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If you don't know much about art but you know what you like, you might as well mosey over to Sellwood and weigh in on the latest neighborhood controversy. There you'll find Mark Lakeman's handiwork. It's either an innovative urban project that is building true community or a mess of discards that looks like it was put together in a craft booth at the Oregon Country Fair. It all depends on your perspective. "It's an eyesore. It looks like a hippie commune, kind of going way back to the '60s," says Kim Bigelow, who lives in a condominium a few blocks away from the intersection of Southeast 9th Avenue and Sherrett Street, otherwise known as Share-it Square. "I don't want to drive by it every day." Lakeman has the solid support of the neighbors who live on the square. Annmarie Wright isn't bothered by the Jerry Garcia color schemes. She says that now she knows her neighbors, traffic has slowed and crime has dropped. She has little patience for the people who oppose the square, characterizing their protests as class warfare from river-edge condo dwellers. "We don't want to piss these people off," Wright says, "but on the other hand, they don't live here. Why do they have so much say on our neck of the woods?" In the fall of 1996, Lakeman, a second-generation urban planner, led a crew of guerrilla pavement painters and filled the intersection with rainbow colors to create a street graphic that would establish a sense of place and direct traffic. Since then, his "intersection repair project," which also includes a garden produce giveaway stand and a 24-hour tea stand, has generated national excitement among urban planners looking for ways to create noncommercial public spaces in neighborhoods. After initial skepticism, Lakeman received the stamp of approval from the local establishment last month from the Portland City Council, which saw the project as the physical manifestation of the lip service normally paid to "creating community." The council voted to extend an experimental project permit for Share-it Square for another six months. But there's a catch. Although the response to the project has been mostly positive, there has been enough controversy over aesthetics that the city is sending Lakeman and some disgruntled neighbors into mediation. Opposition concerns have ranged from fear of decreasing property values to concerns that the square will become a haven for the homeless, but the city has rejected those arguments. Now it's just a matter of taste. Natasha McLeron is a 36-year-old
OB-GYN nurse who has lived two blocks away from the intersection for nine years. She admits that her three children like to spend time at the square, but she thinks it's ugly. She says she supports the general idea of a square and disagrees with neighbors who want it removed, but her support is qualified. "From a neighborhood perspective," she says, "we don't see the process, we see the aesthetics. We don't think, when we drive through, 'Oh, what a nice gathering place.'" McLeron says she'd like Lakeman to redesign the project so it fits in better with the neighborhood. "Take the rainbow colors out, maybe have black and white stripes so it's not so hippie-like," she says. Ann Callanan Madden, a member of the Friends of Sherrett Square council, notes that, ironically, she met McLeron for the first time thanks to the disagreement over the square. She sees it as an example of how the project brings people together. For now, at least, the square is going to stay, and supporters hope that mediation will assuage some neighbor concerns. City Commissioner Charlie Hales, whose office has spearheaded official support of the project, sees the conflict as a clash of American values rather than personal taste. "People who invest in a house and value that as their stake in the neighborhood value independence as a homeowner," Hales says. "Some of them feel threatened by the intersection repair project. The other very legitimate idea is the idea of the barn raising, that as neighbors we get together and do something that makes this a better place." |
