The Southeast Industrial area is not exactly known for being the most beautiful area of Portland. We do have some really neat looking buildings down here and it’s certainly coming up in the world with the attractive Esplanade, and the Olympic Mills Conference Center, and of course, your favorite fixtures store (with the mannequins on the roof, visible from the street and from the Hawthorne bridge). But we’ve also been doing some other stuff to beautify our neighborhood that you might be interested in checking out for yourself -

We applied for and received a grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council through their Public Art Mural Program – http://www.racc.org/publicart/muralprogram.php. (More about our foray into the wonderful world of mural making on another day…)

We replaced the concrete in our parking lots with permeable pavers. These pavers allow for filtering of water before it is introduced to the stormwater runoff. And they’re pretty too!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeable_paving

We contacted the Friends of Trees and had trees planted in a couple of places around our building -
http://www.friendsoftrees.org/ .

Most of these improvements were made possible by grants from the Portland Development Commission – http://www.pdc.us/default.asp .
Take a look at all of these websites. Maybe you can make what you look at all day more beautiful too!