What happened between the first and second rounds of community engagement?
In the first round of community engagement, in the spring of 2024, Metro asked community members to imagine what they wanted for Willamette Cove’s nature park. Metro’s design team laid out some parameters – it’s a nature park, not a sports complex – and some of the site’s constraints – it’s narrow and it’s a cleanup site. The designers took all of the insights and imaginings from community members, considered them in light of the parameters and constraints and drafted possible layouts for the park.
These early drafts were shared with Metro staff like our natural area’s conservation team and park rangers. They were also shared with the Port of Portland, Metro’s partner on the upland cleanup, and the agencies working on the in-water cleanup. And the designs were shared with Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe. The designs were reworked multiple times to address concerns and build on ideas from these conversations.
This back and forth is a regular part of a park’s design process, and it’s really important. It ensures the designs we share with community members are actually possible. We’d hate to include some Awesome Thing in the design, have community members get excited that the Awesome Thing is coming to their neighborhood, only to find out much later that it’s not possible to build the Awesome Thing at the park.
Through this process, the park designers had three designs to show community members.
What the engagement looked like
Like the first round of engagement, we held two workshops and offered a survey to gather the community’s views on the three designs. This round, we also attended several community events where we asked for input and hosted the Willamette Cove Field Day to share the designs and provide information about work across the Portland Harbor Superfund. Finally, we held a discussion with advocates for the disability community.
One of the three full design drafts for Willamette Cove.
Rather than asking community members to pick which design they liked best, we asked them to compare the designs’ different elements – a paved regional trail, nature trails, gathering spaces, water access and art – and pick which version of each element they liked best. We took this approach because each design shared these elements, so we have opportunities to mix and match parts of the designs. We’ve also found that asking someone to pick just one design can be overwhelming because parks are surprisingly complex.
This map shows the entrance to the park and was part of a question about the route for a walkway to a dock, which is highlighted in blue.
Who we heard from
We again sent a postcard to every residence in North Portland letting folks know about the survey. The survey was also shared on social media. We don’t know what neighborhoods survey-takers hailed from, but we do know most of the responses came thanks to the postcard.
About 850 people took the survey. That’s a great response, though it’s quite a bit lower than for the first survey. We expect the drop is a combo of: folks already shared what they think and don’t feel a need to weigh in again; there was misunderstanding that this was a repeat of the previous survey (something we heard at in-person events).
We asked survey takers to share demographics info with us, and we’re so happy that more than 85% of participants provided us with this info. It’s incredibly important to have this so we know what communities we need to do a better job of reaching and ensuring they have a voice in their government’s decision-making processes.
As you can see, the survey didn’t reach people of color very well. This is a regular result of not just our surveys, but surveys in general. There’s an enormous number of reasons any person might not take a government survey, including the cost of spending the time or distrust of a government’s intentions towards their community or never being asked before to engage in government decisions.
While the survey was out, we held the workshops in September, with 57 participants in-person and 38 attending the online session. We again relied on several community-based organizations to help get the word out to the communities they serve, including Indigenous, Black and Latine communities, the disability community, and the houseless community.
We were successful in reaching people of color at these workshops, which is why we hold them. At the in-person workshop, of the 38 people who shared demographic information, 32% were Latine, 23% Black, 9% white, 5% Native American, 4% Asian American and 4% Middle Eastern or North African. 19% declined to state their race or ethnicity.
We did not get enough demographic responses from the online workshop to know the makeup of the group.
While we received great input on accessibility for the park, especially in the survey, we felt we didn’t reach the disability community well enough through the workshops. To remedy this, we held a small discussion with four disability rights activists.
We did not gather demographic data from the folks we met at the Willamette Cove Field Day or the other events we attended. However, two of the events were geared for communities of color (the Portland Harbor Community Coalition’s Water Ceremony and El Grito Celebration).