City of Gresham – �鶹��Ƶ

Revitalizing Gresham’s Historic Downtown Hub

Ada Inman — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 18:13:02 +0000

During the fall of 2024, the School of Planning, Public Policy and Management (PPPM) offered a course at the University of Oregon titled “Urban Transportation.” Students in an Urban Transportation course worked with the City of Gresham to revitalize the city’s downtown. Students gathered information about the study area through a meeting with city staff, a site visit, and a simulated community engagement session. With this information, students began to research possibilities for downtown revitalization efforts. Student groups developed suggestions and each group focused on one of five categories: multimodal transportation, network connectivity, parking, development, and community engagement.

Each group completed a needs assessment based on the existing conditions of Gresham’s current downtown. Students concluded that the downtown area sees the most activation during the lunch hour and the dinner hour, with parking occupancy peaking at 1 PM and 6 PM respectively. Otherwise, the area is relatively quiet. Students perceived few activities during the 16 hour programming window people desire, meaning there may not many opportunities for nightlife. Downtown is primarily dominated by cars and very few people choose to walk, bike, or bus downtown—despite the possibility of all three. One obstacle to revitalizing Gresham’s downtown is the busy five- lane arterial road, Powell Boulevard. It is a barrier to encouraging more pedestrians and cyclists, and it fragments the network from Main City Park, the beautiful community park adjacent to downtown.

Despite these challenges, student researchers suggested ways to bring new life to the historic downtown area while keeping its small town-like charm. The most frequently suggested recommendation was to close a corridor of N Main Avenue to automobile traffic. The proposed corridor is from NE 1st to NE 5th Street, and would include a two-way bike lane, large sidewalks for pedestrians, and increased social spaces. This, along with infrastructure improvements to nearby intersections, would make walking and biking a more attractive alternative to driving downtown. Alternatively, if the city decided against a walking- and biking-only corridor, Gresham could turn N Main Street into a one-way. The unused lane could be converted into a two-way protected bike lane and would accomplish the same goal of encouraging multimodal transportation.

Another common theme researchers suggested was improved and centralized signage downtown. The city could create more cohesive wayfinding signage directing visitors to special attractions like the parks and local businesses nearby. The signage could also better direct drivers to underutilized parking lots to address community members’ perceived lack of parking in the area. The use of bulletin notice boards could offer information about biking and walking as viable and safe travel options in Gresham. Other important recommendations addressing Gresham’s historic downtown district’s needs include infill underutilized parking lots with social space hubs, engage with local artists and students to create public art downtown and increase aesthetic pleasure in the area, and implement a street fair to celebrate new development downtown.

Cultural Asset Mapping

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:38:06 +0000

The City of Gresham seeks to improve the walkability of its downtown to create
a vibrant, pedestrian-oriented city center. Through the University of Oregon’s
Sustainable City Year Program, an Advanced GIS class of undergraduate and
graduate students from the Community and Regional Planning program and the
Planning, Public Policy, and Management department conducted a walkability
study analyzing the built and urban design environment for pedestrians and
bicyclists. This report synthesizes the research and analysis conducted by five
student teams. It contains a description of the class methods, analysis of each
study group, overall findings and recommendations.
Students used Census data and shapefiles provided by the Regional Land
Information System to analyze Downtown Gresham’s land use, transportation
infrastructure, and population density in ArcGIS. Students used a network
analyst tool to further analyze the level of street connectivity around 17
locations of interest. After this analysis, five student teams conducted on-site
walkability assessments of sub-regions in Downtown Gresham. The walkability
assessments measured factors for the built environment and urban design and
included gathering surveys of pedestrians and bicyclists along the route.
To analyze this entire region, five study areas were identified:
• Gresham Town Fair
• Downtown Gresham
• East Powell Boulevard
• Main City Park
• NE Burnside Road
Each team provided analysis and recommendations for each region based on
the spatial analysis and walkability assessments. Key recommendations that
emerged from the findings include:
• Enhance urban design elements with street trees, landscaping, public
street art, and outdoor dining to create an interesting and enjoyable
pedestrian experience
• Increase accessibility and safety with additional wayfinding signage,
pedestrian crosswalks, well-marked and continuous bike lanes, and
traffic calming techniques to high traffic streets
• Improve MAX transit station experiences with additional lighting,
landscaping, and wayfinding signage
• Encourage mixed land uses/density including additional park or public
space in vacant lots
This report addresses the findings of the walkability assessments by study
area and provides recommendations for specific street improvements to add to
pedestrian and bicyclist accessibility. Suggestions for possible next steps for the
City of Gresham are provided, however, further analysis would be needed to
identify feasibility and priority for the city.

Sustainable City Year Program Contact Info
Megan Banks
Sustainable City Year Program Manager
mbanks@uoregon.edu
(541) 346-6395

University Faculty Contact
Taylor Eidt
Planning, Public Policy and Management

Local Government / Community Contact
Stacy Humphrey

Senior Planner

Sandy River to Springwater Multimodal Corridor Feasibility Study

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:37:23 +0000

The City of Gresham, Metro, Multnomah County and the City of Troutdale
collaborated with the U.O. Sustainable Cities Initiative in executing a trail
planning and feasibility study reported here. Students of landscape architecture
conducted the study. It investigated the problem of “closing Portland’s 40-
mile Loop” in its biggest gap along its eastern edge through Gresham and
Troutdale. The “40-mile loop” was originally proposed by John Charles Olmstead
in 1903. It intended to link Portland’s open spaces and greenways to create a
public accessible trail system. That loop has grown to a much more extensive
contemporary trail system and the eastern gap is arguably the most challenging
part of today’s 40-mile Loop system to complete. Unlike most of the rest of the
system, there is no existing right-of-way or river or other landscape corridor to
follow. A new trail here must traverse the suburban landscape though parks,
along roads, along unused rights-of-way, near creeks, or along the edge of
private properties. This report summarizes the planning and urban design
processes the students undertook, and the proposed solutions for creating a
path from the Sandy River waterfront in Troutdale to the Springwater Trail though
southeast Gresham.The class first did regional studies of many potential trail links and their good
and bad impacts as candidates to assemble into alternative trail alignments.
Proposed better alternative trail alignments were then mapped. The class then
developed more detailed designs for segments of alignments selected by city
and Metro planners.
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The project began with field studies of many existing trails in the Portland region
and a combination of field and GIS analysis of the study areas. During the field
trips that visited trails, students recorded trails’ layout and construction, site
furnishings, trail experience, access, and context.

Sustainable City Year Program Contact Info
Megan Banks
Sustainable City Year Program Manager
mbanks@uoregon.edu
(541) 346-6395

University Faculty Contact
Mark Eischeid
Landscape Architecture

marke@uoregon.edu

Local Government / Community Contact

Gresham Climate Futures Report

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:36:12 +0000

As a programming class we were charged with developing a comprehensive program for a new Gresham City Hall building. We
started initially researching the city of Gresham by examining past articles about the challenges the city has faced during its development.
We found out the city has had problems with creating a sense of identity and sustaining a thriving downtown. After visiting the site of the
existing city hall it was clear the new city hall needed a stronger community connection and presence and needed to create a new identity
for itself. During an interview session with specific departments within city hall, we focused on understanding how the building is used and
what each user group’s needs are. For each person, we were interested in themselves as part of a larger department, their department
as part of the city hall, and city hall as part of the city of Gresham. We were also interested in how they used to do their job, how things
are done currently, and how operations might change in the future. After touring the existing facilities and analyzing what we heard from
the interviews through charts and diagrams, we determined the following:
Gresham City Hall will serve as an identity for an emerging downtown while promoting community revitalization.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

Sustainable City Year Program Contact Info
Megan Banks
Sustainable City Year Program Manager
mbanks@uoregon.edu
(541) 346-6395

University Faculty Contact
Jean von Bargen
Architecture

Local Government / Community Contact
Stephanie Betteridge

Management Analyst