This section of the public walkway, looking north from Willamette Avenue, had been boarded up. Now it’s open again.
On a bike ride this week I was reminded of an issue that had occupied the Albany neighborhood east of I-5 and south of Knox Butte Road: Whether to close a public walkway between houses or keep it open.
The question has been settled, at least for now. The walkway, an unimproved alley that had been boarded up by neighbors fed up with it as a nuisance, has been reopened.
This 10-foot-wide alley runs north from Southeast Willamette Avenue to Linn Avenue, and from there to Knox Butte Road, where it opens up on a shallow ditch and then the shoulder of the county road.
Neighbors on Willamette had closed their section last year. They complained about problems caused by people hanging out in the alley, and in September they asked the city council officially to close it. The section between Linn Avenue and Knox Butte remained open.
The city staff looked into it and said they found neighborhood residents split between closing and reopening the pathway. The staff recommended against having the city initiate the vacation, or closing, of the public right of way.
The council took no action, leaving it up to residents and neighbors whether to petition to vacate the space. As of this week, no such petition had been filed, Community Development Director Matthew Ruettgers told me.
Some time since February, when this came before the council again, the board fencing that blocked the section between Linn and Willamette avenues had been taken down. That’s what caught my eye on Wednesday.
Designating a public walkway between houses was required when the neighborhood was developed in the 1980s. Without that alley, the uninterrupted blocks of houses would have been longer than allowed by the development code.
As commenters on a previous story pointed out, the walkway would be even more useful if walking on Knox Butte — or across Knox Butte to the Dari Mart store at the corner of Clover Ridge Road — were less of a hazardous trip.
That’s an issue that neither Albany nor Linn County have taken up, let alone tried to solve. (hh)
Good deal
Bad deal
It is simply the most dangerous stretch of road in the city. The North side of Knox Butte road from timber to clover. Ridge.
It’s only a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt.