every single square inch of Portland, the East PDX News tantalizes with the prospect that we might read a little about the process behind the proclamations:

While Lents has been an Urban Renewal District for years – many folks in the area are wondering when they'll actually see some tangible results.

The most visible changes thus far have been the addition of lighting in Lents Park, the now-fading storefront improvements along SE Foster Road and SE 92nd Avenue, and the new Assurity building.

A lot of residents say they pinned their hopes for a major grocery or large retail store – there isn't one for miles around – on the 3.5-acre lot now occupied by the Lents Little League field on SE 92nd Avenue at SE Harold Street.
http://www.eastpdxnews.com/index.php?mod=article_detail&id_art=706

What residents wanted was apparently made plain during an "open house" meeting with PDC's Justin Douglas, the project manager for the "SE 92nd and Harold Redevelopment Project." (Click picture at left to see an aerial view.)
"We're looking at this site, owned by the PDC, and trying to figure what can be done," Douglas is quoted as saying. "We're trying to figure out what will be complimentary to the Lents Town Center and the surrounding neighborhood."

Trying to figure it out. Well, that's what PDC's website claims, that they're trying to figure something out. They just don't know what would be best! They have to ask the neighbors' opinions and then figure something out! Whatever it might be! Gee, it could be anything!

There is no current plan for redevelopment. PDC will be exploring ideas for a variety of uses that could go on this site, including office, retail, and housing and analyzing whether a change in zoning might be appropriate
http://www.pdc.us/ura/lents_town_center/projects/se-92nd-harold.asp

A paragraph or two into the East PDX News story, Project Manager Douglas spills the beans, though, reminding us that PDC has a funny idea about what the word "possibility" means. At least when they're talking to the public:

"At this point we have a consultant who has been doing a market study. There is definitely a possibility for residential use. The market for retail and commercial uses is not as strong."
"Our intention...is to see what private development would like to do with this site. The PDC doesn't want to hold it forever. We'd like to dispose of it to a private developer."

The PDC's consultant, Jerry Johnson of Johnson Gardner LLC is quoted as well. This "possibility for residential use" starts to take on a more recognizable form. We begin to apprehend that Johnson Gardner is PDC's go-to when they want a certain conclusion:

"We're thinking 'condos'. It may be a short term before we see a demand for condominium development. We're still seeing pretty good strength in town homes, as far as ownership for sale."

Perhaps realizing he's scaring the natives by blurting out the unsurprising truth that the only plan, the real plan, is condos condos condos, Johnson pseudo-backpedals. (Please dial your bullshit-detector sensitivity level down to "medium" for the following):

"It could be a mix of uses; we anticipate a mix of uses...That's why they're doing these efforts to reach out to the community to see what they're looking for. I'm not advocating any development type. My role in this is to make sure that the numbers we come up with in the development type is something we can interest a developer in.

This, from a highly paid and well-credentialed planning consultant, is to me a perfect example of bullshitting. Of the four sentences above, all but the fourth are basically lies. #1:Johnson Gardner does in fact not anticipate a mix of uses - they anticipate dense condo development. #2: They are not "reaching out the the community to see what they're looking for"; they in fact couldn't care less what the existing residents want -- they and PDC are simply going through the motions. And #3: Johnson Gardner is certainly in the habit of advocating exactly this development type. Let's visit their website:

Johnson Gardner has been actively involved in the development of many of the largest and most complex developments in the Pacific Northwest, and is regularly retained by the region's most prominent developers to complete market and financial feasibility studies in the Northwest
http://www.johnson-gardner.com/

We heard from Johnson, how about Gardner? What's his angle?

Matthew [Gardner] is particularly passionate about urban residential development and is currently advising a number of firms with their planned and proposed urban development policies.

OK. So "we're thinking condos" is probably their default position, and PDC probably knows perfectly well how predictable these consultants' analyses are. Here and there, phrases gleaned from their "Selected Projects" list reveal that their focus probably isn't exactly egghead:

...developing market savvy solutions...
...the firm has been retained by major property owners...
...be working with the property owners to evaluate redevelopment options for these properties...

My favorite deserves quotation in its entirety though:

PORTLAND BUSINESS ALLIANCE AND THE PORTLAND DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION: CORE AREA HOUSING DEMAND ANALYSIS
JOHNSON GARDNER produced a series of demand analyses for residential development in Portland's Core Area housing markets. The analysis included a detailed profile of demand by income and age cohort, and evaluated demand using both a demographically-driven as well as a supply-function model.

As a non-economist, I should hesitate to imagine how something called a "supply-function model" might be implemented to contradict demographics and provide a justification for more high-end development. I have no doubts about why, though. High-end makes money. Developers correctly assume that by controlling the character of the supply, people will be induced to borrow and spend whether they can "afford" it or not.
As I observe and have documented in this blog how Portland housing is more high-end than it ought to be, I have to wonder as well about this "profile of demand by income" jazz, coming from a consultant who can take a fairly blue-collar neighborhood open house from "no current plan" on through "possibility for residential" right to the meat of the matter: "We're thinking condos."

For all the talk about sustainable this and that, and all the new urbanist theory dumbing down the discussion, East Portland's variety of problems, whatever they may be, are not likely to be solved by people to whom every problem has to do with the need for more homeowners. Elsewhere in the East PDX News, City economic development planner Alma Flores is talking a little more realistically, it sounds like:

"We've completed an economic survey among people living and operating businesses in southern portion of outer East Portland."
Asked what stood in the way of these stores coming into the area, Flores commented, "We have lost a lot of commercial zoning to residential."
In addition to providing goods and services to local residents, Flores concluded by saying, "Our corridors need to be looked at for employee growth. We're getting residents, but not jobs in this area."
http://www.eastpdxnews.com/index.php?mod=article_detail&id_art=789

To imagine an absence of bias on the part of these consultants and their clients the PDC, in the above-quoted PBA report or any other, is ludicrous for the most obvious of reasons:

Income levels in this region are stagnant. The insufficiency of inexpensive housing is at a critical point. The ongoing building of market-rate housing and the amassing of housing well above that market rate -- which in turn raises the average -- is crystal clear to anyone paying attention. Any reasonable person can tell you that a very real demand is for cheaper housing, but that condo development is almost entirely geared toward the upper-middle class and above simply because it's very profitable to force people to pay more than they can afford for things. And in any case, the PDC's consideration for what existing residents prefer be done with their communities seems generally faked. These last of the working-class-affordable areas, such as Lents and Outer SE, should be prevented from being priced up, and such an effort should be seen as having a profoundly positive impact on the quality of life for Portland's workforces.  PDC's fiction that anyone matters except the developers is better maintained elsewhere. In East Portland it looks like they figure they can do their thing right in front of the local yokels' faces.

PDC on Lents Urban Renewal, 92nd & Harold
http://www.pdc.us/ura/lents_town_center/projects/se-92nd-harold.asp
East PDX News on Lents:
http://www.eastpdxnews.com/index.php?mod=article_detail&id_art=706
And on Midway, 122nd area:
http://www.eastpdxnews.com/index.php?mod=article_detail&id_art=789
Gentrify-It-All Beratungsstelle Johnson u. Gardner:
http://www.johnson-gardner.com/experience

Comments

[ecohuman]

sharply done, but income levels aren't stagnant here. the problem's one of pace--they're moving slowly.

all else you've said is spot on, i think.

and the paradigm of development requires development to eat itself, so the outcomes aren't surprising. by its (current) very nature it can't be "sustainable."

[petrichor]

i tend to agree; the urban planning theory, and sustainable PR hype that portland gets is mostly (but not completely) window dressing. as progressive as portland may be, and as sustainable as we may like to be, there is really not much that we can do about the fact that we live in an inherently conservative system. that leads to a rather self-evident conclusion:

you can not create a progressive, sustainable city within an conservative system. the conservative system locally gets most of its revenue from property tax revenues, thus the way to increase the revenue base is to increase property values. the conservative system nationally--our monetary system itself--has depended on the same system; using federal funding to build freeways to create new pools of urban land value to prop up the total asset value backing our money (obviously that is all falling apart right now, and the fed is trying to shift the monetary base from mortgage asset values to speculative stock values).

the fact that portland has been able to game this conservative system (even securing loads of federally funding) to redirect the incentives towards already urban areas instead of exurbs, and light rail instead of freeways is rather remarkable, imho. the problem, in both cases, is that the system creates a feedback loop resulting in mcmansions 30 miles from stockton in one case, and upper market condos in lents in the other. in the case of portland (and oregon), the feedback loop is broken because of measure 5, so there is a built in deficit in revenue for existing expenses, leading us to zero-sum funding mechanisms like TIF in URAs, and battles over whether to invest in infrstructure for the future or to maintain the infrstructure that the present was built upon.

i'm not saying there is nothing portland could do to alter that system--though i don't know what that is, i think it would be incredibly difficult, and it might even result in a backlash that would make things worse.

[PG]

^^That's true. Spending on rail and mass transit is in my view unquestionably necessary in some form. I advocate slightly higher progressive taxation locally - as a friend of mine points out, it's ok to pay local taxes because Oregon doesn't have a defense department. When it comes to housing, gentrification and affordability, the only thing that comes to mind really is that the process of Urban Renewal occurs under conditions of haste, and historically results in a lot of "what were they thinking" experiences eg south downtown, Banfield freeway etc. Affordable city neighborhoods should have been thought of as a vital social resource - of diversity, stability, inclusiveness, history, institutional memory etc - but urban renewal focuses on exactly what deprives us of that resource. It looks at value only in terms of immediate commercial worth profiting only some, rather than eventual social worth profiting everyone. I say "should have been" -- though it seems too late to start now. My blog in no way fails to recognize that this gentrification process is unstoppable by anything less than catastrophic change of some kind.

[Psymonetta Isnoful]

I have attended almost all of the meetings you are speculating about. I'd like to point out that Johnson Gardner is one of three consulting teams that have been used on this project so far. The others are DAO architects and SERA architects respectively.

The other market study was conducted area wide by Marketek for the purpose of developing a plan to bring more retail, office space and employment to the URA.

Even defining Johnson Gardner as the sole market consultant on the 92nd and Harold project, it must be pointed out that the emphasis has been to bring additional market rate housing to the town center. Since the market is affordable in Lents, that really boils down to more workforce housing. The subsidized (under 50% MFI) housing is already well overcompensated (at least where Lents and other neighborhood URAs are concerned)for by the mandated TIF set aside.

So, while your rant is appreciated, it really doesn't capture the whole picture. So far, the public input has been remarkable, and the outreach on the part of the PDC has been admirable. The opinion of one consultant is just one facet of the discussion.

Access to amenities is an important aspect of creating affordability in neighborhoods. It isn't all about how much you pay for rent or mortgage. If incorporating some townhouse development on a huge three acre, most likely to be parcelized, site is what it takes to accomplish a multitude of other primary goals that were defined by the community in the URA plan, then so be it.

[PG]

No. Affordability IS - listen close - in fact all about how much your rent sucks out of your meager paycheck. Ask any "renter." You're confusing "affordability" with "livability." Which, if you're a homeowner of a certain stripe, only increases, the more the lower-class renters are booted out.

Face it you liberal hypocrite - you're engaged in class war against the poor. If you want to grow some guts you will admit that [heh heh, the rest of this comment has been self-deleted the next morning for excessive hatefulness directed at probably well-meaning commenter above - PG]

[ecohuman.com]

"So far, the public input has been remarkable, and the outreach on the part of the PDC has been admirable. The opinion of one consultant is just one facet of the discussion."

you're confusing public input with statistical validation of predetermined conclusions.

"Access to amenities is an important aspect of creating affordability in neighborhoods. It isn't all about how much you pay for rent or mortgage."

not really. for folks with low or modest income, decisions about where to live really *are* all about how much the rent or mortgage is.

so, if you build "affordable" or "low-income" housing in the Pearl, for example, folks will beg to move in, regardless of amenities or how affordable they are. they'll bus or walk to Safeway to buy groceries to live on.

and, the majority of Portlanders are renters, not owners--the statistics on "homeowners" are notoriously difficult to prove--and include real estate speculators who own multiple houses as "homeowners."

[Psymonetta Isnoful]

not really. for folks with low or modest income, decisions about where to live really *are* all about how much the rent or mortgage is.

Their decisions may be based on that single factor, currently. But, in reality there needs to be a major educational initiative that teaches low income people about how to choose housing based on an overall cost, which includes travel costs/time, access to resources like green space and medical facilities etc.
If someone chooses to pay $800 a month to live in Fairview and then has to commute using a beat up old car to work at Clackamas Town Center, over spending $925 a month to live near the Max and line 72, they're making a bad financial decision. The extra $125 a month equals an added $1500 a year, add in a bus pass purchased monthly and it's a little less than $2000 of added cost per year. It costs at the very least $3000 a year to own an maintain a vehicle, and the average is around $7800 a year.

If they only base their choice on rent, their not taking into account the entire cost.

[Psymonetta Isnoful]

PG...I was a renter, right up until two years ago when I finally made a choice to suck it up and buy a home, even though it was a huge financial and emotional burden for me. I've lived in housing that was on the verge of being condemned, next door to sex offenders ...hell the whole gamut of "affordable" for most of my life.

I really don't see how I'm being a hypocrite for approaching the problem holistically, rather than just endlessly throwing money at cheap real estate for the purpose of producing one low quality unit after another. I certainly am being a little more patient, measured and idealistic.

Perhaps it's just because I 'm a person who grew up poor that has transitioned across classes simply by force of my own will. I'm not engaging in "war" against the poor, I'm hoping that any public projects or monies are used to give them the same life tools that I have.

[ecohuman.com]

"Their decisions may be based on that single factor, currently. But, in reality there needs to be a major educational initiative that teaches low income people about how to choose housing based on an overall cost, which includes travel costs/time, access to resources like green space and medical facilities etc."

your posts are conflicting. you chided the blogger for not giving the whole picture of affordability, then wrote that maybe rent/mortgage really *is* the whole picture for some.

then, you said folks need educating. i agree, but that 's a different point--and wishing that people made better decisions while failing to account for *why* they make those decisions is disingenuous. calling this a "holistic" approach to the problem doesn't make sense to me.

i agree with what you said about cheap housing--building thousands of crackerbox units to deal with it is not a holistic solution. but, development as done today can really do little else. the paradigm is long since broken.

[PG]

Now you're talking Psymonetta. But I think it's a stretch to assume that poor workers don't know very well the tradeoff they're making between where they can afford rent and how much they'll spend in gas. It's a totally basic working class calculation that everyone who isn't an idiot would be making. Secondly your hypothesis fails to allow for the fact that many low-wage jobs are at hours and locations underserved by mass transit. Thirdly people may require a certain amount of space for children, and moving inward (even if, as in your example, the increased rates are offset exactly by the decreased commute costs) most often will mean having less sq ft.

The extremely limited range of real options, especially regarding mobility, experienced by the working poor can't be boiled down to their own inability to reason out long range financial calculations. Even if educated as you've sketched out, they will still find themselves in competition with people for whom such calculation is second nature, having grown up with it and having a lifetime of experience implementing it and seeing the results of it. Just because you've made it doesn't mean that everyone else can.

What should be discussed is the economics of the air pollution, as people are pushed (correctly or not) further from where they work. And in any case what I advocate isn't new construction low-income housing -- what I want is for the cheap places that exist to be left alone! Ultimate green-building!

[Psymonetta Isnoful]

PG, all those cheap places still need rehab. Believe me...they need rehab. Many low-wage jobs in swing shift and graveyard hours have access to vanpool programs, and if they don't, TriMet is happy to help. Car-sharing and cab vouchers are promising options for decreasing the need to own a vehicle for emergency short notice situations. Real options for mobility exist and can be developed. People and programs just need to be encouraged to approach the problem differently.

Having less square feet isn't an issue in my trope. Having adequate, well planned living space and showing people how to reduce their footprint, regardless of income, is the real issue. Most of the world lives in less bloated square footage conditions than the traditional American family. I see no need to subsidize unrealistic and really economically and environmentally poor housing preferences. And, that's what most of it is, accommodating a cultural preference that is unrealistic.

I've made it, yes. And that makes me all the more aware of how difficult the process can be. It's also a challenge for me in that I am judged, by my peers, family, friends and society as a whole based on two different class affiliations and I really truly belong to neither. Either way, pointing out that my story is a small percentage of the norm in no way invalidates the need to give low-income people the tools to improve their lot in life, instead of simply managing their lives for them based on their current situation.

Back to the original subject, building workforce housing on a currently empty brownfield site, with a few integrated affordable housing units and subsidy to provide features that help mitigate some of the air quality concerns around I-205 isn't altering any "cheap" places. It's creating more affordable and family-sized housing and hopefully eliminating the stress on other existing housing that will occur as the neighborhood develops. Providing the retail and service access that has been requested by the current low-income neighborhood residents, who happen to be comprised of a significantly large percentage of homeowners, is helping to fulfill the neighborhood goals.

In Lents, so far, there hasn't been any trend toward conversion of existing affordable housing resources, and the funding and programs for rehabbing and creating new housing has been significantly increased.

[PG]

"Need rehab" doesn't really do it for me. My apartment needs rehab by anyone's standard, but that's largely why it's still cheap enough for me to keep it. We'll see what happens with Lents, shall we? It's got a URA, the city's priorities are heavily condo, and it's been studded with "we buy houses" signs for years. What will happen to people whose continued existence in that neighborhood frankly depends on housing that is below market rates? They'll leave, that's what will happen. They'll leave their home. Landlords all over town are smelling blood in the water. I say "having made it" into home-ownership, as you characterize yourself, doesn't confer any special perspective that those of us who haven't made it lack. In many ways, quite the opposite.

The Portland home-owner is nearly always in favor of gentrification because it benefits him or her. The rising tide raises a select group of boats only. Yet people are driven to justify it with equivocation such as your comments here contain in profusion. I'm sorry, but I'm on the other side. I'm against it. It's gotten out of control. Your joy in seeing things getting fixed up around your new neighborhood is that and nothing more. Don't use it to insist that our market-driven, development-centered civic processes give a damn about the poor, or that via some miracle of education and resource the poor and working poor can find their lives improved even if they can't afford to live in their neighborhoods any more.

[Psymonetta Isnoful]

You're missing one key factor. The majority of the low income homeowners in Lents have been here over 20 years and many over 40.

So, here we have people that have been poor and working poor, but fortunate enough to have owned a home in the Lents neighborhood for years. And now, you want to halt the (minimal) market growth that allows their homes to finally appreciate at a slightly higher percentage (nothing huge like the past). The "select few" in Lents are poor people. Sounds really fair to the poor and working poor. Take their one asset and make sure it never shows any real growth just so the neighborhood can stagnate for the benefit of keeping it a slum and making sure that those with low standards always have a place to sully. Never mind that when those poor and working poor folks moved into this neighborhood, it was a true community with stores and people using the streets etc and wasn't nearly as depressed.

What is really happening is that we're finally reversing a couple of decades of decay that have been caused by neglect and intentional dumping. There is a balance to revitalizing a neighborhood and keeping a stock of clean, well-kept, rehabilitated housing available so that the current residents can remain in better standards. The rising tide is about changing the ratios as the population increases, not driving out the current low-income residents.

[southeaster]

Sorry you view Lents as a slum.
Sure, its a little rough around the edges in spots, and is certainly deserving of its cut of city money and accompanying amenities.
But,just because there's nothing by way of fancy restaurants or fashionable boutiques doesn't qualify it as a slum (that's even with the Copper Penny factored in).
Or is that the new code word for anything that isn't urban chic?

[Psymonetta Isnoful]

I don't view Lents as a slum. Not now. Ten years ago...yes. But, that's what slow and thoughtful progress that's directed by a community plan accomplishes. What I object to is halting that momentum. If that happens, then it's likely the area will slip back into disrepair.

I really object to your characterization of my opinion as well. Wanting a decent grocery store, and a few neighborhood establishments in a pedestrian setting (rather than on 82nd, which is a high traffic corridor) is not "urban chic". It's practicality. The people who live in the neighborhood (and should I point out again that they are predominantly low income people?) deserve to have a decent quality of life too.

[PG]

^^and what they don't deserve is condo development taking priority over those things. Pricing up the neighborhood by PDC's usual machinations in this way will, however, increase the value of existing -- and in some cases, long-time and even low income -- home-owning residents. This approaches one of the usual arguments in favor of gentrification in North Portland: a few people are thereby able to sell their homes to newcomers for a higher price, etc etc blah blah.

Lents includes a lot of renters who don't want to see their rents go up 20% a year. I object to the idea that every relatively lower-priced area of town is now seen by the PDC as a resource for them to help developers quickly exploit. You seem to think there are only two choices, either development that presses on the poor and rental classes, or "slipping back into disrepair." This is only true from a market-based, ownership-society perspective. I argue for a third way involving caution and emphasizing preservation of existing affordability, and definitely de-emphasizing value-adding. Since that apparently makes me a socialist hippie a lot of commenters on this blog won't examine the possibility of such alternatives to the present situation, which unfortunately few seem to recognize as a crisis.

[ecohuman.com]

"You're missing one key factor. The majority of the low income homeowners in Lents have been here over 20 years and many over 40."

no, i think you're missing the point on that topic. calling long-time residents "low-income" is very misleading, because they bought when prices were dirt cheap and when lower incomes were sufficient to pay a dirt-cheap mortgage.

"But, that's what slow and thoughtful progress that's directed by a community plan accomplishes."

you're entirely wrong on that one, too. what drove it was *demand for affordable houses for sale*, pure and simple--not "thoughtful" development or a community plan.

honestly? i think you're avoiding the basic truth of how development and improvement happens. to put it simply: it's all about money.

and did you notice that you claimed amenities were an important part of affordable housing, yet Lents, with homes being snatched often before coming to market, has few of those? in other words, did "amenities" drive people to move to Lents?

and, i wonder if "most" long-time Lents residents would say their neighborhood has been "decaying" until the local planning apparatus and new homebuyers suddenly rescued it?

[ecohuman.com]

by the way, i live next door to Lents and know Lents fairly well.

[Psymonetta Isnoful]

By the way, I live in Lents, walk around in Lents, frequent Lents businesses, attend the neighborhood association meetings and community events as well as provide a leadership role in Lents. I devote a great deal of my time to reading what residents have requested, as well as speaking with them in the community.

They did think the neighborhood was decaying. They are happy with the work the PDC is doing and wish it would progress more quickly. They're excited about the changes, and they have a history of planning well ahead to preserve the affordable housing stock.

A few plastic signs and overzealous "advocates" doesn't invalidate the value of their work.

Sorry.

[ecohuman.com]

I live in Lents, walk around in Lents, frequent Lents businesses, attend the neighborhood association meetings and community events as well as provide a leadership role in Lents.

i know about the "community meetings." given the population of Lents, less than 1% of the population is involved.

when you feel the temptation to draw conclusions about what Lents "wants", consider that. that sort of "community involvement" arrogance is part of the problem, I feel.

is it your fault or invalidate your efforts? no. but even if you attend meetings, read e-mails, walk around and knock on doors, you're *still* only talking to a tiny fraction of residents--and even then, it's a dangerous thing to draw conclusions.

in other words, you don't speak for Lents--you speak for yourself. we're both interested in equity and justice, but we'd be damn fools to assume to know what several thousand of our neighbors want.

[Psymonetta Isnoful]

There is such a thing as an adequate sample, though. I feel that on most issues, I am able to get an adequate sample. There are some populations I wish would be more involved, but they aren't unrepresented within the sample.

When I speak from an official standpoint, I don't just speak for myself and it is my responsibility to make an informed and representative statement.

[ecohuman.com]

"There is such a thing as an adequate sample, though. I feel that on most issues, I am able to get an adequate sample."

why do you believe that? it displays a remarkable faith in statistics (and yourself) to believe you know what a neighborhood of 15,000 with an imaginary boundary around it believes, wants, needs and feels, after speaking to dozens or a few hundred of them.

many of those 14,000+ Lents residents you've never met probably care less about the 1986 Lents Neighborhood plan or other plans. one urban planner's "improvement" is another citizen's "gentrification."

so, while you blog, contemplate new tattoos and what color your living room should be, others two streets over might want to get rid of sidewalks so they can park their truck or RV there. others might want the Copper Penny to become a parking structure. others might want a community garden.

or, they just might want to be left alone. does that make sense? calling yourself a community leader of 15,000 after speaking to 100-200 of them doesn't make you their leader--it just looks good on a resume. calling Lents a "community" because it has a name on a map and a border doesn't make it so, either. this is a key problem in America--top-down definition of community, as if developers (who really shape cities) can define a human community by laying down a grid of streets and planting amenities. it never works that way.

but i hear you. it's a struggle to shape a community. there are things i want changed in my neighborhood too, next door to yours. i work on it.
i'm glad you want to make your neighborhood better; but consider carefully what "better" means, and the severe limitations of defining it for thousands of your neighbors.

[southeaster]

Psymonetta Isnoful:
Do you walk by Riley's often?
If so, I'll buy you a beer sometime.
And woe upon those who'd wanna see the Copper Penny turn into a parking structure.

[Psymonetta Isnoful]

I eat at El Pato Feliz weekly and walk by Riley's more often.

The Copper Penny will not be a parking structure. The Tzartamas' are a little more business savvy than that. But, they are planning on redeveloping the whole block. Hopefully, it will retain its Greek chic and lose some of it's less amusing attributes.

[southeaster]

Less amusing attributes?
Some of my favorite clients (and I mean that) have been busted there.

[Psymonetta Isnoful]

I'm referring to the three whole sides of the block that face the street but are pretty much boarded up/inaccessible, less the entrance to the Pantheon. It's kind of depressing.

I'm all for video poker and discotheques. I'm still on the fence with tube tops, though.

[Housing policy geek]

You are right that many of the residents want to see condos in Lents. And, yes many of these residents are moderate income homeowners who were able to buy when housing was dirt cheap. But, you are wrong that PDC only wants condos. In fact, PDC has to spend 30% of its urban renewal money in Lents on affordable housing.

[Theresa]

Sakis and Johnny give so much to the Lents neighborhood. They donate large quantities of food for events and meetings. They donate to the fundraisers and have even gone as far as to chase petty thieves who steal the Coffee Shops tip jar. The Lents neighborhood is not my neighborhood, but if it was I would be happy to have viable businesses like The NCP.

[Theresa]

Food even :)