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Susan's Online Guide to Portland Let me Help You Find a Home and a Neighborhood |
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Welcome to my Web site about the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area. It is my way of helping you become acquainted with the neighborhoods and communities of the city and to inform you about the Portland area housing market. Your comments and suggestions about my Web site are always appreciated. If you have questions or if you are interested in buying or selling a home in the Portland area, contact me online or call me at (503) 497-2984.
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House and Home |
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Street of Dreams builders downsizing dream November 17 − The flagging economy will suck some of the starry-eyed extravagance out of the 2009 NW Natural Street of Dreams. Promoters insist the 34th annual show of luxury homes will survive the downturn, but houses will be smaller, far more energy-efficient and perhaps half the cost of last year's edition. And, with the exception of the two or three houses that show host Chad Eslinger had already planned to build at his 7-acre Bella Terra development in Lake Oswego, they will all be sold before so much as a single nail is driven. "These are all just signs of the times," said Eslinger, owner of Eslinger Builders, based in Lake Oswego. "The goal here is to bring this back closer to reality." Read the full story in The Oregonian... |
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Green Zone |
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Sports and Outdoors |
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National forests see fewer visitors November 18 − National forests have long been prime recreation spots in the Pacific Northwest and around the nation, but new federal figures show far fewer people are visiting them since 2004 -- especially in this region. Now researchers are trying to determine why people are staying away from the prized public playgrounds, including the nearby Mount Hood, Gifford Pinchot and Deschutes national forests. Their ideas include high gas prices, rising visitor fees, youths glued to television and video games and a busy, urban society with little time for outdoor pursuits. They say the decline is troubling for rural economies that increasingly look to tourism and recreation to replace revenue lost when logging dried up. It also may leave fewer people who champion the value of public lands. Read the full story in The Oregonian... Starkey Experimental Forest and Range banishes humans for the winter November 17 − Biologists buttoned up the lonesome Starkey Experimental Forest and Range for the winter Saturday, banishing the public from the large fenced wildlife research enclosure until May 1. Relatively unknown to most Oregonians, the Starkey Project in northeastern Oregon's Blue Mountains encompasses 40 square miles of alpine meadows and pine and fir forests surrounded by an 8-foot fence. It is open to the public from May until November or December. Field crews plan to spend much of this winter live-trapping and radio-collaring up to 40 Rocky Mountain elk and as many deer inside the fence, one reason the gates have been locked. Read the full story in The Oregonian... |
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Neighborhood and Communities News |
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Comcast revs up Internet access in Portland November 18 − Comcast is pushing the pedal down. Starting next month, the cable company plans to give faster Web connections to all its Internet customers in Oregon and Washington -- twice as fast -- without a rate increase. Comcast will also add a premium service with hyper-fast downloads for $140 a month. Verizon already offers similar speeds to its Internet subscribers in Washington County, east Multnomah County and parts of Clackamas County. In Portland, however, Comcast's upgrade brings fast connections that were heretofore unavailable to most residential customers. Read the full story in The Oregonian...
Regional leaders push lame duck Congress to fund construction projects November 17 − Portland-area politicians are hoping Congress will approve millions of dollars in regional infrastructure projects at the lame duck session scheduled to begin today. City and county leaders say new public works projects will create thousands of good-paying jobs. The elected officials have released a list of construction projects they say can be started in coming months if the federal governments agrees to help finance them. "It's just a matter of political will," Commission Randy Leonard said of Congress and the Bush Administration. Read the full story in the Tribune...
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Web by |
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Susan Marthens |
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Weak
economy crushes market for Oregon recyclables November
17 − The market for recyclables in Oregon and around the globe, riding at
or near historic highs a few short months ago, has tanked along with the
economy, marking what industry experts say is the largest, quickest drop
ever in prices paid for recyclable material. Among other consequences, plummeting
prices for plastic, cardboard, newspaper and metal could boost garbage rates
across Oregon as haulers collect far less recycling revenue to offset costs.
Orders for recyclables, typically converted to raw materials for manufacturing,
dropped abruptly about two months ago as factories worldwide slowed down
or shut down. Demand from China and the rest of Asia, the engine of the
recycling boom, is now feeble at best, recyclers say.
Oregon's
jobless rate spikes to 7.3% November 18 − Consumers slapped
shut their wallets in October, helping drive the unemployment rate to 7.3
percent in Oregon, which lost 14,100 jobs since September -- the worst seasonally
adjusted monthly decline since February 1981. Tom Potiowsky, Oregon's state
economist, called the numbers horrible, saying Oregon's unemployment rate
could reach or exceed 8 percent. The recession appears to be getting deeper
than predicted, said Potiowsky, who doesn't expect better economic growth
until 2010.
The
story of the East Side Big Pipe is told in numbers November
18 − The group converges on the gaping hole in the ground (67 feet wide)
near the Portland Opera headquarters and travels down several stories (115
feet) to the floor of the East Side Big Pipe tunnel (6 miles long when completed
in 2011). It quickly becomes evident that the tale of the biggest construction
project in the city's history is told in numbers -- large numbers and a
lot of them. The Big Pipe is a series of tunnels designed to divert Portland's
combined storm water runoff and sewage to the city's treatment plant on
the Columbia River. When it's done, raw sewage will flow into the Willamette
River two or three times a year instead of every time it rains like it does
now.
Major
US cities preparedness for an oil crisis November 17 − Common
Current just released a new study, "US City Post-Oil Preparedness Ranking,"
which looks at the largest 50 cities and their readiness for a new Presidential
Administration that is weighing ongoing energy price volatility and climate
change policies expected to impact all levels of government. The
cities with highest overall ranking in “Major US Cities Preparedness for
an Oil Crisis” are as follows: San Francisco, New York, Washington, DC.,
Seattle, Oakland, Chicago, Portland, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston.
Ranking highest are cities with strong public transit system ridership,
well-organized and relatively dense city centers, a high degree of mixed
real estate uses (retail, office, residential), and medium-to-high city
population density.
