Wow what a beautiful day! We saw so many smiles at the inaugural Streets Alive Hood River in the Heights on September 30, 2018. More than 1,000 people showed up to walk, bike, eat, dance, make art and have fun.

Thrive was proud to be on the organizing team that brought the event to Hood River.

The Hood River News had good coverage and Gorge Media made a great video that captured the flavor of the day.

Demonstration Projects

One of the goals of the event was to demonstrate safer crossings across 12th and 13th while establishing a neighborway that connected Taylor and Pine Streets and the east-west neighborhoods. The team started at 5:30am and it took us 4 hours to spray zebra striped crosswalks and all temporary curb extensions. Thanks to Hood River Suppy for coming through with the donation of spray chalk and Tum-A-Lum for the Tyvek (stencils) donation! We hope that one day this is permanent so our kiddos can safely walk and bike to May Street School and Hood River Middle School .

This Sunday, Hood River will experience its first open streets event. Streets Alive! temporarily closes a few traffic lanes in the Heights to vehicles so that people of all ages can freely walk, bike, play and share food, music and art with their neighbors.

This will be a day to celebrate what’s great about the Heights and Hood River with amazing food, participatory art projects, a kids bike parade and live music on porches throughout the neighborhood. There will also be zumba and yoga and trapeze artists  . . . the list goes on. Check out the programming map.

 It takes a cast of hundreds to put on an event this fab. We’re still looking for a few more volunteers.  Volunteer opportunities listed here or contact volunteer coordinator Megan Ramey.

We’ll also be testing out some demonstration street treatments on 12th and 13th Streets based on ideas that Dan Burden suggested in his Heights Walkability Report. The cool kids call it Tactical Urbanism or DIY Urbanism or Planning-by-Doing.
We’ll be using low-cost materials like chalk paint and haybales to experiment with potential street design changes like curb extensions and protected bike lanes. 

Thrive is excited to be part of the team organizing the event.