Newcomer's Handbook for Moving to and Living in Portland: Including Vancouver, Gresham, Hillsboro, Beaverton, Tigard, and Wilsonville

by Geon, Bryan

  A cluster of apartment buildings, some of which are not visible from the street and which offer great views, perch on the slope downhill from Barbur Boulevard and uphill from Interstate 5. East of the freeway, newer offices, townhomes, and condos mix with bungalows and the occasional ranch-style or even modernist home. The Johns Landing area along Macadam Avenue is largely devoted to suburban-style office buildings, retail uses, and townhomes, condominium complexes, and apartment buildings, with some restaurants and bars thrown in for spice. Many of the residences have views of the Willamette River and Mount Hood. Johns Landing is also home to a community of houseboats floating in the Willamette. Further south, single-family homes reappear, mixed with townhomes and apartments, in the blocks west of Macadam Avenue and popular Willamette Park on the riverfront. A Zupan’s supermarket anchors the south end of the neighborhood at the lower end of Taylors Ferry Road. Uphill from Macadam, along the Corbett Street corridor, mostly older homes in various styles and various sizes have tremendous views over the river and out to Mount Hood.

  Johns Landing

  The neighborhoods of South Portland in general have a more transient population than some other parts of the city; more than half the residents are renters. Because of its abundant supply of rental housing and its close-in location, this area is a popular place for newcomers to settle, at least initially.

  Hillsdale and Multnomah Village

  Neighborhood Associations: Hillsdale, Multnomah

  Hillsdale (not to be confused with Hillsboro, a western suburb) combines a pleasant small-town/suburban ambiance with proximity and easy access to downtown Portland and OHSU. As its name suggests, the neighborhood straddles the lower slopes and dales of the West Hills, between Barbur Boulevard and Dosch Road/Bertha Boulevard. The heart of the neighborhood is Hillsdale Town Center, a 1950s-era business district along SW Capitol Highway that boasts boutiques, several popular restaurants and cafés such as Baker & Spice (www.bakerandspicebakery.com), a Food Front co-op supermarket, various service providers, and a green-built branch library. The Hillsdale Town Center area also encompasses the full range of K–12 public schools: Wilson High School, Robert Gray Middle School, and the highly regarded Mary Rieke Elementary School. The popular open-air Hillsdale Farmers’ Market (www.hillsdalefarmersmarket.com) takes place every Sunday during summer and twice per month in winter.

  Hillsdale’s amenities and convenient location appeal to young families, and the neighborhood is slowly turning over generationally as the original or second homeowners age. A fairly dramatic rise in home prices in the first decade of this century made the area prohibitively expensive for many entry-level buyers, however. Housing here is largely a mix of postwar single-family styles—Cape Cods, ranches, split-levels, and contemporary homes, many of them extensively remodeled—with daylight ranches (ranch homes built into the side of a hill, with a basement opening to ground level on the downhill side) perhaps the dominant type. A few older bungalows, English-style cottages, and farmhouses survive. (The latter are reminders of the old orchard and dairy farms that dominated the neighborhood until after the Second World War.) Some apartments and townhouses line the major thoroughfares. The Wilson Park neighborhood south of Wilson High School is a 1950s-era subdivision, with sidewalks; in the hilly terrain north of Capitol Highway, the sidewalks vanish, and many homes occupy steep, forested lots with expansive westward or southward views. Some of these homes are fairly ordinary (but not inexpensive) daylight ranches, notable mainly for their hillside perches, but others are dramatic modern structures, custom-designed for their sites. These hillside neighborhoods share many of the wildfire and landslide hazards of the West Hills (which, geographically if not necessarily socially, they are part of). The eastern part of the neighborhood has a heavy concentration of Cape Cods and colonials of various kinds; this area was once part of Burlingame until Interstate 5 was built and sundered this northern portion from the rest of Burlingame. Some of these homes, which are built on the east slope of the West Hills, have terrific views of Mount Hood and the Cascades.

  Hillsdale

  If you’re in the vicinity of Seasons and Regions (www.seasonsandregions.com), a popular seafood restaurant in the 6600 block of Capitol Highway, you may notice, especially on Friday through Saturday evenings, a large number of folks walking by in traditional Orthodox Jewish attire. This block is home to the synagogue, day school, and more run by the Chabad Lubavitch of Portland group, and consequently the area is home to a large number of primarily Orthodox Jews. The Mittleman Jewish Community Center and attached Portland Jewish Academy, more or less across the street, serve a much more diverse group of both Jews and non-Jews.

  Down Capitol Highway to the southwest, Multnomah Village bills itself as “the village in the heart of Portland.” This moniker, while not strictly true—it lies a full five miles from downtown—effectively conveys the neighborhood’s urban village vibe. (Built around an electric railway station, Multnomah was a village until Portland annexed it in the mid-20th century.) Like Hillsdale, Multnomah Village centers on a thriving business district (www.multnomahvillage.org), which encompasses several short blocks of antique stores, restaurants, bars, and quirky specialty shops; local favorites include Marco’s Café (www.marcoscafe.com), Thinker Toys (www.thinkertoysoregon.com), and independent bookstore Annie Bloom’s Books (www.annieblooms.com). The historic Multnomah Arts Center (a former school) hosts music and theater classes, exercise programs, and community events.

  Multnomah Village

  Multnomah Village was built out over a long period of time, and as a result has one of the city’s most diverse housing mixes. Although there are plenty of mid-century ranches and funky contemporary homes in the neighborhood, Multnomah has a larger stock of prewar bungalows and cottages than most other parts of Southwest Portland; recent infill development has also brought an onslaught of row houses, new custom homes, and even lofts. Some homes situated on the higher ridges have views of the Cascades or the Coast Range. Home prices here tend to be slightly lower than in Hillsdale, and there are a few truly dilapidated shacks on some streets. There are also an inordinate number of dead-end streets, some of which are rutted and unpaved, and the layout can be confusing to outsiders. Thanks in part to its older urban fabric and unorthodox street grid, the core of Multnomah Village is relatively pedestrian-friendly, and the area accordingly attracts lots of families with small children. The entire neighborhood is within walking distance of 90-acre Gabriel Park, and some streets dead-end into the park. Thousands of residents and visitors turn out each August for Multnomah Days, a two-day community celebration complete with street fair and parade. Multnomah Village is popular enough, and unusual enough in the context of Southwest Portland, that some real estate listings describe homes that are actually one or two miles away as being in or “close to” Multnomah Village.

  Busy Barbur Boulevard, which parallels Interstate 5 and borders both Hillsdale and Multnomah on the south and east, is lined with supermarkets, fast-food restaurants, auto repair stores, and other services (some of a less than savory nature). Multnomah Village and the southern half of Hillsdale, including the Town Center, have frequent bus service to downtown Portland, Beaverton, and Tigard.

  Bridlemile and Vermont Hills

  Neighborhood Associations: Bridlemile, Hayhurst, Maplewood

  As its unimaginative name suggests, Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway runs from the edge of Hillsdale west to Beaverton. Lined for miles by apartment complexes, restaurants, small businesses, supermarkets and strip malls, this thoroughfare is not especially inviting, but the pleasant neighborhoods on either side of the highway are popular with families and with others who are looking for a quiet lifestyle. These areas have many happy long-time residents, however, and there is typically a low inventory of houses for sale.

  To the north of the highway, Bridlemile is the sort of neighborhood that real estate agents describe as “coveted.” Not quite in (or of) the West Hills, Bridlemile nonetheless shares some of the char
acteristics of that area (including hills). Indeed, the boundary between these regions is indistinct: the neighborhood’s northeast corner is disputed territory claimed by both the Bridlemile Neighborhood Association and the Southwest Hills Residential League. Turf wars aside, Bridlemile is generally quiet and almost wholly residential. Lower Bridlemile, south of Hamilton Street, is largely comprised of relatively small, but by no means inexpensive, one-level ranch homes in tidy subdivisions like Brookford. North of Hamilton, houses are generally larger, and offer better views. Homes in the eastern end of the neighborhood generally date from the 1950s and 1960s; the median home age progressively declines as one travels west, and the western end of the neighborhood has some newer houses, including a few small gated communities that wall themselves off from the essentially nonexistent crime of the surrounding neighborhood. This western part of the neighborhood also includes Wilcox Manor, a former mansion that has been turned into a condo complex.

  Bridlemile

  Bridlemile Elementary School on Hamilton Street, one of the best public elementary schools in the city, feeds into the city’s most sought-after middle and high schools; school quality is one of the area’s biggest draws. A number of small streams flow through the neighborhood, and some backyards abut these waterways. (The stream corridors are also used by coyotes; keep pet cats indoors.) One of the neighborhood’s drawbacks is the almost complete absence of sidewalks, or even reasonably wide shoulders, on the main thoroughfares; residents are dependent on vehicles to travel even a few blocks along Shattuck or Dosch Road (for example) without some risk to life and limb. A feature that is either a drawback or an attraction, depending on one’s point of view, is the almost complete lack of shops or other commercial activity except along Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway. Barring the neighborhoods of the West Hills proper, the average home price in Bridlemile is the highest Southwest Portland; the crime rate is one of the lowest,

  Vermont Hills is the generic name given to the Hayhurst and Maplewood neighborhoods south of Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway. The terrain is indeed somewhat hilly; the main east-west thoroughfare is Vermont Street, which passes along the northern edge of 90-acre Gabriel Park, one of the city’s best neighborhood parks. (Some people colloquially apply the name Gabriel Park to the entire surrounding area.) Gabriel Park is home to the Southwest Community Center complex, which includes a popular pair of indoor pools. Like Bridlemile, Vermont Hills is mostly residential, but a small shopping center across the street from the Southwest Community Center contains several businesses, including the child-friendly Laughing Planet Café (www.laughingplanetcafe.com). These neighborhoods are also reasonably close to Multnomah Village: Maplewood homes are routinely identified in real estate listings as being “in” Multnomah Village despite actually being up to two miles away.

  Vermont Hills

  Vermont Hills was developed mostly in the decades after the Second World War, and daylight ranches and other styles of the 1950s and 1960s dominate here, along with a smattering of Cape Cods, bungalows, and other older home types. However, since many homes originally had large lots, the neighborhood is experiencing substantial infill development, with quite a few large new homes rising in former side yards. There are also pockets of 1970s- and 1980s-vintage contemporary homes scattered on culs-de-sac throughout the area and on some of the steeper slopes, particularly on the ridge south of Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway. The western part of Maplewood, near April Hill Park, has a number of small new housing developments, generally with large, Craftsman-inspired homes. Wooded stream corridors lace the neighborhood; these corridors provide habitat for wildlife that you might be surprised to see in Portland city limits, including deer and even cougar. A unique feature of the Hayhurst neighborhood is Alpenrose Dairy on Southwest Shattuck Road (www.alpenrose.com), an actual working dairy with an attached little league stadium, velodrome, and child-sized replica of an old western town.

  TriMet buses serve both Bridlemile and Vermont Hills along the main thoroughfares, with particularly frequent service along Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway; some routes operate only at peak hours.

  Burlingame and the Tryon Creek Area

  Neighborhood Associations: Arnold Creek, Collins View, Marshall Park, South Burlingame

  The neighborhoods south of Interstate 5’s Terwilliger curves in Southwest Portland are among the city’s hidden delights. These leafy precincts offer generally good schools, low crime rates, and abundant recreational opportunities, but are just minutes away from downtown Portland and from the antique stores and restaurants of Sellwood. These neighborhoods lie between the West Hills to the north and Dunthorpe and Lake Oswego to the south, and some residents feel that the area offers many of the benefits of those areas without the stratospheric real estate prices or perceived snobbery. That’s not to say these neighborhoods are cheap—home prices in all these neighborhoods are well above the city average—but they are certainly less expensive than more “established” parts of the city.

  The Burlingame neighborhood on either side of Southwest Terwilliger Boulevard was largely developed from the 1930s through the 1960s, although some houses in the area date to the 1920s or earlier. Home styles tend toward gracious Cape Cods and ranches, with quite a few English Tudor–style houses and small cottages in the mix. Unfortunately, the construction of Interstate 5 in the 1960s split Burlingame in two; the northern half of the neighborhood became part of Hillsdale (including the “Burlingame” Fred Meyer on Barbur Boulevard), while the southern half became South Burlingame. The most coveted houses stand high on a ridge above Terwilliger and offer excellent views of Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens; more modest homes are tucked into the valleys on either side or in the blocks adjacent to the freeway, although even some of these lower homes have impressive views. (Traffic noise can be troublesome in the areas closest to Interstate 5.) A small commercial district at the intersection of Terwilliger and Southwest Taylors Ferry Road includes a high-end Market of Choice supermarket, a Eugene-based competitor of New Seasons and Whole Foods.

  Burlingame

  To the south, the Collins View neighborhood occupies the slopes above Riverview Cemetery near Lewis and Clark College. The area is popular with professors and others who enjoy living in close proximity to a collegiate environment and to the college’s campus and athletic fields; the area also is popular with students, and some residents have complained about recurring problems with noise and litter from off-campus parties. The neighborhood mix is also reflected in the housing stock, which is a blend of well-kept homes, primarily in various post-war styles, many of which sit on large lots with tree cover and abundant greenery, and smaller, sometimes somewhat ramshackle rental houses occupied by students. The neighborhood’s grandest homes cluster at its southern end, where Collins View borders, and merges rather seamlessly with, the unincorporated Dunthorpe neighborhood; Dunthorpe’s high school, Riverdale High, is actually in Collins View (although it does not serve students in the neighborhood).

  Tryon Creek State Natural Area comprises nearly 650 acres of forested hills and canyons between Terwilliger Boulevard and Southwest Boones Ferry Road. The Marshall Park and Arnold Creek neighborhoods lie just to the west of this unique and eminently hikeable urban park. Both neighborhoods are overwhelmingly residential, with streets winding through hilly terrain cut by numerous creeks, and are characterized mainly by homes built from the 1960s to the present, in many cases on large wooded lots. A few old homes from the early 20th century stand moldering in the dense shade, while some brand-new small-scale developments (of large homes) are being built in the neighborhood’s vacant parcels. A few large properties that have not been subdivided are still farmed or otherwise used for traditionally rural purposes. In addition to the State Natural Area, to which some homes have essentially direct backyard access, these neighborhoods include several other natural areas, such as Marshall Park, which lies along Tryon Creek upstream of the state park. The nearest commercial area is actually in Lake Oswego, on Boones Ferry Road. Stephenson
Elementary, in the southern part of the Arnold Creek neighborhood, is considered one of the best elementary schools in the city.

  Outer Southwest Neighborhoods

  Neighborhood Associations: Ashcreek, Crestwood, Far Southwest, Markham, West Portland Park

  The neighborhoods in Portland’s far southwest—including the neighborhood aptly named Far Southwest—are often overlooked by newcomers and long-time Portlanders alike. While they lack any real commercial districts (excepting the strip mall of Barbur Boulevard), they offer relative convenience. The quiet Ashcreek neighborhood, between Multnomah Village and the Washington County border, has consistently enjoyed one of the lowest crime rates in the city. Most homes date from the 1950s to the present, with some older homes along Garden Home Road. Infill development has resulted in a crop of new homes mixed in with existing houses, including entire streets of new subdivisions—a rarity in Portland proper. Overall, Ashcreek is one of the city’s woodsier neighborhoods, and some streets have an almost rural feel—a feel enhanced by the absence of pavement on some streets. Nearby, Crestwood is something of a southwestern extension of Multnomah Village (and is usually identified as Multnomah Village in real estate listings). The crime rate is nearly as low as Ashcreek’s. Homes here are generally well-kept, and the neighborhood has excellent access to Interstate 5; it’s also fairly close, via back routes, to the Washington Square mall area. In the heart of the neighborhood, the vegetation in 32-acre Woods Memorial Natural Area is almost entirely native, and the park occasionally attracts elk.