We know, we know..this video is  "like, like soooooo posted-last-week"- but still fresh in some minds. This is another logistical bit of brilliance from OK Go.

Will the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area (ICURA) be expanded to include the Rose Quarter? City Council won't decide until next year, but organizations in Portland like the Northeast Coalition of
Neighborhoods (NECN) are trying to figure out what residents of North and Northeast Portland want.

NECN held its last community forum on the future of ICURA last night at the Billy Webb Elks Lodge. Although most residents at the meeting were more concerned about process, politics and racism than about the specific boundaries of ICURA, some did have strong opinions about expansion.

It's an unbelievably exciting weekend for arts in N/NE, headlined by the kickoff tomorrow of the PORTLAND2010 Biennial at Disjecta (with which we happily share a building). As described by Disjecta Founder/Director Bryan Sureth, PORTLAND2010 "is a biennial exhibition of contemporary artwork significant to Portland's art landscape" featuring 18 competitively selected Portland contemporary artists, whose work will be displayed at Disjecta and other venues citywide through May. Be sure to check out the opening reception tomorrow evening from 6-10 p.m. at 8371 N. Interstate Ave.

Also! Roosevelt High School presents "The Wizard of Oz" this weekend! RHS Theatre Arts Director Jo S. Lane has received significant local praise for her productions, and this one is not to be missed. The curtains go up tonight and tomorrow at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. See our other post for more details, and see you there!

Plans are underway for the Kenton Street Fair, gracing North Denver Avenue in May. Jessie Burke, the owner of Posies Cafe, is helping to spearhead the fair's organization, and is giving Kenton businesses first dibs on booths. We've got the info below, and Kenton business owners can download the vendor form as an attachment at the bottom of this post.

We've completed our vendor forms and they are being prepared for distribution and to be posted on our KBA website.  I wanted to send them around to the Kenton area businesses first, however, because we wanted to give Kenton businesses first priority for booth space, and also a discounted rate for all KBA members.  At next week's KBA meeting we will be discussing KBA membership, dues, etc if you want more information on how to qualify for the discounted rate.

The rate for Kenton businesses is $25 per booth (10x10).  You must provide your own tent, table and chairs.  The remainder of details are listed on the application.

In today's Oregonian, columnist Steve Duin offered a thoughtful view on Portland Public Schools imminent high school redesign.  I recommend reading it.  Most of his comments align with our recent editorial. But we do differ in one area. The Sentinel recommends that Jefferson become a vocational special focus school.

Duin seems to believe that the redesign is on the right track, but doesn't go far enough. He makes the case that PPS is not looking into the future with it's vision. His case, perhaps, being that the redesign is, at it's least, triage rather than transformation.  Duin does not argue against PPS logic that a reapportionment of students to fewer and larger high schools would level some of the playing field. But he does say that's not good enough for a forward looking school system.

FROM THE OREGONIAN: BELOW THE CUT

Sarah Stevenson, Executive Director of Innovative Housing addressed the Friends of Cathedral Park Neighborhood Association Tuesday night. She was responding to neighborhood complaints about Innovative Housing's 14-unit facility, with part-time service and care providers by Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare.  The building, located near North Trumbull and Edison streets, was purchased by Innovative in 2005 and renovated and rented the following year.

Tenants are formerly homeless residents who must be single when they apply and go through a screening process.

Exciting event tomorrow in Piedmont! From the Piedmont Neighborhood Association website:

Piedmont Neighborhood Association invites you to come meet your neighbors on March 11th at 7 P.M. at Rosemont Court, 597 N Dekum St. This is a new meeting place for Piedmont Neighbors. Come see this beautifully restored building. The front doors are located at the corner of Dekum and Kerby.

Piedmont Neighborhood will be having a “SHOW AND TELL” Event at this gathering. You will have a chance to talk to your neighbors and see all the good work Piedmont Neighborhood does for our community.

This is the first piece in an ongoing collaboration between The Sentinel and Oregon News Incubator. More information about this journalism experiment is forthcoming.

With Multnomah County Chair Ted Wheeler being named the new State Treasurer following the tragic death of Ben Westlund, Commissioner Jeff Cogen, who represents North/Northeast Portland is leaving that seat to seek the now-open County Chair position. 

Cogen may not succeed. However, several speculative candidates have emerged who wish to replace Cogen as North/Northeast reps on the County board, if Cogen should move to the Chairman position.

The Sentinel will do its best to keep you informed as this shakes out; we begin with interviews with the first two people to file for the North/Northeast County seat as of Tuesday morning.  They are likely to be considered the front-runners in this incredibly full race.

Karol Collymore
Karol Collymore has served as Cogen’s aide since he took office three years ago.  Her political career began in New Mexico where she worked on Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, following that with further work in New Mexico and Oregon, where she moved in 2004.  A resident of the Sullivan’s Gulch neighborhood, Collymore also sought, and nearly won, appointment to open House legislative seat 43 in 2009 [See Senate Shuffle].

At long last, the Kenton branch of the Multnomah Library System opened on Monday March 7th. A grand opening ceremony and party is scheduled for this Saturday March 13th.

Last week, we reported on the unease of Memorial Coliseum redesign finalist Douglas Obletz regarding the city's current Coliseum operating agreement with Portland Arena Management.

Obletz, a principal with the firm Sheils Obletz Johnsen, which proposed the Memorial Athletic & Recreation Center (MARC), took issue with Section 2.2.3 of the operating agreement, which allows the city to reclaim the Coliseum with 18 months notice. However, the agreement also says the city would then only be able to use the site as a “Non-Spectator Facility."

“Our project would be dead in the water,” Oblitz told Sentinel reporter William Crawford. The agreement, in Obletz's opinion, would also put the Blazers' JumpTown proposal at a distiinct advantage.

The Daily Journal of Commerce reported yesterday that Obletz has sent a letter to City Council requesting a delay in the Coliseum Request for Proposals process until the onerous operating agreement can be re-negotiatied between PAM and city officials.  The issue will be discussed further by the Rose Quarter Stakeholders Advisory Committee tonight from 5-7:30 p.m. at the Portland Development Commission offices.

Has one of the key players in a series of commerical and residential break-ins along North Mississippi Avenue and Northeast Alberta Street finally been caught?  Has the recent crime along these streets been the cause of a select few or many small groups?  The Oregonian reports a man arrested whose MO fits the more sophisticated styles of commerical break-ins that have been seen along NE Alberta and N Mississippi.  Unlike other 'smash and grab' style break-ins, this suspect appears to be associated with break-ins where alarm systems had been cut pre-buglary.  In one case along Alberta, a safe was stolen. That's not your troubled teen or thrill-seeker crowd there.  We will see if this arrest has an impact on crime reports.
FROM THE OREGONIAN

Early Christmas Eve morning, Kurt Huffman was dismayed to find a mess when he arrived at the Whiskey Soda Lounge on Portland's Southeast Division Street. It was the second break-in at his business within 10 days. 

"You put your heart and soul into something, and then somebody physically destroys it," Huffman recalls. "It's really disturbing and makes you feel very exposed."

Huffman wasn't alone. As many as 30 other restaurant and taverns had been broken into much the same way since July -- many along Northeast Alberta Street, North Mississippi Avenue and Southeast Division Street.

 

READ THE ARTICLE

UPDATE 5:30 p.m.: OK, the dust is finally settling, and here's what we know, courtesy of WWeek, OPB reporter April Baer and Blue Oregon, among others:

-Newest candidates for Jeff Cogen's District 2 MultCo Commissioner seat: Roberta Philip, a new hire at County Chair-turned-Interim State Treasurer Ted Wheeler's office; and Paul van Orden, the former pro skateboarder and City of Portland Noise Control officer. They join Cogen aide Karol Collymore, Rev. Chuck Currie and former MultCo commish Gary Hansen in the race to fill the District 2 seat. (That's our district, yo!)

-Full slate of candidates for Wheeler's now-vacant MultCo County Chair seat: Cogen, former state Sentator Margaret Carter, and Mike Darger.

-And for State Treasurer: Jim Hill-D, Rick Metzger-D, Chris Telfer-R, and Wheeler-D.

UPDATE 3:13 p.m.: OPB's April Baer breaks the news that Steve Novick has withdrawn from the Multnomah County Chair race. On her Facebook fan page (I know, I know), April says, "Novick just told me he had been on the phones all day. Ultimately, a conversation with former MultCo chair Bev Stein led him to step back."

UPDATE 12:32 p.m.: OPB reporter April Baer resets the MultCo chair race: Margaret Carter, Jeff Cogen, Mike Darger, Steve Novick. And for State Treasurer: Jim Hill-D, Rick Metzger-D, Chris Telfer-R, Ted Wheeler-D. In her words, "Still 4.5 hours to go, folks!"

Meanwhile, WWeek reports the candidates (as of 12:30ish p.m.) for Cogen's District 2 seat are: Karol Collymore, Rev. Chuck Currie, and former MultCo Commish Gary Hansen. Check back here for more updates, including (gasp!) some original reporting.

UPDATE 10:33 a.m.: WWeek reports that former state Senator Margaret Carter will run for Multnomah County Chair. The position was vacated this morning by Ted Wheeler (pictured in slide show) when Gov. Ted Kulongoski appointed him as Interim State Treasurer to replace the late Ben Westlund, who died of cancer over the weekend. More details on the political shuffle below. 

Last fall's Senate shuffle's got nothing on this morning's political developments. Here's the scoop, courtesy of WWeek and BlueOregon:

-Gov. Ted Kulongoski announced this morning that he was appointing Multnomah County Chair Ted Wheeler as Interim State Treasurer, replacing the late Ben Westlund, who succumbed to cancer over the weekend.

-Then came word that former U.S. Senate candidate Steve Novick and United Church of Christ minister Rev. Chuck Currie planned to file for Wheeler's now-vacated County Chair seat.

-Then we learned, via WWeek, that Karol Collymore, a mover-and-shaker in MultCo Commissioner Jeff Cogen's office, was filing for her boss's seat, leading to rampant speculation that Cogen will be filing for County Chair. (Cogen has just confirmed that he will indeed run for County Chair.)

Why the sudden flurry of activity? Well, the deadline to file for the state's May primary is today. The clock is ticking. Let the games begin.

Photo in slideshow by Leah Nash, from Street Roots. Photo embeded in article of Wheeler at a past event with Portland City Councilor Nick Fish from Portlandonline

In addition to a spat about the St. Johns Farmers Market, there's plenty goin' on in the John this month. Thanks to St. Johns Neighborhood Association President Babs Adamski, we've got a quick 'n dirty wrap-up of events, meetings and must-know news for March. Here goes:

Monday, March 8 (that's today!): St. Johns Neighborhood Association General Meeting, 7:00pm - 8:30 pm, St. Johns Community Center Auditorium, 8427 N Central St. (at Leavitt). Agenda includes the introduction of Angela Wagnon as our new Crime Prevention Coordinator, planning for the Community Clean-up and Trash to Treasure in April.

Wednesday, March 10th 6-8 p.m.: St. Johns + Art Organizing Potluck. Interested in helping form the SJ+A group for 2010? We're having a family friendly organizing meeting & dinner. Send an e-mail to babsia@gmail.com for the address.

Friday, March 12th and Saturday, March 13th -- 7 p.m., Saturday, March 13th -- 2 p.m: MATINEE! Wizard of Oz  - Roosevelt High School
Tickets for the performances are now on sale online at www.roosevelttheatre.org or you can contact the box office at 503-916-5260 ext. 71424

Try to picture Brandon Roy never getting the chance to wear a Blazers’ jersey.
 
Go ahead and imagine him playing for another NBA team.
 
Painful, isn’t it?
 
Believe it or not, there was a time when Portland wanted to pass on selecting the three-time All-Star guard.  It was back in 2006 before the NBA Draft.  Roy was fresh out of the University of Washington and was in town for pre-draft workouts with a trio that included Adam Morrison (Gonzaga), Rudy Gay (Connecticut) and Hassan Adams (Arizona).
 

Oh, boo hoo, the Sentinel Street Edition has perished. Who cares. That bloody newspaper never printed even one of our video selections. What did the Street Edition ever for do us at SMV? Nothing, that's what! So, crocodile tears is all you get from us. But since everyone is getting all nostalgic and clogging up SMV's precious bandwidth with all their blubbering, we might as well join in. 

We can be nostalgic too.  Remember 'the aughts'? Remember when bands in 2002 and 2003 made us nostalgic for the bands who did identical music in 1982 and 1983?  That's what we miss. We miss a time when we could really feel nostalgic from a really nice clean piece of nostalgia.

Take Swedeish electo-poppers The Knife's 2002 song "Heartbeats," for example. That song makes us miss when new music sounded really old. The song was re-released in 2004 after Jose Gonzales did a seemingly more popular cover of the song on 10-string guitar. The lovely irony is, the cover sounds less nostalgic than the orginal.  The Knife's official video brings it all together, combining Super 8 footage with really old analog video affects. The whole things just makes us wish we could go back in time 7 years when the new stuff made the past look so much cooler than it ever was.

[PS- in SMV's humble opinion, March 4th, 2010 Daily Show- tightest, investigative, self-satirizing, infotainment media artifact in years...is it just a funny show with a unsettling ending or a vast left wing media conspiracy to get the Quants?]

In my five years with The Sentinel, my favorite story was “Crack in Kenton” (November 2006 article not available online).  An ex-pimp and drug addict named Lionel Scott walked into The Sentinel offices in St. Johns one evening in September. He said that he was seeing a lot of drug dealing in Kenton, but he felt that police and neighborhood activists weren’t taking him seriously. 

The newly installed community policing office on North Denver Avenue was not in regular use, and at the time, there were few businesses on the street that could keep an eye on things. Scott street mannerisms might have lead some to be dismissive or suspicious of him.

Scott appeared sincere to me.  He worked as a case manager for True Dialogue, a nonprofit that worked to keep kids off the street.  Scott’s references checked out, and distinguished people in the community such as the Reverend John Tolbert vouched for him.

Over the next two months, I followed Scott and his wife, Stephanie, as they told me of the remarkable turnaround Scott had achieved in his own life, and of criminal activity they saw in the neighborhood around them. 

In 2006, The Sentinel dedicated considerable coverage to the effort to rename North Portland Boulevard after civil rights leader Rosa Parks. In October 2006, Sentinel Publisher Cornelius Swart wrote an editorial in support of the name change.

But by the summer of 2007, as the first new Rosa Parks signs began going up on Portland Boulevard and became visible, a small backlash against the name change began to arise amongst residents. Little did they know that another street-renaming controversy was waiting in the wings.

In August 2007, The Sentinel street edition expanded on earlier online coverage about a campaign to change the name of North Interstate Avenue to Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard. The Sentinel reported that several neighborhood associations along Interstate Avenue had given initial support for the idea, but businesses were unaware of the proposal.

The efforts quickly grabbed citywide, statewide, and then national headlines as a determined activist group met with increasingly vocal opposition. Accusations of racism on one side were met by allegations of back-room deals at City Hall.

To those who invested their passion, energy and precious time to this paper, and to whom I am indebted for the rewards of this endeavor: Michele Elder, Will Crow, Theresa Rohrer, Colleen Froehlich, Roger Anthony, Rebecca Robinson, Jason E. Kaplan, Vanessa Anthony, Laura Hutton, Todd Anthony, Dave Johnson, David Sharp, Alex Blackwood, Yvette King, Charlotte Johnson, Dave Trabucco, Steven Ye, Connie Summers, Colleen McDonald, Chelsia Rice, James Yeary, Peter and Donna Bogdanov, my daughter, family and devoted creditors. Thank you.

~ Cornelius Swart

Any journalist will tell you that a good lede is elusive. The first sentence of a news or feature story, the lede must hook readers with irresistible brain bait that lures them into the next paragraph and beyond.

We’ve pored over thousands of articles here at The Sentinel, so many that after a while stories of brownfields and Business Boosters and Bachelor’s Clubs and brouhahas blend together, regardless of an individual piece’s quality. There are some stories, however, whose ledes lift them from interesting to instantly memorable. Mara Grunbaum’s lede for “Grand Masters from Astor” is a prime example.

The very first story The Sentinel printed when publisher Cornelius Swart came on board in September 2004 was about a day in the life of a neighborhood police officer who was leaving the beat.

We followed officer Cliff Bacigalupi as he walked the street, talking with neighbors and trying to track down a local counterfeiter.  Since then, we’ve made police coverage one of our primary focuses:  We’ve devoted an edition to crime prevention almost every year and provided what seemed to be day-in, day-out updates on the various moves to close or consolidate North Precinct over.

Many newspapers run with the adage “If it bleeds, it leads.”  However, our readers made it clear they did not want that kind of coverage from their community news service.  We set out to cover crime from a prevention- and solution-oriented angle, with an occasional story of truly exceptionally strange crimes (a bomb found at Peninsula Elementary School, January 2009) and coverage of what sadly seems to be an increasing number of cases that raise questions about police misconduct. Tension between the police and the policed has been a constant tightrope.