Two examples of planners folly in one day!

I haven't been blogging a lot lately, but two articles in the Oregonian today were just too rich to let pass without comment.

Two different articles, both of which illustrate the folly of our vaunted land use planners when they cook up grand schemes for how they think people want to work, shop and live, and then act shocked when it turns out that people vote with their feet otherwise.

And when it happens, does it cause them to re-think their views? Not a chance.

The first one is the opening of IKEA in the Cascade Station "development." IKEA is a complete and total departure from what the Cascade Station area was supposed to be. Planners' vision was their typical New Urbanism fantasy: "The idea was, let's build an urban village next to the airport in an industrial core," said Craig Sweitzer, whose job it was to market the ill-considered development.

Just think about this - how detached from reality do you have to be to even utter those words? An urban village next to an airport? In an industrial core? Who would want that?

But the obviousness of how stupid an idea this was didn't prevent Neil Goldschmidt and his cronies from making millions on it. The money trail is very murky - Bechtel and Trammell Crow helped build the light rail spur to the airport in exchange for the development rights to the property. Who knows what those rights were worth, and how much they actually ended up paying for them? Anybody want to bet with me that the public got screwed again?

Anyway, the development fell apart from the get go. They platted the whole thing out, had all the roads and infrastructure built, the train going through it, and for several years there wasn't a SINGLE commercial establishment in the entire place!

It was actually pretty funny, because the choo-choo train to the airport, occupied mostly with airport employees, would chug through the development, and would stop. "Cascade Station," the loudspeaker would announce, and the doors would open to reveal a deserted sidewalk. Nobody would get in or out, of course. (Except once I hear a coyote boarded.)

The problem was the planners' vision did not include cars. They don't like cars. So they wanted all the commercial tenants to discourage car-driving customers. But commercial enterprises know better, and so they stayed away from Cascade Station in droves.

And the planners had to yeild. It was more embarrassing to have the thing vacant than to allow a car-oriented store like IKEA to come in and bail them out. So IKEA opens today.

I love the quotes in the newspaper:

"Planners and officials now agree that the Cascade Station vision was doomed from the start." Oh! Oops! Sorry, we were wrong.

Randy Leonard said: It didn't work out the way it was planned, but when government sets up a plan for an area, the lesson is, you need to remain flexible so the economics of what you are planning for makes sense." THAT is your takeaway from this, Randy? Remain flexible, so you after five years of bleeding money you can admit you were wrong and the whole thing made no sense in the first place? I think the lesson is to make sure that what you are investing public resources in makes sense in the first place!

And this, from one of the guys who planned the whole concept: "Sometimes reality has a different idea." WOW!

But the money quote from a Tri-Met planner, explains the whole disaster:

"Bottom line for Tri-Met: We got our train."

Exactly. That is all it was about. They lied and bribed their way to get another piece of their choo choo system built. That really is all that matters to them. Everything else is just for show.

Now, the other article is just as funny, but for the opposite reason. With Cascade Station, they invested in the New Urban vision and the market rejected it. The planners don't seem to be bothered at all.

But 10 miles south, another retail center was built that rejected every single principle of the New Urban vision, and it is wildly successful. Bridgeport Village is everything planners hate. Auto oriented, retail only (not mixed use) and proudly upscale.

It is so successful, in fact, that the planners want to now get involved. They are talking about designating Bridgeport Village a "Regional Center," which in their fantasy are the clusters of high density mixed use areas surround the Portland urban core.

The problem is Bridgeport rejects the Regional Center model, which is to combine housing, office and retail so that people don't have to use their cars. And that makes the New Urbanists mad.

Lake Oswego mayor Judie Hammerstad is one of them. She hates Bridgeport, because she spearheaded one of the mixed use developments in downtown Lake Oswego, about three miles from Bridgeport. And a lot of the office space in the Lake Oswego development is still vacant, and the retail establishments other than the restaurants are struggling.

"My original objection to Bridgeport Village was that it contained no housing and almost no office space," she said. I still feel that way."

In other words: "They didn't make the same stupid mistake we did and burden their project with a bunch of square footage that doesn't fit the development. That means I am stupid, and I hate it when my stupidity is so clearly on display."

So the planners - get this - want to designate Bridgeport Village a Regional Center, because then it would have access to all sorts of governement transportation funds so it could turn itself into something as successful as Cascade Station!

These people sure are good at keeping Portland wierd.