Salmon found at Pringle Creek Community

Karen Hans, a biologist from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, came out to Pringle Creek Community last week. She brought a group of 8th graders from the Jane Goodall Environmental Middle School. They came out to do a fish count in Pringle Creek.

They found a 5-inch Coho salmon; a 10-inch Cutthroat trout; and a 1-inch trout fry (which was probably also a Cutthroat). The significance of finding the Coho is that it shows there is a certain degree of fish passage between Pringle Creek Community and the Willamette River. The significance of the 1-incher is that it shows that fish are spawning here.

This is very exciting news because it demonstrates how collaborative creek restoration in an urban setting can have a measurable positive impact on fish and wildlife. If we protect the riparian zone and make it more habitable, the fish will return.

-- santiago

Pringle Creek Team: James Meyer

It’s an oldie but goodie, a December 2005 interview with Pringle Creek masterplanner James Meyer that was originally in the Journal of Daily Commerce. Now it is on the allbusiness dot com website. To read the entire article you’ll need to register.

Pringle Creek comes up a few times. The interview focuses on James and his partners getting Opsis Architecture off the ground and thriving in the fast-paced Portland market.

DJC: Is there an overarching philosophy behind the firm's work?

James Meyer: I think it's fairly soft, or loose. It's not a philosophy so much as a foundation of values. The environmental values are imbibed very strongly. All the partners are (University of Oregon) graduates who graduated together, did studio together, so we've got this history. And I think that the U of O during those times really reinforced that part of making buildings with sensitivity to the environment that would manifest itself in ways of daylighting, energy efficiency, site orientation.

These are all components that (University of Oregon professors and sustainability advocates) Charlie Brown and John Reynolds were talking about a long time ago, before there was a U.S. Green Building Council, before there was LEED (the USGBC's rating system for green and sustainable buildings), before all this stuff.

I did my first solar house in '73 or '74. I think with us, and especially the partners here, that's been this foundation that a lot of the other components built upon.

And then from that, it's design excellence, it's spaces that are humanistic, it's a listening philosophy. We just listen, to the clients and the process focus and development, those kinds of things.

Below is a photo of James (center, leaning) and his partners from a 2006 Portland Tribune article about the green renovation of their building.

Think tank says Pringle Creek "may be" greenest

The Center for American Progress (CAP) is a large and influential progressive think tank headed by former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta. CAP has a new weekly website series to recognize “those who are taking action to address climate change and help create a low-carbon economy.” The series is called “It’s Easy Being Green” and last week’s article is titled “Is Pringle Creek the Greenest Neighborhood?”

Pringle Creek Community in Salem, Oregon, named the 2007 Green Land Development of the Year by the National Association of Home Builders, may be the greenest neighborhood in the country. And what’s more, Don Myers, president of the community’s developer, says, “It’s clean, it’s nice, it’s elegant, it’s all the things that I think are what a lot of people in residential architecture are comfortable with.”

Sure, it would have been nice if CAP would have said "yes, Pringle Creek is the greenest." But it’s quite exciting to get national exposure as the neighborhood that “may be” the greenest.