Portland City Council set to vote on South Park Blocks plan amid some fervent opposition

Despite fierce opposition from residents, Portland’s City Council is expected to approve a plan Thursday to renovate the South Park Blocks — a historic 12-block park in downtown Portland.

The plan describes a decadeslong remodel of the park that connects the Portland State University campus with some of the city’s biggest cultural attractions. The 132-page plan, two years in the making, would add new seating, art, plants and a bike path to the leafy strip in the city’s core.

The overhaul comes with a steep price tag: The city estimates it would cost anywhere between $22.9 million to $46.6 million to build. That does not include the price to make the area part of the “Green Loop,” a connected six-mile park through Portland’s central city area for joggers, walkers and bikers. That pathway is estimated to cost an additional $7.4 million.

City officials describe the plan as “an unfunded vision” and say they have not allocated funding for most of the features.

Nevertheless, the plan has generated a strong backlash among Portlanders who believe it will lead to the decimation of the treasured elms that line the park.

But supporters and city officials said these claims are wildly overstated.

“I expected people to read the master plan and respond to that — not what they read on social media,” said Portland Parks Board member Paddy Tillett. “It’s sort of a gathering snowball of misinformation that is rumbling across the South Park Blocks.”

Tillett said he believes the plan is a critical step to keeping the trees healthy and preserving the park. But the most extraordinary thing about the document, he said, is how many “conspiracy theories” have sprung up around it.

An online petition pushing for City Council to oppose the plan has gathered nearly 800 signatures, erroneously claiming the rows of trees will be cut down to form a bike path. In a post titled “Assault on the South Park Blocks,” the author of a local architectural blog wrote that the park would be shrunk by 17,400 square feet. The city says that’s not accurate, and the bike lane will be adjacent to the park, rather than cut through it. Former city commissioner Mike Lindberg posted a photo on social media of a row of park trees tagged with caution tape and wrote that the city had marked the trees for the woodpile. The post drew more than 300 outraged comments.

The city said there’s no truth to it.

“No trees will be proactively removed. Zero. Nada. None,” wrote Will Howell, communications director for Carmen Rubio, the city commissioner in charge of the parks bureau. “Rather, the plan prescribes a tree succession plan to direct the replacement of trees whenever they reach the end of their life cycles.”

Howell added that eventually the overall number of the trees will be reduced, but he called it a necessary step to space out the trees and keep them healthy.

Currently, there are about 330 trees in the South Park Blocks, according to Tate White, senior planner with the parks bureau. She said over the next two decades, the city anticipates losing about one per year.

“If the complete long-term vision is achieved fully, there will be fewer than 20% less trees in the South Park Blocks,” she wrote in an email. “But importantly, the tree canopy coverage will remain. And the trees will be healthier and more resilient for future generations.”

The assurances have done little to sway the opposition. Wendy Rahm, a member of the Downtown Neighborhood Association and vocal opponent of the plan, said she read the plan herself and does not trust the city officials who insist that most of the trees will remain. According to her, the high-level statements made in the plan do not align with what the maps show.

“They’re accusing a lot of the opponents of misinformation, but in fact those people have dug into the master plan,” she said.

The council will hear testimony on the plan starting at 2 p.m. Thursday.