Six years after officials drafted plans to extend the Portland Streetcar about a half-mile to the massive Montgomery Park office building, the transit project is set to pass a crucial hurdle.
The City Council will vote Wednesday on the path of the new tracks, as well as plans to rezone the nearby shuttered ESCO steel plant in Northwest Portland to allow for mixed-use redevelopment.
"This is the city signaling to the federal government that this is the route we're planning," said streetcar spokesperson Andrew Plambeck. "We'll be submitting, essentially, a letter for the federal government that we're entering the project development phase."
With the project's next phase comes a new pricetag: $120 million -- a 50% increase from expected costs back in 2018. Streetcar officials hope the feds will pick up much of the tab.
From the current terminus at Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center, the new rails will head north along Northwest 23rd Avenue to Wilson and Roosevelt streets, which will be built through the steel plant site, reconnecting the grid. The new end of the line will be Northeast 26th Avenue, about a block from the Montgomery Park building and its iconic red-light roof sign.
While never famed for its speed, the Portland Streetcar has unlocked billions in market value along its 8-mile route, supporters say. It was the primary mover behind the transformation of Slabtown near downtown from a dusty district of warehouses and rail sidings to a hopping streetscape where trendy eateries sit beneath hundreds of apartments.
When the new route is completed, Plambeck expects 2,000 new apartment homes to grow in the project area.
Several obstacles remain for that optimistic view of the near-future. The Menashe family, which owns commercial real estate across the city, picked up the Montgomery Park building and surrounding parking lots at fire-sale prices earlier this year, a sign of still-cratering demand for office space in the area.
Plambeck says the 17-acre site may not change overnight, but it could someday see new construction or a skybridge to Forest Park.
"There's a lot of redevelopment potential," he said. "We still see it as a great long term investment and community benefit for the city."
The current plan for the streetcar extension relies on a large infusion of funding from the Federal Transit Administration. Under President Joe Biden, the feds were covering the lion's share of such projects at about an 80-20 split, according to Plambeck. Costs were 50-50 during the first Trump administration, and how the project will fare under President-elect Trump is unknown.
It's also unclear how much the city will eventually need to pony up. The Portland Clean Energy Fund recently provided $30 million in funding for the streetcar, but that money is being spent replacing a dozen 25-year-old trolleys.
Assuming city officials approve the new streetcar route on Wednesday, the next step will be additional engineering assessments and drafting an environmental-impact report, which will take about a year. If all goes according to plan, construction could break ground in 2026, with the first riders boarding in 2030.
-- Zane Sparling covers breaking news and courts for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach him at 503-319-7083, [email protected] or @pdxzane.