Last week's vote of the Portland City Council on a proposed plan for Linnton put into focus a dilemma of land use planning. The proposal was to rezone some of the industrial area in Linnton for retail and dense housing -- in effect (and I'm sure I'm grossly oversimplifying) to give the Linnton industrial area zoning designations that would let it be redeveloped as a simulacrum of the Pearl District.
Again in general, and with some exceptions, the residents of Linnton mostly supported the rezoning. The owners of industrial businesses in the area mostly opposed the rezoning. The City Council voted to keep the current zoning and not to rezone the industrial area for housing.
One neighborhood activist was quoted in the Whimperer as saying, in effect, "We, the people who live here, support the Linnton redevelopment plan, and if the City Council rejects this plan, then the City Council is turning its collective back on neighborhood involvement."
I think the Council made the right decision, for several reasons. First is that the Council should be protecting the areas of the City that support industrial businesses -- businesses that add tangible value to the goods that pass through Portland. The Council needs to protect these areas because the difference in land value between industrial land (on the one hand) and retail and housing land (on the other) would ultimately force industrial jobs out of the city. Industrial land in Portland is available for about $8 to $15 per square foot, or about $320,000 to $600,000 per acre, depending on location and access. Land suitable for residential subdivisions is now going for $100,000 to $150,000 per lot, undeveloped, which for 5000 SF lots is about $700,000 to $1,000,000 per acre. (If you're checking the math, allow for the land lost to streets and stormwater retention areas.) Land near the Pearl District is going for about $6,000,000 to $8,000,000 per acre, and in the center of downtown Portland land is worth more than $10,000,000 per acre. The most recent downtown land sale I'm aware of valued the land at about $14,000,000 per acre.
If the industrial land in Portland is opened up for residential and commercial development, the land that's worth $600,000 an acre for industry now becomes worth $1,000,000 to $10,000,000 an acre for condominiums or retail uses. The industrial uses leave town. That's undesirable for the City, however profitable it may be for individual landowners.
Buried in the description of the three industrial zones (IG1, IG2, and IH) is a reference to them being used to designate the industrial sanctuaries of Portland -- the areas in which industry is free to grow without being pushed out by competing demands for housing. It's been more than a decade since the City Council last faced a serious challenge to its industrial sanctuary policy, and I'm pleased that the Council stood firm last month. The Linnton area is as sensible as any for an industrial sanctuary, given the presence of tank farms and a natural gas facility, long-established uses next to which no new housing should be allowed.
I had to give the neighborhood activist's comment some thought. When the activist said that the City was disregarding the wishes of the people who lived in Linnton, the unspoken message I received was that only the people who live in a neighborhood should have the right to plan for what uses go there. That may be right if "neighborhood" means a block or two, but not if (as the City uses the term) "neighborhood" means an area of several square miles that can include housing, retail uses, institutions, and heavy industry. A neighborhood's users (stakeholders) include not just the residents but also the people who work there, shop there, and own land and businesses there. And in Linnton, the industrial uses predate most of the residents, a fact the City Council wisely recognized.