Council approves plan for Wallace Marine Park improvements as encampments in SE portion decrease
Update, Nov. 11: Salem City Council voted 7-1 Monday, Nov. 10, to authorize a project to improve sections of Wallace Marine Park, which could include paving of the park’s trail. Councilor Irvin Brown voted no and Mayor Julie Hoy was absent.
Original story below:
City outreach efforts to move people camping at Wallace Marine Park into available shelters have paved the way for a new recreation trail to be added to the park’s south side.
On Monday, the Salem City Council will consider approving a new paved pathway that planners say would make it easier to walk and bike through an often-muddy natural area of the West Salem park.
The northeast section of Wallace Marine Park is home to a longstanding homeless encampment, which in recent weeks has drawn increased public attention as the community discusses how to address safety and homelessness.
If approved, construction on the bike path wouldn’t start until 2027, according to a staff report from Gretchen Bennett, the city’s acting in capacity community services director.
The total estimated project cost is over $1 million, which includes creating a management plan, design, permitting and construction.
READ IT: Wallace Marine Park proposed pathway
Bennett said that, with the city’s outreach having moved much of the camping out of the southern part of the natural area, her team began considering ways to serve people who use the park for recreation. Currently, the 94-acre park doesn’t have a paved loop and the flood-prone natural area can get muddy and difficult to navigate, she said.
“We’ve always gotten input on how it would be amazing to connect a more complete circle for people who ride bikes or jog or what have you, all the way around the park,” she said. “We started thinking, ‘Oh, we’ve made this work in this area. What would that look like, to have a path?’”
She said that outreach teams have also noticed a general decrease in campers at Wallace Marine Park since the last intensive count was done a few years ago, when 250 people were counted.
“We just don’t see those numbers today,” she said. “The area that we’re talking about is substantially less than a couple years ago, you would have seen many more camps in the area.”
She said that while the number and locations of camps are dynamic, there are “generally speaking much less encampments” in the proposed project area than in the northeast natural area, which is not part of the proposed path.
The natural area where the proposed pathway would be built is “intended primarily for conservation, with limited compatible recreation such as trails and nature observation,” according to Bennett’s staff report for Monday’s council meeting.
Some written public comments submitted ahead of the meeting ask the city to evaluate the environmental impacts of a paved path, rather than a more absorbent option like bark chips, in an area that floods. The Glenn Gibson Creek Watershed Council asked the city to instead start with a comprehensive plan for the natural area.
“While the watershed council recognizes the difficulty of managing the houseless population in the park, we have serious questions about the proposal,” Chair Kenneth Bierly said in written testimony.
Bennett said that she had to submit the proposal as a mid-year project to get the ball rolling in a timely manner, but that, if approved, Monday’s council vote on the proposal would start the city’s conversations with the community about the environmental impact of the project, and what the community wants to see built or changed at the park.
“We want to take it in the context of: What do people want for Wallace Marine Park?” she said.
The city’s approach to camping at the park, Bennett said, has been to focus on health and safety issues and to move people into sheltering and housing when possible. She said the city’s homeless services, police and cleaning teams visit multiple times a week.
“Wallace Marine Park is not a forever home, and we need people to make alternative arrangements, and so just trying to understand exactly what those could be and how we can help facilitate that happening as quickly as we can,” she said.
She said they took a similar approach, with similar goals, at Cascades Gateway Park in southeast Salem, which has seen a bigger decrease in camping. Camping was temporarily allowed both there and in Wallace Marine Park during the pandemic.
“We have the same goals and intentions at Wallace. It’s just taking us a while because of our resources. And we need more of everything,” Bennett said.
She said barriers to finding homes for campers have been a lack of available shelter for people with disabilities and complex medical conditions, a lack of services for people with mental health issues and substance use issues, and housing prices.
Many of the people they’ve been able to move out, she said, are those who are new to being homeless and those with less complex needs, but that they’ve been able to help people with higher needs, too.
“There was an older gentleman that had been outside for years that returned to his family that comes to mind. Finally, after years and years of being out there,” she said. “There have been people who’ve been accessing treatment that they hadn’t been open to.”
Bennett believes the city council’s recent approval of two more police officers for the homeless service team will help the situation, because they’ll be able to visit the park daily, rather than four days a week.
She said projects like the bike path intend to get more people using the park for recreation.
“(It) will just increase positive use in the area, which contributes to safety, the more people you’ve got out there using the area,” she said.
See what else will be discussed at Monday’s council meeting, below:
Correction: Due to an editing error, an update to this story incorrectly reported what the council voted on. The city council authorized funding and the development of a plan for park improvements, but a plan for a path would be finalized later in the process.
Contact reporter Abbey McDonald: [email protected] or 503-575-1251.
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Senior Reporter Abbey McDonald joined the Salem Reporter in 2022, where she covers homelessness and housing. She previously worked as the business reporter at The Astorian. A University of Oregon grad, she has also reported for the Malheur Enterprise, The News-Review and Willamette Week.
