On the north leg of the Periwinkle Bikepath on Monday, Nov. 17, 2025.
Every once in a while I find myself on the northern-most leg of the Periwinkle Bikepath in Albany. It usually looks like a sad place, as it did last Monday.
Here, for what it’s worth, is what I thought about on that occasion:
This section of the Periwinkle path runs between Ninth Avenue on one end and the edge of the city’s Kinderpark on the other. It is 0.14 miles long and 10 years old.
It was built by Lowe’s, required by the city when the company built its home improvement center at Oak Street and Ninth Avenue in 2015.
The first time I used the path, in December of that year, the place still looked pristine. But as I reported at the time, somebody had already left some trash behind.
Over the years, the trash and graffiti got worse, although last Monday it looked as though the worst of the trash had been recently cleaned up.
As a general idea, off-street paths are wonderful for taking walks and bike rides away from the noise and hazards of motor traffic. But sometimes they are in the wrong place. That is the case when paths don’t lead where a lot of people can use them, leaving them open to abuse by vagrants and vandals.
Is there any reasonable way of fixing the problems with the path behind Lowe’s? If you can think of any, let’s see them in the comments below. (hh)
The north end of the Periwinkle Bikepath starts here, on Ninth Avenue.
I don’t have any answers either, but I hope people understand why the citizens in the Mennonite Village don’t want the trail that the council is forcing on them. Who would these days?
Exactly what I was thinking.
My first thought, too when I first began reading this,
With our present state of affairs, things will get worse, rather than better. More and more people can’t afford housing, and more and more people are losing their jobs. So, I agree with you, Hasso. It is a sad state of affairs.
As to a solution for the path, only thing I can think of is gate it off and padlock it up and form a bikers and walkers organization whose members pay a fee in order to have a key to get into the area and use the path for recreational walking and biking.
You really need to go there before proposing such impractical solutions. It’s simply too accessible. Who decides who gets to use it? Do you restrict the foot bridge going to 12th Ave? Who’s going to pay for a ridiculous amount of high fencing when they just cut through it?
For a cyclist, it’d be faster to use an alternate route than have to mess around unlocking/locking gates
Yes, you are right. But, frustration and the lack of any solutions prompted me to write that…knowing it wouldn’t work and won’t happen. Whoever built the wall (the city or Lowe’s) could maybe tear down the wall instead of continuing to try to clean it, which never lasts more than 5 minutes. With no wall, the criminal element and the insane among the homeless population wouldn’t have the cover of the wall or the wall to deface.
You really need to go there before proposing such impractical solutions. It’s simply too accessible. Who decides who gets to use it? Do you restrict the foot bridge going to 12th Ave? Who’s going to pay for a ridiculous amount of high fencing when they just cut through it?
For a cyclist, it’d be faster to use an alternate route, then have to mess around unlocking/locking gates.
This is just exactly what is going to happen at the M V. I feel so sorry for the residents.
You need a Police Chief with the will to do something about it.
Think how bad it’ll get near Mennonite Village with even more remoteness.
A solution to the constant graffiti is to replace the wall with a chain link fence. The homeless camps, creek pollution and trash, loitering, those are problems that will becsolved when America becomes a different kind of country, with different values. I bike a lot in Northern Ireland and there are no such issues there.
Seems like in other places they have had success by having a mural put up: https://graffitinetwork.com/schilderingen/anti-graffiti-projecten/
I wonder if this could be done professionally or if it would also work to allow members of the community to add art to sections of the wall.
Maybe, instead of painting over the graffiti with a slightly different beige color, the graffiti could be covered with some sort of bright random color. In the end, you would end up with a wall of a bunch of bright color swatches which might be its own sort of mural which would deter further tagging.
Love your idea!!!
Sorry folks, there is a lot of risk to painting a mural. I was up late after watching episode 5 of Ken Burns’ The Revolutionary War (Gawd! A lot of us are descendants of greedy, slaveholders who stole Native American’s lands. Forming an empire is what the war was all about). Back to the mural: I watched the 11 p.m. news out of Portland after watching the War on OPB. Murals in Portland are being “tagged” by vandals. So, it is naive to think no one would “tag” or desecrate a mural in Albany.
Thank you Hasso. You do a wonderful service for our community, informing and enlightening us. The wheels of thought should be revolved by someone who’s agenda is to better this city and our collective conscience.
Yes. Albany Oregon is a very nice place to live. We moved to Albany April of 2024 from Eugene. One of the most wonderful things I saw upon walking about,not only the Periwinkle but the intire town was, the almost non existance of unhoused people. Now in Eugene it’s another story. As you proably know, Eugene’s had a very big problem with “the un-housed” for along time. It’s getting better in Eugene.What ever Albany has been doing seems to be working.
Walk the path mentioned about 8 am when they are starting to “wake up”.
Invite artists to paint murals on the wall. They are usually respected and not painted over.
The City could provide and service some trash cans along that path.
Mr. Hamilton, Albany just hides the homeless by herding them into areas the city deems ghetto or in the parks where they won’t be seen by most people. Albany has some closets of secret ugliness. Long time residents know them all too well. Watch past years of city council meetings.
I know. Have seen small villages down stream of Talkinng Water along Willamette on trail.It can get alot worse. But for now it seems acceptable. Out of sight=out of my mind:)*
Thanks Hasso for this report and also to those who left comments. Albany is a great place to live and we all need to do more in protecting our wonderful park system! Since most people have cell phones with the ability to take photos. So if you do see someone damaging any place with paint, quickly take a photo of them if you can safely.
Plant ivy along the wall.
Decades ago when my children were involved in Girl and Boy scouts, they had community service project requirements. I only see “troops” out selling candy or popcorn these days. Could these adult supervised troops adopt bike/walking paths to monitor, garbage collect, etc. They could take pictures of damage or tagging from month to month and send them to the city (not sure where)? Seems like a way to get kids outside being physically active, learning photography, comparative analysis skills and giving them a sense of pride in their neighborhood.
Maybe Lowe’s or the city of Albany will be willing to put up a security camera so that it can be monitored?