ADA Parking Lot Compliance in Gladstone, Oregon: 2026 Guide

ADA Parking Compliance in Gladstone Starts in Your Own Lot

Gladstone is a compact Clackamas County city wedged between Oregon City and Milwaukie, where the Clackamas and Willamette rivers meet. Most of the commercial activity here clusters along Portland Avenue and McLoughlin Boulevard — older strip retail, churches, medical offices, and the kind of small-footprint lots that were paved decades before anyone measured an access aisle. That history is exactly why ADA compliance trips up Gladstone owners: a lot that has served customers for thirty years is not automatically compliant, and there is no grandfather clause that excuses it.

If you own or manage commercial property in Gladstone, the Americans with Disabilities Act (Title III) applies to your parking the moment the public can use it. This guide walks through what compliance actually looks like on a Gladstone lot. For the full statewide picture, start with our ADA parking compliance guide for Oregon, then come back here for the local detail.

How Many Accessible Spaces Does a Gladstone Lot Need?

The 2010 ADA Standards set the count by total spaces in the lot. The ratio starts at one accessible space per lot and scales up.

Total Spaces	Required Accessible Spaces
1–25	1
26–50	2
51–75	3
76–100	4
101–150	5
151–200	6
201–300	7

Beyond 300, the requirement continues to climb, reaching 2 percent of total capacity for very large lots. Many Gladstone retail and church lots fall in the 1–50 range, which means one or two accessible spaces — but at least one must be van-accessible. The van rule is simple and unforgiving: at least one of every six accessible spaces (rounded up) has to be van-accessible. A small Gladstone lot with a single accessible space therefore needs that one space built to van standards. Our breakdown of how many accessible spaces your lot needs covers the rounding rules in plain English.

Stall Dimensions and the Access Aisle

Dimensions are where older Gladstone lots most often fall out of compliance, usually because someone restriped over faded lines without measuring.

• Standard accessible stall: at least 8 feet wide
• Van-accessible stall: at least 8 feet wide with an 8-foot access aisle (or 11 feet wide with a 5-foot aisle)
• Standard access aisle: 5 feet wide, marked with diagonal hatching
• Vertical clearance for van routes: 98 inches along the approach, the space, and the aisle

The access aisle is not decorative. It is the striped, hatched zone beside the stall that lets a wheelchair user deploy a ramp or lift. It must connect to an accessible route to the door, sit at the same level as the stall, and carry "NO PARKING" so drivers do not block it. Two adjacent accessible stalls can share one aisle between them.

The 2 Percent Slope Rule

Every accessible stall and its aisle must stay under 2 percent slope in all directions. Gladstone's riverside terrain and the gentle grades around Portland Avenue mean some lots were marginal when built and have drifted out of tolerance as the asphalt settled. A stall that measures 2.4 percent is a violation even if it looks flat to the eye. Slope problems usually require regrading or an asphalt patch rather than paint, so they are worth catching early. The same 2 percent cross-slope cap applies to the accessible route from the stall to the building entrance.

Signage and Oregon's Fine Plate

Federal rules require a sign at every accessible stall showing the International Symbol of Accessibility, mounted so the bottom of the sign sits at least 60 inches above the pavement. Van stalls add a "Van Accessible" plate below it. Oregon layers on a requirement that catches a lot of out-of-state owners off guard: under ORS 447.233, accessible parking signs in Oregon must also display the dollar amount of the fine for illegal parking in the space. A sign that is missing the Oregon fine plate is technically non-compliant even when it meets every federal spec. See ADA parking sign placement for mounting detail.

Pavement Markings That Hold Up in Gladstone Weather

The wet Willamette Valley winters and summer UV that Gladstone shares with the rest of the Portland metro fade traffic paint faster than owners expect. Faded accessibility symbols, washed-out aisle hatching, and a barely-visible blue stall border are not cosmetic problems — markings that can no longer be clearly read can be cited as compliance failures. Plan to inspect striping annually and repaint the accessibility symbol, aisle hatching, and stall borders before they drop below clear visibility. A fresh, high-contrast symbol painted in each stall is the cheapest insurance you can buy against a complaint.

When Repaving Triggers Upgrades

Routine maintenance — sealcoating, crack filling, pothole patching, restriping existing lines — does not trigger new ADA obligations, though you can never make the lot less accessible than it already is. But an alteration does. If you overlay, reconstruct, regrade, or expand a Gladstone lot, you trigger the obligation to bring the altered area and the path of travel up to current standards to the maximum extent feasible. That is the moment to fix counts, widen aisles, and correct slope, because the lot is already torn up and the work is far cheaper bundled into the larger project than done piecemeal later.

A Practical Gladstone Compliance Checklist

• Count your total spaces and confirm the required number of accessible and van stalls
• Measure each accessible stall and aisle width with a tape, not by eye
• Check slope in all directions on every accessible stall and aisle
• Confirm each sign hits the 60-inch mount height and carries the Oregon fine plate
• Verify a continuous accessible route runs from the stalls to the entrance
• Repaint faded symbols, hatching, and borders before they become a liability

Most Gladstone lots that fail an audit fail on two or three of these, not all of them — which means compliance is usually a focused fix, not a full rebuild. The honest way to know where you stand is a measured assessment. Cojo Excavation & Asphalt serves Gladstone and the surrounding Clackamas County communities, and we can tell you in one visit whether your lot is compliant or what it would take to get there. Compare costs and timing with our guide to parking lot striping in Gladstone, and learn how to read your own lot with our overview of what an ADA compliance audit covers.