We just can’t get enough asphalt

But we’re getting more!

We get lots of great comments on our Comment Cards, but no one’s perfect.  When people answer the “How can we improve?” question, all too often it’s a suggestion about our parking.

Yes, we know parking in Sellwood is awful, and right in the middle of this parking hell sits our dusty, pitted, puddle-filled parking lot.  We’ve known how unpleasant it is for a long time, but we haven’t paved it for two very good reasons… a) our landlord owns the building and b) the City owns the lot.  (There’s a longer story, so click here if you’re curious).  For years we’ve wanted to improve it for our clients and ourselves, but it’s always been just too big of an investment to tackle.

However, times change and in August of 2022 we got a deal we just couldn’t pass up, so we had a small paving company do concrete pads in front of our shop entries and exits.  It was a big step!

Those small pads might have cut down the dust but we’d have had to wait till Summer to find out.  In the meantime, the Winter rain already told us that Lake Dwyer hadn’t been affected at all… the 4″ deep puddle between the shop doors was still there.  The parking lot folks were happy to come back, regrade the area, fill the area between the pads, and even add a little berm at the top of the lot to redirect the water.  We still don’t know about the dust, but we’ve already had enough rain to know Lake Dwyer is much improved.  Maybe we should change the name to Dwyer Pond?

Whatever, we’ve made some improvements that will make your parking experience better, if not perfect.  The next step will be to check again when the construction of the new apartments across the parking lot is complete in a couple years.   Whether it’s us or the City, we doubt these are the last changes you’ll see to our dusty lot!