John's Landing to parachute landings: John Gray is Architecture Foundation of Oregon's latest honoree

The Architectural Foundation of Oregon has announced its annual Honored Citizen. And no, this doesn’t have anything to do with a discounted meal at Shari’s restaurant and pie house. Instead, it’s a kind lifetime achievement award for those who have made a lasting contribution to the built environment, either here in Portland or elsewhere in the state. Past honorees include urban naturalist/advocate Mike Houck, architect Robert Frasca, philanthropist Jean Vollum, and landscape architect Barbara Fealy.

Although he won a Bronze Star in World War II parachuting behind enemy lines with the Army’s famed 82nd Airborne division, locally developer John Gray is best known for resort projects like Sunriver in central Oregon near Bend and Salishan on the coast just south of Lincoln City. Each is a remarkable and lasting demonstration of how Gray patronized talented, noteworthy local architects like Van Evra Bailey and John Storrs, the latter of whom designed Salishan.

In Portland, Gray was also a developer of John’s Landing, named not after himself but the B. P. John Furniture Company, the largest of several furniture manufacturers along the west side of the Willamette. John Storrs’ designs helped Gray and others transform the area into Portland’s first riverside residential and commercial development.

As it happens, I’ve been thinking about John’s Landing lately because I’ve been getting weekly acupuncture treatments on Southeast Macadam. (Remember when they used to call South Waterfront “North Macadam”, by the way?) Although one certainly has to respect and applaud the way John’s Landing was redeveloping relatively central riverfront property decades before it became widespread, I don’t find it a pleasant place to spend time. 

It’s unfortunate: This is a major arterial highway, and cities have to have them. Even if there were a streetcar all the way to Lake Oswego and lots of commuters were using it, we’d still need a four-lane road going south from Portland. And because of the hilly terrain, there aren’t that many alternatives. It’s not as if there are other streets on a grid to diffuse the traffic. So I don’t blame drivers in this regard or the need for the highway going through here. 

However, this is not a pedestrian friendly place, either in the relationship of the sidewalks to the busy street or the architecture.  Some of the houses in John’s Landing are very nice, and so is Willamette Park. But from OPB’s ugly and banal corporate headquarters to the car dealerships to the lowest-common-denominator restaurants (excepting the yummy breakfast spot Café du Berry and a couple others), it’s unfortunate that in pedestrian-friendly Portland that south Macadam doesn’t feel more pleasant to walk or shop at. I don’t mean to say that it’s a hopeless string of strip malls and fast food, but John’s Landing could use a dose of North Mississippi and even the Pearl. Don’t you think?

This is not meant to take anything away from John Gray, either. Quite the contrary. He was a visionary, it seems, and one who patronized some of the best local architects of their time. Particularly if one lived in Oregon during the 1970s or 80s, when there was far lest development on the coast or east of the Cascades, places like Salishan and Sunriver were distinctive places that felt as much like California’s famed Sea Ranch development: modern but born from nature and a sense of place. 

And John’s Landing seems capable of taking on new life given how the space between this neighborhood and Portland is filling out (South Waterfront), including perhaps a streetcar to be extended through. What could we do with John’s Landing to compliment the strides that John Gray and his architects made in the last generation? And to whom can this airborne builder pass the baton to?

Comments

[ws]

Good question. Very good question. The freeway-like Macadam really kills any kind of peaceful ambiance that might otherwise be possible right near that road. Only 4-5 blocks up, at Corbett, it gets really nice. In fact, if you drive, or have the muscle to walk up the hill to where Corbett ends, there's some very nice views. Too bad Macadam couldn't be a little more like that.

[Frank Dufay]

OPB’s ugly and banal corporate headquarters

Far, far nicer looking, however, then the rubber manufacturing plant previously on that site. Many years ago I worked a Desma injection molding machine there...a nasty, brutish place reminiscent of the early industrial revolution.

[Aneeda]

Why do Portlanders freak out whenever they see a four lane road/highway? Many American and European cities have four lane roads that are brimming with people, commerce, and all kinds of interesting activities. It's this kind of thinking that has created the Burnside couplet debacle. Every street has a scale and it is up to city planners and architects to create buildings that respect and enhance that scale.

[ws]

I'd love Macaddam's 4 lane road if there just weren't so many fast moving cars traveling on it. Aneeda, so what do you think might be a good way to deal with that situation? Maybe some traffic calming hillocks along the whole thing would do the trick.

[dobrien]

I, too, am conflicted about that area but not because of SW Macadam. Instead, it's what's been created on the river side of the four-lane corridor: we have a nice walkway along the river's edge, but we also have a bunch of low-density '70s housing/condo developments surrounded by gates, berms and parking lots; the housing along the river (from River Place to OBP) is about as community- and pedestrian-friendly as Suburbia USA.

[kyle]

certainly pulling the grid to the water to break up those gated like garden condos would help tie the city to the river. parking the entire length of macadam on both sides along with street medians would help. Medians not just for trees, but wide enough for people to wait and cross in moves - frogger style. one of my favorite roads in my travels is Passig d' Gracia in Barcelona. This one may be as many as 10 lanes wide, but broken up three or four times, and it is buzzing with activity at the edges and within - not b/c it is a european thing, but b/c of the scale of the frontage - they engage the street, and there are layers to the street - furniture, kiosks, subway entrances, trees, cars, busses, and people, and some bitchin' buildings to help. typical roads here are done with traffic engineering sensitivity - they lack the small scale fabric that makes streets habitable that which in turn slow cars down by creating visual interest and activity. i don't think Macadam is hopeless - quite the opposite, with all the empty frontage and parking lots, there is a lot to take and give back to making a nice thoroughfare. once north/central/south waterfront bridges downtown to John's Landing, i think you will see that area better connected and as such more desirable - hopefully then we can improve on what is there.

[Vern Rifer]

The observations about today's Johns Landing are correct but there is a ground swell of interest in changing that. Metro created LOPAC a citizen committee to study extending the Portland Streetcar through JL to Lake Oswego.
LOPAC and the neighborhood ,condominium and business associations are united in seeing the streetcar extension as an opportunity to change JL from a highway right of way to a more pedestrian friendly neighborhood. PDOT and Planning are working together with the JL interests to move the streetcar into Macadam, widen the sidewalks, slow traffic and activate the buildings along the street. And there will be significant new development all along that right of way. Also importantly it would connect JL and the South Waterfront as one neighborhood.

Interested parties should contact PDOT to get involved.