page_title: South Park Blocks
section_title: Pedestrian access and renewal
hierarchical_section_title: South Park Blocks / Residential park blocks / Pedestrian access and renewal
caption_attribution_description: The South Park Blocks during the summer at Salmon Street. w:Shemanski Fountain is in the background.
context_page_description: The South Park Blocks form a city park in downtown Portland, Oregon. The Oregonian has called it Portland's "extended family room", as Pioneer Courthouse Square is known as Portland's "living room".
  Twelve blocks in length, it is intersected by the Portland Streetcar and forms the Portland Cultural District and the greenspace at the center of Portland State University. The New York Times stated the blocks are "literally at the heart of the city's cultural life." Public artworks in the park include Shemanski Fountain, In the Shadow of the Elm, Peace Chant, Alexander Phimister Proctor's Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Rider, and a statue of Abraham Lincoln. The park also contains approximately 337 elm, oak, and maple trees valued at $3.4 million, as well as roses. A plaque from the Lang Syne Society was placed in the South Park Blocks at Jefferson Street in 1991, commemorating the Great Plank Road.
context_section_description: The southern end of the South Park Blocks were closed to cars in 1973, removing traffic from the blocks and the center of the university.
  The area was the focus of a Portland Development Commission urban renewal based on a 1982 master plan, becoming an urban renewal district in 1985, and expiring in July 2008. The park blocks underwent serious renovations in 1987, adding plazas, large flower beds, lighting and irrigation, and newly paved sidewalks. Several apartment complexes specifically aimed at the middle class were built, including the University Park Apartments (125 units, $10.5 million, quickly sold and converted to condos), South Park Square Apartments (184 units, $16 million, completed May 1988), and Tom Mesher's Gallery Park Apartments (31 units, $3 million). In 1987, the New Theater Building of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts was completed immediately next door to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. The South Park Blocks Association, a commercial and institutional association, was started at that time, to attract residents and consumers to the area and to address security concerns.
caption: Blocks at Salmon Street
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