Portland Architecture

Portland to Portland cyclists explore cities' connecting threads

Architect-editor Peter Murray (image courtesy Portland to Portland)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

By the time you read this, they will be somewhere in the bread basket of the United States, on the long stretch between Portland and Minneapolis populated with antelope and reactionaries. But for the group of British architects and sustainability experts bicycling from Portland, Oregon to Portland Place in London as part of the Portland to Portland charity ride, the focus is on cities.

"Part of it is enjoying the countryside, but since we’re all architects and planners, cities are the key places to see. And the only way you really know what it’s like to cycle in a place is to do it," explained Portland to Portland's organizer, Peter Murray, chairman of the nonprofit New London Architecture and editor of the New London Quarterly, in an interview last week in Portland on the eve of their ride. "There will be fairly few people around with the sort of professional experience we have amongst us as a team who have actually experienced the number of cities we’re going to experience in a short time and have the access to key political figures, heads of departments of transport and people involved in the cycling movement. It will give us a tremendous amount of interesting information that can hopefully feed into the discussion of how you change the culture of cycling."

When I met the Portland to Portland riders, they were only getting their first glimpse of Portland, cycling throughout the city as a precursor to riding thousands of miles across the United States, Ireland and England.

Sustainability expert Nic Crawley (image courtesy Portland to Portland)

"I’ve seen one KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD sign but that’s all. I’m a little disappointed," joked Nic Crawley, who heads sustainability efforts at London's Allford Hall Monaghan Morris Architects. "The car drivers are courteous. Back home in London it can be tough. It’s a very different culture. Here they seem to recognize bikes have as much right to the road as cars. You feel a bit safer, and that’s quite nice."

Although the ride, which includes stops in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, Dublin, Oxford and London, is just getting started, Murray and the other P2P riders seem to already sense that while each city's layout and infrastructure pose different challenges and opportunities, they are united in an effort to make cycling not just a leisure activity, but part of people's daily transit routines.

London, Murray says, "has all sorts of competitions," to promote good cycling infrastructure design, "but what drives the change is the culture, and the demand. What you don’t know really until you provide the facilities is what the true demand is. Everybody has a bike in their garage. But at the moment in London, only a little over two percent actually use it on a regular basis. So everyone is potentially a cyclist. How do you actually get them to change? You get the change by delivering the infrastructure. But it’s very difficult to convince the politicians to pay for it unless there’s the demand. It’s one of those chicken-and-egg situations at the moment, so the policy is to take it slowly. London is targeting five percent rates of cycling."

Murray also sees the advancement of cycling culture into everyday life and transit as part of a broader generational trend in which citizens take back streets - or portions of them - from the dominance of automobiles.

"In Bristol, mothers on certain streets didn’t have anywhere for their children to play. They started putting traffic cones on the streets to block traffic," he says by way of examples. "It cuts across all sorts of licenses and legislation. It was a form of protest, but it’s been so successful, that then becomes accepted. Some streets have become permanent." But when it comes to concepts like shared streets between cars, cyclists and pedestrians, he says, attempts have failed. "Motorists don’t slow down enough. So we’re back to separation."

Yet this is what Portland to Portland is largely about: designers and city builders comparing notes about how we balance different modes of transportation and the space they require. And while Europe has America beat when it comes to mass transit options, Murray says we are the ones leading the way with robust cycling culture and the livable cities they're a part of.

"It started with people like Jane Jacobs. It’s an American thing," he explains. "A lot of people look to European cities, but the actual shift in how we think about cities happened with her. When I was in NY not long ago I encountered a book by Bernard Rudofsky called Streets for People. That was written in the '60s. There was a livable city movement in the united states when we didn’t pick it up for a decade in Europe."

Murray also sees in both America and Europe competing to elevate their cycling culture, not as a badge of honor but because cycling-friendly urban areas also help embolden economic prosperity. Two studies published last year, one observing cycling in New York and another in Portland, found that bicyclists and pedestrians may spend more than their peers who arrive at the same neighborhoods via automobile or public transportation.

Riders preparing to depart the Rose City (image courtesy Portland to Portland)

In New York, a study by Transportation Alternatives showed that newly created bike lanes on First and Second Avenues in Manhattan's East Village led to a sharp increase in bicycle ridership in the study’s focus area, some 24 percent compared to a one percent overall ridership rate in the five boroughs. And those traveling in the East Village by bike spent an average of $163 a week versus $111 for car users. In the Rose City, Kelly Clifton, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Portland State University, found that while customers who drive to various establishments may spend more money per visit, bicyclists visit the same venue more often, and spend more overall.

But Portland mustn't rest on its laurels, Murray says, for competition abounds. "When I was contacting people in Minneapolis in their cycling department, I said we were starting in Portland because it’s such an important cycling city. But they said, ‘Minneapolis is catching up fast. We’re looking to overtake Portland soon.’"

In city building as in all else, though, it's not a question of whether Minneapolis overtakes Portland or Columbus overtakes Pittsburgh. It's a matter of the long ride, and the opportunity to share the road.

Neighbors seek limits on Williams Avenue

The Albert Apartments, Williams Avenue (image via Ruben J. Menashe, Inc.)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Today perhaps like no other street in Portland, Williams Avenue embodies the ups and downs of density and development in historic neighborhoods.

The one-way, two-lane street, part of a north-south couplet with Vancouver Avenue where North and Northeast Portland meet, is surrounded by neighborhoods of single family houses and single or double-story commercial storefronts. As development has ramped up here both before and since the recession, tension has increased over just how dense Williams and Vancouver should be and how tall its new buildings should be allowed to go.

In past years, as Williams in particular has attracted a host of mixed-use development with new restaurants, bars, cafes and other businesses, these have principally occupied single or two-story buildings. Yet over the past year, as the real estate economy has recovered from the Great Recession and even seen a boom of apartment construction, the newest generation of buildings on Williams has been significantly bigger, up to five stories.

Leaders of the Boise neighborhood have begun the process of creating voluntary design guidelines for developers to follow, similar to what happened in the Pearl District when it was experiencing rapid growth in the 2000s.

"The neighborhood’s been overwhelmed by developers and their proposals. And every time a project came, the neighborhood had to start from scratch," says realtor Daria Crymes, co-chair of the Boise Neighborhood Association's Land Use and Transportation Committee.

The ire of neighborhood activists has been focused on projects like The Albert, a 72-unit apartment project developed by Jack Menashe; the Boise neighborhood association appealed Bureau of Development Services approval of the design in 2009, arguing it was too big based on the size of the surrounding houses and that its design, by LRS Architects, was not pedestrian friendly. The appeal was denied, but LRS and Menashe voluntarily made some slight modifications, such as shortening the building’s southeast corner by two feet, changing the northwest corner from a square-edge to a bevel, and adding planters.

Earlier this year neighborhood leaders also opposed another Menashe development designed by LRS, the 84-unit Williams and Mason apartments. "The Albert was his first and this is his second. Neither has been well received," says architect Diana Moosman, Crymes' Boise neighborhood co-chair, "but we had another Menashe duplex presented [to the neighborhood association] by William Kaven Architecture, and we liked it a lot. There's just a series of developers who have traditionally done single-family residences."

Indeed, The Albert's language on its website is all about fitting in. "Given the choice, wouldn't you rather live in a community that's aware of the world around it?" it reads. "In a home to rent that's true to the Portland scene? The Albert is just that." It also advertises the building's proximity to Williams, a "bicycle highway." The design, although perhaps unremarkable aesthetically, doesn't seem overly monolithic. What's more, The Albert has a Gold LEED rating; in many ways it aspires to be responsible, sustainable, transit oriented development and succeeds. It's also fully leased out.

The building just happens to be taller than neighbors would like.

Unlike comparable major neighborhood streets such as Hawthorne Boulevard or Alberta Street, which are zoned CS ("Commercial Storefront") and allow buildings up to 45 feet (about four stories), Williams is largely zoned EX (for "Central Employment"), which allows up to 65 feet - generally five stories. 

Williams zoning is defined by the circa-1993 Albina Community Plan, which sought to preserve the industrial jobs that had lined Williams and Vancouver in generations past. Hence the EX classification, which was intended to maintain jobs in the center of the city; from the 1960s into in the 1980s and '90s, these neighborhoods were losing much of their employment base.

According to Debbie Bischoff, senior planner in the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability who oversees the Northeast district, the city may be reviewing the Albina Plan within two years or even as soon as this summer if given a grant from Metro. But due to budget cuts, she says there is a backlog for amending zoning codes. "There are neighborhoods that haven’t been revised in 30 to 40 years," she says. "We’re behind. All plans, we hope every 20 years or so we can go back and revisit. But we haven’t had adequate staff."

What's more, the EX zone code is subject to state law, which requires what's called a two-track system, in which a developer can either chose to meet zoning codes or, if seeking exception for some kind of innovative design that violates the code, go through a discretionary design review process open to public comment. But as long as they meet the zoning code standards, there's no staff overview.

"It’s been frustrating to community members," Bischoff adds. "If a developer wants to work with them voluntarily, that’s great. But he can also say, 'I’m meeting the zoning code standards, so I don’t have to make the changes that you’re asking.' It’s not until the last three to four years we’ve seen development maxing out to that full build out. I’m hearing what the community’s saying, and we know there are problems, and we want to try to address them. "

Crymes says the neighborhood association would actually be open to the existing 65-foot height limit "as long as it’s not done continuously in huge mass so it totally contrasts with what’s here." If this were downtown, mandatory design review for projects of a certain size would help assure something compatible with the existing urban fabric is built, but it doesn't apply here. Boise neighborhood leaders suggested perhaps it should be expanded to major streets outside downtown, but that would still require a change from EX to CS zoning to avoid the state law.

Even if the city does change the code, "There's going to be a lot of build out in the next few years," says architect Diana Moosman, Crymes's co-chair. "Williams may be done by the time anything changes."

Beyond the issue of height, neighborhood leaders also say there's a difference between much of the past decade's multifamily housing in established neighborhoods like Belmont or Hawthorne and what's going up along or near streets like Williams or even Division Street in Southeast Portland.

"It just seems like there’s a little bit of degradation of material quality," says architect Diana Moosman, Crymes's co-chair. "On Belmont I’m sure those buildings were controversial. So each one has a nice material quality." Now, she adds, "It feels like something’s shifted: four story buildings are accessible now, so the developers are saying, 'We’re not going to pander. We’ll just put in HardiPlank,'" referring to the inexpensive cladding material made of cement and cellulose.

The group cautions that they're not against all high-density development. They cite the work of developers like Ben Kaiser, who has been responsible for infill projects on the street such as the Williams five and an upcoming mixed use office building. "I think some developers want to invest in the neighborhood and some people just want a make a dollar," says Stephen Gomez, co-chair of the Boise committee and board chair of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance.

Boise neighborhood leaders say more projects are coming, such as the former Oregon Association of Minority Entrepreneurs property that was recently sold to a Seattle developer. If the guidelines can be put in place, they can work with developers and architects to avoid costly redesigns. 

"We’re hoping we’ll inspire developers to work with us first," Crymes explains. "I think Menashe would have been interested in it. They’ll be able to save money working with us. We don’t want conflict with developers. We really don’t."

Given Portland's multi-generational effort to curb sprawl with the Urban Growth Boundary, multi-family housing has to be allowed to happen, especially along major streets. Many of these developments are good for the neighborhoods they inhabit, increasing street traffic and investment, and some of it even has been amongst the best architecture being created in the city during this boom-and-bust era of the 200s and 2010s.

Williams seems to have the wrong zoning, especially given how it's set to be transformed from two automobile lanes to one, with an expanded bike lane. Yet city bureaus are by nature deliberative, slow-moving bodies that take years to enact changes to zoning or other guidelines. This isn't going to happen right away.

While design guidelines created by the Boise neighborhood would lack teeth, it would solve a key problem: that by the time news of potentially monolithic projects reaches neighborhood residents and leaders, it's already relatively late in the pre-construction period, when it will cost the developer to go back to the drawing board. The design guidelines Boise leaders are creating, while certainly no panacea for either side, can at least get everyone talking and thinking about these issues earlier in the process.

Ada Louise Huxtable’s Portland

Ada Louise Huxtable (photo by L. Garth Huxtable)

BY DAN HANECKOW

Ada Louise Huxtable, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times and Wall Street Journal architectural critic as well as a celebrated author and preservationist, died on January 7 at the age of 91.

Although New York City was the primary arena for this greatest of American architecture writers, Huxtable often traveled to other cities around the world, including Portland in 1970.

“Doctors bury their mistakes, architects plant vines and Portland covers them with roses.” So began Ada Louise Huxtable’s piece that appeared in the New York Times on June 19 of that year.

A month earlier, Huxtable had been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for architectural criticism. She visited Portland after attending the opening of the Alvar Aalto-designed Mount Angel Abbey Library.

Huxtable, the nation's most influential and acclaimed architecture critic, saw in Portland a prime example of the forces arrayed against American cities, albeit in a spectacular setting. The headline read: "In Portland Ore., Urban Decay is Masked by Natural Splendor."

Her initial impression was positive.

“Small scaled, comfortably pedestrian streets with a cosmopolitan architectural mix are bounded by the hills on the west and the Willamette River on the east, with spreading residential and industrial areas beyond that double the metropolitan population,” Huxtable wrote.

She noted there were battles over whether apartment houses should be allowed on the hills among single family homes, on how to save historic landmarks, and protect neighborhoods from an expanding in-town university.

She rhapsodized on snow capped peaks, a cyclorama sky and 35 miles of rustic foot trails, then concluded, “This is a dreamworld urbanism; a city blessed by nature and by man. It is so lovely that Portlanders are lulled into a kind of false security about its urban health.”

Portland had “a curious apathy,” Huxtable argued, to problems whose symptoms were obvious.

Downtown Portland around 1970

“The scattered bomb-site look of downtown parking lots made by demolishing older buildings that pay less than metered asphalt and the blocks given over totally to parking garages or a combination of open lot and garage, are destroying the cohesive character of the city as decisively as a charge of dynamite wherever they occur. Sixty percent of city ground is now covered by automobiles.”

“Inadequate public transportation was accompanied by rising fares. Suburban shopping centers demagnetized downtown.”

“Everything is not coming up roses.”

She was especially critical of the city’s new corporate skyline. Portland had “… a better-than-average assortment of the Anywhere U.S.A. products of the large, national, big-city architectural firms, with their interchangeable towers and plaza’s multiplying a slick, redundant formula.”

“Against the suave schlock of some of Portland’s current architectural imports, Mt. Hood doesn’t stand a chance.”

First National Bank of Oregon (now Wells Fargo tower)

“This tower will be tapered and rail-finned, with an accessory block-square box, in a manner that finally died unmourned in Detroit but that the Southern California sun seems to keep alive," the Times critic added. "In style, scale and impact it will be alien corn, in every sense of the word.”

“The neatly extravagant Unistyle commercial model by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, suitable for use by any major corporation in any American city, with soap sculpture on the inevitable plaza, rises to 375 feet.”

“No one has stopped looking at the tops of these buildings long enough to see what is happening on the ground. Each one is contributing to the devitalization of the city. Virtually all of them eliminate the life on the street. There is nothing on each square block on which these buildings rise- where there should be window, shops, pedestrian activities- but a corporate entrance and a parking garage."

Georgia Pacific Building (today Standard Insurance Center)

"This deadly design usually employs the most foolproof city-wrecking device ever adopted by architects, for which today’s practitioners must surely be called to account. It is the tower on an elevated plaza, or podium, one floor above ground level, which puts a concrete or marble bunker on the street- a blind, insolent formidable fortress raised against pedestrian humanity, and its friendliest function is to receive cars.”

“The new Portland then, consists largely of towers, bunkers and bomb sites," she wrote. "And the mathematics have not yet been devised that will dispose of all the cars that the working population of each new skyscraper brings.”

Huxtable praised the South Auditorium urban renewal area, somewhat faintly.

“Because the work has spanned the decade from 1958 to 1969, with some later use of rehabilitation for an extension of the original area, Portland was able to learn from the most desolate and early mistakes of other cities. Opinions on the necessity and efficacy of the relocation process vary.” The apartment towers by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill were handsome though. She attributed much of its success to the landscape of fresh lush growth, without which the plan would be sterile.

She adored Lawrence Halprin’s fountain installation.

Forecourt Fountain (today Ira Keller Fountain)

“The project is brought to life by Lovejoy Park – Lawrence Halprin’s fountain plaza, which is the area’s social center and a notable work of environmental space and sculpture. A larger edition is almost finished as a forecourt for the city’s neuter auditorium.” (In a later article she would describe the Ira Keller forecourt fountain as “one of the most important urban spaces since the Renaissance).

Portland’s Park Blocks and “,,,a handful of Victorian of commercial buildings (that) are protected by fierce citizen determination and a special design district designation,” also drew positive notice.

Skidmore/Old Town walking tour map, circa 1970s

Portland was not accustomed to notice by the New York Times. The attention was not entirely welcome. When The Oregonian ran the piece it was retitled to somewhat soften the blow: "Portland’s New Architecture: Towers, Bunkers, Bombsites."

“I don’t like the article and I’m surprised The Oregonian would publish something like this,” responded Ralph Voss, President of the First National Bank of Oregon, whose new building Huxtable described as alien corn. “I don’t know who she is, but I know who Charles Luckman is," Voss said of the First National building's relatively famous businessman-slash-architect. "I think she was just trying to be cute.”

“I guess she’s entitled to her opinion,” Bob Lee, a Georgia Pacific Vice President noted. “But the (Georgia Pacific) building was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, among the world’s leading architects. I think they are probably better equipped than the young lady in question. As a citizen I think for someone to blow into town and write an article critical of all Portland structures is presumptuous and preposterous.”

Others found merit it her observations.

“I wish we had more of the same sort of criticism. She said a lot of things many of us have been thinking, but we aren’t really free to criticize our fellow architects,” commented Gary Mitchell, a former chairman of the civic design committee of the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

“I think she’s brilliant and she’s dead right,” said Richard A. Campbell of Campbell, Yost and Partners (today YGH Architecture).

John Kenward, executive director of the Portland Development Commission, noted cohesive design in Portland was difficult to achieve because 47 percent of the city area was streets. “Full block, or combined block development is encouraged to get around the problem," he said. "Perhaps there is a point in comments about planning, in that we haven’t always given as much thought to it as we should.”

Norman Zimmer, architect (and ZGF principal) noted city dwellers needed to positively assert civic pride to ensure enlightened development and design in the future. “I have the feeling most of the people who make the decisions put on their hats and motor out to Dunthorp at night," he said. "It’s up to us in the city to get public awareness built up”.

Huxtable wound down her 1970 Times piece by writing, "Some day, some American city will discover the Malthusian truth that the greater number of automobiles, the less the city can accommodate them without destroying itself. The downtown that turns itself into a parking lot is spreading its own dissolution. The price for Portland is already alarmingly high. But there are no easy answers, or no American city would be in trouble.”

PDC Downtown Project publication, circa 1976

Two years later, Portland’s Downtown Plan of 1972 would be released. With its emphasis on transit, density, lively street level activity and preservation, it addressed many of the ills that Huxtable enumerated.

In hindsight, her piece was part of Portland’s process in recognizing a need for change. In the architectural community, her observations fell on fertile ground. Even the Oregonian agreed with her that downtown was too automobile oriented.

The results of the 1972 plan - a walkable Portland, lively with a re-magnetized downtown and a more balanced approach to the automobile - continues to be revisited by the New York Times.

Fountain inside Bank of California building

“The Bank of California building even put a fountain in its garage at the incongruous corner where the cars turn around onto the exit ramp. A switch Bernini never dreamed of. In the age of the automobile, it has a kind of ludicrous logic.”

The fountain can still be seen beneath the Union Bank of California building on Broadway between Washington and Stark, with the addition of bike racks next to it.

Two years away from the implementation of the 1972 Downtown Plan, Huxtable ended her article on a note hope, however distant.

"But some day," she wrote, "some American city will discover the Malthusian truth that the greater number of automobiles, the less the city can accommodate them without destroying itself. The downtown that turns itself into a parking lot is spreading its own dissolution.  "

That city to discover the truth and chart a different future, arguably, was the one she had just visited.

 

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Take me to the river: ZGF's Sandoval & Lienhart on Zidell Yards

Zidell Yards (rendering courtesy ZGF)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last Friday in Atlantic Cities, I wrote about the Zidell Yards development and its master plan by ZGF Architects. "Despite its size, Zidell Yards seeks to be a macro development comprised of many different micro-sized parts," the story went, "an urban space of tranquil greenery, or a park disguised as a vibrant city."

As a follow-up, I'd like to share some of the interview text that didn't make it into the story, particularly from Gene Sandoval and Nolan Lienhart of ZGF Architects.

One of the first messages I heard from the duo was that Zidell Yards would be different from South Waterfront, both because of circumstances and because of intent.

"You’ll never have another time like the 90s and 2000s when, I believe, investment in single-family housing could fuel such a development with cheap loans," Sandoval explained. "This plan really accommodates development that is truly real and of the moment. It has the grit and authenticity that you might not find in a macro development where you build everything in a few years."

"The original plan here was mega blocks. We’re developing in smaller parcels now," Sandoval added. "It allows diversity in development. Bigger blocks mean taller buildings. Smaller means shorter and more affordable buildings, because you could have a different construction type, so you can invite a different type of business and use. There’s some blocks that are 200 by 70 feet. It’s very pragmatic. Given the economy, how many of the big developments can you do? It’s place making and space making, but also the practicality."

"If you do this kind of diversity in streets, in building types, you can invite a whole variety of people and businesses and demographics. If you want a successful neighborhood, you need that variety. That’s the dilemma the South Waterfront has, because of its homogeneous nature."

Ross Island Bridge, Zidell Marine Company, the tram and OHSU (photos by Brian Libby)

Sandoval also emphasized that, unlike the strong influence of Vancouver, British Columbia on the design for South Waterfront in the 2000s (lots of tall, thin buildings with wide bases extending to the sidewalk), the team would look further afield. "We’re actually global people, our team. Our precedents are beyond the United States," the architect explained. "The typology we wanted to use was not Vancouver. We used Rome a lot. We used Copenhagen. We looked at Hong Kong, and Venice because of the waterfront. These are thousand-year-old cities. Because authenticity was very important to us. Florence is very similar to Portland. It’s a city of bridges with a great public realm. Venice, not only is it a waterfront city, but it was an artisan city: a city about making. This place is really about making. The Zidell family wanted it to be rooted in their core business of making things. They want to continue that. With this authenticity comes several different traits they want to bring: materiality, making, real, steward, grit, thinking, grounded, craft, creating."

Of course it's easy to be optimistic with master planning: it's an opportunity to create best-case scenarios, free from the inevitable difficulties of real-world building. Some of the first buildings being discussed for the Zidell Yards are class-A office buildings. Is that really so gritty and crafty, having an insurance company or a financial management firm set up shop in a glass tower? The renderings produced so far also don't wow me aesthetically. But renderings, or at least the individual non buildings in them, are a nonfactor at this point: it's still all about the planning.

The Zidell Yards plan seems to be rooted in sound yet tangible ideas: the idea of embracing the Willamette River like few Portland neighborhoods have done before, truly getting the chance to touch the water. The continuing presence of the Zidell barge-building facility at the edge of the property beside the tram will also give the neighborhood some diversity and keep the otherwise all new collection of 21st century medical and condo buildings there feel a bit from feeling too sterile. And the street plan diverts from a traditional checkerboard street grid of 200 by 200-foot blocks in an interesting way. There's the chance for a little more sense of surprise  and discovery as one rounds a corner. The property, as it touches the new light rail/pedestrian/bike bridge and the Collaborative Life Sciences building to its northern edge, also undergoes a fairly significant topography change from south to north.

"You really are creating three neighborhoods in a small development," Sandoval said. "There’s the flats to the south, the village underneath the bridge, and the hill, which will be about two stories. We think it’s going to be healthy."

The plan was based on a few key principles, he explained: "One was there’s no substitute for a place where people want to gather. We want to accommodate many different…in demographics, in construction, in height, in everything else. It’s very antithetical to the South Waterfront project.  We thought by connecting all the dots we connect with the river and tell the story of what the river means for Portland. It’s one of the pearls we can string together."

"There’s been a lot of curiosity about the river. We’ve made such an investment in cleaning it up that maybe it’s a good time to have a conversation about what it means. Fundamental to this is the notion of how you foster environmental stewardship. Their site’s been through huge environmental mitigation. How can we have the site help this place? We thought maybe in the water. So we have a network of north south streets that connect to downtown and to the south, but also streets that connect you to the river. But there is a potential where this greenway path, rather than just running through the site, can start weaving into the urban site, so they great stitch together hand in hand. We think you can have a really incredible public realm with them coming together."

Ross Island Bridge and Zidell Yards (rendering courtesy ZGF)

ZGF has also experimented with making streets facing the Ross Island Bridge (where there will be a park underneath) into universal streets shared by pedestrians and slow-moving cars. "We’re anticipating making it more like a plaza and less like a street," Nolan Lienhart explained. "The obvious precedent for this is Director Park. It seems like it’s working great. It’s clear it’s the domain of the pedestrian, and cars are allowed in it, not the other way around."

The park underneath the Ross Island Bridge is, as it should be, a major focal point for the buildings around it. "We said there’s a lot of merit to being well connected to the park. The building is enriching the park and vice versa," Lienhart added.

The park and the river connections can be simultaneously about providing a gathering place and acting as a treatment system for the river. Now that Portland has spent several years cleaning up the Willamette, it can be more of a place to truly interact.

"We wanted to make it a destination. We thought maybe you could put some barges on the river. It connects to the Zidells and gives people a chance to celebrate the water," Sandoval said. "We want to slope the site to the water and try to catch the water in the park and use the park as part of the overriding organizational elements. Not only is the ground plain doing that but we’re hoping that whether it’s the roofs, the courtyards and gardens, or the catch basins on the streets, the whole thing is a filtration system. The hope is to filter and make the river healthier in a very overt way rather than hiding it."

 

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The shame of Portland's West Hayden Island land grab

Map of West Hayden Island (courtesy Port of Portland)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It's a plan the mayor's own handpicked experts have expressed reservations about. It's on an accelerated pace that even its tentative supporters question. And it may be a case of the haves taking from the have-nots that demonstrates Portland isn't as different and progressive as one might hope.

Last night, watching a hearing of the Portland Planning & Sustainability Commission about annexing West Hayden Island's wildlife sanctuary for an expanded deep-water industrial port, I thought of a moment from The Simpsons.

In an episode called "Mr. Lisa Goes To Washington," the family travels to Washington, DC for Lisa to compete in an essay contest. Tasked to write about America's greatness, Lisa begins enthusiastically but, after witnessing a senator accepting a bribe in order for a forest to be clear-cut, instead unleashes a diatribe of bitter commentary. The episode has a happy ending: because of Lisa's essay, the senator is arrested for bribery. I'm not sure the same fate awaits those pressing forward with annexation of West Hayden Island, nor should it. I don't think these are outright villains, but instead people who believe job and industry growth is priority number one. Given the recession of recent years, one can't blame that kind of thinking. Yet we shouldn't sacrifice values to choose a few potential jobs twenty years down the road.

The Portland metro area is said to have a shortage of deep-water ports, the kind that can service today's super-sized ships and barges. (Never mind that Vancouver can help solve that shortage - we're not allowed to think of the two cities on either side of the river as the same, or even having shared interests.) West Hayden Island has admittedly been eyed for decades as a place of industrial expansion. It was first brought into the Urban Growth Boundary in 1983, when the Port of Portland bought the land from PGE. In 1994 it was designated a Regionally Significant Industrial Area.

But West Hayden has also long since been identified as a critical natural area, both as it relates to wildlife and as a crucially important flood plain protecting the city from increasingly likely floods in the new era of climate change. Its more than 800 acres of forest, wetlands, meadows, and shallow water habitat near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers provide irreplaceable habitat for federally listed salmon and imperiled bird, bat and amphibian species. Bald eagles' nests are a common site there. Quite simply, West Hayden is the largest wildlife sanctuary in our Portland metro region.

Couple that with the fact that West Hayden is home to Oregon's largest manufactured home community, and you have a case of the Powers That Be making an appalling dual-front attack on both the environment and on a poor community.

And here I thought Republicans were in the minority of our city's political leadership.

Scenes from "Mr. Lisa Goes To Washington"

Last night's hearing before the Planning and Sustainability Commission, the only opportunity for public comment, was practically a caricature of self-serving moneyed interests pitted against community members fighting only for values and their homes.

Whenever someone testified in favor of industrial annexation, he or she came from an organization that would directly benefit from the environmental usurpation. A union representative whose colleagues would be hired for the construction on West Hayden spoke of "family-wage jobs," implying that trying to save endangered species directly resulted in his babies going unfed. A series of business and port alliance representatives, neckties removed from their black suits, sung the praises of industrial development and finished their remarks to the sound of silence from the packed audience or some poor unironic single clap. Whenever a homeowner about to be displaced or choked by diesel fumes pleaded with the council for mercy, or an environmental group leader pleaded for the accelerated timetable to be slowed down, a chorus of applause rang out from the commission chamber and its filled overflow-room.

The annexation of West Hayden Island would be troubling enough in its own right, but now Mayor Sam Adams is attempting to skip the unfolding process and bring about a City Council vote by the end of the year. Even those at last night's hearing tentatively willing to support the annexation admitted they felt blindsided and disappointed by the mayor's effort to seal the deal before he leaves office at year's end. Most of the community groups at the hearing, such as a group of Native American tribes with ancestral connections to the Columbia and to West Hayden, told the Planning and Sustainability Commission they had never been brought to the negotiating table until the deal was already done.

Adams argues that the process of annexing West Hayden has taken some thirty years, and that he's merely taking the needle off a skipping record. But the thirty years of gridlock on this issue ought to tell us something.

Consider the fact that in 2009, after the City of Portland initiated planning for annexation of West Hayden Island, the mayor's handpicked Community Working Group, charged with poring through studies and data to deliver a recommendation on Hayden, could not come up with one. The Community Working Group reported to Adams that it could not resolve the inherent conflict between industry and the environment.

The reason this has taken 30 years is that the city can't seem to accept the inherently incestuous, greedy nature of its actions. We keep revisiting the issue in hopes that the bald eagles won't be in the way, or that the flood plain isn't an ideal way to protect us from floods, and then blame the process itself for stifling the industrial invasion.

The West Hayden Island annexation plan is to take 300 of the remaining 800 acres for Port of Portland expansion. That may sound like a fair trade-off at first: wildlife still gets more than half. But think of those 800 total acres as the last toothpaste in a tube already squeezed to the limit. Aside from a few tiny parcels here and there, the city has already taken virtually all of the wildlife area that ever existed in the Portland area. If we take 300 of 800 acres remaining on West Hayden Island, we're not leaving more than half to wildlife and the floodplain. We're going from 98 percent of local wild areas claimed for development to 99 percent. We're squeezing the very last remnants out of the toothpaste tube and expecting no future cavities to form.

Today people from all over America are turning their attention to Portland as an example of the future of cities: a place where, unlike in Phoenix or Houston or Atlanta, we really do consider what ecologists call the "triple bottom line" of people, planet and profit. But here is a case where people and profit are ganging up on planet, and the charge is being led by leaders of our city. I pity the good people in the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, or the Planning and Sustainability  Commission, whose jobs depend on carrying out the mayor's plan even though the very names of their institutions call this into question.

It's not to say that Portland shouldn't be concerned about competing in a global economy. Today's world is far too interconnected economically for us not to make international trade, and the shipping that enables it, a high priority. But Portland may not even be able to attract the new generation of giant vessels to a deep-water West Hayden Island facility; its construction is being hyped as a risk-free endeavor enabling business that is guaranteed to come. But it's really a case of economic speculating. We can look to the real estate market of the past four years to see how speculation can be catastrophic. We can also look across the Columbia river for a solution here: Vancouver has additional space for deep-water ports, yet the city is seen as a competitor rather than a collaborator. Here millions of dollars and countless peoples' homes and livelihoods are at stake, and we're legally obligating ourselves to act deaf to the solutions around us.

The city talks of mitigation for West Hayden Island: the idea that the acreage and wildlife sanctuary lost here can simply be given back somewhere else. But as Audubon Society conservation director Bob Sallinger told the commission at last night's hearing, "Little pieces do not make a whole." We can't set aside thin strips of riverbank, or stitch together patches of trees here and there, and call it proper wildlife protection.

Then there's the mitigation offered to low-income homeowners. Asked by a commission member what could be done to compensate her and her disabled-veteran husband, a resident told last night's audience tearfully that mitigation was never truly possible, only partial compensation for condemning their home against their will. The resident explained how one of her ancestors was executed in Salem, Massachusetts in 1610 for suspicion of witchcraft - and how now, with West Hayden probably doomed, she could understand the feeling of being persecuted.

 

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Carol Coletta on the metrics and momentum of urban place-making

(image courtesy Portland Sustainability Institute)

BY JULIETTE BEALE

Last week marked the third annual Ecodistricts Summit, a gathering of planners, policy analysts, architects, engineers, academics, and students interested in learning or sharing more about sustainable community building. This year’s topics included sustainable neighborhoods, district development, energy planning and district/community financing, with case studies from Holland, Switzerland, Australia, and Seattle.

Carol Coletta, Director of ArtPlace – an initiative created by six major banks, several foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts – delivered the keynote address Wednesday night. Based in Chicago, ArtPlace strives to renew urban neighborhoods and communities through investing in the arts and culture. Coletta, who previously served as president of CEOs For Cities, opened by affirming, “It is the week of cities.”

Citing many sources from the New York Times to Business Week, she repeatedly emphasized that there is great new energy in urbanism. Today 40 percent more young people are living in cities than in the past thirty years. People are drawn to cities for their walkability, amenities, jobs, housing, and culture.

Not only do cities offer great lifestyle opportunities, Coletta reminded the audience, but they also make financial sense. Urban living saves people money. In New York City, to cite one of the strongest examples, $19 billion is saved each year from city residents collectively not driving. “We are in a moment when compact cites make more sense than ever and the market is saying bring it on,” she added.

Coletta went on to discuss how ArtPlace is accelerating the urban draw through creative placemaking. When surveyed about what connects them to their cities, urban residents were less likely to have schools and jobs at the top of their lists. Instead, social offerings, openness, and aesthetics were the key attributes. Coletta further suggested that what she called “distinctiveness” plays a critical role in place making. Citing the example of a Parisian Boulevard study where classic Paris streets were overtaken by globalized American shops, she noted, “When a place feels like everywhere it feels like nowhere.” 

For this reason, a major area of ArtPlace’s research is creating metrics for measuring vibrancy, diversity, and distinctiveness in cities and clearly demonstrating how the arts play critical roles in promoting these attributes. These metrics provide the basis for ArtPlace to issue grants to various arts and cultural organizations looking to renew their neighborhoods.

In closing, Coletta offered that the principles, metrics, and attributes behind the work of ArtPlace are very similar to Ecodistricts. These organizations need to draw from each other’s strengths to broaden their own guidelines and district thinking.

She also mentioned that Portland is positioned in a unique place: “If I had to praise Portland on anything it would be the unusual courage it takes to recognize your distinctiveness and lift it up and act on it.  Not many cities are willing to do that.”

As the keynote speech and the Ecodistricts Summit as a whole suggests, district-wide urban and sustainability initiatives are gaining incredible ground across the country and world-wide. Last week, the AIA Committee on the Environment hosted a Pecha Kucha night where Vince Martinez of Architecture 2030 shared information about Seattle’s 2030 District. The District’s plans include stringent building energy performance targets as well as district transportation and water consumption energy reduction goals. Other cities including Pittsburg, Cleveland, and Los Angeles are creating 2030 Districts. Will one of Portland’s Ecodistricts be next?

 

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Renovating the Pittock Mansion

Pittock Mansion (photo by Brian Libby)

BY FRED LEESON

As Portland notes the 50th anniversary of the Columbus Day Storm this month, it’s worth noting that the record high winds on October 12, 1962, indirectly led to public purchase of perhaps the city’s best-known and best-loved residences: the Pittock Mansion. 

Unlike the high winds that damaged the Pittock and thousands of other buildings that day, public acquisition took nearly two more years. But storm damage that led to talk about demolition of the mansion also led to public determination and fund-raising efforts to save it under municipal ownership in 1964. The numbers seem unreal today — a purchase price of $225,000, with $75,000 of that total raised in a public fund drive.

Today, the mansion managers expect to spend more than four times that amount to repair damage caused by the much slower attrition of water infiltration on the mansions exterior terraces. Plans call for removing and replacing damaged balusters, removing the tile floors, adding a new waterproof membrane, replacing the tile floors and then reinstalling new or repaired stone balusters. 

“Anything we don’t have to replace we will reuse,” architect Peter Meijer told the Portland Landmarks Commission this month. He said stone from a quarry in Tenino, Washington, the source of the original baluster material, is no longer available. Meijer said a comparable match has been found at a quarry in Nova Scotia. Some of the balusters to be replaced are made of concrete, a substitute used in earlier repairs.

Meijer said the work is schedule to occur over 12 to 16 weeks next summer. The funding is being developed through a partnership between the Parks Bureau and the non-profit Pittock Mansion Society, which took over management of the building in 2007 as part of a Parks Bureau budget-cutting plan. A successful restoration project should prove that the partnership is an acceptable means of preserving the much-loved mansion, which attracts some 80,000 visitors per year. 

In some ways, the building’s history is as quirky as its view is wonderful from high in Portland’s northwest hills. It was designed and built between 1909 and 1914 for Henry and Georgiana Pittock, early pioneers who accumulated extensive wealth from numerous business dealings, including Pittock’s conversion of the Weekly Oregonian, which he bought in 1860, into a daily newspaper.

The architect of the 22-room mansion was Edward T. Foulkes, a Monmouth native whose impressive career was spent mostly in the San Francisco Bay area and Fresno, Calif. Pittock wanted his mansion to showcase Pacific Northwest materials and craftsmanship, and Foulkes delivered. The architect was still in the early stages of his career at the time, after studying at Stanford, MIT and the famed Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris. He also spent two years travelling much of the world in 1903-04.

The mansion project also showed the power of influential businessmen of the era. Portland historian Kimbark E. MacColl wrote about how Pittock and the City Water Board of the era reached a private agreement to extend a city water line to the mansion even though it was located a half mile beyond city boundaries. The quiet deal was cancelled, however, when a City Council member went public with it.

The Pittocks were elderly — 80 and 68, respectively — when they moved into their new home in 1914. Both were deceased within five years. By the time of the Columbus Day storm, a grandson had been trying to sell the building, without success.

An unexpected act of nature and the desire of Portlanders to share ostentatious opulence — albeit on a part-time basis — saved a monument and a fascinating look at life of the rich and famous of an earlier era.

 

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Imagining density, close-in and on the urban margins

"Scenario A" from Benson Blocks BOMA workshop (rendering courtesy PSU)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Two articles from the Daily Journal of Commerce illustrate the variety of ways - but not the only ones - that development can move forward amidst the persistent Great Recession.

As Angela Webber reports in one story, six Portland State University real estate students presented proposals last Wednesday for a 14-acre site between Northeast Sandy Boulevard, Interstate 84, and 20th Avenue called the Benson Blocks.

Though broken down into two potential proposals, "modest" and "robust" (depending on the economic conditions), each is a mix of high-density housing and retail. The larger plan includes condos and hotels, for example, while the smaller one sticks to rental apartments (both would include senior housing). Other properties proposed in various plans include an urban Costco store, a YMCA, and a new Portland Community College campus with potential for student apartments.

The presentations (available via PDF here) were made to local members the Building Owners and Managers Association, who in turned offered the students feedback. The proposals were also made in cooperation with the owner of this 14-acre site, Joe Weston, who also owns a variety of properties throughout Portland.

Kyle Brown, one of the students working on the Benson Blocks plan, told Webbber his biggest lesson was “how much parking can influence a development’s financial pro forma.” Both proposals called for underground parking and stand-alone parking structures. “It’s the biggest influence, which is kind of a bummer,” Brown said. “That’s the way things have to be built.”

Map of the Benson Blocks study (image courtesy PSU)

That said, the "robust" proposal also included a Sandy Boulevard streetcar, which could be a reality one day given the Portland transportation bureau's plans to move lines outward from the MLK/Grand loop currently being constructed.

Having constructive dialogue between students and members of the development community is certainly something to applaud. What's more, focusing these efforts on one large swatch of property makes things easier in terms of imagining broad multi-block place making.

Yet given how a streetcar line is currently coming to woefully under-utilized Grand and MLK area, one can't help but wonder if such a brainstorming session might have been applied here. After all, local developers would be the first to concede that following the streetcar is a recipe for business success, not simply hoping it comes in 15 years. The central eastside has blossomed over the past decade yet without the boom-and-bust cycle of the Pearl District. How could that district be enhanced, possibly with housing and office space, without overrunning its existing character? MLK and Grand are major thoroughfares, yet planners ultimately hope to create a more pedestrian friendly environment here. What's the right mix of traffic calming, transit and mixed-use buildings?

What's more, I can't help but feel that looking at one 14-acre parcel of land is somewhat of a copout. True urban infill development is difficult precisely because there are countless parcels owned by different people. If we're truly trying to teach real estate students to approach development intelligently, why not have them tackle the real problem and not simply dream within an easier exception?

Living in Southeast, I pass down MLK and Grand on a regular basis, and it's always a disappointment to encounter multistory mixed-use buildings with the upper floor windows boarded up. It would have been perhaps more educational for both the students and for us to have them look at a messier problem but one with help (via the new streetcar line) seemingly on the way.

Come to think of it, Portland already has another large, multi-block development that's been struggling to come up with a compelling vision and the right economic critical mass for half a decade: the Burnside Bridgehead. After initially selecting one developer, the Portland Development Commission ultimately moved to parcel out the parcels in a multi-developer format. Certainly there are economies of scale to be reaped from coordinating multiple buildings in one huge development, yet there is also an added challenge in keeping this house of cards together. Successful developments of this size such as Gerding-Edlen Development's Brewery Blocks may be the exception to the rule. And should the exception be the focus of student dreams?

Meanwhile, the DJC's Nick Bjork reports that the group o 28 local policy makers responsible for presenting recommendations to the Metro Council unanimously support "a modest urban growth boundary expansion" for the Portland-metro area. "But about two-thirds of the group’s members went further," Bjork writes, "and asked that the council also require residential zoning in those expanded areas to be as dense as most Portland neighborhoods."

Urban Growth Boundary map (image courtesy Metro)

This may be a case of one step forward and at least one step backward. Kudos for those trying to make the margins of the metro area's boundaries more walkable, sustainable, desnse and transit-oriented. Yet it also has to be said: why are we expanding the boundaries at a time when both the home building and office markets are at historically low levels? Yes, there are thousands moving to Portland each month. But given the world-renowned fertile farmland being plowed to expand the growth boundary, and the countless swatches of land available throughout the area, why in the world would we loosen the belt?

If we are going to expand the boundary, however, Allison Arieff's opinion piece in Sunday's New York Times, called "Shifting the Suburban Paradigm," might be a timely read. Arieff argues that the single-family homebuilding industry isn't doing nearly enough to respond to the changing needs and conditions involving single family homes. Too often, Arieff writes, home builders have responded to the Great Recession by creating new marketing plans instead of new products.

"We’re beyond the point of a fresh coat of paint and a new sales pitch. If we’re going to continue to hold on to the single-family home, we need to transform it," Arieff writes. "There is a demand for smaller, more energy-efficient homes in less car-dependent neighborhoods; all aspects of the industry, from designers to lenders to planners to consumers, should meet it. In this era of anti-government fervor, subsidizing the American Dream isn’t an option; transforming it is the only one we’ve got."

"I don’t care if we’re talking Le Corbusier, Cape Cods or Corinthian columns," Arieff (who previously was editor-in-chief of Dwell magazine) continues. "We can’t make any progress in housing until we stop thinking about the home as decorative object and begin considering it as part of a larger whole. How does it work on the street? In the neighborhood? How is it served by transit? Is it adaptable, allowing for the housing of extended families or the hosting of an entrepreneurial endeavor? Can the owner build an accessory dwelling (a.k.a. granny flat) to do so? (Most zoning, homeowners’ associations and CCRs don’t allow for it currently.) What needs to happen to zoning, to financing, to our very notions of resale value to change the suburban condition — and by extension, the American Dream as we know it?"

When I posted this article to Facebook, however, local architect Joseph Readdy added a perceptive critique. "Allison Arieff makes some excellent points about the buildings, but doesn't address the issue of urban form that makes suburbia so unsustainable," he wrote. "Bright green cities won't be made by addressing building efficiencies alone. The public realm counts, too."

Indeed, if we look at existing suburbs for infill growth, there is an opportunity - a necessity, actually - to examine how the traffic and the isolation can be improved. Suburbs, be they in Oregon or anywhere else, were designed for the automobile. Can they be retrofitted to make options for getting around other than driving? It's not enough to have a MAX station two miles away, or for the surface parking lots to trade a few of their stalls for extra landscaping and a bioswale. Readdy is right that we have to think not just of how to retrofit a house, but an entire suburb, and to do it with a carrot more than a stick: a way that makes people want to live there, and able to.

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Neighborhood, block and building: elevating new urbanism

Downtown Portland (photo by Brian Libby)

BY COLIN CORTES AND JOSEPH READDY

In the last decade, US Green Building Council has seen a groundswell of support develop for its initiatives, not only through the USGBC’s LEED rating system for green buildings but through its chapters across the nation and the world. What if we could collectively bring the same level of attention to a wider array of city building? That’s the goal of the Congress for the New Urbanism. New Urbanism is lighter on the pocketbook, more efficient with tax dollars, safer for pedestrians, bikers and drivers, easier on the environment and is a healthier way to live. It just performs better.

The Charter of the New Urbanism seeks to understand and improve the places in which we live at three scales:  the region; the neighborhood; and block, the street, and the building. The dynamism of CNU results from spirited debates about how to best respect new urbanist principles. For nearly twenty years, CNU members have promoted the hallmarks of new urbanism, including:

• Livable streets arranged in compact, walkable blocks.

• A range of housing choices to serve people of diverse ages and income levels.

• Schools, stores and other nearby destinations reachable by walking, bicycling or transit service.

• An affirming, human-scaled public realm where appropriately designed buildings define and enliven streets and other public spaces.

Earlier this month, Portland-area members of the CNU met for the first time since CNU 19, the nineteenth annual meeting in Madison, Wisconsin June 1-4. CNU 19 in Madison had included discussion threads organized around the topics of food policy, access, and quality; bicycle mobility and transportation; social equity; and environmental justice.

Since 2005, the CNU has also fostered what is called an “open-source congress,” where members, following their own interests, propose new work initiatives. Like open source software, the metaphorically termed open space technology is a way to convene persons interested in a discussion topic, provide structure to the discussion, and allow the discussion to propagate across time and space, increasing the relevance and effect of the discussion. Three CNU Cascadia members from Portland – Bill Lennertz, Colin Cortes, and Marcy McInelly – initiated individual open-source sessions in Madison. Bill, Colin, and Marcy shared their reasons for promoting their sessions, a summary of their work completed during the congress, and efforts resulting from their initiatives.

CNU members were joined by more than twenty faculty and students from the masters in architecture and new urbanism programs at Querétaro campus of the Tecnológico de Monterrey for a lively discussion on architecture and urban design in Mexico and the United States. The students are traveling up the west coast touring the cities of San Francisco, Portland, and Vancouver British Columbia.

Encouraged and inspired by the success of USGBC and its nationwide network of chapters, CNU implemented chapters in 2004. The Cascadia Chapter was first organized in 2005, incorporated in 2008, and is the bi-national and regional in scale, covering British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. CNU Cascadia is looking for new members who want to improve the built environment. While a few colorful personalities founded CNU in 1993, today almost 3,000 members confirm the timeliness of the CNU mission by adding to its momentum.

For example, member Marianne Cusato designed the famed “Katrina Cottage” for victims of Hurricane Katrina to provide a dignified and durable alternative to standard FEMA trailers. Eliot Allen, principal with Criterion Planners in Portland, has done much to help infuse the LEED-ND rating system with new-urbanist principles. For his help in advancing the SmartCode, the most well known model form-based code, Allen was co-recipient of a 2009 CNU Charter Award.

Beyond a spectrum of scales, CNU benefits from a spectrum of members and partner organizations with a variety of experience and perspectives about how to improve our built environment.  CNU partnered with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to create the LEED-ND rating system, as well as “Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach”, a joint Institute for Transportation Engineers and CNU initiative that will improve mobility and community by promoting walkable communities.

Besides joining CNU and gaining the benefits, you can stay abreast of new urbanism and learn how to contribute by visiting the CNU Cascadia website and participating in the Google group, LinkedIn group, or Facebook group.  Of course, for in-person connections there’s an annual CNU Cascadia Summit, the next in March 2012, and the next Congress, CNU 20 May 9-12, 2012 in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Colin Cortes is an assistant planner with the City of Tualatin. Joseph Readdy is a Portland architect and an adjunct professor of architecture and urban design at Portland State University.

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From 1972 to 2035: comparing downtown plans

Downtown Portland from Hawthorne Bridge (photo by Brian Libby)

BY FRED LEESON 

Nostalgia can hit in unexpected ways.  As the City of Portland goes about trying to draft a Central City 2035 plan to guide downtown and inner-East Side development in the next quarter century, I found myself looking up the famed Downtown Plan of 1972.

In the summer of 1971, I was a summer intern at the now-departed Oregon Journal newspaper, where I was assigned to be the newspaper’s only night general assignment reporter on weekday evenings.  Thus I found myself attending and often writing about  meetings of the Downtown Plan’s Citizen Advisory Committee, chaired by Dean Gisvold, a young Portland attorney.

It’s amazing to look at that plan today, which is available on the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability web site.  Superficially, it was still the era of the typewriter; the maps and graphics are surprisingly elementary viewed against today’s professional standards.

Yet the content of the plan is incredibly striking and clear.  It’s impact is obvious today:  North-south transit spines of Fifth and Sixth Avenues; east-west spines on Morrison and Alder Streets; a central downtown public square; a pedestrian-oriented Waterfront Park available for big and small events; increased downtown housing; a high density building spine along the north-south transit spine, stepping down towards the river; transit; commercial and pedestrian-friendly uses on ground floors; increased  transit, pedestrian and bicycle use at the expense of automobiles. 

The plan even makes a passing nod to housing and commercial opportunities on 26 acres of mostly vacant railroad yards in Northwest Portland.  Today we call it the Pearl.

The motivations for planning in the early 1970s were different than in 2011.  Today the process is mandated, bureaucratized and institutionalized under statewide rules and regulations.  When the Downtown Plan was initiated in the final years of Mayor Terry Schrunk’s administration there were no state rules.  The motive was desperation:  Downtown Portland as it had been known for decades was dying; this was an attempt to make it vital once again.

The 1972 Downtown Plan is hallowed --  and rightly so --  in planning history.  It was intelligent and prescient.  It was an outstanding roadmap for its day.  

One recommendation of the 1972  plan was  not been honored, however, and it has ramifications in the 2035 plan.  Although there were no designated historic districts in the early 1970s, the 1972 plan recognized the importance of Portland’s historic fabric.  “Density and design standards for new buildings need to respect the setting and character of historic and architecturally significant buildings,” the old plan said.  At another point, it advises to “protect historic areas from incompatible development.”

Alas, the city government went on to do exactly the opposite.  In the 1980s, the City council  zoned the heart of downtown, including the national historic districts, as CXd, the densest of the city’s many commercial zones.  As the city explains   CXd, “Development is intended to be very intense with high building coverage, large buildings, and buildings placed close together.”  

The impact of the high-rise zoning on historic districts such as Skidmore/Old Town and Japan/Chinatown has been painful.  Owners of vacant lots and low-rise old buildings hold out thinking their land will pay off later as sites for high-rise towers.  Cathy Galbraith, director of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation, a historic preservation advocacy group, says the high-rise zoning leads to benign neglect.  She also says it makes one wonder whether the city would rather see the historic districts simply disappear over time, in favor of high new high-rise projects.

Fittingly, historic preservation is one of several elements being discussed as part of the Central City 2035 plan.  City planners hosted two symnposia in May and June, where several of the brightest minds in development and preservation discussed the challenges, opportunities, successes and failures of preservation in Portland.  

As a result of those meetings, an ad-hoc committee of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation is drafting a Platform for Preservation that outlines preservation goals and priorities for the Central City plan.  A final version is expected soon. Key members of this informal brain trust included Cathy Galbraith, architects Paul Falsetto and Christine Yun, and Portland architectural and neighborhood historian, James Heuer, also a Bosco-Milligan board member.  

Not surprisingly, changes in zoning that would reflect the context and density of the Central City’s numerous historic districts is one key priority.  Another issue, not visited in earlier plans, calls for the city to study ways it can encourage seismic bracing of the Central City’s many unreinforced masonry buildings, given new geological evidence about the Cascadia subduction zone and the high probability of a major earthquake in the foreseeable future.  

Buildings such as the historic Union Station railroad depot pose a real danger in a major earthquake.  Experts predict that the unreinforced campanile would collapse into the main lobby under it, posing a serious threat to the lives of anyone in the building.  The Platform for Preservation urges the city to study how other jurisdictions are encouraging earthquake bracing upgrades, with tools such as low-interest loans and property tax incentives.  The issue is as much about human safety as it is about retention of historic building fabric.

Other elements of the platform include:

 

• Undertaking a new historic resources inventory that considers not only the architectural merit of vintage buildings but also sites of social, cultural and ethnic significance.  Many buildings that may have played important roles in Portland history may not be significant architectural landmarks, but worthy of preservation for other reasons.

• Establishing affordable, centralized design review with appropriate design guidelines for historic districts.  The Platform for Preservation envisions a central Historic Preservation Officer and a staff that can give building owners timely, constructive advice on renovation projects.  

• Recognizing positive energy conservation and sustainability aspects of preservation.  Cutting-edge research shows that even the “greenest” new buildings take 40 to 60 years before they hold an advantage over an older building that is reasonably upgraded with insulation and other energy-saving devices.  This research contradicts conventional thinking that often favors demolition of old buildings to create a carbon-reduction benefit.

• Encouraging the city to be a better steward of its own historic resources, including Union Station, the North and South Park Blocks, and publicly-owned items both large and small of historic and public importance.

Professional planners and a citizens’ committee headed by historian Chet Orloff are expected to prepare a final proposed Central City plan late this year.  City Council action is expected sometime in 2012.

One hopes that the final product will be as intelligent, useful and outstanding as the 1972 original.

Fred Leeson is a Portland journalist and president of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation and its Architectural Heritage Center.

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Rallying around the ranch: A look at the Bureau of Planning & Sustainability's "Modern Historic Resources of East Portland" survey

An East Portland subdivision, circa 1930s (image courtesy City of Portland)

BY ALYSSA STARELLI

Last Friday at 8:02am, I got a call wresting me from my sleep. On the line was a reporter asking me about the significance of the East side ranch house. The City of Portland's East Side Historic Survey had just come out. Did I have any thoughts about it? Of course I did!

As explained by its authors, the objectives of this survey were three-fold. " One was to complete a reconnaissance-level historic resources survey for selected groups of properties constructed between 1935-1965 in East Portland," the introduction states. "Reconnaissance level surveys generally involve visual evaluations of properties including basic location information, descriptive features, plus an estimate of the age and architectural integrity of resources. They generally do not include assessments of historic events or individuals. The second objective was to prepare a survey report that provided the City of Portland with baseline historic resource data for future preservation planning and land use planning in the area. Objective number three was to increase the body of knowledge regarding mid-century resources in Portland."

This survey project focused on the neighborhoods of East Portland, the borders of which are generally considered to be east of 82nd Avenue. It occupies approximately 20 percent of the City of Portland, and most of this area was annexed  in the 1980s and 1990s.

East Portland survey area (image courtesy City of Portland)

Sure, I personally have an untempered affection for the ranch. I love their gambrel roofs with scalloped bargeboards, diamond mullioned windows, and dove cotes (Tally-Ho!). I'm fond of their hip-roofed, Roman-bricked, two-car garaged, and pom-pom treed lots in "Perfectville" (Lorene Park). I thrill over their vaulted and beamed ceilings, clerestory windows, and futuristic kitchens (Whispering Pines). But it's really about what these homes represent.

At a time when men were coming home from war and starting families of their own,  cramming the family into mom & pop's inner-city bungalow just didn't cut it. Portland was bursting at the seams, and building eastward. The so called cookie cutter tracts like Academy Heights built in the mid 1940s and early '50s  were a dream to strive for: an affordable, realistic, hard-earned dream. They came with individual bedrooms for the kids, a cozy family room with a picture window, a tidy kitchen for mom and a green lawn for dad. What more could a family want?

Later, as the automobile became king, lots grew larger, the footprint of homes stretched out and became the prototypical ranch: an epitome of coveted suburban living. Portland was prospering, technology was advancing, and our houses reflected this. The ranch home was a place for the family to grow, and the parents to entertain. The kitchen morphed into a well-designed laboratory with all the latest built-in gadgets. Basements were finished and outfitted with rumpus rooms and wetbars, while patios became lanais. The whole house was a family oasis! Why take a vacation when you can have a luau at home?

Concurrently, the trendsetters of Portland took their sophisticated tastes and embodied them in a modernistic style. Though still in tracts, these architect-designed homes were more privacy-oriented, with the majority of living centered towards the back of the house. The area that previously would have held a picture window was now a blank wall hiding a private courtyard. Windows moved up the wall to the clerestory, affording more light and more privacy. Ceilings jutted to the sky and mom's kitchen cabinetry practically hung from the air. Countryside living was eschewed for a more museum-like modernity, but still the suburban dream remained.

Many of these homes survive and are enjoyed and even coveted today. The East Side Historic Survey, just released by the Bureau of Sustainability and Planning, compiled this data from a select sampling of the many mid-century tracts of the East Side. Complete with photos, vintage ads, and a detailed explanation of the protypical mid-century style of architecture, the survey delves into the many builders included in each tract, the exact whereabouts, as well as the original price and specific history of neighborhood if available.

It is a document of great import as the Bureau is currently working on their Central City 2035 plan, with the intent to to "identify historic preservation policy issues, from the views of important stakeholders including the Landmarks Commission, property owners and developers, preservation advocates" and are taking into account the popularity and historic value of these neighborhoods in their plan.

Furthermore, its publication provides a resource for home owners and buyers who clamor for more information in regards to their beloved homes, but maybe most importantly, it shines a light on the historical significance of the neighborhoods and one would hope will foster a change in the perception of both East Portland and the rash of remuddling currently taking place.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to get involved in preserving these properties and other historic resources, the Bureau of Planning & Sustainability is holding two work sessions to help incorporate historic resources into the 2035 Plan. The first session took place on May 20, but there is another coming up, on Friday, June 17 from 9-11:30AM at the bureau's offices at 1900 SW Fourth Avenue.

Alyssa Starelli is a Portland realtor specializing in mid-20th century properties and a co-founder of the Midcentury Modern League

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London's former deputy mayor assesses Portland's brand of urban green

Nicky Gavron (image courtesy Wikipedia Commons)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In Thursday's Daily Journal of Commerce, reporter Angela Webber talked with former London deputy mayor Nicky Gavron, who was in Portland to speak at the BEST Awards breakfast.

During Gavron's tenure, the city adopted its Climate Change Action Plan and introduced a congestion charge. She is now, as a member of the London Assembly, helping the city pursue a  goal of 60 percent reduction in carbon emissions from 1990 levels by 2025.

The former deputy mayor also has an interesting biography. According to Wikipedia, Felicia Nicolette C. "Nicky" Gavron "...is the daughter of German Jews who had fled Nazi Germany in 1936 as pressure on the Jewish community was mounting. In March 2008 she claimed that her mother was chosen to dance before Hitler in the opening ceremony of the 1936 Olympics, until the authorities discovered that she was Jewish."

Gavron first became interested in politics in the 1970s when she campaigned against the widening of the Archway Road in London. In an interview with the Guardian, quoted in the Wikipedia entry, she said, "It was in the days when everyone thought road widening was the answer, but the penny dropped for me that it was part of the problem."

Webber asked Gavron to assess Portland's reputation internationally.

"Portland is known as being the archetypal compact city, a city that had the foresight to invest in very good public transport very early on, and for looking at public transport in terms of the metropolitan area, not just the city," Gavron said. "You’re also known for the quality of your urban design and the livability city and the huge emphasis that you’ve put on making the city a very healthy environment to live in."

"Now, coming here, what I’ve discovered is how deep you want your greenness to be," she added. "I’m very impressed by your emphasis on growing food locally and on people eating healthily, and the emphasis you’re putting on eco-districts, something interesting I want to do in London."

"Portland’s also got something which I hugely admire, which is your economic development
strategy," Gavron said. "And I think it’s a focused, very good strategy. And I particularly admire the cluster policy. You’ve got this tremendous cluster of information and communications technology, plus you’ve got the green tech cluster. And if you marry greening the economy and investing and innovating in almost every part of the economy, but particularly with your clean tech – if you marry that to the information communications tech, you’ve got a sort of revolution.
You really are the vanguard of the green revolution. I think you’re unique placed to be a
pathfinder city of the future."

Webber also asked, "What would you recommend that Portland look at, from your outside
perspective and with your expertise?"

"I have never been in a major city where I’ve seen more and better public transport," the Londoner said. "It’s quite exceptional, but what you haven’t got in Portland is really good bike lanes. I’m not saying London has them, but if I compare you with Copenhagen, well … that city has much narrower streets, and 37 percent of people bike to work. I think you’re at about 8 percent – well, that’s good too. I really do think that Portland has huge potential to become a cycling city. There is lots of potential for that."

"I also think," Gavron added, "it would be great if you could introduce a minimum standard of energy efficiency across all buildings. Then above that you could allow people to go in for a deeper model of energy efficiency by putting solar on their roofs or sharing in a community energy scheme. I think you can do it as a pay-as-you-save model so that people don’t have to bear the up-front costs. In the end you have lower energy bills, but meanwhile you pay off what you’ve done, and if you move house and move flat, the next occupier picks it up. In London, we are requiring standards way above what you’re requiring here.In the future you’re not going to get the same value if you haven’t invested in your building being green. And people are going to demand it too."

"In London, we’ve helped facilitate it this with a better buildings partnership, in which the big
property owners have got together and formed a company. They’re looking at the tenant-
landlord disconnect, and the difficultly of how you actually get a really good model green
lease. Their idea is collaboration between tenants and landlords, working out the financial
mechanisms so the investment pays off for both. I think that’s quite interesting."

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Notes from Willamette River Symposium #1

Map of Willamette industrial area (image courtesy City of Portland)

BY HEIDI BERTMAN

Last Friday, the City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability held the Willamette River Symposium #1. It was part of a series of panel discussions intended to establish policy recommendations for the Central City 2035 plan.

The goals of the symposium were to review existing conditions, policy and the endorsed 2006 River Concept; identify ways to achieve development, access and vibrancy while protecting and restoring natural resources and watershed health; and build on the 2006 River Concept policy guidance to address ways to meet these new goals. 

In her introductory remarks, BPS director Susan Anderson called for a vision that will include the Central Reach as a commons and common resource shared by the whole community which will be passed to future generations.

The draft language reads, “The Central Reach will continue to be a highly urban, regional center with a waterfront that is the city’s main civic space and a regional attraction. Access to the river and public use of the waterfront will improve through new development and transportation improvements, eventually including changes to Interstate 5.” The document also calls upon Portland to:

• Ensure a clean and healthy river
• Maintain and enhance a prosperous working harbor
• Create vibrant waterfront districts and neighborhoods
• Embrace the river as Portland’s front yard
• Promote partnerships, leadership and education

The audience was overwhelmingly comprised of planners and people whose principal work is in planning and policy, not surprising but nevertheless dismaying since the main goal is to make policy recommendations that will shape how our city is built for years to come. Still, it is commendable that the city has any public planning sessions instead of reviews after-the-fact, as it is a dense and detailed process with many implications to daily life.

River Plan reach areas (image courtesy City of Portland)

Friday’s symposium was the first public discussion on the River Plan/Central Reach. The policy language for the Central Reach plan is guided by the River Concept, endorsed by the City Council in 2006, which was first used to guide the 2008 River Plan/North Reach.

The planning recommendations of the River Plan come principally from the background work of the 2001 River Renaissance Vision and the 2004 River Renaissance Strategy; the 2004 Willamette River Conditions Report; and the 1987 Willamette Greenway Plan. One is inclined to ask why there are so many plans. The simplest answer is that these are all living documents and, as such, reflect the current issues and priorities of the time in which they are created.

In fact, a distinct theme raised by panelists in Friday’s symposium was the concepts missing from previous documents. Infrastructure was one: At all levels of scale, the changes to or needs for infrastructure are integral to any plan and there is no strategic plan in place. Cultural concepts were another: As a group together as well as of the individual. So too was the concept of access, be it physical, visual, or economic. Then there is civic space, from the ideological (jobs, commerce, housing) and to the built (open space).

These omissions spurred a good deal of discussion. Civic space should be both indoor and outdoor and part of a system of spaces for the public, functional for smaller groups and individual use. It was agreed that we may not know what these civic spaces look like, but that it is important to consider the concept if we wish to have a vibrant urban and regional center. Currently, the simple definition of civic space at the Central Reach of the Willamette is the outdoor public open space which is more ceremonial and decorative than functional for the individual; people move through it or occupy it for a short time unless attending a large event. It is a literal translation of the front-yard concept but the scale and placement of it with respect to other types of space in the city and transportation connections limits the full realization of the concept in this form.

There were also comments by many panelists that were hard to disagree with. The plan needs to reference clear metrics to set policy and those policies for implementation need to be aspiration-driven as opposed to punitive. The use of "continue" in the main vision description for the Central Reach is an overstatement. It is not yet highly urban in use or form. There is no value statement on “urban” or a clear descriptor. “Urban” needs to be defined as "diversified urban with jobs, transportation, equity, access.” If the vision is for the city to continue being something, that definition should be clear and capable of describing an evolving environment.

Panelists also addressed a core issue which makes the planning process so difficult to understand, and which leads to the sometimes inconsistent statements from one document to another. Bob Sallinger, panelist from the Audubon Society, questioned the length of process from concept to strategy and plan. He cited the numerous changes in our region since 2006 and asked how the city might be swifter and expedite the planning process. It remains to be seen just how the process may be simplified or shortened but at least the topic is in the panelists’ and the public’s consciousness.

The Willamette River Symposium #2 will be held on Friday February 25 from 9AM-noon at BPS offices, 1900 SW 4th Avenue, Room 2500A.

Heidi Bertman received her Master's of Architecture from the U of O in 1998 and worked with Opsis Architecture before moving to ZGF Architects in 2004, where she is currently a designer.

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Guest post: Rose Quarter development rights…and wrongs

Rose Quarter development map (image courtesy William Macht) 

EDITOR'S NOTE: In an effort to make Portland Architecture a multi-contributor site, the following is a guest post by William Macht, adjunct professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. Macht is also a member of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee assembled by Mayor Sam Adams and the Portland Development Commission to address the Rose Quarter and Memorial Coliseum. (The SAC's next meeting is September 28.)

As you'll see, Macht is critical of the development agreement that exists between the Blazers and the city, but supportive of Mayor Adams' defense of Memorial Coliseum. 

If you'd like to submit a guest post to Portland Architecture, email editor Brian Libby at brianlibby@hotmail.com.

To understand the right course for the Coliseum and the Rose Quarter, one needs to remember Santayana’s famous dictum, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Mayor Adams seems to be on a course to do so.

In 1960, Mayor Terry Schrunk and the Council hired leading national architect Gordon Bunshaft and his SOM firm, who designed an innovative building with a roof that covers 3.25 city blocks and is supported by only four columns topped with ball bearings that allow it to flex. Its 60’-high glass curtain walls yield spectacular views across the river to downtown from its concourse, which is democratically placed in the center of the stadium, so that those in the most and least expensive seats meet in the middle, unlike the windowless Rose Garden whose seating and services are economically stratified.

Memorial Coliseum (photo by Julius Schulman, from the book Modernism Rediscovered) 

Mayor Schrunk and Council gave the City a precious multipurpose gift to be used for a wide variety of public purposes. Unlike what some would have us believe, the Coliseum was not built for the Trailblazers who would not exist for another decade. Nor was it built for private pro-fit. A public entity, MERC, that now runs the Convention, Performing Arts and EXPO centers, ran it in the public interest for over 30 years.

Shortly after Paul Allen, then reputedly the world’s second richest man, acquired the Blazers in 1988 for $70 million [now valued by Forbes at $338 million], he sought public support to build a new stadium for his team. He convinced the City to put up $45 million, which he matched in what was termed a “public-private partnership”, to build the Rose Garden that he would own. A consortium of bondholders led by TIAA-CREF financed the balance with 8.99% bonds that Allen refused to personally guarantee. 

In February 2004, after interest rates had fallen sharply and his team was doing poorly, Paul Allen defaulted on the bonds and put his Oregon Arena Corporation [OAC] into voluntary bankruptcy to escape the then $198 million debt. Having lost the Rose Garden to the creditors, Allen went into bankruptcy court and offered $90 million to buy it back, and did so in 2007. While the repurchase price has not been revealed, Allen forced the creditors to take an apparent loss of over $100 million.

In this “public-private partnership” with the City, Allen insisted on another public contribution, effectively a 30-year non-competition operating agreement through Allen’s OAC management of the Coliseum, as well as the Rose Garden. 

Although the deal on its face was structured to look very favorable for the City, since the city gets 60% of net income from the Coliseum, and the Blazers must pick up any operating losses, when one looks at the whole deal, it emasculates the Coliseum as a City asset. Under this arrangement, if the Blazers stage an event in the Coliseum they get to keep 40%, but if they schedule the same event in the Rose Garden, they keep 100%. As rational economic beings, they profit most by putting just enough in the Coliseum to keep it close to breakeven, so they need not pay operating losses and can reap the larger returns in the Rose Garden.

Rose Quarter and environs (image courtesy William Macht) 

And because the City must pay any capital repairs and improvements to the Coliseum, it has not accumulated reserves to pay for them. Deferred maintenance at the Coliseum makes it less competitive, a circumstance that is in the Blazers’ economic interest. Apparently, Allen had done the same thing at the Rose Garden because when Allen lost ownership of it, his company insisted that the creditors invest $40 million in renovation to make it what it called “a first class facility.” 

Despite the Coliseum operating agreement, and allegations that the Coliseum is a money-loser that should be demolished (which the Blazers were happy to endorse in the 2001 Rose Quarter plan) the City has actually realized a modest profit there. Using business accounting, the city has made $3.7 million in the last 10 years, even though that includes three years of the bankruptcy and three years of the Great Recession. Yet when I pointed this out recently on OPB’s Think Out Loud, Allen’s business manager had the temerity to say that it was  “the City’s good deal” that was the reason that Allen had to declare bankruptcy, somehow equating the annual $380,000 average city profit with $198 million of defaulted Blazers’/OAC debt.

So the real problem with the Coliseum is not its physical structure, but rather its deal structure. Despite claiming to have lost money managing the Coliseum through OAC [now PAM], Blazer president Larry Miller stated “The current agreement is also very important to our business model, so any changes to the agreement will need to add significant benefits to PAM. At present, it is difficult to envision changes to the agreement that would fully protect interests vital to PAM…PAM reserves the right to decide in its sole discretion whether it will agree to any such changes.”

Without PAM profits, that ‘business model’ which PAM seeks to protect must be the non-competition agreement protecting the Blazers’ economic interests in the Rose Garden. The non-competition agreement has now been in effect for over 17 years, longer than a patent, and its continuance will preclude any other proposal, as well as optimization of the profit and community potential for the City. 

Despite repeated requests, throughout the yearlong planning process the PDC and the Blazers/PAM have failed to produce operating income and expense data for the Coliseum, programmatic history and other data of the type normally published by operators of publicly-owned arenas. PAM has withheld such information on the stated ground that its disclosure would “reduce the competitiveness of the Coliseum as a facility”. Yet publication of more detailed data by the public owners of the Spokane Arena, for example, has not harmed its competitiveness. It is logical to expect quite the reverse to occur; that is, publication of lower event rental fees for the Coliseum would reduce the competitiveness of the Rose Garden, which PAM apparently seeks to prevent by non-disclosure.

 

Reasonable arguments can be made that the operating agreement extension option rights in 2013 and 2018 are extinguished by the event of default caused by the voluntary bankruptcy, and/or, that the anti-competition agreement’s 30-year potential term is void as against public policy. Even if the legal challenge did not succeed, through the voluntary bankruptcy and anti-competitive behavior, the Blazers have proved themselves to be unfit private partners in any future public-private partnership.

Under its 1992 development agreement with the City, negotiated under Mayor Clark but amended several times when Mayor Adams was chief-of-staff to Mayor Katz, the Blazers were given what are erroneously referred to as “development rights” to the Coliseum and portions of the Rose Quarter, and which are scheduled to expire November 24th of this year. In fact, these are actually “Development Rights of First Proposal” since any Blazer development proposal, even if exercised, could be simply rejected by the City without consequence to it, which would be free to solicit proposals from other developers.

In addition there are many preconditions to any rights, many of which have not been met. The City has not declared the area "available for non-public use development", nor could it because it has not examined the need for public-use development, which is defined in the agreement to include "recreation." On that score alone, the Obletz MARC proposal, and others are ripe for real consideration.

Nor have the Blazers submitted a proposal with adequate specificity for review. In fact, the mayor has said publicly, and been quoted, that the Jumptown proposal floated earlier was “terrible.”

Furthermore, the agreement requires the Blazers to develop and submit a “master plan”, which the Blazers have not done. The "master plan" required to be submitted by OAC/PAM for this proposal was in fact the 1992/2001 urban design review done without regard to current conditions a decade later. Nor was it a true development plan and certainly not one prepared by OAC/PAM. Yet it was accepted by the Council in 2001 when Adams was chief-of-staff to Mayor Katz. This legerdemain is not worthy of a public-private partnership in the public interest, nor worthy of the ostensibly transparent public process initiated by the Mayor a year ago.

2009 Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade, Memorial Coliseum (photo by Brian Libby) 

Under Mayor Adams’ task force, headed personally by the Mayor, the PDC solicited concepts for “repurposing” the Coliseum.  Proposals for the rest of the 40-acre Rose Quarter were expressly excluded. From 96 proposals submitted, three proposals were selected for review to be made by a more detailed request for proposals [RFP] from the three. The Mayor aborted the RFP process when he determined that none of the three proposals could be implemented with available resources, as we in the minority had warned, and when his personal effort to meld the three proposals was unsuccessful.

Nevertheless, the Mayor has now announced that he is negotiating with the Blazers/PAM a pre-development agreement, one element of which could be extension of the development rights. In other words, the Mayor is treating the Blazers/PAM as though they were the winners of an RFP competition selected through a public process, entitled to negotiate a new public-private partnership, even though the competition was only for the Coliseum and was, itself, aborted by the Mayor. If the Mayor negotiates a pre-development agreement prior to expiration of the right of first proposal, both the perception and reality of unfairness will be obvious.

Beyond the procedural unfairness lurk the substantive problems of the Coliseum and Rose Quarter that remain unsolved. Nothing is being done to remedy the underlying deal structure that condemns the Coliseum to marginal public use. Nor is anything being done to remedy the complaints of the Coliseum’s major tenant, the Winterhawks regarding the condition of the building. And nothing is being done to determine and undertake those select improvements that could expand and optimize public and private uses of the arena, concourse, meeting rooms and 40,000 SF exhibit hall without reducing the Coliseum’s competitiveness for larger events.

Instead, the Blazers/PAM plan to reduce the seating from 12,000 to about 7,000 seats is a thinly veiled plan to permanently make the Coliseum less competitive with the Rose Garden. There is no public benefit in reducing seating capacity because it is the largest events that are the most profitable. The reduction of seating capacity precludes events like the Davis Cup tournament and full house events like popular concerts, graduations, and the Obama and Nader rallies. 

The Blazers justify the reduction contending that fewer seats make the bowl more intimate. Yet without reduction of bowl size, it is difficult to understand how fewer seats and larger holes in the same sized bowl leads to greater intimacy. What is clear is that fewer seats make the Coliseum less competitive with the Rose Garden for larger, more profitable events. A more intimate venue could be done flexibly in a way that preserves the ability to hold larger events, for example through use of a collapsible band shell, curtains or other temporary devices.

Moreover, both the Blazers and the Mayor labor under the illusion that increasing the sports and entertainment functions of the Rose Quarter will solve its underlying problems. In fact, since those uses are primarily event-driven, and mostly occur on some evenings and weekends, further development of such type will exacerbate the crowding during event times and do nothing to complement it during slack times. 

The major urban planning problem of the Rose Quarter is that it is disconnected from the urban fabric both programmatically and physically. Go there any time other than event time, most any weekday, and more than 2500 parking spaces will be vacant, garages locked, and there is activity too minimal to even support the succession of retailers and restaurants developed by the Blazers/PAM.

There could be actions that would ameliorate these conditions and begin to bring the Rose Quarter back into the city. A very simple and potentially profitable first step would be to remove the City garages from Blazer control and add them into the SmartPark system to provide needed parking for the Left Bank and other businesses across the street. But until the Mayor and Council let the development right of first proposal expire and challenge/terminate the operating agreement, nothing can change. 

The Mayor’s effort to bring the Rose Quarter within the Interstate Urban Renewal Area to absorb large portions of its tax increment funds for an entertainment complex to be developed by urban entertainment center developer Cordish with the Blazers/PAM would be throwing a good deal of money, time and talent toward solution of the wrong problems. It would also take scarce resources away from many potentially viable and needed projects within the Interstate URA.

However, rather than being roundly criticized by the Oregonian editors as having “caved in to a few puffs of pressure – and took razing the Coliseum out of the picture” Mayor Adams should be commended for learning its architectural value and changing his mind. Moreover, no editor has explained the fiscal folly of demolishing the Coliseum, a public asset valued by the county assessor at $57.1 million, that can and does operate profitably 365 days a year for up to 12,000 citizens, in order to spend $55 million of scarce new capital for an open-air stadium for up to 7,000 baseball fans that would host home games on only 70 days during the summer and could not even begin to cover its debt service.

Having intelligently changed his mind on Coliseum demolition, so too should he change it and end negotiation of a pre-development agreement with the Blazers/PAM, and at the same time challenge/terminate the operating agreement. 

Mayor Adams has amassed all of the City’s development resources under his control.  One wishes that he would use them as wisely as did his predecessor Mayor Terry Schrunk and the Council in 1960 when they had designed and created an innovative and democratic architectural landmark, for public use to benefit diverse segments of the public, in honor of its veterans, and dedicated to service of the public at large, not private monopolistic profit.

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Hayden Island and big-picture thinking

Aerial photo of Hayden Island (courtesy Army Corps of Engineers) 

The emerging debate over the future of West Hayden Island may be a bellwether of the Portland area's values and approach to city building in the future and possibly even an argument for a regional port authority.

The approximately 1,200-acre Hayden Island, located on the Columbia River between Vancouver and Portland, saw its east side developed decades ago. It is home to the Jantzen Beach shopping center, large hotels, residential communities and boating docks.

The western portion, however, has remained undeveloped.

"Its 826 acres of  wetland, grassland, forest, beaches and shallow-water salmon habitat represent some of the last intact wildlife habitat on our otherwise developed and degraded urban river system," write Audubon Society conservation director Bob Sallinger and Willamette Riverkeeper executive director Travis Williams in a July 28 Oregonian editorial.  "Its location at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers places it at a critical juncture for migrating fish and bird populations. It is also entirely in the flood plain - in 1996, the entire area was underwater."

"If we are serious about restoring ecological health to our urban landscape," the op-ed continues, "this is the last place we should be considering converting to industrial terminals and parking lots."

The Friends of West Hayden Island also note the island has "81 species of birds (including nesting pairs of bald eagles and heron), nine species of mammals (including deer and beaver), four species of amphibians (including a rare variety of painted turtle), nine species of butterflies, large forests of native cottonwoods, federally-protected wetlands, and shallows for juvenile salmon."

The island also "contains the natural regional flyways for migratory and year-round bird populations that use both east-west and north-south flight patterns, and is the centerpiece of the 150-square mile ecosystem," the Friends' website also notes. "This includes Vancouver Lake, the Smith-Bybee Lakes and wetlands, Sauvie and Government Islands, and the confluence of the Upper Willamette and Lower Columbia Rivers systems."

Deer at West Hayden Island (image courtesy Friends of West Hayden Island) 

Industrial expansion is what the Port of Portland and the city's own long-range planning have in mind. West Hayden Island was added to the region’s urban growth boundary in 1983 for marine industrial purposes. No industrial development is in process for the island currently, nor is it currently even within City of Portland boundaries. But the City could annex the area and create zoning for industrial use as stipulated 27 years ago.

Last Thursday (August 5), before a council chambers so full it had to be partially cleared to comply with the fire code, Portland's City Council authorized staff to plan for building 300 acres of marine terminals on West Hayden Island. The council voted 4-0, with Commissioner Randy Leonard absent, to authorize further planning. The Bureau of Planning & Sustainability is charged with developing a proposal by December 2011 for annexing the island and identifying 300 acres for deep-water terminal development. 

In an Oregonian report by Scott Learn, Commissioners Amanda Fritz and Nick Fish stressed that decision isn't final. "What we are agreeing to is a road map for the second phase of analysis," Fish said. "This does not call the question on whether we go forward on annexation." 

The council also ordered further study of how to best use existing Port lands, options for restoring the undeveloped portions of the island, a possible new bridge from the island south to North Marine Drive, and opportunities for increased coordination with the Port of Vancouver.

In other words, the Council seems to be preparing to go forward with industrial development while covering its bases by showing that other options have been explored.

Expanding the industrial zone into West Hayden Island would cost taxpayers an estimated $100 to $150 million in new public infrastructure. But one can't discount the economic argument for expanding the port's industrial terminal area. The Port of Portland says expanding into West Hayden could bring an estimated 1,200 jobs, although that would be over a 10 to 20-year period.

But Sallinger of the Audubon Society questions those numbers, because they're from the Port itself, the agency arguing for the expansion. He told Learn that City of Portland should hire consultants independent of the Port to study whether the Port can redevelop its own lands instead of expanding and whether other Columbia River ports have room to meet projected demand.

On the Port of Portland's website, the following arguments are also made for expansion:

"Local waterfront industrial land is needed. There is an identified scarcity of waterfront industrial lands within the City of Portland per the city’s industrial atlas and inventory and the City’s Draft Economic Opportunity Analysis. Additionally, the city’s “Portland Plan,” a required land use planning process that is currently being conducted, identifies the need for 600 acres of industrial land within city limits."

"Regional industrial land is needed. Our regional government, Metro is considering urban growth boundary expansion. To comply with state law, more industrial land must be found within the urban growth boundary. Annexing and zoning WHI would help address the region’s industrial land shortage and establish environmental resource protection levels."

West Hayden Island (image courtesy Port of Portland) 

It gave me pause that the Port is advocating for expansion. The text I drew from on the agency's website also acknowledges the environmental concerns and resources in West Hayden Island, but I still question if it's right for a public agency to make the case for its industry.

On the other hand, there is some geographical perspective we must keep in mind: The proposed 300-acre development would take up less than half the island, leaving the rest for restoration. "This is not development running amok," Bruce Halperin of the Oregon Trucking Associations, told City Council (as quoted in Learn's article). "Of course, it would be nice not to develop the land at all, but our economic and social needs don't afford us that luxury."

Then you have the question of the Columbia Crossing and how this whole plan fits together. Are these planning and exploration efforts by various panels and government working groups talking to each other? Isn't there, or shouldn't there be, a comprehensive plan for this whole area? Unfortunately, that becomes difficult because this is such a jumbled set of jurisdictions, a place where city boundaries end, then the river separating two states, two cities and two counties. It's like a multi-headed beast.

Meanwhile, the Port of Portland has already been spending decades dumping on West Hayden Island contaminated toxic dredge material on the island, they were outraged.

The port maintains the contaminants - lead, zinc and DDT - were found at very low levels. "Throughout the process it has been deemed as safe for human and natural resources," said Josh Thomas of the Port of Portland in a KGW story. But Department of Environmental Quality officials said that the low level contaminants could cause long-term harm to wildlife, especially birds.

"It’s a relatively low level of toxicity but it is absolutely contaminated," Sallinger told KGW. He sees a potential conspiracy involving the Port. "Our concern is that the Port of Portland has intentionally contaminated West Hayden island with contaminated sediments from the Portland harbor super fund site under the pretense the site was going to be developed."

I also found compelling an online Oregonian op-ed by Hayden Island resident Ellen Seminara, who addresses numerous practical concerns: 

There's only one way on and one way off the island, and it's used by all who live, work and shop here. Imagine your own neighborhood and what life would be like for you if several thousand people had only one way in or out every day. It's already difficult for me to get home after 3 PM every day. Is there any plan to improve access on and off the island to accommodate the additional cars and trucks that this project purports to create? 

The current bridge is already overburdened. Traffic is often backed up from the bridge past the Rose Quarter for large blocks of time during rush hour or when the drawbridge is up. This brings interstate commerce and travel to a halt, leaving all those cars and semi-trucks idling. It's a huge waste of time and fuel. What effect will dumping 1,200 new cars and an unknown number of large semi-trucks have on this problem? 

Every time we have a big rain there are giant lakes of water that accumulate in the streets. By the end of winter we have enormous potholes all over the island that need filling. Does the city have a plan to remediate the roadways to accommodate all this extra heavy traffic?

She also has had a first-hand view of the wildlife there, and of the community eroding:

We watch the moonlight reflect on the water and delight at seeing blue herons and osprey hunt for food. This is a quiet and beautiful place to live, but our quality of life seems to be diminishing. We recently lost two family restaurants. One has been divided into two bars, and the other is likely to become a strip club. The only park and playground on the island has been shut down all summer, forcing me to go all the way to Peninsula Park to find toddler swings.

"It's been wonderful to watch the revitalization of the Kenton neighborhood just two exits south on I-5," she concludes, with a nod to Mayor Adams' area of residence. "I'd like to see Hayden Island benefit from this level of attention."

Several years ago I interviewed the head of the Central Eastside Industrial Council for a Daily Journal of Commerce article, and I remember the overriding feeling he had that ordinary citizens in the general public don't appreciate how important industrial land is to the economy. Our society used to devote much of our waterfronts to shipyards, ports, warehouses and train tracks in order to move goods throughout a region. To a large extent that's of course still true today, and as a left-leaning environmentalist I feel a responsibility to try and fairly recognize those industrial needs. 

At the same time, this is part of a multi-generational transition. Societies have rediscovered the public and environmental value in allowing waterfront spaces to be preserved naturally, to let important natural parcels serve act as wildlife habitat, wetlands, flood plains and other kinds of mostly concrete-free settings. It's not just an empty touchy-feely emotional response born from daydreams about Bambi and Thumper frolicking amongst our Subarus and Starbucks, but a valid recognition of how necessary natural systems are for a region's overall health and prosperity. After all, Portland's economy has been enhanced by the city's popularity and reputation for progressiveness in sustainable thinking. If we start to let that erode, does that put us a step closer to being some overgrown eyesore?

Port of Vancouver (photo by Brian Libby) 

I say let West Hayden Island stay a natural area, and instead merge the Port of Portland and the Port of Vancouver into one regional body. After all, it's silly to expand Portland's industrial acreage into a natural deemed important to wildlife and the environment when the city across the river in Washington has that amount of land and more.

As enumerated in Scott Learn's Oregonian article, the Vancouver port has about 350 acres available for new terminals in its Columbia Gateway project. The Port of Portland says West Hayden Island, which it owns, is the only place it can develop large new terminals, and the 300-acre footprint is the smallest it can go. Aren't these guys and gals talking to each other at all? You have one river separating the two cities, and then you have one calling for cutting trees and laying concrete when the exact thing that's needed is available with people eager to develop it just across the water?

I've tried to be empathetic to the economic value in having proper industrial space, but when I try to look at the whole picture, I see an prominent piece of mostly untouched natural land at the confluence of the state's two biggest rivers, all in an otherwise urban setting, making all the more inherently valuable. Then I see one city looking to claim that land as if it's their only alternative when another entity is all but jumping up and down and waving its hands with a solution. If we're going to spend the $100-150 million that West Hayden Island's industrial infrastructure would require from the city, I'd rather devote it to a new bridge connecting the Island with Marine Drive. Like Ellen Seminara the Hayden Island resident says, having just one way in and out of there for all the residents, truckers and shoppers makes it more of an island than the Columbia ever has.

It's no HafenCity, but South Waterfront is quietly growing up

Meriwether Condos, John Ross Condos (photo by Brian Libby) 

In the Travel section of last Sunday's New York Times, writer Gisela Williams takes a look at the HafenCity district in Hamburg, Germany. What she found there got me thinking about Portland's South Waterfront district.

HafenCity is a new district at the site of Hamburg's central harbor on the Elbe River. It's one of the largest and most ambitious urban construction sites in Europe. "Though several portions of the district are unfinished," Williams reports, "HafenCity is filled on the weekends with tourists and residents eating at its waterside cafes, enjoying its vast open space and seeking a glimpse of its 'starchitect'-designed buildings...The spotlight so far has been on the Elbphilharmonie, a 350-million-euro (and counting) project...designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron to look like glass wave cresting atop a brick warehouse...and will eventually house the NDR Symphony Orchtestra's concert hall..."

Although it's much larger in scope (388 acres versus 38 acres), HafenCity shares many similarities with South Waterfront. They are both former industrial-zoned waterfront neighborhoods being invented from scratch, starting with large public investments that sought to kindle private development.

OHSU Center For Health & Healing lobby and Portland Streetcar (photo by Brian Libby) 

But there are also key differences besides size. HafenCity is being anchored by cultural facilities and public spaces. There are not just condos with retail below, as has largely been the case in South Waterfront (other than the OHSU Center for Health & Healing).

South Waterfront also doesn't have any 'starchitect' buidings. There are plenty of reasons to be cynical of the culture of a few famous architects designing indulgent eye candy. But having, for example, a new concert hall for the Oregon Symphony designed by a Zaha Hadid, a Rem Koolhaas or even a Brad Cloepfil would help give SoWa a cultural foundation and an architectural draw. Cloepfil, as it happens, has remained embittered that he once seemed to have a commission for the OHSU Center for Health & Healing when it and the neighborhood were initially being proposed. only to be relegated, in his words, to "the bait".

Then there is the question of public space. "In HafenCity you find a lot of quality public spaces," architect Martin Haas of Behnisch Architekten told Williams. "You can see how important the urban planners understood the importance of that by seeing how much money was spent on designing public spaces."

Elizabeth Caruthers Park design, image courtesy Portland Parks & Recreation 

It's not to say South Waterfront doesn't have open space. But only now, years after the first towers rose there, is the first park, Elizabeth Caruthers Park, opening. There will be an opening celebration and ribbon cutting on Thursday, August 19 from 5:30-8:00 PM.

Meanwhile, though, the South Waterfront Greenway continues its purgatory. Portland’s vision is to have a continuous greenway running along the Willamette River from the Steel Bridge, past River Place, through South Waterfront to the Sellwood Bridge. But according to Portland Bureau of Parks & Recreation, the action for 2010 on this riverfront strip consists of "defining the "preferred alternative" design, conducting outreach to stakeholders, meeting with committees and continuing discussions with the state DEQ about environmental testing of material and with riverfront property owner Zidell. If I were a salmon, I wouldn't plan on resting along these banks anytime soon.

And then there's that pesky economy. Condo towers like the John Ross and Atwater Place once attracted stampedes of people ready to plunk down deposits on units yet to be built. But once these buildings were completed, they experience bank repossession and auctions of units. No architecture took a bigger hit during the Great Recession than SoWa condo towers.

South Waterfront greenway, 2009 (photo by Brian Libby) 

But as the economy has revived from its worst moments of crisis in late 2008 only to sort of stagnate, neither falling nor rising quickly, South Waterfront has quietly become more of a real neighborhood.

Those auctions may have been embarrassing and not as lucrative as backers of the original projects might have hoped, but they have put residents in these buildings. Currently only 79 units out of 214 in the Atwater Place remain to be sold. Only 20 units in the John Ross remain to be sold. The Mirabella condo for retirees opens in August, 2010 and is largely pre-sold. The rental apartment properties, the Ardea and the Riva on the Park, are 72 percent and 85 percent occupied respectively.

There are also three children's learning facilities opening in 2010: the Montessori day care in the John Ross, the Healthy Starts OHSU day care, and the Southwest Charter School in the old Discovery Center. The South Waterfront community garden is even up to 85 beds from 30 a year ago.

Looking ahead, plans to develop the area are largely on track. For example, the General Services Administration (GSA) is planning a 74,000 square foot add-on to an existing building to house a division of the Department of Homeland Security. A five-story affordable housing unit, The Tamarack, will break ground in the fall of 2010, set to provide 209 homes.

There is also the Gibbs Street Pedestrian Bridge, which will connect SoWa with the Lair Hill neighborhood. Construction is scheduled to start in December 2010 and conclude in December 2011.

Willamette River from Atwater Place condos (photo by Brian Libby) 

And then there is the Life Sciences Collaborative Building north of the Ross Island Bridge. This multiple-university facility is still being planned, but it will in time fill in the gaping hole between South Waterfront and the rest of the downtown waterfront with science and research facilities. That's really when SoWa will feel like a vibrant part of Portland: when it's part of a continuous strip of city and greenway along the Willamette.

South Waterfront will never be HafenCity, and maybe we don't even want or need for it to be. At the same time, as the saying goes, news of the district's death have been highly exaggerated. It just needed time to get rid of its new-car smell, so to speak. In time, we'll think of SoWa not as an island, but like we do any other district in the city. After all, cities and neighborhoods don't take years to grow in, but decades and centuries.

Adams, Blazers on Rose Quarter past, future

L-R: Randy Gragg, Sam Adams, J. Isaac, Rick Potestio, Sarah Mensah. Photo by Brian Libby 

Last night's Bright Lights talk about the Rose Quarter development, hosted by Portland Monthly editor Randy Gragg and featuring Mayor Adams and three members of the Trail Blazers team, was both encouraging and, at times, a little baffling.

The talk began with an explanation from Gragg about why the two non-Blazer finalists for the Memorial Coliseum renovation - the VMAAC (Veterans' Memorial Arts & Athletic Center) and the MARC (Memorial Athletic Recreation Complex) - were not participating. "For tonight it’s both broader and more specific," he said. Gragg mentioned three decisions coming up that needed vetting: the expiration of the Blazers’ Coliseum development rights in 2011, whether Urban Renewal Area funds from other districts should be used here, and whether the Convention Center URA should be reshaped in 2011 to include the Rose Quarter.

Gragg then invited Portland State University professor and historian Carl Abbot to give a brief refresher talk on the 100 years of history that predated construction of the Rose Quarter. This parcel has always had value as high ground, Abbot explained: a peninsula of higher land between Sullivan’s gulch and the bottom lowlands. “It was one of the few places where dry land came down to the river on the east side.”

Then, with the addition of streetcar lines in 1904, the future Rose Quarter area became a cross section of two principal arterials: Broadway running east-west and Interstate Avenue (then Portland's principal highway) running north-south. The Broadway Bridge construction in 1912 made Broadway a commercial corridor. As Portland developed a working waterfront in the 20th century, the mixed-income and mixed-race neighborhood of Lower Albina flourished here. Approaching and during World War II, industrial jobs helped Portland's African-American population grow by tenfold, from two thousand to 20,000. After the war, like most American cities, Portland added freeways (Interstate 5) and huge urban renewal projects (Memorial Coliseum). These had value, but at the great price of destroying a once thriving neighborhood.

I've been to several Gragg-hosted panel discussions over the years, and they almost always start with each of three or four speakers giving presentations, and then a discussion finally at the end.

So next Mayor Adams was introduced to the crowd, but he had a message of his own to deliver before sitting down with Gragg.

First, the mayor paid tribute. "It’s with a great amount of reverence and humility that we have to approach this," Adams said. "Reverence in that this was once a functioning neighborhood…and reverence for the fact that this part of the city includes the displacement of African American Portlanders who had not much of a toe hold of any sort of security in this city for very long—except for this neighborhood."

Some of Adams' following comments were the most controversial of the evening. The mayor asserted that he was not blindsided by opposition to demolishing Memorial Coliseum for a baseball stadium last year.

2009 Rose Parade at Memorial Coliseum, photo by Brian Libby 

"When we were looking to site a new triple-A ballpark, I was a strong advocate for it to go in the Rose Quarter," he said. "It was really a great place to put it. But when our charrette of people got together and said the only way to site it was to tear down Memorial Coliseum, I said after two days…that this would be very controversial, but I wanted to honor their work and get the word out for public input."

“I did not support tearing down Memorial Coliseum but I thought the discussion was a good and healthy one.”

Many of us were shocked that the Mayor argued this was all part of his master plan. Gragg followed up by asking, "The  process the way you portrayed it was very intentional and methodical. But you were a bit blindsided by the reaction against putting the stadium there, weren't you?"

"No," Adams insisted. "If you were there at the charrette…I told people in the room this was going to be controversial. It was as contentious as I predicted it would be."

I'm sure the mayor and his advisors are smarter than me when it comes to politics; Adams has a limitless passion for ideas. But I'd have advised the mayor to demonstrate a bit more humility about the journey of the past 15 months. We've all had a learning experience, and I would bet that includes the mayor as well.

Gragg then asked Adams about the now-controversial recent decision to dive into generating three finalists for the Coliseum commission only to set aside two of the finalists. The Mayor indicated that this, too, was all part of the plan.

"Absolutely," he said. "It was important that we only get it to the point of being half baked because we needed the ideas of the district to inform the ideas about the coliseum and do diligence on what was really realistic for the future of this building."

I'm not saying Mayor Adams is wrong or that he's lying. But his version of the last year and a half of wrestling and debate over Memorial Coliseum is very different from the memory that most of us have. That Adams was supportive of the Coliseum all along is a very shocking revelation that's difficult to believe. But the important thing is that he supports it now.

"There have been press reports about it being halted," Adams continued. "But we’re going to take the most inspired but doable ideas out of Memorial Coliseum, look at the district and come back to the Coliseum. I realize it’s tough to track. This kind of negotiation usually happens behind the scenes. At one time people were surprised when it was going to be a big box. One of the lessons I learned was it needed to happen in the daylight, to look at all the ideas and take them seriously."

“I told [the Stakeholder Advisory Committee] at the beginning we were going to come up with some half baked ideas of the Memorial Coliseum and let a discussion of the Rose Quarter inform the discussion about the Coliseum and vice versa. You’re going to have to cover the same waterfront of issues if this is going to go forward. You couldn’t do one in isolation, but they were so big you had to look at them apart.”

"Because there’s so much emotional attachment to the Coliseum and the Rose Quarter, for some, that passion presented itself with people with very firm and confident ideas on what the future for Memorial Coliseum should be and what the future of the rq should be. In my time I’ve heard ideas that have run the gamut. So I knew it was important to let people present, and that the good, doable ideas, no matter where they came from, we’d try to move those ideas forward. That’s why we had such an odd, open process move forward."

Rose Quarter map, courtesy Portland Development Commission 

Talking about the Rose Quarter moving forward, Adams had some potentially encouraging signs. "Inspired by the Coliseum itself, it’s an opportunity for us to have a stand up neighborhood that is modern in its form," he explained of tentative design plans. "It’s a chance for us to break from the re-creation of past forms and create a new form that’s inspired by the Coliseum itself."

Considering that the Blazers' plans for the district, tagged "Jumptown", seemed by their first released rendering to be built in a cloying neo-historic style, the team's plans have come a long way. But the Blazers, for all their faults, have one thing over Adams: they freely admitted to changing their thinking according to public input.

"We’ve changed our approach from what we initially thought about the coliseum and the larger district," Isaac said. "But we’re still in the middle of this and we’re still looking for input."

"If there’s one message that we would want you to take home with you tonight, it’s that this district can be whatever you want and we want it to be. The potential hasn’t been captured yet. We want the district to reflect how Portland is changing. It’s got to embody the values that make Portland different."

Isaac also argued for the Coliseum to remain an arena, not for architectural reasons but for business ones.

"We feel like an arena function is a benefit to this community that is very little known. About half a million people a year come into the coliseum. We still have those graduations, and winter hawk games. And we bring major events to town because we have two arenas. It functions well and brings activity to the community. We wanted to add to it rather than to take away."

Isaac was then joined by Rick Potestio, the ultra-talented Portland architect who may be leading the Blazers' Rose Quarter design plans long with Nike's Tinker Hatfield and Baltimore-based firm Design Collective (Cordish's longtime partner).

Host Randy Gragg at Bright Lights. Photo by Brian Libby 

“The Rose Quarter’s potential is based on its connection to the rest of the city," Potestio said. "It's the best located opportunity the city has to bring a vibrant neighborhood into connection with our waterfront.” He went on to emphasize its connections not just to North and Northeast Portland neighborhoods and the Lloyd District, but also Chinatown, Old Town and the Pearl District across the river. Most of all, though, he emphasized the river. "This gives an unprecedented opportunity to create a vibrant riverfront experience, something we’ve tried in the rest of the city but have really been yet to achieve," he added. "It has incredible proximity to all modes of transportation. The southern edge is an important intersection of light rail system, the north side will have the first streetcar line on the east side, and the fact that this is a nexus of bike routes is really significant." Potestio has long been an avid cyclist.

"I also imagine a future with high speed rail and water taxies," the architect continued. "High speed rail could be adjacent to if not within the Rose Quarter. "And parks and public spaces need to be an integral aspect. And the Rose Quarter was once part of of city street grid. While it’s not possible to recreate that, we have the opportunity to create a series of blocks and streets that are intimate and human in scale."

The Blazers' chief marketing office, Sarah Mensah, also joined the discussion. She walked the audience through a huge array of ideas being considered for the Rose Quarter: a farmers market, retail pods and food carts (“pop-up retail”), music and arts, local and regional microbreweries & wineries, housing. "We’ve got to figure out to make the rose quarter an accessible and desirable place to live, and not just to visit," she said. "When people live there, they tend to spend time there. The same with office space. It will be a critical component to a mixed use development." She also mentioned one or more hotels.

A skeptic might argue that these are all just seductive keywords: "organic", "local", "brewpubs", "food carts", "river", and that Mensah was just forging a superficial relationship to things that define us.

Rose Quarter topographical map, image courtesy Portland Development Commission 

Something else Mensah said could be even more important: "This does not need to be a single-source developer either. That’ snot traditionally how it’s been in Portland."

Of course the other piece of this puzzle is the Cordish Company, the Baltimore-based developer the Blazers are partnering with on the Rose Quarter development. Cordish has taken a barrage of local criticism based on the company's proclivity for developing chain-oriented places with an antiseptic feel that feels more suburban and mall-like than befits a central urban area. But as Gragg pointed out, Cordish also has designed places more urban and less dissimilar from what Portland wants. 

"Which Cordish are we going to get?" Gragg asked Isaac and Mensah.

"They recognize Portland is different from any other market," Isaac answered. "They get that something that worked somewhere else might not work here."

"We get what we deserve," Mensa added. "At the end of the day, the city and PDC are setting the parameters here. We’ve got specific goals in place that we want to follow. We’re comfortable that they want to be successful. The last thing they want to do is invest in a project like this and have it not be accepted by the city in the future."

"I’m not for or against Cordish," Adams said, "but I think we can get a little provincial. Remember it a was local developer that a few years ago wanted to add big-box retail in the Coliseum." He was referring to Brewery Blocks and South Waterfront developer Gerding Edlen.

One Center Court from Memorial Coliseum, photo by Brian Libby 

Ultimately the evening's talk was just that: talk. How the process unfolds from here will be the proof.

Adams, despite perplexing the audience with his claims that he never wanted to tear down the Coliseum, has embraced a contemporary, mixed-use vision for the Rose Quarter that includes a functioning, restored MC that is retained as an arena. That's good - credit to the Mayor for that. 

The Blazers say the right things about adding a variety of functions from food carts to plazas to a riverfront with water taxis. For all of Paul Allen's Nixonian isolation, the Portland-based Blazer staff do listen to the community and are rooted here. The organization, to its credit, has also come a long way in its thinking about the district. Yet can we trust the organization to let Rick Potestio's considerable talents lead the way and to deliver on its other promises? Can we get Cordish to develop something contrary to most of their portfolio? It's hard to say. My inclination is to have a blend of trust and skepticism, and to hold all these players accountable every step of the way.

Kicking off the Rose Quarter conversation

Rose Quarter riverfront, photo by Brian Libby 

On Monday, July 12, the Bright Lights discussion series from Portland Monthly magazine and the City Club will present a talk about the future of the Rose Quarter, hosted by the magazine's editor, Randy Gragg, and featuring Mayor Sam Adams and Trail Blazers vice president of business development J.E. Isaac.

"Sam will talk about process moving forward. J will talk about their programming concepts for the coliseum and the quarter in concert," Gragg explained in a Thursday phone conversation. "This is intended to be an unofficial kickoff to basically re-examine the problem and what’s on the table in terms of money, what’s on the table in terms of how far they want to go."

So far the city's Portland Development Commission-led process has focused on Memorial Coliseum. But now attention is being turned to the overall district. It's too bad the Coliseum and the Rose Quarter are being looked at separately, but that's one of the many difficulties that have been inherent to the process so far, from a lack of budget consciousness to a discouraging of professional design expertise. But it's encouraging to see the city is finally ready to take a holistic look at the Rose Quarter.

"Basically the Blazers have had the development rights to the Quarter since they built the Rose Garden," Gragg added. "I think this is a bit of a moment of recognizing that it’s not just about the building. It has to work in consort with the rest of the Quarter. Whatever you do with the Coliseum can’t be done in isolation."

Speaking of isolation, it's worth pointing out who won't be a guest of Gragg's for the Monday conversation: the other two finalists besides the Blazers that were selected by the city's Stakeholder Advisory Committee process: the Memorial Athletic Recreation Complex (MARC) and the Veterans Memorial Arts & Athletic Complex (VMAAC). Even though as a staunch Coliseum preservationist I'm glad to see the city possibly moving away from the two plans that would have gutted the building and cost exponentially more than the city can afford, one can certainly see why the MARC and VMAAC proponents would feel angry about being marginalized after all that effort to generate their proposals.

That said, perhaps there is still room for a portion of either the MARC or VMAAC proposals or both - simply in places other than Memorial Coliseum. As I and others have said for over a year now, since the Coliseum was first threatened by a ludicrously ill advised minor league baseball stadium plan, there is huge opportunity to transform the Rose Quarter into a vibrant, mixed-use district: but that opportunity shouldn't begin with ruining the best thing the Rose Quarter has going. Instead, imagine new facilities along the riverfront, or on the site of two giant Rose Quarter above-ground parking garages, or on the site of One Center Court's hideous above-ground parking garage, in the huge exhibition hall underneath the Coliseum's entry plaza.

Rose Garden and Rose Quarter from Memorial Coliseum, photo by Brian Libby 

I also can't help but wonder: the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade extends from OMSI in the south to the edge of the Rose Quarter in the north. Wouldn't it be ideal to extend the Esplanade so it runs past the Steel Bridge and the Rose Quarter, continuing on to at least the Broadway Bridge? This way pedestrians could walk to the district pleasantly from virtually anywhere downtown or in Southeast. 

Last week on Portland Arts Watch, Barry Johnson offered some ideas about what the process needs:

First, any urban planning solution to the Rose Quarter's 'dead zone' problem should be part of an overall plan for the area surrounding the Rose Quarter, especially the blocks north of Broadway, along Williams and Vancouver streets,  and the Lloyd District. The Rose Quarter needs to be connected to these areas in some way to be successful at anything it attempts to do. Second and related, the neighborhoods nearest the Rose Quarter, including the River District across the Willamette River, needed to be consulted.

For the past year with private development at a near standstill, public projects like the Columbia Crossing bridge and the Rose Quarter have garnered all the more attention. The Columbia Crossing is a disaster waiting to happen, with the process hijacked by state transportation departments and flying in the face of local values. The Rose Quarter could just as easily become a failure - or more accurately, remain a failure - but there is also no reason why it can't be a great success.

It's true that the Portland Development Commission can sometimes be a detrimental force just like state governments are doing with the CRC; the agency has a history of favoring process for process sake - a parade of community members talking rather than an investment in great designers. Even so, at least PDC is of Portland, stocked with people who understand the city and live it every day. The wild card in that sense may become The Cordish Company, the Baltimore developer that the Trail Blazers have so far insisted on making their partner. Would Cordish be able to develop a Rose Quarter that is truly expressive and representative of Portland? It won't happen simply by stocking local businesses in a neo-historic brick building made to ape jazz clubs of a half-century ago. Whomever the developer is, they need talented planners, architects and other designers involved.

We also have to figure out funding. Gragg said Mayor Adams will be largely talking about the process moving forward. Perhaps the biggest aspect of the process will be the question of where the money comes from. The city has a very small amount of budget to devote to the Rose Quarter and the restoration of Memorial Coliseum unless the city is able to draw from urban renewal funds allotted to the Convention Center Urban Renewal Area and/or the Interstate Urban Renewal Area. But it's been an ongoing open question as to what funds will be drawn from where, and what impact the loss of those funds might have on these urban renewal areas.

Another way the City of Portland can bring clarity to the Rose Quarter redevelopment process is to hasten a decision on the future of the Portland Public Schools site that lies just across NE Broadway from the Rose Quarter. Will it be a place where we can build mixed-use housing and a new neighborhood? Because housing is the primary component needed in making the Rose Quarter successful. The problem with the whole area between NE Broadway, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Burnside is that it is both (1) not scaled for pedestrians and (2) not home to much of any pedestrians. We can't change the fact that people coming to the Rose Garden arena for events will usually come in cars, because Trail Blazer games and concerts attract people from all over the region. You can't walk here from Newberg or Washougal, at least not in time for a 7PM tipoff. Yet if the Rose Quarter is to become a successful district, not just during events but when there aren't any, we need to give people reason to be walking here - as in it being where their condos, apartments or even hotel rooms are.

We also need to find a way to find out if the plans being discussed will ever really happen. It's one thing to plan a holistic, vibrant neighborhood with housing and public amenities. It's another to build it. How long will it be before a transformed Rose Quarter plan is implemented? We could be talking several years. At the same time, Memorial Coliseum could be restored starting tomorrow. Upgrading its facilities is a quintessential 'shovel-ready' project even if it doesn't require a shovel.

The Bright Lights discussion will be held, as always, at the Gerding Theater in the Pearl District (SW 11th between Couch and Davis), with doors open at 5:30 and the talk beginning at 6:30pm.

Redeveloping the Rose Quarter: can Portland really trust Paul Allen?

Image courtesy ManhattanGathering.wordpresscom 

First of all, I'll be the first to admit that I may be way, way more passionate about Blazers basketball than the average person reading this architecture blog.

But it's a funny coincidence that the front page of today's Oregonian leads with a story by Ryan Frank called "Cultivating the Rose Quarter" on the morning after Blazers owner Paul Allen has inexplicably, ruinously, crazily fired general manager Kevin Pritchard, a veritable folk hero to Blazer fans who also is considered by NBA officials across the league as one of the best.

Consider this opening passage about Allen and the Rose Quarter in Frank's article:

"On a summer day in 1993, Portland Mayor Vera Katz and Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen piloted backhoes to unearth the city's next riverfront district.

Katz and Allen celebrated the team's new $262 million arena. But just as important, executives said, the team planned to dig up nearby parking lots and building restaurants, shops and more.

Seventeen years later, Allen and the Blazers enjoy a successful home court in the Rose Garden. But the surrounding district is still a garden of blacktop."

Clearly the firing of Kevin Pritchard and the ongoing issue of redeveloping the Rose Quarter are two separate stories. But they both have caused a great amount of bad blood amongst Portlanders. The connecting thread? Paul Allen.

It's true that for more than a year, as I and others in the Friends of Memorial Coliseum group have fought to preserve that building, the Trail Blazers franchise ultimately became an ally in the preservation effort. The team initially gave lukewarm approval to Merritt Paulson and Mayor Adams's plan to demolish the Coliseum, but then both parties backed away and the Blazers created a plan to preserve the building. They deserve full credit for that. When the two other finalists in the Stakeholder Advisory Committee process proposed projects that would more or less destroy the interior (MARC) or the interior and exterior (VMAAC), the Blazer plan offered the one sensible redevelopment of the Coliseum as arena.

Image courtesy Flickr.com 

But the Trail Blazers don't have to be the only entity to preserve the Coliseum. And even if they do continue to act as manager of the arena on behalf of the City of Portland (which owns the building), does that mean we should give Paul Allen's company the chance to redevelop the rest of the Rose Quarter?

The hideous and horribly functioning present state of the Rose Quarter would be reason enough not to let Allen's company be the redeveloper or overseer of this redevelopment. When you add to it the fact that they've aligned with the Cordish Company as developer, whose experience is in suburban-style, national-chain-heavy environments, that is at least strike two. But when you add to this toxic brew an owner who is increasingly seen  as an isolated, arrogant, out-of-touch, vicious, insensitive owner, it becomes a very, very difficult case to make that his anti-Midas touch should be allowed to blemish anything else here.

It pains me to write a lot of this, because I actually have a very positive opinion of the other people in the Blazers front office in Portland. In the past year of the Memorial Coliseum preservation campaign, I've had the opportunity to get to know J.E. Isaac, the Trail Blazers senior vice president of business affairs; Sarah Mensah, the team's chief marketing officer; and Bill Evans, the director of corporate communications. All three have struck me as good people who care about the local community and want to do right by our city. Unlike Allen, they live in the Portland area and have invested themselves here. But these poor folks have been wronged by Allen and Vulcan as much as the rest of us. It's too bad they work for a modern-day Howard Hughes.

Again, I know some of you reading this will see only my anger and emotion over the firing yesterday of general manager Kevin Pritchard. But there is indeed a legitimate, sober case to be made that the Pritchard incident is but the latest in a long, nearly two-decade-long string of disappointing management decisions by the organizations Paul Allen leads.

The Rose Quarter lies in the heart of central Portland. It is the largest and most important transit hub on the east side, and it has festered as a vast landscape of concrete and empty restaurants for too long. The district doesn't just need a facelift, but an utter transformation, with a vibrant riverfront scene, a mix of uses (including housing), and capable designers. It needs a planning process tied to the adjoining neighborhoods and city fabric (as Barry Johnson wrote in his excellent recent post on the Rose Quarter.)  And it needs a development team who commands unequivocal faith and possesses the utmost integrity. Does that sound like a job for Paul Allen?

20 minute lifestyles and eBikes

Photo by Brian Libby 

In the latest issue of Atlantic Monthly, writer Lisa Camner talks to Portland mayor Sam Adams about the creation of the creation of "20-minute neighborhoods", in which residents can access places and services (shopping, schools, parks, entertainment) by walking or bike within 20 minutes.

"The 20-minute neighborhood plan is a part of Portland's long-term strategy to manage the challenges that face many urban environments across the country, including rising energy costs, population growth, roadway congestion, and demand for expensive public transit to connect more and more distant suburbs," Camner writes. "This contrasts with our conventional notion of the American cityscape, where large residential communities are connected via highways to large shopping centers, which in turn stand miles from large office parks."

Camner also tapped Mayor Adams for a Q&A about the 20-minute neighborhood strategy:

How do 20-minute neighborhoods create more camaraderie than drivable neighborhoods?

Well, if you're going to the same place repeatedly, you're more likely to meet people. If you see the same people, you're going to feel more comfortable introducing yourself and striking up a conversation. And when you look at ratings on "sense of satisfaction," it's that sense of belonging, of being noticed, of hearing what the latest news is. I don't know if you have a favorite coffee shop or restaurant where, even if they do not know you by name, it's clear they like to have you back. It's that sense of belonging, that informal exchange. Your neighborhood becomes an extended family.

So people tend to visit the same places over and over again when everything is nearby.

Exactly. If you're going to the same neighborhood grocery store, you're going to get to know the people at that grocery store. You have a connection because you live there, and they work there, and hopefully, a good percentage of them will also live there You've got something in common, more than if you drive across town to the big box stores in the suburbs, where you're overwhelmed with people from all over the region. And when you go to the neighborhood store, you might ask, "Hey, can you carry this?" There is a positive cycle. Each grocery store, let's say, will begin to reflect the needs of the surrounding neighborhood because of a sort of mutual dependency. They're going to be very reliant on neighborhood business.

For the city, the benefits are multiple. We'll more readily meet our climate change goals because there will be less driving. On the individual side, households save energy costs and fuel. And, people who are walking and biking are going to be more fit. People healthier and insurance premiums go down. There's less pollution. CEOs for Cities did a study and we already drive 20% less than comparably sized cities. We don't have car companies here, we don't have oil wells here, we don't have car insurance companies here, so every dollar we don't spend on something we don't produce here is a dollar that stays in the economy. For us, based on 2005 figures, that's about $800 million that stays in Portlanders' pockets

How does the city go about converting "regular" neighborhoods into 20-minute neighborhoods? I know Portland has a number of these neighborhoods already, but the project is not complete yet.

Right. About 11% of our city is what we would characterize as 20-minute complete neighborhoods. That is sort of the platinum standard. One key factor is walk quality. Some of our neighborhoods lack sidewalks. You might have an inexpensive grocery store that really meets the specific and unique needs of an area of town, but if you don't have sidewalks to get there, you can't very well call it walkable. The other key piece here is getting clear what the market is. What do people want?

How do you determine that?

We're doing market surveys to figure out what the economic profile is of a potential 20-minute neighborhood. We want to not only meet people's basic needs but also find out where they'll go for play and recreation and entertainment. This kind of research is a relatively new area for government. We're used to being "sticks and bricks." What we are trying to do now is figure out information. Where do you want a neighborhood park? How many school-aged kids within a proposed boundary are going to the local public school? A local business does not have the resources to go out and do a market analysis of the mile that surrounds it. But we can do that for 30 businesses on a main street.

What are the biggest challenges for converting to 20-minute neighborhoods?

Well, the challenge of money is long lasting and universal. After that, it's lack of insight, lack of research. I hate to say it, I'm a nerd--but it's data. Not data in and of itself, but insight. The notion of what can we do better with the resources that we have, is really, really key. In a lot of cases, it's the matchmaking of needs and wants that comes with analysis and insight. And that's not free, but it doesn't cost the kind of money it costs to expand arterial streets and freeways and other things.

I think the other big challenge, on the federal level especially, has been the lack of valuation of the trip not taken. The 20-minute complete neighborhood concept puts a very high value on the trip not taken, the mile not driven. It's changing now, because this administration gets it. But the biggest challenge has been getting federal funding for investments that prevent trips.

And how many bicycles do you own?

Well, Sanyo donated to the mayor's office an electric bike. You pedal, and there's a little bit of extra juice behind it, a little electric motor. And then I just have one bike, a Trek bike.

Do you think there's something about Portland that makes it uniquely suited for 20-minute neighborhoods? Or do you think this can be replicated in other cities?

I absolutely think it can be replicated in other cities. I do not think it's anything in our water, as wonderful as our Portland water is. I don't think it's partisan, I don't think it's ideological. In fact, in many ways it's a conservative pitch. You want to get the most out of the infrastructure you've already invested in. You want to be a more self-reliant city that isn't as vulnerable to the vagaries of energy costs--most cities don't have oil wells or gas wells. These are the kind of self-reliant things you should do anyway. In the process, you actually make more of your business owners' money, and save more of your residents' household costs. It's radical common sense.

Meanwhile, Oregonian commuting columnist Joseph Rose has a story that may be partially related, about the efforts of entrepreneurs like local blogger PDXebiker to promote the idea of electric bicycles in Portland - the kind that kick in with a little electric motor when you're too tired to pedal, or unable to pedal on the way to your big meeting without breaking a major sweat.

Rose talks a little about how electric bicycles are frowned upon by the city's purist cyclists. They have called PDXebiker "traitor" and "cheater" when he whizzes through bike lanes. But electronic bicycles could be a key component of the 20-minute neighborhood.

"The city's new bicycle plan calls for 25 percent of all trips to be made by bike in 20 years," Rose writes. "Now, I think we have a better chance of going to war with zombies than meeting that goal. But a lot of Portlanders say they would love to ditch their cars, if only the transition to bicycling wasn't so extreme."

"With the motorized assist, riders can pedal in work or symphony-going clothes without breaking a sweat."

If we're really going to get to a point where most Portlanders live in a 20-minute neighborhood, and where residents make 25 percent of their trips by bicycle, this is the way to do it. And as Rose adds at the end of his column, "I don't get it. eBike. o(ld)bike. Either way: one less car."

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Cascade Station: urban or suburban?

Cascade Station map, courtesy Portland Development Commission 

Anna Griffin had an interesting column in Wednesday's Oregonian about the strip mall at Cascade Station along Airport Way and how it calls into question the ways we gauge how developments succeed or fail.

Cascade Station is a 120 acre parcel of property that is owned by the Port of Portland. When it was first pitched in about 1999, this was supposed to be a pedestrian oriented mixed-use development. Instead, it has become a hive of big-box chain stores. But in the middle of a terrible economy, Cascade Station has thrived, at least in terms of sales and revenue. For example, Griffin reports that the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant there is the 16th busiest of the chain's 600 franchises. 96 percent of the commercial side has been leased. And Ikea is, while certainly a big-box to end all big-boxes, very popular.

In other words, Portland failed at the goal of making Cascade Station an urban development, but it has succeeded  - economically speaking - as a suburban one.

"This village thing was a great vision, but not there," shopping center developer Fred Bruning told Griffin. "If we hadn't built this, the entire place would probably still be vacant."

Indeed, there were quite a few years when, if you were riding the MAX to the airport, it would routinely stop at Cascade Station and nobody would get on or off. Now 6,000 people get on or off a MAX train at Cascade Station each week.

Cascade Station also probably succeeds in large part because of its ease of access and lack of sales tax for nearby Washington residents in Clark County, which already is mostly a suburban-feeling place anyway.

Here's an explanation from the Portland Development Commission of what happened with Cascade Station morphing from its original intended look and makeup:

"Unfortunately, following the execution of the agreement in 1999, development stalled due to the events of September 11, 2001 and because the site’s zoning precluded any retail larger than 60,000 square feet in size. This effectively precluded any anchor retail stores from locating there, and the small stores would not sign on."

"On February 17, 2005, the 1999 Plan District was amended with the intention of reviving development interest at Cascade Station.  Development rights for the property were modified to allow, among other uses, up to three larger-format retailers.  These anchor tenants are expected to provide the necessary customer draw that would spur the rest of the smaller retail to move forward, as well as the office and hotel uses." 

PDC was perhaps between a rock and a hard place: seed the development with cheap plants that grow fast, or better fruit trees that might not bare any.

Griffin also ties her look at Cascade Station to Mayor Sam Adams' easing off of his refusal to support Walmart stores being established anywhere in Portland. Not long ago, Adams began talking with Walmart about an economic impact study for a store at Hayden Island, where he previously tried to keep the chain away. Some of this stems from the fact, as Griffin notes, that Walmart has spent many millions to buffet its image and appear more friendly to sustainability and smart city building. But a lot of it also has to do with the economy, and the fact that we can't be as picky about what kind of development we want when we really need development of any kind.

Advertisement taken from Cascade Station website  

As for Cascade Station, I have to agree that it was probably never in the cards for this to be a pedestrian-oriented development, even with its MAX stops. But I suspect the people behind the development never had their hearts into the idea of urbanity.

When it was pitched as an idea in 1999, I attended a presentation on Cascade Station, and I specifically remember the would-be developers from Trammel Crow saying it would "look urban, work suburban". In other words, the office and stores might come all the way up to the sidewalk along Airport Way, but they would still have massive parking lots in back. And while MAX was a nice extra amenity, it was almost a non-factor, because the overwhelming majority of shoppers at Ikea and elsewhere would be coming and going in their cars.

In general, light rail and streetcars are seen as a development tool, particularly for creating mixed-use environments where people walk, bike and take mass transit as much as they drive - or more. However, this particular MAX line was really meant to connect people in downtown and other parts of Portland to the airport, not for creating this kind of compact, urban environment. Had Cascade Station's developers really wanted an urban place, they'd have needed to introduce a mix of housing with commercial and retail space, and created a grid or other street system with a scale of small blocks meant for pedestrians.

Cascade Station in all its asphalt glory, photo courtesy Daily Journal of Commerce 

I think is the underlying truth in Griffin's column is that urban and suburban areas will always, to some extent, need each other. And we must remain flexible to both options.

To that end, Griffin's story ends with a quote from Bruning, the shopping mall developer. "When you travel to Europe, you leave the airport, and you immediately see industrial and commercial development," he says. "The first thing you see in some of the great cities of the world is Ikea."

I still consider it an open-ended question more than something I've completely figured out. Are big cities meant to have auto-oriented industrial and commercial developments on their outskirts, or could Cascade Station really have been something more than football field-sized parking lots and stores the size of the airplane hangars next door at the airport?

Meanwhile, the Portland Development Commission has moved toward shrinking the Airport Way urban renewal area. That's in part because law stipulates no more than 15 percent of the city's land can be an urban renewal area, and we're near the ceiling. But I wonder if somebody at PDC said to himself or herself, "I didn't get into the urban renewal profession so we could give breaks to Dress Barn and Staples."

I'll tell you this: Except for maybe the once-every-two-years sojourn to Ikea, I wouldn't take a single step towards the rest of the eyesore that is Cascade Station - not at Dress Barn, Marshall's, Ross Dress For Less, Red Robin, Jamba Juice, Kay Jewelers, Bath & Body Works, or even the International House of Pancakes. It says a lot that Cascade Station's website prominently features the phrase "tax free shopping" - all but an explicit admittance that the target market is more about big savings than a pleasant environment. But I wouldn't shop at these chains' outposts in Beaverton, Tigard or Gresham either. Yet lots of people do, and one can't pretend to know all their needs and motivations.

Tradition and eccentricity: City undergoes acupuncture treatment as part of Portland Plan

Needle installation at Mt. Tabor, image courtesy The Portland Acupuncture Project 

Over the past several years, I've received acupuncture treatment for a variety of ailments: headaches, bronchitis, a pinched nerve, even stress. Sometimes it has worked, and sometimes it hasn't. But if a person is in a lot of pain, it's worth a try. And it'd be a disservice to dismiss acupuncture's effectiveness just because it's different from, or unprovable by, standards of Western medicine.

Chinese acupuncture, which Wikipedia defines as "the procedure of inserting and manipulating needles into various points on the body to relieve pain or for therapeutic purposes" has been around since at least the second century BC. Yet there is no factual evidence proving the central idea, of placing these needles at body points situated on meridians along which qi (or "life energy") flows.

I describe this tension behind acupuncture practice in the West after thinking about the symbolism of the Portland Acupuncture Project, which is actually not medicinal but an outdoor sculptural installation by Portland artist Adam Kuby. The work, consisting of 35-foot-high steel poles made to resemble acupuncture needles, was commissioned in accordance with the current process of formulating the Portland Plan through a series of workshops. The Portland Plan just entered Phase II with a workshop on April 26, and the next one is scheduled for April 29 at Beaumont Middle School. 

Needle installation at Waterfront Park, image courtesy The Portland Acupuncture Project 

Kuby's needles are being installed - literally pricked into the ground as if it's our collective skin - at sites throughout the city such as Waterfront Park, Kelly Point Park and Mt. Tabor.

"This project explores the interface between art, regional planning, traditional Chinese medicine and the health of a city," his Portland Acupuncture Project's website explains. "Unfolding over the course of 2010, this 6-month art installation will coincide with a series of public workshops to help steer the Portland Plan, a guide for the city's growth over the next 25 years.  Needles appearing across the city will bring attention to the some of the city's most challenging problems, greatest assets, as well as places with enormous potential."

“Using the body as a metaphor for the entire city, Kuby hopes to identify those places in the landscape that are important to us as a community," added Susan Anderson, director of the Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability, "drawing attention not only to the significance of each focal point but also to the interconnectedness of them to each other as well as to ourselves.”

Portland has a strong Chinese medicine community for an American city, with two schools of Chinese medicine and more than 500 acupuncturists in the three-county area. As a result, the project has gained not only public donations from the Regional Arts & Culture Council and the Oregon Arts Commission, but also several dozen individual and business donors and the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine. Yet the $40,000 fund raising goal to install the large poles/needles for six months, has not been reached. Kuby, a Mount Tabor-area artist with a background in landscape architecture and public art installations, told Keri Brenner in The Oregonian that he still needs to raise about $12,000 to $15,000 more if the project is to be able to be installed in all quadrants of the city.

Acupuncture chart from Hua Shou (1340s), image via Wikipedia

Each series of up to five needles/poles will remain in place for eight weeks before being moved to new meridian-like "points" in the city for another eight-week installation, continuing the rotation one more time after that. Brenner also reports Kuby worked with city planners to dovetail the placement of needle sculptures with strategies and initiatives identified in the Portland Plan, the city's roadmap for the next 25 years. Some of the needles/poles will be placed at sites to represent focus on transportation issues, for example, while others might stimulate discussions on housing problems or jobs creation. 

I mentioned at the outset of this post the tension between acupuncture's thousands of years of tradition and its lack of complete acceptance from Western medicine. That's because along with the general metaphor of acupuncture needles healing the city, or contributing to higher energy levels or flow between different parts of the topography, perhaps acupuncture itself may be a fitting metaphor for the current moment Portland is experiencing amongst the broader American zeitgeist as the potential model for how other American cities might look in the future. A recent article by English political magazine, for example, explored Portland as and "The new model" for "elite cities", asking, "Is Oregon’s metropolis a leader among American cities or just strange?"

Portland is building on thousands of years of tradition too, continuing compact pedestrian oriented city building of Europe and most of Western civilization. We are the descendant, urbanistically speaking, of cities like Amsterdam, Barcelona, Glasgow and Kyoto. And yet people in other places, even progressive urban-minded ones, still look at the city as quirky and off-kilter. But hey, what does it matter? Like the local slogan goes, Portland is, despite all its inevitable missteps, the City that Works. Or maybe it's the other, unofficial slogan, urging us to keep weird.

Incidentally, I think some of Kuby's needles are very much needed along Southeast Grand and Martin Luther King Boulevards while this streetcar construction is in progress. Traffic is a black hole there these days. Either Kuby needs to place some needles there, or I need some in my forehead and toes while slowly inching by the orange cones.

Making Portland Plan plans

Image courtesy Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability 

Portland is a planning Mecca and it's time to update our Koran: The Portland Plan, a broad, strategic plan with objectives and policy directions. Currently the city is going through what’s called Periodic Review, which was enacted by the state Legislature in 1981. It establishes a "factual basis" in several topic areas per state law such as land supply, development potential, and employment and housing needs.

On January 26 and February 9, the first two in a series of meetings began to review the Portland Plan, and the next meeting is scheduled for March 9. The topic will be nine “action areas”:

• Prosperity, business success & equity
• Education & skill development
• Arts, culture & innovation
• Sustainability and the natural environment
• Human health, food & public safety
• Quality of life & civic engagement
• Design, planning & public spaces
• Neighborhoods & housing
• Transportation, technology & access

There are two main stages to this process: an evaluation of the existing plan and then potential updates made. In September 2009, the city decided on a three-year work plan with three components: (1) Land use inventory and analysis (we are in this stage through fall of this year); (2) Consideration of alternative courses of action; and (3) Selecting preferred alternatives and implementation pf policies, zoning code and map updates (2011-2012).

According to my friend Eric Engstrom of the Bureau of Planning & Sustainability, there are a number of factors here of interest to the design community. “The Portland Plan raises the possibility,” he says, “of further historic preservation work in outer East Portland, where we have never cataloged historic buildings.”

Further, Engstrom says, “It could create a venue to discuss desirability of having some mid-century historic districts in the future, to preserve examples of atomic ranch subdivisions. It creates a venue to discuss relationship of sustainability to retention and re-use of existing structures (embodied energy of existing buildings, recycling buildings, reducing carbon footprint, etc.). It could lead to stronger policies on that issue.”

Image courtesy Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability

The plan also creates, Engstrom says, “a place to discuss our overall policy of how we re-use iconic buildings. It won't necessarily prevent battles like Memorial Coliseum in the future, but offers a way to create/refine a policy on how we approach those issues.”

And the Urban Design report “raises the question of how we re-design public spaces,” he adds, “especially the street right of way, to serve more than cars, to make them actual places, rather than ugly space you must pass through to get where you want to go.”

Some population and housing figures are particularly important to the Portland Plan. 

Metro forecasts that 464,438 to 619,628 new households will be located in the greater Portland area by 2035. It’s also forecast that Portland itself will accrue 105,000 to 136,000 new households by 2035 (1.2 to 1.6% annual growth). That means 3,500-4,500 units need to be built each year just to keep up. By comparison, 29,300 units were built between 1997 and 2007.

Metro also forecasts that regional employment would increase from just under one million jobs in 2005 to between 1.36 and 1.85 million by 2035. In Portland proper, the forecast is for 113,000 to 202,000 jobs.

Image courtesy Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability 

The Planning Commission will next be meeting about this on March 9th at 1:15pm. Topics will include land supply assumptions and maps, future hearings and recommendations to City Council. Public testimony will be heard at this meeting from 1:15-3pm in the 2500A room of the 1900 SW 4th building.

Want to make your voice heard? Fill out a survey by March 31 to indicate your preferences on a range of issues. The Planning Commission will continue with meetings in March, and then Round 2 Workshops will be held in April and May.

Last of the Portland Plan workshops

Photo by Brian Libby 

The final Portland Plan Community Workshop is being held Tuesday night at 6:30pm at the University of Oregon's White Stag Block in Old Town (70 NW Couch).  Round two workshops begin in spring 2010.

As with the six previous community workshops, Mayor Sam Adams will facilitate a community dialogue about how to solve some of the city's major challenges, with audience polling being conducted on a wide range of issues. 

The first six workshops have included just under 800 participants. With a city population of over 557,000 that's not a very high rate of participation, about one in every 700 citizens.  But who have attended have a 98 percent approval rating on the usefulness of the workshops.

The Portland Plan will be a strategic roadmap to ensure the city is thriving, prosperous and sustainable for all residents over the next 25 years. The Portland Plan is part of a state-mandated comprehensive plan update and will touch every neighborhood and resident as the city grows.

The last time the City developed a comprehensive plan was 1980; about 50 percent of Portlanders today were not here at that time. Because the plan will ultimately affect every resident, the City and its partners are asking for maximum community input to define priorities, develop solutions and guide investment of public dollars as we develop the plan over the next 15 months.

A city-issued press release also says  in workshops and online surveys, the top three issues facing Portland in the next 25 years are:

1. Sustainability & the Natural Environment 
2. Prosperity, Business Success & Equity 
3. Education & Skill Development 

You can also find out more about the Portland Plan online at www.PDXPlan.com or on its Facebook and Twitter pages. If you can't get to the final Portland Plan community workshop in person, it will be streaming live online and broadcast via live TV on cable access channel 30.

Another look at Burnside Bridgehead

 

The Portland Development Commission will host a public workshop this evening (Wednesday, November 25) to engage community members about potential uses of the four-acre Burnside Bridgehead site.

The workshop will be held from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in the atrium of the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, 107 SE Washington Street. A second workshop, slated for winter 2010, will offer attendees a chance to comment and provide input on the draft Framework Plan.    

“Fresh perspectives make the ordinary extraordinary,” said project consultant Will Bruder. “The team is very eager to have a two-way conversation with community members about what they want for this site.” That Bruder (a very talented Phoenix architect now teaching at PSU) is involved bodes well for this development, especially given what a cluster-@$*& Burnside Bridgehead was originally, when PDC's board awarded the development contract to national developer Opus, against the wishes of the advisory committee that selected local developer Beam.

And speaking of which, an additional element of the Framework process is PDC’s partnership with Beam Development on Burnside Bridgehead going forward. In February, Beam agreed to serve as PDC’s strategic advisor for the Framework Plan, providing development advice in exchange for the opportunity to develop a minimum of 20 percent of the site.   The Burnside Bridgehead Citizen Advisory Committee, which meets monthly, will provide significant input and comment to the project team. 

Expected to occur over the next six months, the planning process will culminate in the release of a Burnside Bridgehead Framework Plan in March 2010.  This high-level guidebook to redevelopment will include the refinement and clarification of public goals and objectives for the property and identify key opportunities and constraints on the site.

The Burnside Bridgehead site is identified in the City of Portland’s recently adopted “Economic Development Strategy, a Five-Year Plan for Promoting Job Creation and Economic Growth” as a key catalytic site within the Central City for the creation of a significant mixed-use gateway development. The Burnside Bridgehead Framework Plan project is a six-month process that will culminate in the release of the Framework Plan, a high-level guidebook to redevelopment that will direct and guide the creation of this mixed-use gateway.  

This Plan includes the refinement and clarification of public goals and objectives for the property and the identification of key opportunities and constraints on the site.  The process is also intended to answer remaining questions about the site including the reuse potential of the Convention Plaza building, changes in capacity of the site given upcoming transportation infrastructure improvements such as the Burnside-Couch couplet and the Eastside Streetcar, and the appropriateness, and direction, of phasing development within the project area.

The second workshop, slated for early 2010, will offer attendees a chance to comment and provide input to a draft Framework Plan.

Learning From Columbus: Friedman's case for capping I-405

Note: This is a guest post from Daniel Friedman, a member of the Portland Downtown Neighborhood Association board. Friedman is an emeritus psychology professor at Antioch College where he taught for 21 years before retiring and moving to the South Park Blocks in 2001.

Friedman grew up in Columbus, Ohio and sees in its new capped freeway a reminder that Portland should revisit its own I-405 capping plan first forwarded in the 1990s by then-mayor Vera Katz. His proposal here also comes just days after the city of Vancouver, Washington announced the results of a design competition (won by Portland firm Allied Works) to cap I-5 to re-connect the east and west halves of the city.

Columbus, Ohio, like any number of American cities, has sent planners and public officials to Portland to ride the streetcar and to study up on transit-oriented development and other urban-planning innovations. Now it may be time for Portland to send a delegation to Columbus. 

What Portlanders would see in Columbus is a potential solution to the drastic rupture created in the downtown streetscape when Interstate-405 was built in the late sixties.

I-405 divides Goose Hollow from Downtown Portland, forcing pedestrians to cross the freeway on bleak, noisy, often-deserted overpasses whose narrow sidewalks leave them precariously close to fast-moving traffic. Crossing the canyon-like I-405 is dull and unpleasant and discourages pedestrian travel between two dynamic and rapidly developing neighborhoods. The I-405 freeway creates a dead zone in the middle of what is otherwise one of the nation's most walkable central city districts.

Columbus faced a similar problem: a desolate freeway overpass that separated the downtown area from Short North, a densely-populated, mixed-use neighborhood, not unlike NW 23rd. Pedestrians were forced to trudge across a forbidding, windswept highway overpass in order to travel from Short North to the city's Convention Center, Public Market, Arena District, and on to downtown. 

Inspired by the Ponte Vecchio (pictured above), the Arno River bridge that has housed shops and artisan workspaces since at least 1345, Columbus developer Jack Lucks proposed construction of retail storerooms on both sides of the street, on platforms extending out over the interstate. 

Lucks' innovative solution—which came to be known as the 'I-675 Cap'—has won a number of design and planning awards, including a Charter Award from the Congress for New Urbanism. 

 

This aerial view shows the basic design: Three parallel "bridges" across the freeway. The center bridge carries North High Street. Shops and restaurants are located on top of additional bridges which extend out along either side of the original freeway overpass. 

The retail platforms are 38-feet wide on one side and 57-feet wide on the other. Completed in 2004, the Cap contains 26,000 square feet of retail.

By constructing platforms for shops and restaurants along the sides of what was once a derelict interstate-highway overpass, this retail-focused freeway cap has reconnected Downtown Columbus with the adjacent Short North arts and entertainment district. As they stroll along the Cap, many pedestrians aren't even aware that they're crossing an eight-lane interstate highway. 

The I-670 Cap is one of the few freeway caps in the US that consists of retail and restaurant space rather than parkland. The advantages of the retail approach are two-fold: (1) Revenue from retail users fully or partially pays for development; (2) Continuous retail pulls pedestrians across the freeway, seamlessly linking formerly divided neighborhoods. 

Imagine several freeway caps, each containing small retail spaces, spanning I-405, reconnecting downtown Portland with Goose Hollow. Perhaps the strongest candidate for a cap would be SW Morrison Street, since there are already proposals on the table to designate it as downtown's signature East-West shopping street. [See: Portland Downtown Retail Strategy-2009 , Downtown Portland Retail: A New Renaissance ]

With a retail-focused cap to entice pedestrians across I-405, Morrison has the potential to evolve into a continuous retail and entertainment corridor extending all the way from the Willamette to PGE Park (0.9 mi).

Metro seeks feedback on latest Urban Growth Boundary expansion proposal

The Metro regional government is seeking public feedback on how to accommodate up to 300,000 new homes by 2030. To expand the urban growth boundary or not to expand. The Metro Council produced a preliminary report earlier this spring, and before the official draft comes out in September, they'd like to receive comments on the plan - due no later than June 30.

The preliminary report makes a somewhat surprising argument given that the UGB has expanded a few times in the past: that future growth can be absorbed through a combination of zoning changes, density increases, clearing brownfield sites, incentives for housing near transit centers and new financing tools to pay for infrastructure. Metro also listed these criteria or operating assumptions.

(1) People live and work in vibrant communities where they can choose to walk for pleasure and to meet their everyday needs. 

(2) Current and future residents benefit from the region’s sustained economic competitiveness and prosperity.

(3) People have safe and reliable transportation choices that enhance their quality of life. 

(4) The region is a leader in minimizing contributions to global warming.

(5) Current and future generations enjoy clean air, clean water and healthy ecosystems. 

(6) The benefits and burdens of growth and change are distributed equitably.

There is also an economic component here, of course. Metro cites the Case-Shiller index, which measured home prices during the period of December 2005 to December 2008. Prices in the Portland region decreased by only three percent, compared with decreases of 43 percent in Las Vegas, 31 percent in Tampa, 13 percent in Atlanta, and 40 percent in San Francisco.

Comments should be submitted to Malu Wilkinson at malu.wilkinson@oregonmetro.gov.

One resident in particular, Robert Nobles, is keen on residents sending Metro a message. He's written me a few times urging a post, and when The Oregonian posted a notice about the issue, he was one of the first to comment. But Nobles' point in that comment is a good one:

"The real issue is what type of housing those people live in. Builders want huge swaths of land that they can build the same house like an assembly line.This mens more profit for them, but homogeneity and poor planning for the city," he writes.

"The people want well planned neighorhoods with a diversity of housing types and incomes. This means infill lots, condo towers or mid-rises, duplexes, granny flats, etc. What the poeple want cannot be built like an assembly line, and since there is not enough supply of it, the average income gets priced out of it due to high demand. There is room within the boundary for many more people with the type of housing choices we all want, but speculative builders mostly want to build fast cheap efficient crap."

Personally, I believe the reason we have a growth boundary is so it acts as one. Expanding it is contrary to that effort. So I almost always argue against expansion. Even so, it's not always a black and white issue. People need affordable places to live just as we as a region need to limit sprawl. There needs to be a balance, although ultimately tipping that balance in a direction that encourages cheap suburban auto-dominated environments will hurt people who are economically struggling more than it will hurt people better off.

Notes from Arun Jain's vision for Portland's future

On April 9, the City of Portland's outgoing Chief Urban Design Strategist, Arun Jain, gave a presentation at the American Institute of Architects' Center for Architecture to highlight the results of his staff's multi-year study of Portland and where we go from here.

The work consisted of three principal components: (1) an urban design assessment to get at the heart of urban design issues in the city, like height restrictions, topography, environmental issues, etc.; (2) creating a basis for selecting areas of highest place-making potential, the places where future growth makes the most sense; and (3) what Jain calls "framework elements", the values we hold important going forward like enhanced green streets and certain "nodes" where public areas or other special places might exist.

Jain began the talk by emphasizing the complexity of cities. He quoted urban theorist Christopher Alexander in saying, "A city is not a tree." In other words, Jain said, "This is really about overlapping networks. They're not as clean and simple as we'd like. Cities are messy." But often our memories of cities, he added, are the unusual places where traditional street grids or other familiar aspects of city planning act differently.

"There's no right or wrong to cities," Jain continued. "Solutions are either better or worse, and many create other problems...But we don't need to predict the future to make great cities." The role of urban design, he explained, is to look at urban form, quality, and pattern.

Some of the challenges Jain spoke of seemed a little funny: not the fear of change he spoke of, nor confusion over design's role, but when he said, "We're always dogged by citizen involvement." Part of the reason I really like Arun Jain is he's an academic - and certainly not a populist. How many people at the City would actually say public involvement is a pain?

Jain's work developing an urban design strategy began in 2006, intended as a lead-in to formation of a central city plan and the overall Portland Plan being hammered out.

Really, though, rather than looking forward, it seems Jain spent more time looking back. In his presentation, Jain spoke of numerous previous Portland plans dating back nearly a century.

A 1912 plan, for example, created more wide thoroughfares in the early years of the automobile. A 1932 Portland plan designated the downtown west waterfront as a park, something that only happened 50 years later. This plan also initiated locally the Beaux Arts "city beautiful" movement.

Then there's the famous Robert Moses plan in 1943, which introduced a system of highways and freeways - some of which were built, some not. The 1966 plan expanded the downtown core and for the first time identified individual neighborhood "units" and emphasized how each one should have a school, park and retail. It also added more freeways. The 1972 plan gave us much of the Portland we know today, with the downtown bus mall and an emphasis on smart growth.

Jain also studied several cities that have aspects of city planning applicable to Portland. Barcelona favors the notion of social equity: building important projects in the poorest neighborhoods. Edinburgh, with its Royal Mile, shows "you can't always concentrate retail in one area," he says. "They have to hold lots of festivals to make it work."

Kyoto (pictured above left), Jain believes, shows a good approach to the street grid, allowing a variety of sizes. Jain loves Portland's small 200x200-foot blocks, he says, "but it eats open space, and is too small for things like a symphony hall." Kyoto's "floating grid," he says, keeps the grid system but allows for the principal of congregating blocks together like tatami mats into larger parcels in certain areas.

Glasgow, Jain explained, wanted to be a city of youth and technology and has become just that, providing a key comparison for Portland. Philadelphia's diagonal streets give dynamism to its street grid, much like our own Sandy Boulevard. "It's a traffic engineer's nightmare," he added. "But who cares? It's fun."

Looking ahead, Jain identified several "places of change" in Portland that could and should accommodate more high-density growth: inner Burnside, the MLK/Grand loop, the Lloyd Center/Convention Center district, and inner North Portland.

One of the most eagerly anticipated parts of Jain's study was exactly how much height, or extra height, should be allowed in areas like the northern Pearl District where industrially-zoned areas are giving way to mixed-use and residential. I'm still not sure how this will pan out, but Jain seemed to indicate that a single height limit, even for a small neighborhood, should be frowned upon and would allow too much sameness. "There needs to be some cleverness," he said.

A bold offering for the future was Jain's idea to make certain key streets not only green in the sense of having sidewalk bioswales or permeable pavement, but actually to make the streets themselves more park-like, thereby connecting various real parks around the city with an infrastructure of public spaces that connect them. It's "streets as less of a conduit and more of a place," he explained.

Jain focused on the Central Eastside Industrial District as an area of future growth and not forever a continuing industrial enclave. This isn't a surprise. Everybody knows the Central Eastside is a sleeping giant.

But on a related note, since the east bank I-5 freeway overpass is not likely to go away soon, nor is the industrial designation, Jain identified the area near OMSI as a key growth area in the immediate years ahead. There will be a new MAX/streetcar and pedestrian bridge being built there, and it is prime riverfront property across from downtown.

"The freeway and the CEID restrict the Central Eastside from rampant speculation," Jain said. "Now is a time to set it up better."

Jain also called for an extension of Sandy Boulevard past Burnside so it meets Morrison Street and connects to the Morrison Bridgehead.

He additionally looked at the US Postal Service site on Broadway in old town as a place for a "consolidated campus or institution," with small buildings and a human scale. That doesn't sound good for those of us who would like to see the post office building saved and renovated for a new use. It's not very small.

Overall, I've always been exceptionally impressed with Arun Jain: his intelligence, his commitment to research and the historical view, and his unwillingness to rush. At the same time, I heard a snicker or two from architects after his presentation. The just of their comments were that anybody could have identified the Central Eastside and OMSI for future growth, and it needn't have taken years to do so. Perhaps there's at least a kernel of truth in both arguments, but given how rapidly the city is sometimes inclined to embrace change, it was helpful having a tortoise amongst the hares.

With Jain now having left the City, there will be big shoes to fill when it comes to Portland looking at itself and assessing where the city wants to go. But there are no plans to find another Chief Urban Design Strategist for the City of Portland. That makes Jain's work for the last few years studying the city all the more important.

You can read the entire Urban Design Assessment here.

Arun with a view: Jain highlights Portland Plan today

Apologies for the short notice, but today (Thursday) from 4:30 to 6:00PM at the AIA Center For Architecture (403 NW 11th Ave.), outgoing City of Portland chief urban design strategist Arun Jain will deliver a presentation on the Portland Plan, the mammoth planning effort to map out the next few decades of growth.

Jain's presentation will be called, "So… what kind of city would you want anyway? An Urban Design Framework for Central Portland’s Future."

As he writes in an accompanying document, "The Urban Design Framework is intended to be an important basis for making strategic choices that focus the preservation, enhancement and creation of great public places and development energy in the central city.  It highlights the 'bones' of the central city and describes where exceptional and public minded development would greatly leverage city and central city priorities over the next 25 years."

Jain's work leading up to the Urban Design Framework is based on three main efforts: an urban design assessment (identifying key issues), selecting areas of highest place-making potential, and then setting urban design elements like nodes for placemaking (greenspace, public areas), enhanced street corridors, and a green network "synthesizing and linking the city’s man-made and natural environmental assets (i.e. parks and schools with the river, trail heads and natural reserves)."

Arun Jain has, as of a few days ago, left his position at the City of Portland. But rather than his wanting out, my impression is that the city decided it didn't need a Chief Urban Design Strategist anymore. With head planner Gil Kelley already departing and the planning bureau merging with the sustainable development bureau, suddenly we've got a vacuum of top-level expertise at a time of change and upheaval. Certainly there are others still drawing paychecks in the new Bureau of Planning & Sustainable Development with talent and expertise and vision of their own, no doubt. But I'm sorry to see Arun packing his bags.

Meanwhile, come see and hear Arun's views. Or in case you can't, I plan to attend and take notes.

Portland central city plans: past, present, future

Do you remember what you were doing on March 24, 1988? I was a 10th grader at the time, counting the days until I could get my driver's license and speed recklessly through McMinnville, and reading Cliff's Notes of literary classics for English class. But here in Portland, that day saw the release of the Central City Plan (pictured at left).

In other words, it's been more than 20 years since Portland, that much hailed bastion of planning, has updated its plans for the greater downtown core.

But fear not: We won't be sliding back into Dallas or Atlanta-like tendencies just yet. The city is currently at work on a new Portland Plan. A citizens advisory committee is expected to begin work in September, with completion in 2010. There are also intra-neighborhood plans like the North Pearl District Plan, which for example could see that area near the base of the Fremont Bridge go considerably taller. (Which makes sense.)

The last Central City Plan in 1988 was largely an expansion of the 1972 plan, which created high density office and retail cores downtown as well as the Transit Mall along 5th and 6th Avenues. The 1988 plan focused on greater connections with the river and expanded the notion of the central city to the south and east. The '88 plan also emphasized introducing housing to the urban core.

In an interview published earlier this month in The Oregonian by Stephen Beaven, Steve Iwata of the Planning Bureau said the goal this time around is to bring more jobs to the central core neighborhoods. "I think we've done pretty well on the housing side," he said, "But job creation, that's a significant challenge."

I'd amend that thought just slightly: We need more job creation in the northern part of the central city, particularly the Pearl District. There are already numerous office spaces under construction there. But we still need lots more housing in the traditional part of downtown and in Old Town. That's the only way we can get downtown to stop feeling dead on evenings and weekends, or overrun with vagrancy. This phenomenon has improved measurably in the central core over the last 20 years, but there is still a long way to go.

How would the rest of you like to see the new Portland Plan for the central core put together?

Arun Jain, chief urban design strategist for the city, has with his staff created several studies of past Portland planning efforts, such as those involving famed New York freeway builder/neighborhood destroyer Robert Moses, and earlier plans involving the famous Olmstead Olmsted brothers of Central Park fame. (The plan at right is from 1897.) Jain, who I also interviewed in June for Design Within Reach's 'Designs on Portland' discussion series, has also scoured the globe for cities whose topography, street grids, relationship with bodies of water and other factors either resemble Portland or provide a historic case study: Barcelona, Savannah (Georgia), Glassgow Glasgow, Edinburgh, Philadelphia and Kyoto.

Of the street grid examples, "Each city uses its grid differently," Jain says. " Some follow it rigidly (Philadelphia, Barcelona, Savannah) whereas others manipulate it for emphasis (Kyoto, Edinburgh, Glasgow).  Philadelphia and Barcelona have disturbed the monotony of their grids through powerful diagonals but Savannah deliberately enhances its character through repetition and extension of the historic grid."

"In contrast, Kyoto plays with its grid by combining or further sub-dividing it to satisfy changing function and need. Kyoto also overcomes monotony through a height strategy that allows only temples and prominent structures to dominate.."

Regarding topographical factors, Jain says, "Cities with the strongest natural forms have a natural advantage in framing and defining their urban form.  Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Kyoto have capitalized on their assets by deliberately limiting development on surrounding hills, preserving only large historic monuments and allowing only few prominent institutions and outlooks." 

Each city’s relationship with water varies, too. Proximity to water frames and contains the urban cores of Philadelphia and Kyoto, while Barcelona and Savannah have water as an edge, and Glasgow and Edinburgh embrace both sides of their river.

Then there is the character and identity, something as important to Portland as its architecture. "Barcelona pursues its agenda of social equity in terms how art and design are expressed in the city," Jain says. "Glasgow has chosen to leave industrial artifacts to retain historic memory and character and reinvent itself as a cultural and youth-oriented city.  Edinburgh has strict design guidelines to retain historic character and ambiance while using monuments and icons to pursue the creative city and promote innovation.  Kyoto encourages preservation and restoration of the traditional Machs building form.  Savannah has adopted a strategy to createa city of parks.  Philadelphia has used a mix of traditional historic inheritances and reuse of existing infrastructure to continue its evolution."

What do these comparisons mean? They provide a template, or a guide, for how we go forward with issues like establishing more creative and recurring uses of Portland’s grid, creating better waterfront relationships to and across each river bank, promoting civic functions and events to strategically activate street life, and enhancing existing assets (such as bridges) through lighting and design. If we don't, we could end up with a freeway-strewn city like Moses planned in this map.

At the same time, planning can only do so much. It's the private sector who mostly fills out the city. That said, Jain is right that we ought not to plan in a vacuum. We don't want Portland to be any other city, but some of them have been at it a lot longer than us.

Meanwhile, there is also an upcoming series of evening lectures as part of Riverfest that will feature a variety of speakers who will discuss Willamette River's role - past, present, and future -- in shaping the city we live in. The lectures will be held September 2, 3, 4 and 5 from 7:00pm - 9:00pm at the former McCall's restaurant at 1020 SW Naito Parkway. The series is officially called "The Lower Willamette Group/Port of Portland Willamette Chautauqua". Just don't try to say it five times fast.

Bridge Over Troubled Potter

It's a funny, audacious idea: take the old Sauvie Island Bridge that was recently replaced by a new span, and recycle the structure into a new bike and pedestrian bridge over I-405. It also may be an indication of the risk and reward of Commissioner and mayoral candidate Sam Adams, a proponent of the idea, versus current/outgoing mayor Tom Potter.

The bridge has been discussed for a few years, but originally the idea was to make it a simple, cheap concrete crossing. That's what Mayor Potter still supports, according to an article in today's Oregonian, because it's about $1.5 million cheaper than recycling the Sauvie Island Bridge. But $1.5 million is practically pocket change to a major metropolitan city like Portland, and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who wouldn't choose, money aside, the Sauvie span for its superior aesthetics and the message it sends about Portland's values.

Potter has every right to oppose an extra budget outlay, but when I read that he opposes Adams on this matter, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. Tom Potter is a good man, no question about it. But this is the latest case where, at least when it comes to the built environment, he just doesn't get it. Adams does.

I mean, a long ugly concrete slab in the central city, to save a million and a half? That's like choosing a kiddie burger over a Big Mac to save a nickel.

At the same time, the fact that Adams, as head of the city's transportation department, may be able to push this through, also may show his danger, or at least the irony of this whole thing. The original discussion about a bike/pedestrian bridge was born of talk about the Burnside couplet, which Adams has pushed hard. The bridge itself is just the kind of project that Adams ought to champion, but the couplet is a rogue project that is about much, much more than transportation; a change this big really ought to come as part of a larger central city planning process coming from...city planners. So in other words, I think the bike bridge battle shows Adams at his best, but it's also inextricably tied to a bad idea.

Adams and Potter are like the eager son and the fatigued father. I'd rather have the son leading in this case, but he could perhaps use just a little of the father's restraint. In the case of this proposed bike/pedestrian bridge, though, I think the island is Potter, not Sauvie.

As always, though, I say this as a conversation starter, not an ending. What do the rest of you think?

Point-Counterpoint on PDC's Future Urban Renewal Plans

The opinion section of Sunday's Oregonian offered two opposing views on what the Portland Development Commission should do next with respect to its urban renewal areas: to keep devoting resources to making the central city more dense, or to focus more on outlying areas in need such as Parkrose and Rockwood.

Portland State University urban studies professor Carl Abbott favors declaring victory in the central city and heading eastward to do more good:

"The equation [for urban renewal starting in the 1970s] had two simple parts: Shore up downtown as a center for retailing, employment and culture. Preserve and revitalize older neighborhoods to keep them attractive for the middle class.

It worked. From the slopes of the West Hills to the slopes of Mount Tabor, the city is a success by any comparative standards.

The Portland 'miracle' is yet to work its wonders, however, in the city's far eastern neighborhoods. These are areas with more people in poverty, more immigrants, fewer parks and a lot less creative class buzz."

By contrast, Patricia Garner, land use planning committee chair for the Pearl District Neighborhood Association and a project manager with Chesshir Architecture, says there are still important pockets of land in the central city currently not in urban renewal districts that need to be developed and densified. Namely, the flats of Goose Hollow and the area around Con-way in Northwest:

"If these to areas were developed to their full capacity, the city could see an increase of at least 4,000 new housing units and one million square feet of new office capacity. The more that is built in these urban environments, the less we have to build in other neighborhoods."

Gardner also addresses what urban renewal is and isn't:

"One of the biggest misconceptions about urban renewal financing is that fat cat developers are given money to create their projects for rich people. This is not true....Urban renewal does not work in established, healthy neighborhoods unless there is a desire to fundamentally change the character of that neighborhood toward more density. But it works fabulously in these blank opportunity sites."

I tend to agree more with Patty Gardner on this one. Of course Abbot isn't wrong that poorer neighborhoods would certainly benefit from more investment in services and infrastructure there: libraries, open spaces, schools, transit. But urban renewal money isn't social service money. It's meant to plant seeds in mostly vacant areas and make neighborhoods. It's true that some of the close-in industrial areas in Northwest Portland seem better candidates for high density than neighborhoods like Parkrose and Rockwood that are far from the city center.

If we're going to go very dense outside the city center, however, it should be at key transit intersections, such as Parkrose's next-door neighborhood, Gateway, where Interstates 5, 205 and 84 intersect along with the MAX line to downtown, the airport and eventually Clackamas. But Gateway already is an urban renewal area.

To some extent, pitting low-income outer Portland neighborhoods against the central city for urban renewal dollars feels like an incongruent, apples-to-oranges affair. Even so, we shouldn't abandon our dance partner -- the central urban core -- in the middle of the floor to cut a rug on the fringe of the dance hall.

Can 49 Trump 37?

This November, Oregon voters will decide on a new ballot measure, number 49, designed to take some of the sting out of the horrific, catastrophic Measure 37 that has raped our state's land use laws. Tonight and tomorrow, the environmental nonprofit 1,000 Friends of Oregon will host two campaign-kickoff meetings.

Tonight's, on the East Side, will be held from 6:30 to 8:00pm at the Hollywood Branch Library, 4040 NE Hollywood. Tomorrow's, on the West Side, will be at the same time but held at the Northwest Branch, 2300 NW Thurman.

If you'd like to get involved but can't make either of those meetings, the phone bank is already underway and seeking volunteers at its Lloyd Center headquarters. This Saturday at Colonel Summers Park (SE 17th and Taylor) from 11:00 to 3:00 kicks off canvassing on the issue.

Unless you want rural strip malls to go with the clearcutting and pickup trucks, please consider getting involved. Besides, the activism will be good practice for the real battle: November 2008.

City Council’s Burnside Blitzkrieg Continues

Yesterday the City Council voted unanimously yesterday to begin initial work to convert West Burnside and Northwest Couch into two one-way couplet streets between 2nd and I-405.

Leading the charge on this $80 million endeavor is commissioner Sam Adams and the Department of Transportation. But as Anna Griffin reports in today's Oregonian, city planners and members of the Planning Commission, an advisory group, are against the plan. However, there is also tied to the plan an extension to the streetcar, which most everyone supports.

Steve Duin’s column from today's paper also quotes commissioner Erik Sten saying, “Let’s be blunt. We have a Planning Bureau that’s trying to undermine this project.”

I don’t quite understand. If it’s a major planning decision for the city and it doesn’t originate from the Planning Bureau, isn’t the undermining happening the other way around? If this is best for Portland and the central city in particular, I’d have expected the plan to originate in the Planning Bureau and then be carried out by the Transportation department.

This is just my opinion, of course, but I don’t even find it “blunt” to say that we have a couplet effort that’s undermining the architecture of the city’s planning process.

But where the couplet plan starts is less important than whether it goes through or not. As someone staunchly against the couplet, I can give you some reasons why it shouldn’t happen. And somebody favoring the couplet can give reasons why it’s for the best. But do we want to move forward with a plan that at least half of those weighing in seem to oppose? Is the couplet a plan that those in power should railroad through?

Burnside isn’t a great place for pedestrians. There need to be much better crossings in certain places. However, as the only street in Portland that touches Northwest, Southwest, Northeast and Southeast, I believe it has extra importance as a unifier of the city—a grand boulevard in the tradition of the Champs Elysee.

If Burnside is divided into a couplet with Couch, the dichotomy may allow more room for wide sidewalks and other pedestrian amenities. But one will also be crossing two busy streets instead of one. I think of the places this format exists in Portland—Northeast Broadway and Weidler, Martin Luther King Boulevard and Grand—and I think of islands surrounded by traffic.

If the city council members advocating for the Burnside couplet are so confident about the plan’s viability, why not come to us with a couplet plan not attached to a streetcar extension? I wonder if some supporters are in it for the streetcar and turning the other cheek with the couplet.

The ironic thing about the couplet to me is that, despite whatever claims its supporters make about pedestrian health, this is a plan for automobiles. When you think about all that Portland is known for, does it really fit to radically change the most significant major thoroughfare in the city in a way that's about moving cars? That's why marrying the streetcar plan to the couplet plan is so clever--and (however unwittingly) devious.

Also, I’m continually flummoxed at the notion that there are property owners in Old Town or otherwise along Burnside who are waiting to invest until the couplet is approved. It’s true that the streetcar has been used in the past as a development tool, but I believe the promised value of a couplet to property owners is a purely psychological one. The couplet is news that they can use to spin for condo buyers, but not something that will transform their area—only they will do that, but renovating the buildings they’ve been sitting on.

How about this: we go forward with what everyone agrees on and then take up the couplet if necessary. That means we put a streetcar down Burnside. We take out the trees in the middle of the intersection, put them on the sidewalks and widen them, adding those wide curb extensions at key intersections. We also put traffic lights on Couch to make it more viable as a through street. Those combined things would in my and a lot of people’s minds solve what needs solving. If it doesn’t, we can still make Burnside and Couch one-way at a later date. But for now, why not move forward with solely the measures people agree on?