West Linn’s Dollar Street Woods vs A New School?

By Scott McMahon | February 26, 2020

Dollar Street Woods vs A New School

Hi and welcome to another episode of Around The Neighborhood with me, Scott McMahon. This is the show about the quest for fun, history, and mystery in our backyard.

I’m here in West Linn, in the neighborhood of Willamette at Fields Bridge Park taking a stroll along the Tualatin River. My mom loves coming to this park to take her dog for a walk. And if you take this path up and under the Fields Bridge, we come upon what neighbors have called Dollar Street Woods.

Dollar Street Woods reminds me of Wilderness Park next to the high school. It’s just raw and natural as if you were an early explorer coming into this thick terrain. Just having an opportunity to walk through this place is special for the neighbors here.

There’s about 20 plus acres to these woods that run along Borland Road and Dollar Street. It’s no secret that Borland Road can get a bit of traffic during rush hour, so these woods provide some cushion and sound protection from the line of cars.

The West Linn Wilsonville School District actually owns this land, and has so for over 25 years. With a recent bond measure past to put money in building new schools for the area, at the time of this recording, there is a proposal to build a new middle school right here.

What’s interesting about this parcel of land is how narrow it is and how the topography is uneven and slopes. Engineers seem to be able to build anything in any terrain, but it’s unclear what the costs might be to do so. I’m definitely curious to see if they do end up building a new school here how the traffic flow will evolve or not evolve.

Depending on the neighbor, having a new highly rated school built across the street from your home is boon to your home value, or it can be a bummer to see a natural oasis taken down. You can imagine there is neighborhood concern how a new school will affect this area and if you’re interested in keeping in touch with these things, I’ve left links in the description.

I remember when they rebuilt Sunset Primary School a few years back, and I did an episode on that back when it snowed in West Linn. Anyway, I remember all the construction and reclaiming a portion of the park nearby to expand the driveway. So it was a bit of a mess with construction, but I think the neighbors are finally glad to see everything completed and a new school erected. The difference between Sunset and this proposed project is that Sunset already had a school built and the neighborhood was built around the school.

This would be the opposite. A neighborhood built around the river and Fields Bridge and Fields Bridge Park … and then drop a school in the middle of it.

From what I understand the school district is doing their best to manage the increase of students coming to the area and trying to deal with a high school that is getting high in capacity. Currently we have Rosemont Ridge Middle School and Athey Creek Middle School here. If the district builds this new middle school here, they would turn the Athey Creek school into the new site for a tech high school that would pull some students from West Linn High School and Wilsonville over to it, essentially adding a new high school to the area.

Again, from what I’ve read the district doesn’t own or have access to large enough parcels of land to build a new school. Also, the bond measure that was passed doesn’t allow them to buy new land, only to build upon projects that were presented during the ballot process.

The district provides updates on all their projects if you sign up for their email notices. I’ll leave a link in the description if you’re interested.

And who knows, a wealthy landowner can come out of nowhere and donate a large piece of land to the district and a whole new neighborhood is built around it. But in the meantime there are no hard plans set yet. So, we can still take a stroll through the woods, cruise down to the river and see if one day this area will become the home to a new school and new memories for the students that attend here. Can you imagine going to school being so close to the river? The next Mark Twain could come from here, writing stories about collecting frogs along the river for a class project or something.

Anyway, I hope you liked this episode, and since the show is sponsored by my real estate services, all my contact information is in the description, in case you ever had a question about buying or selling a home, especially in this area. Thanks again for watching, and I’ll see you around the neighborhood.

Dollar Street Woods vs A New School

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