The park located between SW Park & SW 8th and W Burnside & SW Ankeny provides an excellent opportunity for Phase I of the Culinary Corridor. The park is not currently named, PBOT refers to it as Ankeny West. Ankeny West is currently fenced off. A few years ago, Portland Parks attempted to activate it with food carts, however, only 3 carts were placed at the location and without critical mass, it failed to become a destination. With a design created with PBOT and Hennebery Eddy, Friends of Green Loop will place 26 food carts at the location which would create the critical mass necessary to gain a foothold and attract customers.
PBOT plans to close the surrounding streets (with the exception of W. Burnside) to allow food carts to be placed around the perimeter of the park in the street. There are two structures in the park which contain public restrooms, storage and some electrical services that can be used by the cart pod. The park also contains a stage, which could be used to provide live entertainment or additional seating. The food carts combined with the park creates an exciting opportunity to create a unique place on the Green Loop that we can enhance with event programming and outdoor seating.
Ankeny West is a 5 minute walk from the former Alder Street food cart pod location, Pioneer Square, O’Bryant Park, Director Park, Powells and many downtown offices. Traffic on Burnside makes the site highly visible. In addition, there is also an opportunity to improve the crossing at Burnside which could facilitate more pedestrian traffic between the North Park Blocks and the Central Park Blocks.