Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder speaks at the opening ceremony for the Cully Boulevard project. Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder on Friday celebrated the innovative reconstruction of Northeast Cully Boulevard, which provides sidewalks, trees, lighting and bicycle safety improvements for a largely Latino area that suffered for decades with unsafe streets.
The project was funded by the regional flexible funding program, a pot of money that Metro and officials from across the region designed to make the most strategic use of federal transportation money. The flexible funding program paid for nearly half the cost of the City of Portland’s rebuild of Cully, with the city providing the balance.
"To make the most of our tight transportation dollars, the region has focused on making our streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists," Burkholder said. "It’s especially important for us to put these investments in neighborhoods where busy streets lack sidewalks and other basic needs."
The City of Portland worked with the Oregon Department of Transportation and Hacienda Community Development Corporation to ensure that Cully area residents had an opportunity to work on the project. Northeast Portland residents employed by Verde, Hacienda’s nursery enterprise, have installed nearly 100 trees and 1,000 other plants to filter polluted stormwater and improve air quality.
At a ribbon cutting celebration on Friday, Mayor Sam Adams credited regional partnerships with Metro and Oregon's transportation department for making the project a success.
"This was one of the busiest, most dangerous streets in Portland," Adams said. "Now, it’s one of the most advanced designs in the United States."
Nathan Teske of Hacienda CDC and Claudia Gonzales of the Cully neighborhood, speak with Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Cully Boulevard reconstruction project. The one-mile project connects the Villa de Clara Vista apartments, which houses low income families at Northeast Cully Boulevard and Killingsworth Street, to the Albertson’s grocery store at Northeast Cully and Prescott Street. Previously, residents walked in the street, dodging fast-moving cars, because the two-lane stretch had no sidewalks or even safety shoulders.
The project also installed a streetlight at a five-way intersection of Cully Boulevard, Prescott Street and 57th Avenue.
"This is about safety for our communities and our families," Garrett said. "This is really a project from the community."
General contractor Westech Construction Inc. encouraged one of its subcontractors to train neighborhood residents to become certified construction area flaggers. Claudia Gonzales, a resident who worked as a flagger on the project for nearly a year, said the new facility and the jobs mean a lot to the community.
The flexible funding program provided $2.4 million of the project’s $5.4 million budget, starting in 2002. The Cully project competed in the fund's “green streets” category, providing money for projects that use plants to slow and clean stormwater runoff before it enters waterways.