Portland Architecture

Broadway as retail core

The new edition of Portland State University’s Real Estate Quarterly is hot off the presses, and this issue has a piece by PSU professor William Macht arguing that Portland is suffering from a downtown retail conundrum:

“We have too much ground floor area seeking too much retail space from too few retailers, who seek to sell too many non-essential goods to too few customers, who increasingly have too little money to buy them and too little space in which to store them.” Other than that, though, everything is great.

Macht cites recent efforts by the mayor’s office and the Portland Development Commission focusing on the downtown retail core, “branding it and putting gateways onto it.” But rather than one retail core for all of downtown, we instead have many smaller retail cores that are too fragmented:

• The downtown retail core, currently defined as SW 2nd to SW 12th Avenues, Washington to Salmon Streets;

• The Brewery Blocks, the retail heart of the 45 blocks of the South Pearl district, from West Burnside to NW Glisan, Broadway to I-405;

• A growing retail corridor on NW Lovejoy from I-405 to NW 9th serving the 45 blocks of the central Pearl district;

• The Museum Place Safeway at SW 10th and Jefferson, acting as the seed for a retail core for the 40 blocks of southwest end of downtown.

• The 48 blocks east of the South Park Blocks between SW Salmon and SW Market that are built around a line of four full-block parks between SW 3rd and 4th Avenues

• The 48 blocks south of Market Street, east of the South Park Blocks, plus the four blocks of University Place

• The 16 blocks at RiverPlace, which comprose a small but isolated retail core.

That's not even mentioning all the retail aggregating on the east side on principal arterial streets like Burnside, Hawthorne, Alberta, Belmont, Fremont, Mississippi and Division.

Rather than a marketing or advertising solution for downtown Portland, what the city instead needs is a consolidation strategy to move retailers to a Broadway corridor.

“It is unrealistic to think that retail space can ever be the public activator that many planners and civic boosters have hoped,” Macht goes on. “Furthermore, we have spent too little time thinking about other ways to activate and use ground level space."

Why make Broadway the connecting retail thread for Portland and focus retail development there?

“Broadway is the most accessible street in the center of downtown with three lanes of through traffic plus continuous parking lanes on both sides of the street,” Macht says. “Stores are very visible and accessible through its entire length. And it is the only downtown street that connects to two major freeways at each end making access to shoppers more convenient than any other. Broadway is also the natural link between the Pearl district and Old Town/Chinatown and it is the terminus of the growing Lovejoy retail corridor.”

Macht also sees the the 12 blocks of the old downtown Post Office as ideal for a major retail space. The post office intersects the Lovejoy corridor and terminates at the North Park Blocks. The size of the Post Office site, he says, could anchor larger diversified anchor retailers not represented downtown. Although that could mean a big chain store. Do we want that?

“The Broadway strategy is really one that builds on history,” the professor adds. “It is clear that Broadway was conceived as the Main Street of Portland. It is the only street in the center of the long rectangle of the city that connects across its own bridge to the east side of Portland, where it changes its course from north/south to east west. It is the street on which the main Post Office and Union Station were built, where the Federal Customs House was located, where the Benson Hotel and other main hotels were built, where the elaborate U.S. Bank and other major banks were sited, where the iconic Jackson Tower stands in the precise center of Broadway between PSU and the Post Office Blocks, and where every major theater was built.”

You can read a PDF file of the entire Real Estate Quarterly here.

Bestseller or return for refund? Powell's unveils design for new entrance to flagship store

As reported by the Daily Journal of Commerce and the Portland Mercury recently, Powell's Books has submitted its plans by local architect Ernest Munch to the Design Commission for review. That doesn't mean the project will begin anytime soon, for Powells may wait until the economy recovers. Even so, based on past postings I've written about the store, Powells is a good listener and it would be helpful to give them public feedback.

The new design would encompass about 28,000 square feet and three stories, essentially replacing the store's southeast corner at 10th and Burnside. A signature element would be a large revolving 15-by-18-foot cube as part of the facade that would display art.

"We consider (the current) building as a vanilla wrapper and when you open it you find something delightful," Miriam Sontz, Powell's CEO of strategic development, told the DJC. "This is a more exhibitionist building. As a business, we're excited about it."

Munch has designed two other stores for Powells, at Cedar Hills Crossing and at the Portland International Airport. I believe he's also done previous design work on the Burnside store. Looking at his portfolio, though, Munch's got a lot more experience designing houses and wineries. There are no other commercial projects listed in his portfolio. For all I know, Munch is a brilliant architect. But if Powells really wants to create more of an "exhibitionist" building as Sontz described, I wonder if a more experienced, acclaimed architect might have been considered, at least as a collaborator with Munch. What might other talented architects with bigger, more acclaimed portfolios like Brad Cloepfil, Works Partnership, Skylab, Holst, or Thomas Hacker done here? And is it too late for Powell's to consider bringing one of them on to work with Munch?

I love Powells, and I hesitate to say anything bad about the proposed design rendering. It's hard to tell definitively from a couple small computer renderings how the store would turn out. But I also have to be honest about being underwhelmed in what I've seen so far. I'd have preferred a new entrance with more elegance. The cube seems like a gimmick to me, but worse yet the rest of the facade design seems clunky.  I don't want to vilify this architect, or say he's not up to the job. But because this is Powells, the stakes are higher. So many of us consider this store a kind of second home. Is this design up to snuff?

Here's one more idea to leave you with, or perhaps Powell's if they're listening: how about some type of grassroots design competition to determine the look of a new store?

Doorknobs and Stained Glass:Visiting Old Portland

Several years ago (back when he was on NBC) I remember David Letterman reading a Top 10 list of rejected Jeopardy! categories. Along with titles like "Things That Ooze" and "Things That Only I Know", I remember one of the fake categories was "Doorknob Lore".

Bret Hodgert would probably do well at that last category. He's the proprietor of a new architectural hardware and salvage shop on Southeast Division and 41st I visited a few days ago. Like vintage clothing, Portland has long been a place where you could find lots of fun old architectural items, whether it's at The Rebuilding Center, Rejuvenation, or even some of the older hardware stores. Hodgert's place isn't nearly as big as some, but it's a fun place to browse - almost like a museum of century-old lamps, doors, chandeliers, windows and, yes, doorknobs.

Hodgert has a secret he won't tell: where he gets all these pristine Victorian and other old home hardware and housewares. His one tip-off is that he regularly visits towns in the Midwest, where there are sadly countless old homes in disrepair with valuable old parts most likely to end up at the dump, unless somebody like him rides in to the rescue.

One of my favorites in the shop is a stained glass piece with grapes in the center. Surely it's a religious thing more than a drink thing - water into wine and such. But some winery really ought to shell out the bucks for this piece - it's gorgeous, and would make an ideal centerpiece at somebody's tasting room.