Don’t get us wrong: The vision for the Hawthorne Bridge is a good one. The design is beautiful, and it will be the conversation piece that city leaders hope it will be, when locals and visitors alike are going to and fro along Highway 97.
It will be a nice showpiece, but those of us who plan to actually use the new bridge and the new connectivity that it will create between downtown Bend, the Bend Central District and the east side have concerns — ultimate connectivity being chief among them.
When the bridge is built, people will be able to ride, walk or roll from downtown Bend into the newly revamped, up-and-coming area of the Bend Central District. There, they’ll soon find fun amenities like the new Dogwood-meets-Spoken Moto and the popular Portland-transplant wing place, Fire on the Mountain. As the area grows (and gentrifies), it may very well offer an increased level of connectivity with downtown that will better serve the people who live and visit there.
But that’s where the connectivity stops. If someone who lives on the east side wants to access this newly revamped part of town, they’ll start their journey into the Bend Central District by crossing Third Street — among the busiest streets in town — at a lighted crosswalk that’s hardly a pillar of safety. City leaders say there are some plans in the works to address this safety issue, but none of that is forthcoming any time soon, and it’s not part of the scope of work of the bridge project.
Those are the unfortunate optics: City leaders have gone out and secured grant funding to build a bridge to connect the west-side downtown with the BCD — a great vision for a growing city — but have stopped short on making true connectivity a reality for the many people who live and work on the east side of Bend. If you currently walk, ride or roll from the east side to the west, then you already know that the most dangerous part of the route is not the crossing at Franklin Avenue, under the railroad tracks and Highway 97 — it’s crossing Third Street amid throngs of whizzing cars. To spend tens of millions on a bridge that dumps only into the BCD — where coincidentally, the City of Bend plans to build its own City Hall in the coming years — but to leave a safer crossing at Third Street unfunded and unplanned sends a very clear message: This is not actually about safety; nor is it about truly serving the lower-income, diverse population that lives in and around Third Street.
When city leaders sought funding for the Hawthorne Bridge, they applied for a federal grant aimed at better serving low-income people who currently live there. Census Tract 16, where the bridge is planned to go, currently has a large population of people living in poverty, as our Nov. 19 story detailed. That fact helped city leaders obtain the grant that will pay for the bridge.
Grant funding is nice and means that local taxpayers will be less burdened by the costs to build this bridge. But once it’s built, city leaders also expect some $250 million in private development to come into the area around the bridge. What will become of the many low-income people who currently call the area home? Gentrification may force many of them out.
In light of these facts, call us dubious about this project being about creating true connectivity for the people in the area. It appears it’s more about paving the way for developers to have a nice new avenue to access a historically underserved area.
We’d like to get on board with this bridge project. We want to believe in this vision of connectivity from downtown all the way to the east side. But the crossing at Third Street is a major thorn in the side of that ultimate vision. It needs to be planned for and solved sooner rather than later, so a true vision of connectivity can emerge.
This article appears in Source Weekly November 28, 2024.
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The new majority of City Councilors includes people whose campaigns were heavily funded by those who will profit from new development and gentrification. It’ll be interesting to see which incumbents get cash from the same sources in the next election. Mendez and Kebler, for example.
Until the city makes Bottle Drop move out of MidTown……….that area of town is going to have issues pretending it’s a cool place to walk across the bridge and hang out.
Spot on “Mickey Finn”!!!