Steven Laudage is a member of the Urbanist Coalition of Portland.

Portland recently paid $15 million to reacquire the West Bayside properties once planned as the Midtown mixed-use neighborhood. The public recovery of this land presents a unique and critical opportunity for Portlanders to come together and envision what this area could become.

We must ask our city leaders to take into account our needs, wants and dreams via a transparent and efficient public process to consider potential uses of these lots. Having gained this consensus, the city can then issue a clear request for development proposals.

The city has a responsibility to make prudent use of the money we have already collectively invested (via our tax dollars) into these lots, which should be used to enhance the vibrancy of our community.

This area is particularly well suited for multiuse development: publicly facing businesses at street level and housing above. It is zoned for such uses, meant to allow and encourage “the role of downtown as a meeting place for community residents and visitors alike from all walks of life.”

Our comprehensive plan identifies West Bayside as a priority node for the enhancement of “needed housing, businesses and services proximate to transit.” As a state we must densify our downtowns, both to revitalize them and to preserve our vital wild lands for natural and public use.

A sustainable Portland is one where we enable people to live in West Bayside, rather than pushing housing out to car-dependent suburbs. The previous would-be builders planned 800 apartments for this site. Imagine what this area would be like today, if so many families had lived in West Bayside for the past decade.

People could live within a 10-minute walk of the Back Cove Trail, Deering Oaks Park, Kennedy Park’s Playground and Field, Lincoln Park, Stone Street Splash Pad and Bayside and Boyd Street Community Gardens.

The relatively neglected Bayside Trail runs directly adjacent to these lots, which should be improved as part of redevelopment, to provide the neighborhood walkable and bikeable connectivity to the Eastern Promenade and soon enough Deering Oaks and beyond.

For at least the past half-century, plans framing the future of West Bayside have been put forward, but unrealized.

In 1968’s “A Report on the Bayside Neighborhood,” these themes of development, desirability, increased tax revenue and housing opportunity were echoed. In 1999, Portland developed “A New Vision for Bayside” to move on from its history of scrap lots to become an “urban gateway …a walkable district … a critical mass of dwellings … transit-oriented development … a neighborhood center.” I still ask for that.

With more people on the peninsula, we can further support the vibrant culture here. We can make new varieties of business and opportunity all the more feasible.

I want to live in a Portland where locally owned midsize music venues can thrive. I want to live in a Portland where families and single folks alike can develop interconnected social and support networks. I want to live in a Portland where more people can afford to live downtown so they don’t have to drive downtown.

I want to live in a Portland where a mix of socioeconomic groups and subcultures come together to care about one another. I want to live in a Portland where an efficient peninsula loop public transit line connects residents to groceries, culture, food and drink, parks, schools, stores, waterfront, employment and long-distance air, bus and train transport.

Portlanders, let’s demand this site be developed as a multiuse business and housing resource with at least 800 homes, improved transit and active “complete streets,” urban greenery, activated public spaces and unique placemaking. I hope we can talk it out together.