Grant leads to greening of Tigard’s Main Street

The city receives a $2.54 million grant from Metro utilizing federal transportation dollars for the project

The Times, Apr 5, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Tigard is turning greenbacks into a “green” cityscape.

The Metro Council on March 18 voted to give Tigard’s Main Street Retrofit Project a $2.54 million grant, which is the largest the city has ever received.

Tigard, which has pledged $500,000 of its own money toward the project, will transform 1,400 lineal feet of Main Street from Pacific Highway to Burnham Street to full green street standards.

The project includes widening sidewalks, reconstructing and reconfiguring portions of the existing street plus adding new lighting and native street trees to create a pedestrian-friendly atmosphere, according to Duane Roberts, the city’s associate planner in long-range planning.

The first phase includes incorporating recently developed streetscape design standards for Main Street together with green street elements.

The green aspect includes sustainable elements such as brick pavers, holding cells for stormwater and pervious areas where runoff can infiltrate naturally as opposed to being piped underground.

“The green street design is part of Tigard’s overall sustainability/nature theme being used throughout the downtown,” Roberts said.

Tigard is a town center by Metro’s definition, according to Phil Nachbar, the city’s downtown senior planner.

“From Fanno Creek Park, we are bringing the park up into the city and connecting the downtown with the park,” he said. “Main Street will be gateway to Fanno Creek Park. The street will be designed more for pedestrians, and the layout will help control traffic. We have to get the traffic to slow down.”

According to Nachbar, Burnham Street, which runs from Main Street to Hall Boulevard, also will be developed as a green street.

It will include the same features planned for Main Street, such as holding cells for storm runoff that will be part of the curb system.

“Burnham will be a fully reconstructed street with sidewalks, new street lighting and landscaping,” Nachbar said. “Both streets will have sidewalks that ‘bulb’ out where there are crosswalks to make crossing the street more pedestrian friendly.”

According to the Metro staff evaluation of the project, the Main Street retrofit “provides an opportunity for construction of a green street demonstration project in Washington County… The project will improve water quality and quantity discharge into Fanno Creek.

“Green street retrofit projects contribute to improved stream health, which also has benefits for urban salmon habitat.”

The project received strong public support, which counted for a substantial part of the scoring criteria Metro used to rate the various proposals submitted for funding, according to Roberts.

The federal government is funding Tigard’s project along with others chosen by Metro, and Nachbar expects that in October 2009 will be “when the money would shoot in.”

“We are ready to go,” he added. “We’re hoping we’ll be among the first cities to get funding. The first thing is to finalize the design, and when the money comes, we would start the construction design and then start the actual work.”

The grant substantially speeds up the design and construction timetable for Main Street, even with voters in May 2006 approving an urban-renewal measure to fund improvements to downtown.

“It would have taken five years or more for (urban renewal) tax-increment financing to kick in,” Nachbar said. “The two exciting things are that we are starting work on Burnham and doing the final design for Main Street.”

As for what people can expect to see in the future, Nachbar said that construction on Burnham should take place in 2007-08. “We should do quite a bit and will likely complete it in 2008-09,” he said. “The actual Main Street construction should start in 2009-10. These are pretty major streets in downtown that are connected. It’s taken a long time.”

The city also is starting work on the master plan for Fanno Creek Park and a public plaza at the south end of Main Street.

The City Council on March 13 awarded a contract to Walker Macy to prepare the master plan for both projects.

Tigard’s Main Street project was one of 19 out of 67 submitted that was approved for full funding; an additional 12 received partial funding, according to Roberts.

“The ‘flexible funds’ awarded the city are included in the Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Plan, which identifies how all federal transportation money will be spent in the Portland metropolitan region,” Roberts said.

“While much of this federal money is earmarked for specific projects such as commuter rail construction, two federal programs annually provide Metro some $30 million in flexible funds to finance a wide variety of transportation-related projects and programs.”

Metro distributes this money to local jurisdictions, public agencies and special districts based on applications submitted by project sponsors.

For questions on the city’s plan for renovating downtown, contact Nachbar at phil@tigard-or.gov or at 503-718-2557; for technical questions about the Main Street project design, contact City Engineer Gus Duenas at gus@tigard-or.gov or at 503-718-2470; for questions on the MTIP grant-funding process, contact Roberts at duane@tigard-or.gov or at 503-718-2444.