NW 86th Street: the road that built Clive and now has to reinvent it

If the Greenbelt is Clive’s natural spine, NW 86th Street is its historic human one. The city says the road was once named Clive Road and has played a key role in the city’s development since settlement in the 1870s, serving as a major vehicular and commercial link for the greater metro. That statement is important because it places 86th Street at the center of both old Clive and modern Clive.  The corridor also carries some of the city’s oldest surviving structures. The city’s history pages say the Railway Depot and Swanson Grocery still stand along the historic area around 86th and Swanson. That gives the corridor more than traffic importance. It makes 86th one of the places where Clive’s earliest physical memory is still visible.  But the city is candid that the corridor lost some of its prominence over time. Clive says commercial, residential, and municipal uses became scattered, and NW 86th Street struggled to maintain its prominence as other areas in the metro developed and grew. That is an unusually honest description, and it explains why so much current planning effort is aimed back at this older spine.  The response has been redevelopment and reinvestment. Clive’s strategic plan identifies the 86th Street Neighborhoods Revitalization Plan as a high priority, and the city’s major-projects pages list both the NW 86th Street Corridor and the 86th Street Neighborhoods Plan as active planning frameworks. This is the city openly trying to make its older core matter again.  Linnan Park is part of that effort too. The city says the park sits just east of 86th Street, and current project pages say it is one of Clive’s oldest parks and is undergoing a major remodel through 2025–2026, with new shelters, a sprayground, playground, and mini-pitch courts. That means corridor revitalization is not just about storefronts. It is also about upgrading the neighborhood public spaces attached to the corridor.  So this Clive story is about a road that once made the city and now has to help remake it. NW 86th Street is not only a transportation artery. It is where Clive’s oldest memory and its most obvious redevelopment ambitions now meet.