Now let’s take a look at what we heard from community members.
Nature, nature, nature
The number-one message, without a doubt, was community members want Willamette Cove to focus on nature.
Question eight on the survey gets at this most clearly.
More than 50% of those surveyed said they want the nature park to lean towards nature. Going into the survey, we expected that most people would say make it 50-50 or lean toward nature, but we also thought plenty of people would want the focus on greater human access. Nope. Folks want Willamette Cove to be a NATURE park.
This result was the same no matter the person’s race, income, age or whether they currently have a disability.
The same was true in the workshops. Community members really gravitated to the idea that Willamette Cove was a place where nature could thrive amid miles and miles of industry.
When we asked which activities community members would most likely do at the park, the second most picked was “watching birds and other wildlife.” (The most picked was “walk, run or roll on the trails,” but you will need to do these to do anything at the park, so it might not have been the best question to ask.)
People do want to access Willamette Cove, first and foremost to connect with nature.
We asked which two types of water-based activities are the most important, and, again, the favorites were nature-first.
Finally, when we talked about tradeoffs caused by Willamette Cove’s narrow layout, the top priority was restoration followed closely by hiking trails.
There’s something worth pointing out for the last-place choice in that graph, “open or sheltered gathering space.”
That bottom ranking might indicate we shouldn’t include gathering places in the design. But the designs almost certainly will have gathering spots. That is because in two previous questions, "spending time with loved ones" was ranked very highly as a reason people go to parks and what they would do at Willamette Cove. Gathering areas, like a picnic shelter, are a huge benefit to these activities.
Honor Indigenous perspectives and knowledge
Throughout Willamette Cove’s park planning, we are informally consulting with several tribes to make sure the cleanup, restoration and park development at the cove aligns with their priorities, particularly supporting salmon and lamprey with healthy habitats. In the survey, we also shared that one of the values we heard from community-based organizations was the need to incorporate Indigenous perspectives and knowledge and center their experiences and expertise as we planned the park.
Community members overwhelmingly supported this. A characteristic response said, “These values resonate with [me], and I am reassured to hear the early and prioritized consultation with tribes and communities of color.”
To be sure, there were responses that disagreed with this and the project’s racial equity approach. Those comments number in the couple dozen among 2,200 responses.
The desire to see an emphasis on Indigenous community members showed up in a question about signs. The most popular type of signs were those about “Indigenous history and priorities (signs using Indigenous language, with storytelling or discussing traditional use).”
Put the entrance at N Richmond Avenue
During the main workshop activity, we asked community members to take a blank map of Willamette Cove and add stickers and drawings of where they would like to see different activities. One analysis of those maps simplified them into heat maps showing where a few types of activities were concentrated. For instance, water access was most requested at either end of the park.
The entrance to the park was overwhelming placed at N Richmond Avenue.
Community members were asked to pick the best spot for the entrance to the future nature park. In the map, the blue gets darker every time an area is picked.
This was a relief to the designers and luckily, the best – really the only – place for the entrance is exactly where community members want it.
Notably, this is the same place community members most want to see educational and interpretive activities and signs.
Accessibility
Making sure that Willamette Cove’s goodness is accessible to the disability community is high on our list of priorities. These types of design choices, like the slope of a trail or the height of a curb, have time and time again proven to benefit everyone.
Across most of the survey questions and in the workshops, disability community members’ views aligned closely with the overall input. A key difference was in how the community members expect to get to the park. Like everyone else, driving was at the top of the list. Disabled folks, however, are far more likely to take a bus or use a rideshare, like Lyft, to get to the park. We also heard that folks with vision difficulty or who have difficulty living independently were the most likely to face obstacles to accessing and feeling safe at parks.
Concerns
The two most pressing concerns expressed in the survey and at the workshops were about safety.
The historical industrial contamination Metro and the Port of Portland are working to clean up before the park can be built was far and away the biggest worry.
That’s the biggest worry for Metro too, and getting the cleanup right is job 1.
Physical safety was next. Community members want to make sure the park is for everyone. At the in-person workshop, Latine participants in particular expressed a desire to see signs that reaffirm the park is welcoming to everyone, regardless of race or background.
In the survey, the houseless community was cited several times, both from folks worried about camping and those worried about houseless community members losing a place to live. It is worth noting that there is no known link between camping and violence against housed community members, and the contamination at Willamette Cove is at unsafe levels and no one should visit or camp there before it is cleaned up.