The BTA was one of about a dozen folks who testified at yesterday's SK Northwest hearing. We supported the City's requiring the developer to include a segment of the planned Greenway Trail, and used our expertise to deflect some arguments put forth by the applicants.

The Hearings Officer lectured for a while about process, Kate Green from the City explained the City's decision, and then laywers for the appellants (SK Northwest and Portland Spirit) made their arguments. Those arguments struck me as generally unimpressive, but as each was only given 15 minutes, much more is likely entered into the public record in writing. They may just be creating a record to take the case higher. Then the public were given a chance to testify, in three-minute segments a piece.

The developers argued that the trail wasn't a transportation facility, because it's managed by Portland Parks rather than PDOT. They argued that they were already paying enough through the Transportation Systems Development Charge, and that they weren't impacting public access to the river and hence should not be required to improve such access. They also argued that bicyclists much prefer bike lanes to off-street paths.

We argued that adding 300-500 car trips across the interim cut-through path (on 4th and Caruthers) clearly impacts public access, that all of our surveys show bicyclists prefer off-street paths to bike lanes (especially those through industrial areas with parallel train tracks, trucks parked in bike lanes, and gravel everywhere), and that if industrial uses aren't compatible on the property with the bike path due to safety, clearly the industrial-area bike lane on 4th is incompatible with safety and an alternate structure should be built.

Much of the case centered on Dolan and Nollan (two court cases — lawyers, please correct me if I err) — whether there was a valid public purpose served by the requirement for the trail, whether there was an essential nexus between the requirement and the public purpose (Nollan), and whether the requirements were roughly proportional to the development's public impacts (Dolan).

Mike Houck from Urban Greenspaces Institute and Gregg Everhart from Portland Parks also testified for the Trail. About 45 people were in the audience — significantly more than these hearings generally get.

The Hearings Officer will make his decision in 17-24 days.

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