The city is recalibrating projects to enhance interactions between Tigard’s Main Street and the Fanno Creek corridor, rendering the initiative somewhat less ambitious but also less construction-intensive and costly.
City planners expect to implement several redevelopment initiatives totaling $640,000 while putting others on hold. All are part of an effort to pepper Tigard’s core district with access to the creek and its greenery to both beautify downtown and engage passersby.
The city is moving ahead with projects to widen the Main Street crossing connecting two stretches of the Fanno Creek Trail to ease navigation for bicyclists and residents with disabilities and to resurface a boardwalk on the north side of the creek as well as a pedestrian bridge completing the trail link, Sean Farrelly, the city’s redevelopment manager, told Tigard City Council in a Feb. 10 update.
Also still in the works are decorative metal sidewalk railings on both sides of the Main Street bridge over Fanno Creek, a commemorative bench at the opening of the boardwalk and removal of invasive plants and planting of native species on both sides of the creek, Farrelly told the council. The railings are expected to feature depictions of native animals, fish and plants, augmenting a utilitarian safety railing there now, Farrelly said.
Farrelly projected that the changes will be completed in 2028.
Not moving forward is a plaza along the creek’s south side. Construction would have required the closure of a one-way driveway next to Cooper Mountain Ale Works and the conversion of a one-way driveway on the building’s south side into a two-way driveway.
Farrelly said many downtown businesses and business organizations resisted that project in light of its potential construction-related disruptions. Farrelly also told Tigard Life that those entities argued the benefits of that project did not do as much to outweigh their costs.
In addition, the developable space on Fanno Creek’s south side next to Cooper Mountain is highly limited and complex, putting construction logistics and budgetary expenses at a premium, Farrelly said.
“We’re dealing with a pretty constrained space, and so there’s not a lot to build into public space,” he told the council.
The development is unofficially called the Nick Wilson Memorial Plaza Project in honor of the late council member, who died in 2020 after working as a landscape architect focused on greenspace development, including the Fanno Creek greenway.
City staff is working with surviving members of Wilson’s family to develop an aesthetically pleasing bench to commemorate Wilson. “Nick would like a bench,” said new council member Tom Anderson, who served a prior term alongside Wilson.
In the resurfacing projects, aging wood on the boardwalk and bridge will be removed and replaced with a fiberglass surface offering better traction, Farrelly said. Right now, those lengths – the boardwalk is about 160 feet long, the bridge about 90 feet – show wear in places. Large patches of asphalt covering have been applied to lower slip and fall risks for pedestrians and bicyclists.
Mayor Yi-Kang Hu expressed enthusiastic support for the resurfacing project based on first-hand experience. “I walk and bike there, and the deck really needs replacement,” Hu said.
In answer to a question from Hu, Farrelly said the projects would not reduce the number of Main Street parking spaces.
The city’s decision to defer the south-side plaza development would not bar the city from reconsidering the project in the future, Farrelly said. The city will continue to own a strip of land on the south side of Cooper Mountain and an easement on the north side in the event, for instance, that the site was reconfigured in ways which eased adjacent redevelopment and lowered project costs.
Though project expenditures appear in the city’s budget for its fiscal year starting in July, the Tigard City Council has not yet adopted that budget.
