stations—their names referring to the Portland Transit Mall—to coincide with the opening of Pioneer Place shopping mall in downtown Portland. After operating for 30 years, these stations closed permanently in March 2020, owing to low ridership and to speed up train travel times across the city center. In September 1990, the Oregon Convention Center opened to the public with MAX service from Convention Center station. Work on the line's newest station, , started in 1997 as part of the Civic neighborhood development, but was delayed for approximately twelve years due to a lack of funding. Construction resumed in May 2010 and the station opened on December 1, 2010. In 2015, TriMet began renovating fourteen of the system's oldest stations, between Hollywood/Northeast 42nd Avenue Transit Center and Cleveland Avenue. The project includes the installation of new windscreens, shelter roofs, digital information displays, lighting, and security cameras. Three stations—, , and —have been renovated as of February 2019. Westside extension Early planning and delays On September 30, 1908, an interurban rail service ran for the first time between Portland and Hillsboro. It was operated by the Oregon Electric Railway (OE), which built a branch line from its Garden Home depot to Forest Grove. The Great Depression and the rise of the automobile in the 1920s led to the closure of the Forest Grove Branch in 1932. The Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) later acquired much of this alignment and used it for freight service. It abandoned a segment between Orenco and central Hillsboro in 1977. In 1979, plans to restore passenger rail service from Portland to the west side emerged with a proposal to extend MAX to 185th Avenue, near the Hillsboro–Beaverton boundary. In 1983, Metro (the successor to CRAG) selected light rail as the preferred mode alternative, and the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA) released $1.3 million to begin a preliminary engineering study. That same year, newly appointed Hillsboro Mayor Shirley Huffman began lobbying for the line's extension to downtown Hillsboro. She traveled frequently to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress and UMTA. The project was later suspended by TriMet amid conflict with UMTA, who wanted the former to develop a financing plan before it released funding for preliminary engineering work. By the time planning resumed in January 1988, significant changes in the Westside Corridor, including the conversion of of vacant Washington County land into mixed-use urban areas, required a re-evaluation that was