Every project must be accessible to the public, and a Metro grant can foot the bill for a maximum of one-third of the total cost. Recipients typically buy land, restore it, improve neighborhood livability or fuel an urban transformation – and this year’s six projects represent all those categories. Recipients will expand Lily K. Johnson Park in Beaverton and the Baltimore Woods corridor in North Portland, develop Cully Park in Northeast Portland and Nadaka Nature Park in Gresham, replace a stone bridge at Tryon Creek State Park and restore a creek in central Beaverton.

Award to Lift Urban Portland expands successful community garden project

After a week of record rainfall, clouds are expected to part and let the sun shine in on Portland. The weather forecast is especially happy news for green-thumbed volunteers that will build raised garden beds at a White Shield Home for teenaged- and soon-to-be-mothers in Northwest Portland. Funds for the planters were awarded by Metro’s community enhancement grant program.

Metro and the Miller Nash law firm are co-sponsoring this week's quarterly Say Hey event, a chance to recognize people of color who have recently moved to the Portland region.

The Hawthorne Park development is getting a new neighborhood natural area, thanks in part to a Metro Nature in Neighborhoods capital grant. The neighborhood's namesake park will feature native trees and shrubs, a walking path, picnic tables, a stormwater pond and bridge, and a nature-based play area with logs and climbing boulders.

Reinvigorating Milwaukie's waterfront has been a public priority for nearly half a century. After dedication and money from local governments and nonprofits, both residents and salmon will have reason to come and stay a while.

Metro, in cooperation with Recology and crackedpots, is launching the second year of a program that makes art out of trash.

With a grant from Metro, the Community Cycling Center studied the cultural and socioeconomic barriers to bicycling in some of Portland’s poorer neighborhoods. Now, the center is using the study’s findings to leverage additional funding and roll through barriers to riding a bike.

Baltimore Woods was in limbo. While the recession kept developers at bay, the area gave rise to weeds, litter and neglect.

But neighbors around the 30-acre corridor in North Portland’s St. Johns neighborhood saw the land as a community asset. And with the support of a Metro Nature in Neighborhoods capital grant, the woods were given a new lease on life.

Members of community organizations in Northwest and North Portland had their dreams come true last week, as the Metro Council approved $69,900 in grants for community projects.

Methodically piled heaps of steel and cement mark a block in downtown Cornelius under development. In the coming months, an informal parking lot and alley in downtown Cornelius will be transformed into a full-service medical campus, complemented with a green ribbon of a walkway funded by a Metro Nature in Neighborhoods capital grant.