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I guess I'm on a Rocky Butte tear today. So be it.The majority of the sightline pictures of my Rocky Butte posting flux were looking east, and I suppose I have an excuse for that, as the Cascade Range is simply a fantastic thing to gaze at and I every day thank the cosmic chance that caused me to come to be here, in this area, because visually I never tire of being alive here.
Looking east from Rocky Butte is engaging, for different reasons. You look upon Portland's undulating east side, ranks of houses and streets, many many trees, and there's always north of the Columbia.
Dig, if you will ...
I will now amuse myself (and bemuse you, the reader) by pointing out some things in the photo.
That blue swath across the middle is, of course, the mighty Columbia. On this side of the river, closest in, that area of beige flat-top industrial buildings shows where NE Killingsworth St (at this time next year, NE Lombard St, remember) runs east from 82nd. That peculiar-looking double-humped building, the blue gray edifice, is the Boeing Paint Hangar.
Yep, that's where planes get painted. Also visible there are some jets, presumably in the finishing stages, and to the right of those, the clear area just south and west of PDX, which is a good place to put a Brobdingnagian painting booth for your jet planes.
The bridge right about dead-center in the photograph is the Interstate Bridge, carrying I-5 over the river into Washington. We'll be replacing that bridge in the next few years, unless we don't, like what happened the last time. Stay tuned there. And just above and left of that is the railroad bridge, and just beyond that, another shipping ship.
North bank: you'll notice some tall structures there. This is adjacent to downtown Vancouver, but it's not downtown Vancouver, its the port facilities that I picted a few weeks ago from the other side, from Kelley Point. Vancouver city center is the collection of low-slung blocky shapes immedately to the right of that. Vancouver city center is in a state of flux; they're building a new waterfront district, and developer money is flowing into the area like mad, and there's no plans for new high-rises, but the place is on the grow.
Backing it all up on the horizon is that spur of the Coast Range we call the Tualatin Mountains, that part of which you'll find Forest Park in.
Backing it all up on the horizon is that spur of the Coast Range we call the Tualatin Mountains, that part of which you'll find Forest Park in.
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Those buildings have a bit of history. From the O " Two Port hangars clouded by debt will be used to give new planes a final coat
Brand-new, green-sheathed Boeing jets will begin touching down at Portland International Airport this summer to be painted inside two giant hangars.
A 15-year lease agreement between Boeing and the Port of Portland, scheduled to be approved by Port commissioners next week, promises several dozen jobs and expands the airline manufacturer's Oregon presence.
The deal also opens a new chapter in the life of the scandal-tainted hangars that drained tens of millions of dollars from the state's public-employee retirement fund.
The Port, which operates PDX, issued $50 million in revenue bonds in the early 1990s to finance hangar construction, wooed by promises from Pacific Aircraft Maintenance Corp. Pacific said it could employ as many as 1,300 people, making Portland a hub for maintaining planes. But Pacific shut its doors a month after opening in September 1993. The retirement fund, which backed the bonds, was left holding the bill: $131.3 million, including interest, to be paid by 2022.
The state filed lawsuits in the years that followed and won multimillion-dollar judgments after a judge found that Pacific's principals misled state officials and milked the company of assets. Insurers and project developers have paid the state a total of $21.9 million.
In the years since Pacific closed, the state treasurer's office has rented hangar space to a variety of tenants, including the Air Force Reserve, Horizon Air and SkyWest Inc. Not even counting the enormous bond debt, the retirement fund lost about $1 million operating the hangars over the past nine years, due largely to maintenance and operation expenses averaging $1.2 million annually.
Kate Richardson, chief of staff for state Treasurer Randall Edwards, said that with the Boeing deal, the agency is realizing its goal of handing back management of the hangars to the Port.
"We inherited this big, fat challenge . . . that was based on a false premise in the first place," she said. "It's great that Boeing came in when they did; that wrapped up the deal."
Though the arrangement will allow the treasurer's office to get out of the hangar-management business, the retirement fund will continue paying nearly $5 million annually on the bonds.
Mary Maxwell, the Port's aviation director, said Boeing representatives contacted the Port in recent months to begin negotiations. Boeing will pay the Port $844,000 annually and assume responsibility for property taxes, utilities and maintenance.
Debbie Heathers, a Boeing spokeswoman, said the company would sublease the hangars to a firm that will paint new Boeing 747s, 767s and 777s. She would not precisely predict employment, but said it would be fewer than 100 people, including a handful of Boeing employees overseeing the contractor.
She said Boeing began looking for a painting site because it is renovating three such hangars in Everett, Wash. In addition, she said, new space was needed because of the demands on Everett from production of Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner.
The company expects to send 27 planes to Portland for painting between May and January, Heathers said.
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