A Tale of Two Juries

Even though a final undisputed winner is yet to be chosen for Fire Station 1 and Burnside Bridgehead, not to mention the building of the structures themselves, I think it's safe to say at this point that FS1 was a successful competition and Bridgehead was not.

And the reason for that is pretty simple: the difference in juries.

Fire Station 1's jury was balanced, with design experts complementing a developer and a client representative. It included Dave Miller of Seattle architecture firm Miller Hull, Steve McCallium of local industrial design firm Ziba, Francesca Gambetti of Portland developer Shiels Obletz Johnsen, Bing Sheldon of local architecture firm SERA, and Jack Graham of the Fire Bureau. They picked three excellent finalists and we're pretty much assured of a good building.

Burnside Bridgehead's jury consisted of the Portland Development Commission board. As reported today by Ryan Frank in The Oregonian's In Portland section, they are made up of a preacher/bureaucrat (Matt Hennessee), a lawyer (Doug Blomgren), an insurance executive (Eric Parsons), a banker (Janice Wilson), an affordable housing advocate (Bertha Ferran), and PDC executive director Don Mazziotti (although I'm not quite clear if he had a vote). You could make a pretty solid argument that there isn't one person on the PDC board with an expertise or background in design. Their decision to choose Opus over Beam seemed pretty much entirely based on money (not because the Opus plan was a terrible design and Beam's was perfect -- far from it -- but because finances seemed to dominate their criteria).

I'm not saying finance shouldn't have been a factor in the Bridgehead decision -- of course it should have. But the fact that design was seemingly all but ignored (not to mention the overwhelming will of the people) was a real tragedy.

Of course it's not as simple as I make it out. The Bridgehead competition was about selecting a developer, while FS1 is about choosing an architectural plan. But Bridgehead didn't just request qualifications from developers -- it called for architectural plans as well. Which, in turn, were then largely ignored in favor of economics.

If we had it to do over again, I think Bridgehead should have either been just a selection of the developer based on resources, track record and community connections with the architecture figured out later (with PDC and the public's input), or it should have been an architectural design competition preceded by a lot of public deliberation about what the program should be.

But as convoluted and schizophrenic as Bridgehead seems to have been, I'll bet if we had had a more balanced and diverse group making the decision--a group with at least one experienced architect on board--there wouldn't be quite so much sour grapes now. Just look at how well FS1 is turning out: That's the way it could have been with Bridgehead.

Oh, and one other thing: two PDC board members (Wilson and Hennessee) will leave in July, in addition to Mazziotti. Who will Mayor Potter select? If you care about architecture in Portland, I urge you to call, write or email the mayor and urge him to add a design expert to the PDC board.

Comments

[Mike Thelin]

The Allied design is gorgeous!

[The One True b!X]

I somehow missed the RFP for Station 1. Are they allowed to design with the engine doors on Davis instead of on Naito? I would have thought they'd want them on Naito.