Metro announces the recipients of $2.1 million in funds awarded through the Regional Travel Options grant program. These fourteen grants will support projects that increase opportunities for residents to use transit, carpool, ride their bicycles or walk.

Habitat restoration, stream and floodplain improvements, and conservation education opportunities are taking shape across the region with support from Metro’s Nature in Neighborhoods restoration and enhancement grants. Metro is especially interested in projects like Adelante Conservación that foster innovative partnerships and serve low-income communities and communities of color.

Wondering how to install signs in your community directing walkers and cyclists to local businesses? Interested in creating activities that encourage people to get out of their cars and walk, ride or take transit? If so, your city, public agency or nonprofit organization may be eligible for a Regional Travel Options grant.

Long-term, maximum benefits to local residents envisioned for use of funds

The Metro Council late last week approved a resolution to spend the remaining $1.6 million in the North Portland enhancement fund by 2018 on a local trail and select neighborhood improvement projects proposed by the community. The council’s unanimous vote supported the recommendation of a committee comprised of North Portland residents that administers the fund.

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.

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.

Beaverton develops blueprint for downtown redevelopment with community help, and will work with Metro and community leaders to implement its vision.

If you were inspired by Metro's recent Nature in Neighborhoods grant recipients, who are transforming an alley into a green parkway, restoring fish habitat and more, why not join them? It's time to fine-tune your own idea to protect and enhance nature. Metro staff needs to know how many viable projects are brewing to anticipate the next full application period. If you have a project ready for consideration, submit your letter of interest as soon as possible.

A transformation will begin soon in the heart of Cornelius, as gray asphalt turns green. A project by the Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center to turn an alleyway on its property into a linear parkway is one of three in Washington County awarded Nature in Neighborhoods grants by the Metro Council on May 19.

Envision standing underneath a magnificent old oak and looking down into the Willamette River to see salmon and trout making their way into the mouth of Johnson Creek. Now imagine watching an invasive weed new to the Portland metropolitan area clog ponds at the Blue Heron Wetlands and make its way to nearby waterways including Smith and Bybee lakes. Efforts to protect, restore, promote and celebrate nature throughout the Portland metropolitan region received a nearly $1.6 million boost from Metro on Thursday. The Metro Council awarded 17 Nature in Neighborhood grants to a variety of worthwhile projects.