A downside look up at their new neighbor
Thursday, February 01, 2007
By Spencer Heinz
The Oregonian
On the cozy street that fought the tram and lost, homeowner Mark Gould says he wishes riders would not wave as though sailing over a circus.
"I have to say," he says, "it's odd."
This is part of life below the tram on Southwest Gibbs Street, the staging grounds for the former "NO TRAM" opposition.
After years of tilting against City Hall and Oregon Health & Science University, a crystalline kingdom of glass and steel that hews brightly to the hillside, the anti-tram forces watched as the tram became real. The 3,300-foot route sails over the neighborhood from the hospital to its new cousin on the waterfront.
Under the tram, attitudes range from those who say the two cars are better-looking and quieter than they expected, to those who despise the device because they say the city and campus pushed it on them. Some say tram riders, contrary to promoters' promises, can see into their houses.
"My privacy still feels invaded," says Alice Sayre, a clothing designer who took a free introductory ride and got a surprise: a view of her studio through a skylight. Sayre, married to Gould, says being under the tram feels ominous.
"You're taking the garbage out," she says, "then here comes this thing that's half the size of a bus."
It's the same for Gayle Robertson, 39, a teacher in Salem who lives near the top of the tram route. During her introductory ride, she spotted her living room. On the plus side, Robertson says, the tram cars look smaller and sleeker than she had imagined; on the minus, she sees the tram as mainly for OHSU instead of for the public -- and as an inappropriate luxury.
"I think it's really distasteful for it to be built," Robertson says, "when schools are being closed below it and a war is being fought."
OHSU proposed the tram to link its campus with the Willamette riverfront over a hash of freeway lanes and boulevards. In the Homestead and Corbett-Terwilliger-Lair Hill neighborhoods beneath the tram, attitudes sometimes vary depending on whether the speaker is a deeply rooted homeowner or a new tenant.
From her apartment's front porch, 20-year-old Molly Huggins says she loves seeing the tram and friends' reactions to it.
"People like freak out to it," Huggins says. "They don't expect anything, then they see: It's like a bus in the air."
The tram's two cars, passing every three minutes or so, are soundless from below but serve as conversation pieces.
"That's not a tram, that's a beer keg," proclaims Jim Wallace, 77, a retired teacher of teachers at Lewis & Clark College who lives in the neighborhood and takes a daily stroll. He wants to see the kegs adorned with lights, served by flight attendants and bookended by local breweries -- McMenamins and Widmer.
"That may say more about me," Wallace adds, "than it does about it."
Bill Speedie, 65, and Marilyn MacDonald, 61, own a home just off Gibbs Street and show relief that the tram isn't "a monster," as she puts it. And that it is not intrusive, though tram cars sometimes catch the sun and bounce it briefly through their living room.
Don Livingstone, an architect with an office under the tram, looks forward to its function: This summer, he plans to ride his bicycle from his hillside home to his work down on Gibbs, then coast to the riverfront for a tram ride home.
Meanwhile, the line has become a landmark for those who need directions. "Now we can say," Livingstone explains, " 'We're right under the tram.' "
Mail carrier Huong Ly says the tram looks "really cool. It makes the city more like people would want to come and visit it."
And Larry Beck, a Gibbs Street resident and a Portland lawyer who helped guide the "NO TRAM" resistance, says the tram cars are less imposing than he had feared.
"That being said," Beck says, "it irks me when I can look up and see the lines and people looking down at us." He doesn't expect to ever ride the tram, either: "It does not serve me in any way."
It has, though, provided lessons for him and his family.
"It's worth fighting that fight," Beck says. "You can band together with your neighbors toward a common goal. And you may win or you may not. But it's worth the fight."
Spencer Heinz: 503-221-8072;
[email protected]
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