Portland Architecture

Streetcar loop wins federal funds approval

US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced today that the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has approved the Portland Streetcar Loop Project for funding. It's a tremendous victory for the city's mass transit future.

Without getting into partisan politics, it's clear having a new administration in power at the national level has helped make the streetcar a reality. Although since debuting in 2001 the Streetcar has been extended from PSU to South Waterfront, not much substantial progress has been made. In 2003, Earl Blumenauer wrote a law to create a federal funding program that would help communities develop streetcar projects, but the Bush administration refused to implement this legislation, more or less halting progress on the Portland Streetcar Loop project and several others nationwide.

Streetcars of course have a much longer history in this and other American cities in the 19th and 20th Centuries before General Motors colluded to buy out and eradicate them. The image below is the cover of a book about Portland Streetcars by Richard Thompson (assumedly a different Richard Thompson than the singer-songwriter). 

Now, though, Portland is not only getting a substantial new part to the streetcar system, but it's paying off to be a pioneer in this new-old mass transit mode. "Since debuting the first modern streetcar in 2001, the Portland region remains the undisputed leader in the national streetcar renaissance," Congressman Earl Bluemenauer said in a prepared statement today.

"In fact, Clackamas County’s very own Oregon Iron Works will soon be unveiling the first American-built streetcar in 58 years. With 80 cities around the county poised to make their own investments in streetcar projects, the manufacturing potential for streetcars and the economic opportunities for Oregon are tremendous."

With the streetcar loop going up and down Grand Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the Central Eastside could begin changing dramatically, especially when you figure in the new MAX and pedestrian bridge that will be built adjacent to the streetcar loop's southern edge. Grand and MLK are under-utilized and under-developed given their central city location and role as principal thoroughfares (the latter of which probably hinders a pleasant pedestrian setting). Although most of the Central Eastside is zoned for industrial and business, I believe MLK and Grand are zoned for mixed-use development and allow housing.

In his presentation to the American Institute of Architects a few weeks ago, outgoing City of Portland chief urban design strategist Arun Jain also identified the area around OMSI and the coming Willamette river rail/pedestrian bridge as a node for future high-density growth. In the future, perhaps this particular portion of the Central Eastside could be re-zoned to allow more growth. That would ease some of the pressure on the broader district to transform by letting it happen around OMSI, and in another ten or twenty years could help make a stronger case for ultimately dismantling the east bank freeway overpass to divert Interstate 5 underground and free the east waterfront for redevelopment.

After the streetcar loop comes, the next step will be east-west lines on some of the east side's major streets. Burnside is already involved. I've heard that Southeast Belmont also is set to get a streetcar line, but not Hawthorne, which I personally think is a big, big mistake. What other streets should have a streetcar line: Powell, Division, NE Broadway, Stark, Fremont, Alberta?

Coliseum threat, Rose Quarter folly gaining traction in national, international media

The proposed demolition of the modern architecture landmark Memorial Coliseum has been steadily been gaining attention beyond Portland and Oregon's borders.

The London-based World Architecture News is the latest to pick up the scent of folly, hubris and ignorance coming out of the Coliseum demo plan. Check out this editorial by WAN's Matthew Freedman:

In 1965, along with 20,000 others, Allen Ginsberg saw the Beatles play Skidmore Owings and Merrill’s Memorial Coliseum in Portland, Oregon, and then he wrote a poem about it: “the million children / … / become one animal / in the New World Auditorium”.

In 2009 the Coliseum finds itself at that difficult age. Threatened with the prospect of demolition in recent weeks, it appears not quite old enough to be widely perceived as venerable heritage. Yet it’s not so young or unimpressive that it hasn’t found a nostalgic place in the hearts of locals, and an aesthetic one amongst architects and design buffs.

The place was only five years old when the Beatles invaded, and Ginsberg clearly saw its openness and modernity – the windowed curtain walls sitting around a concrete arena - as part of the same spirit of optimism and youthfulness embodied in the band’s triumph.

Yet their apparent absence as factors in the decision-making process – until dissenters raised their voice in objection - highlights the bemusing public sector thought processes that often accompany this type of redevelopment. 

And the new policy of a renovated, repurposed Coliseum and new stadium elsewhere comes with a familiar caveat: it will cost millions more from the public purse than the original plan. This places the guilty burden of increased spending for taxpayers on the victorious objectors, and somehow implies that they may be as much a nuisance as a legitimate voice of dissent.

The same tensions between preservation, progress, and public taste get played out all over the world, all the time. Still, the parallels point up the truth that the State often falls down on preserving crucial smaller examples of enlightened public building. Their survival so often depends on the vigilance of an interested community, even where this boils down to simple bafflement at why huge change is needed. But it’s easy for inertia and other priorities to win out over that. And therefore it’s encouraging when structures that are still barely on the radar of public architectural taste can be the focus of a fight.

Meanwhile, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has also gotten in the act with this blog post from Portland's Val Ballestrom of the Architectural Heritage Center:

A thought occurred to me many months ago that if we cannot review demolitions in Portland because of their potential historic value, perhaps its time we review demolitions for their impacts on environmental, social, and cultural sustainability. This is especially important in light of the fact that Portland’s Historic Resource Inventory is more than 25 years old, with no current funding on the table to have it updated. The first inventory remains incomplete and outdated as numerous neighborhoods were never surveyed or have since been annexed into the city limits. This means that Portlanders are potentially losing historic resources - we don’t even know we have - on a weekly basis. And all of this can occur without review or notification.

Still, I try to remain hopeful. The current controversy over the proposed demolition of our “glass palace,” the Memorial Coliseum, has brought to light the inherent connections between preservation and sustainability. Letters from architects, university professors, the US Green Building Council, the National Trust, and my own organization - the Bosco-Milligan Foundation - have emphasized both the architectural significance of the building and the un-sustainable solution of demolishing, once again, a perfectly usable building. I hope that the yet-to-be-determined outcome of this controversy begins a new chapter in Portland, one that truly makes the connection between preservation and sustainability by recognizing the negative impacts of needless building demolition.

Kulongoski's CRC push: is design really only "aesthetics"?

On Wednesday Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski made a kind of stump speech for the new Interstate 5 bridge over the Columbia River.

Kulongoski was there to announce that about 27,000 new jobs may be created by the project as a way of kick-starting what he seems to fear may be increasing gridlock and opposition to the $4 billion plan.

Troubling to anyone who has seen the atrocious preliminary designs for the Columbia spans, however, should be Kulongoski's dismissive attitude about very real design concerns. In the press conference he spoke of "aesthetics" as if design is some kind of superficial concern.

“The aesthetics should not be driving this conversation,” Kulongoski said from his press conference at a MAX station near the proposed bridge. “The economy should. And the thousands and thousands of family wage jobs when we start construction of this new bridge.”

Even as a supporter of the Columbia River Crossing plan (with reservations), it's dangerous to think of a leader like the governor trying to push through what may be a very, very regrettable bridge design. This bridge will be with us for generations. It will be potentially a symbol for the region. If Kulongoski's efforts shoehorn through an ugly, oversized bridge solely out of short-term economic concerns and manipulating those public emotions in order to force a political gain, it will not reflect well on his legacy.

Kulongoski could be of more help working to assure that the bridge not simply happen but happen the right way. This project needs a design competition, Mr. Governor, in order to assure we don't build another Glenn Jackson Bridge, the eyesore that carries I-205 over the river. The project also needs Pearson Air Field to be "de-commissioned," to use one of Mayor Adams's phrases, so the bridge can have more than pancake-level height. And this project needs a discussion focused on more than budget and the amount of car lanes.

Although there are many, many stakeholders and advisors weighing in on the project, and a lot of them may be unappreciative of the lasting value of design, there are some people on the Urban Design Advisory Group who know better: people like Jeff Stuhr of Holst Architecture, Carrie Schilling of Works Partnership, and Jane Hansen of Lango Hansen Landscape Architects. But will the powers that be on CRC listen to them? If it were up to yours truly, I'd put more faith in the expertise and instincts of this trio, at least as it relates to the bridge, than I would Ten Pin Ted.

To build the right bridge, let's make sure leaders like the governor and the mayor know design is more than exterior aesthetics and attaching pieces of things we like. You can't slap wind turbines on the bridge railing and call it green. And you can't leave the design process up to the bureaucrats and call it anything close to an icon. And icons aren't superficial desires, but anchors of all the economic, cultural and social prosperity we seek.

"Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like...People think it's this veneer. Design is how it works." -Steve Jobs

Emmons talks Coliseum to City Council and in Oregonian op-ed

As reported by the Portland Mercury's Matt Davis earlier this morning, architect Stuart Emmons addressed City Council today about how saving Memorial Coliseum was the way for Portland to "walk the talk" on being a sustainable design leader.

"We are teed up to become a leading sustainability capital and design capital, but it will take more than just talk," Emmons told the Council. "We will be judged by our actions. Everything we do and are involved in should back up our words physically. We are not doing this in a coordinated, thorough way right now."

"Let's preserve Memorial Coliseum. Not only say 'preserve' it, but really preserve it. Preserve its design integrity respectfully and make it into a sustainable best practice," he said. "Good sustainable practices call for building reuse. We will be nationally chastised for tearing down Memorial Coliseum, or marring its design integrity, no matter how we spin it. We will be a poster child for what not to do. It's the wrong message to send."

Emmons offered the Council a handout filled with pictures of the building as well as New York's Penn Station, the symbolic lesson in preservation from the past. It was enough to garner praise from Commissioner Nick Fish after Emmons' testimony. His brochure also included a picture of a 1960 Corvette, with text saying it "needs new tiers, a new carburetor, and a new paint job. Should we junk it? Or should we restore it?"

He also made three arguments about finances for the Coliseum.

First, restoring Memorial Coliseum is, as Davis described, "a perfect shovel-ready project", and restoring it is likely to be more aesthetically pleasing, and cheaper, than building a replacement.

Second, the $200,000 to $500,000 the coliseum is losing is "peanuts relatively," he said, "and clearly under a new deal and new management, Memorial Coliseum can easily pay for itself."

Third, Emmons urged the council to consider the economic value lost by a demolished Coliseum. "The assessor values the Colieseum at $57.1million, which is a fraction of its replacement value. Has the Paulson team added the $57.1 million to their $55 million?" he asked.

Emmons also had a wonderfully written opinion piece in the Sunday Oregonian, providing a much-needed counter balance to the editorial board's advocacy for the landmark Coliseum's destruction. Here is the text of the architect's essay:

I walked around Memorial Coliseum at sunrise today. Its setting on North Interstate Avenue is amazing, I never noticed this view before: a huge glass wall hanging over a landscaped berm. The plaza we all know was serene at that hour. As I talked to a security guard about the building he was patrolling, a smile came to his face. Memorial Coliseum is so special to Portland and should be saved and restored.

Designed by the Portland office of the firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill in 1960, the coliseum is an excellent example of International Style Modern architecture. Along with Pietro Belluschi's Equitable Building (on Southwest Sixth and Stark) and the Standard Insurance Building (on Southwest Fifth and Taylor), Memorial Coliseum is one of Portland's three premier Modern buildings.

No other Modern buildings in our city rise to this level of high art. The three are different in their approach and use but share one of the main tenets of Modernism: a deceivingly simple, powerful expression of a concept through the use of form, proportion, structure and composition.

In the case of Memorial Coliseum and the Standard, their sites also become a key part of the composition: the Standard set in a passive plaza, with gardens and fountains; Memorial Coliseum now set on a plaza on one side and the landscape berm on the other, setting the stage for a masterwork.

Great examples of this high level of achievement in other cities would include works by Le Corbusier (such as Pavillon Suisse in Paris), Skidmore Owings and Merrill (such as the Lever House in New York), Mies van der Rohe (such as the Seagram Building in New York) and, on a large scale, Oscar Niemeyer's Brasilia in Brazil. If the coliseum were a painting, a work of fine art, it would occupy a special place in our art museum and be cherished.

The beauty and sculptural power of Memorial Coliseum derive from its simplicity. Complex problems of function and structure have been culled down to the most basic, minimal expression through an amazing level of rigor, engineering and passion: a huge, magnificently simple, beautifully proportioned, exquisitely detailed glass box encasing a gracefully curved form. It is this contrast between the geometric and the organic forms that gives "the saucer in the box" its true power and brilliance.

Outside, the compositional ideas continue, with a curved canopy set in front of the box, the second organic form, and below, two sunken plazas, one holding a fountain that quiets the space in front of a memorial wall carrying the names of people from Oregon who gave their lives in war.

Back to the box. The box is enormous, and yet it has only four columns. Huge trusses span the whole interior, keeping the interior free for the graceful seating bowl. And the best and unique part of this building are the curtains around the bowl. When open, sunlight pours into the arena, negating the need for most artificial light. This is an extraordinary space, a curved bowl hovering in a glass box for shelter.

Walk out of the arena, and one glass box is in a towering space of glass and form overlooking the river and city beyond. No other public building in our city takes advantage of its site so well and offers such breathtaking views of the skyline. Watching the sun set over Portland from Memorial Coliseum gives me a great feeling about my city.

And so, we have not cared for this treasure as it deserves. No worries. It is still here and ready when we are, when we dare to take the leap. Many Modern buildings are in the same state. But, many have been restored to reach their original intent and grandeur. 

Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim and Saarinen's TWA terminal at Kennedy Airport just went through major renovations that have brought these buildings back to their original magnificence. Skidmore Owings and Merrill's 1952 Lever House went through a major restoration and now it is back to its best condition. These are just a few examples.

Look no farther than to Portland's City Hall and see a wonderful building that was given new life with a comprehensive historic restoration and seismic upgrade, completed in 1998. We love coming into our city building and are jealous of those who are fortunate to work in it.

Imagine a reconditioned Memorial Coliseum glistening against the evening sky, its beautiful curved form inside. People all about. Imagine the pride we all would have in our city, the city that preserves and cherishes its history, its past successes, and looks to its future. This is our Portland.

Great buildings in great cities need to be cherished and taken care of, for they are the riches of the city and tell the story of our place. Memorial Coliseum is part of our history, and one of our treasures.

Memorial Coliseum: City Council vote May 7 (and other updates)

As reported Monday by the Daily Journal of Commerce's Sam Bennett, the City Council has scheduled a vote for next Thursday, May 7 Wednesday, May 6, on a pre-development agreement to go ahead with renovations for PGE Park in order to make it ready for Major League Soccer by 2011.

How does this relate to Memorial Coliseum? If the vote on PGE Park is de-coupled from the issue of building a baseball stadium at the Rose Quarter, that's at least a temporary victory in that it allows the soccer plan to go through while the Coliseum and Rose Quarter get figured out. If the vote also stipulates a building of the Portland Beavers' minor league baseball stadium in a particular place other than the Memorial Coliseum/Rose Quarter site, like Lents Park or the Terminal 1 site in Northwest Portland near the Fremont Bridge, that's of course the ultimate victory for the Coliseum.

One thing to say about the baseball stadium itself: Those of us involved in the grassroots effort to save Memorial Coliseum have more or less decided that it's folly for us to get too involved in debating the merits of any particular non-Rose Quarter location for the baseball stadium. Lents, for example, has many things going for it, but like any site, there are complicating factors. To work towards preserving Memorial Coliseum is our greater focus. And if City Council decides that the Coliseum is untouchable, or at least not to be demolished, then the baseball stadium location becomes moot to our preservation effort.

Although much of the debate about saving the Coliseum has been focused on aesthetics, the preservation debate also requires pragmatic talk about economics.

Portland State University real estate professor William Macht's research shows that the Coliseum has tremendous untapped economic potential in its current form: as an arena. If the City were to re-write the management agreement so there's no longer a disincentive for Oregon Arena Corporation (the Blazers' Rose Garden and Coliseum manager) to turn a profit on the Coliseum, it could host many more events and thus bring in revenue for long-overdue repairs.

The Blazers are said to be seeking an open-air music venue. In June, July and August, that would be terrific. But what about the rain-inclined other nine months of the year? A better plan would be to turn Memorial Coliseum into an indoor-outdoor venue. Perhaps the riverfront facade could be opened up, or even a retractible roof installed.

The Blazers have also discussed putting their planned "Live!" entertainment in the Coliseum, mostly restaurants and bars. Making this work is not an impossibility, but there is strong reason to be very skeptical about how this would taint the Coliseum's architecture. A better plan would be to make the Coliseum, still as an arena, into the centerpiece of a redevelopment scheme surrounding it. Put the "Live!" stuff on the river to better integrate the Rose Quarter wit the huge untapped potential of the waterfront at the old Thunderbird motel, or on the grounds of the Rose Quarter between and around the two arenas.

As far as anyone knows, the City Council vote comes down to a split with Commissioner Dan Saltzman in the middle. Amanda Fritz and Nick Fish seem to be against Memorial Coliseum's demolition, while Commissioner Randy Leonard and Mayor Sam Adams are either for its demolition or undecided, given that Lents could still be the chosen destination for the baseball stadium.

From Adams' perspective, the Rose Quarter initially seemed like the means for getting a baseball stadium deal done. But to his credit, the Mayor listened to the thundering chorus of voices opposing Memorial Coliseum's demolition. (Polls by KEX radio and the Portland Tribune found a more than 8-to-1 opposition to the demolition plan.) It probably would best serve the mayor to get any kind of deal done, be it a baseball stadium in Lents or elsewhere, before the June 30 date arrives and the chance for his opponents to issue a recall campaign. The mayor risks further incurring the ire of those seeking proper time for a more drawn-out Portland style process if he goes too fast, but having this issue resolved would serve him even better.

Meanwhile, those seeking to join the Memorial Coliseum preservation effort are encouraged to keep the pressure on City Council by emailing all 5 members and asking them to save this gem.

To that end, as you can see in the pictures accompanied in this post (the first two were taken by the legendary architectural photographer Julius Schulman - the latter scanned as best we could over a two-page fold, and the final one is of the Coliseum's construction), we're continuing to unearth pictures of our beloved Coliseum that better articulate what make it special. Not only is this a pure and beautiful glass box, but watching an event in the seating bowl can be done during daytime with natural light pouring into the space. Think about it for a minute: of all the basketball games or arts performances or political rallies you've ever been to anywhere in the world, how many of them could daylight one of those performances?

City proposes new permitting process allowing murals to escape advertising regulation

For many years murals were a welcome and much enjoyed presence in Portland. But when advertisers got more aggressive about putting up billboards, electric signs and, yes, murals of their own, non-commercial murals fell victim to the strictures of regulating crass ads. (The picture above is of a mural on Hawthorne Boulevard called "Share the Road" by Sara Stout.)

Now the City of Portland hopes to bring to life the art of public murals once again through a new permitting process. With the aid of a Murals Working Group and other stakeholders, the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is proposing a new process that allows murals to be permitted separately from sign regulations or from the Regional Arts and Culture Council's Public Art program.

Original art murals meeting specific definitions and placement requirements will be allowed through a new mural permit.  The permits will be administered through the Bureau of Development Services in their Development Services Center.

“The city should not restrict artists from doing art,” said Planning Commissioner Howard Shapiro. “Murals enhance the community. They are a civic treasure that should be encouraged. The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability has released a proposed draft for the Original Art Murals Project in anticipation of the Planning Commission's Public Hearing on this project to be held on May 12, 2009, at 12:30 p.m. The draft and more information can be found online.

City Council will likely review and vote on the proposal in mid- to late June. BDS plans to hold an open house on the administrative rules governing the procedures in July, and the new program should become effective in August.

Habitat for Humanity takes the LEED with young designers' help

Although the open house to celebrate Habitat for Humanity’s first LEED-Platinum rated project was held a month ago, it’s not to late to applaud the Webster Street project.

Consisting of two duplexes (a 900 square foot two-bedroom and a 1200 square foot four-bedroom), the Webster projects are 40 percent more efficient than code requires. They are the first LEED-rated Habitat homes of any kind in Oregon, let alone Platinum-level, and two of only a handful nationwide.

The homes were built with a slough of volunteers and professionals lending their time, money and efforts: Walsh Construction, Cascadia Green Building Council, and Bank of America, among others.

But particular credit goes to the two young designers involved: Scott Mooney and David Posada.

Mooney works at THA Architecture and Posada at GBD Architects, but they became friends while attending the University of Oregon’s masters degree program for architecture (they graduated in 2005).

The homes grew out of a design competition for young architects sponsored by the Cascadia Region Green Building Council in 2007 to design a LEED-certified duplex on a lot owned by Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro East.

“Over the course of the last 18 months, David and I have been volunteering our time on nights and weekends (independent, but with the full moral and resource support, of our respective firms) to adapt our concept into something more feasible and affordable that would allow Habitat to fully realize this unique project,” Mooney told me recently.

Habitat for Humanity already builds relatively efficient homes with Energy Star appliances and Earth Advantage sustainability methods. But the Webster Street projectm even with donated goods and services, was more expensive and required greater technical expertise and collaboration.

Stepping up, Bank of America gave $75,000 to help pay for materials, and their employees regularly volunteered to work on the construction. Just as importantly, Walsh Construction provided a pro-bono site supervisor (not usually a presence on simple Habitat homes) and recruited skilled construction-industry volunteers.

The Webster duplexes are built with metal roofs and structural insulated panels, which drastically reduce heat gain and loss through the building. Two cisterns capture rainwater for irrigation in the summer. Stone for the shared courtyard came from the driveway of the house that once stood on the site. The utility room houses a 50-gallon water heater that is so efficient it warms the house through a floor heating system while providing hot water for other uses. The homes have concrete floors with radiant heat. Countertops in the smaller home are Paperstone, richly colored and made of 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper in Hoquiam, Washington.

It’s enticing to think of a future in which Habitat for Humanity builds all of its homes to LEED specifications (certified or not) and involves real architects. Were we to pair great design and construction with the hugely beneficial efforts of Habitat, our community could help revolutionize what is already a very laudable nonprofit.

In the meantime, lets give our thanks and praise to the many professional and amateur volunteers making this project happen, but especially to Mooney and Posada for both a a transcendent design and effort.

Shame on Commissioner Randy Leonard (updated)

In today's Oregonian, Randy Leonard is quoted as saying the following:

"It's amazing to me that some people have persuaded others that the Coliseum is some kind of an architectural gem when it's in reality a child only a mother could love. The dirty little secret is that it's ugly. Somebody needed to say that."

Commissioner Leonard, why do you think somebody needed to say something so ignorant?

Don't take my word for it that the Coliseum is a gem. Ask the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the American Institute of Architects, or the US Green Building Council. They've all called for the building to be saved. Look at coffee table books like "Modernism Rediscovered," in which the Coliseum is the only Portland building pictured in a selection of American architectural gems.

Commissioner Leonard certainly also sees himself as a friend to Veterans. Does he think the historic building our city built to honor them is really ugly? Is the pride millions of Portlanders felt when it opened ugly too? How about the sacrifices our veterans made to earn that honor?

Commissioner Leonard, will you call it ugly to all the veterans who showed up at an open house earlier this month with Mayor Adams to tell him to save the Coliseum?

What about the people you've been working with to save John Yeon's Portland Oregon Visitors Center? That's a very, very fine work of modern architecture that's in a very similar vein  to Memorial Coliseum -- although not even remotely close to being in the same zip code of significance.

Commissioner Leonard has developed a reputation as the Council's voice for the everyman, the blue collar vote. But now he is patronizing that voting base.

Previous generations called iron-framed building like those in the Skidmore historic district ugly. Now if we'd saved them we'd have a Portland version of Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

Previous generations called Victorian houses ugly. If Portland had saved more of these beauties, we'd have a famous collection like San Francisco's.

Randy Leonard is falling for the same seductive ignorance that has plagued historic preservation since its inception. He should know better.

Commissioner, you may not appreciate Memorial Coliseum's one-of-a-kind glass curtain wall surrounding the arena, or how the seating bowl sits completely detached from the rest of the building, allowing natural light to pour in like no other arena in the nation.

And getting aside from aesthetics for a moment, let us also remember how Oregon Arena Corporation's management agreement for the Coliseum screws the City of Portland by setting up the building to die a slow death from disrepair and untapped usage potential.

Since I'm a little younger than you, Commissioner, if Memorial Coliseum is razed, I look forward to the day when I can stand at the site of the building with your grandchildren and said, "You know, he actually said it was ugly. Boy, history sure proved him wrong. Look at the monstrosity here now. It's too bad, because your grandpa was a strong leader, and wanted the best for Portland."

UPDATE: After a few hours of reflection and exchanging an email with the Commissioner, I would like to amend my comments. It was overly hyperbolic and too emotional of me to accuse Randy Leonard of "arrogant ignorance." I apologize to Commissioner Leonard for that. He's a good guy and working very hard for Portland.

It was frustrating and seemed pretty insulting to Portland and all those who care greatly for Memorial Coliseum to hear it called "ugly" by a member of City Council who I'd expect to be above such things (unlike yours truly). When I originally wrote of Leonard displaying "arrogant ignorance," it was an attempt to return his right cross with an uppercut. However, this debate is hurt, not helped, by getting personal and ugly.

While I apologize personally to Randy Leonard, I do very much believe he should take up our group on a standing offer to take him on a tour of Memorial Coliseum. I remain convinced he'd change his mind upon giving the building a real look.

Baseball stadium back to Lents? Saltzman as Coliseum savior?

Local media from the Portland Mercury to Willamette Week to The Oregonian are reporting that Southeast Portland's outer Lents neighborhood--the site originally envisioned for the Portland Beavers' new minor league baseball stadium--may be back in play. (The photo above is by Matthew Ginn of Homestead Images.)

The change comes because the City Council's swing vote on this matter, Dan Saltzman, appeared to be against the plan to raze Memorial Coliseum - or at least to do so quickly and without proper public process.

Also becoming more of a consensus now is that Memorial Coliseum and a new baseball stadium can't me made to fit in the Rose Quarter. So if baseball comes to the Rose Quarter, Memorial Coliseum is out.

Lents is actually a great location for the baseball team. And not just because putting the stadium there could help save the Coliseum.

A stadium at Lents park would help re-invigorate a long ailing neighborhood. The people who live there are in favor of the baseball park in Lents by a considerable margin. The park would also be connected to a new, nearby MAX stop along the coming I-205 line. And, of course, it's right next to I-205.

Merritt Paulson never opposed the idea of Lents Park for the baseball stadium, but he was concerned about its potential because about 60 percent of Beavers game attendees are said to come from the west side.

But attendance at Beavers games now is abysmal. Maybe if they moved the Beavers to Lents park there would be fewer people from the West side coming to games -- but a LOT more people from the East side coming. After all, Gresham, Vancouver, Clackamas, Oregon City, and other suburbs would be a lot closer to the stadium. It's arguable that attendance for the Beavers might actually increase at a Lents site.

What's more, some of the City Council members currently on opposing sides might actually come together for a Lents ballpark. Randy Leonard, perceived as Adams' biggest ally on the plan to put a baseball park in the Rose Quarter and demolish the classic internationally renowned modernist landmark Memorial Coliseum, is said to be willing to support a Lents stadium, and he has explicitly been supportive of that idea in the past. And Dan Saltzman, who is the swing vote on the Rose Quarter, has also said he would support a Lents ballpark, and even without the waiting period being called for on the baseball at Rose Quarter idea. Hell, Lents could actually get a unanimous city council vote.

It's not to say there wouldn't be challenges in Lents. Parking is chief among them, although I believe that is a solvable problem. Tell me a poor neighborhood with lots of surface parking lots wouldn't see business opportunity in selling parking spaces. And then there's the fact that Lents will have excellent mass-transit access.

Let's also look at the Lents site for the baseball park in the context of inner and outer City of Portland investments. We already presumably have millions of dollars that will be going into PGE Park to convert it to a soccer stadium downtown. It's only fitting that the other ballpark be in more of an outer neighborhood to balance out the distribution of projects and funds.

One of the questions Dan Saltzman will face now, I think, is whether it's worth pursuing Lents as the solution now, without taking time out for a longer look at the Rose Quarter, or whether we should stick with an emerging plan to draw this out another couple months. To Coliseum supporters, the waiting period Saltzman was floating seemed like the best chance to save the building. But if Lents could be chosen, maybe it's a case of the sooner the better.

For Saltzman, I'd like to see more of a firm commitment to saving the Coliseum. He's been a real savior in this process, but largely by advocating for a longer process. The Commissioner is correct to favor a longer period in looking at the Rose Quarter, but regardless of whether he's nostalgic about a long-ago Jethro Tull concert at the Coliseum, it'd seal the deal and rescue the city from this horrific preservation emergency if he'd take the final step and express insistence on the building being kept.

Until, then, keep in mind these illustrious words:

"We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender." -- Winston Churchill

Oregonian editorial gets it wrong (again)

I thought The Oregonian's editorial board was off base when they endorsed George W. Bush for president.

But what they're doing to Memorial Coliseum and, by extension, to Portlanders, is astonishing. Right there in the headline it's clear as a glass curtain wall: "Raze Memorial Coliseum and build a baseball stadium," it reads.

In today's paper, the editorial board -- which does not represent the opinions of staff writers and columnists like Barry Johnson, Steve Duin and Anna Griffin, who have all expressed skepticism about the Coliseum razing plan -- characterizes the Coliseum as a failed economic loser, and argues that the effort to preserve this legendary architectural landmark is jeopardizing the chance to fix the Rose Quarter.

No personal disrespect to the editorial board, but I continue to argue that this is misinformation. 

The Coliseum is only in disrepair and not making money because the management deal is set up for it to fail. And don't take my word for it. Look at the extensive research on this by professor William Macht, associate director of Portland State University's Real Estate program. Oregon Arena Corporation has a financial incentive to take the Coliseum to break-even point, but a disincentive to make a profit (they want to protect the Rose Quarter). And the city won't bankroll any upgrades because it doesn't make a profit. It's a Catch-2,222.

The Coliseum deal screws the City of Portland and instead of pointing this out, the editorial withholds this information. It's a pointy, rusty dagger in the heart of their argument.

Then there's how the Oregonian editorial doesn't even make the slightest mention of how the Coliseum is an internationally renowned landmark of modern 20th Century architecture. They make it sound like this is some old concrete warehouse. Or that if you care about the enduring economic, cultural, artistic and social value of the Coliseum more than the cold hard numbers, you're some kind of naive babe in the woods.

When it comes to making financial arguments for tearing down historic legendary architecture, as the editorial board is doing in lock step with Merritt Paulson (whose father, of course, was part of the George W. Bush cabinet), cities have a long history of manipulating economic arguments to justify decisions future generations regret. People tried to do it in Portland, arguing for us to raze what are now successful historic renovation projects like the Armory and Ecotrust. They argued New York's landmark Penn Station had to go for the same reason.

But what they're not telling you is what an economic value there is in a Coliseum given proper upkeep and the chance to thrive in a revitalized Rose Quarter.

Stop strangling the Coliseum and saying it can't breathe!

Not only would the Coliseum not be a money loser in a new Rose Quarter if given the chance, it would be one of the biggest attractors. It's the only building possessing great design on the complex, and being able to book two arenas instead of one would give Portland a huge advantage over other cities in this regard.

Having the Coliseum stay on the Rose Quarter site would make a headquarters hotel, like Mayor Adams is pushing, much more viable.

It's one thing if our city admits that we just don't care about the Coliseum or its historic value. But those of us seeking to preserve the building are sick and tired of faulty economic arguments being made to raze the building. About 300,000 readers of the paper could be looking at that editorial today, and chances are less than 2,000 will read this post. So the damage has unfortunately been done no matter what I say. 

I'm also being very strategically unwise when it comes to criticizing a newspaper that I regularly freelance for. (I love the rest of the paper!) But my conscience would never let this kind of unfairness and misleading go without answering back.

US Green Building Council calls on City Council to preserve Memorial Coliseum

The US Green Building Council, the nation's premiere sustainable building organization, has written Mayor Sam Adams and City Council calling for the Coliseum's preservation through its regional Cascadia chapter. Here is a copy of the letter written by Ralph DiNola of the Cascadia board:

Dear Mayor Adams, Commissioners Fish, Fritz, Leonard, and Saltzman:

On behalf of our membership and directors, we implore you to preserve and breathe new life into the Memorial Coliseum for this and future generations.  In our efforts to help advance the cause of sustainability in the region and Portland, we see green building and historic preservation as essential elements in our efforts to bring about a sustainable society.

Portland is already considered a leader in the emerging “Sustainable Preservation” movement.  Preservation and reuse of the Memorial Coliseum would provide another tangible demonstration of Portland’s leadership in this important national movement at an unprecedented and highly visible scale.  In almost any scenario, demolition and replacement of the existing building with a new building, no matter how green, would not result in a more sustainable outcome, while representing a huge loss for the heritage of Portland and the built environment.

“Historic Preservation is intrinsically a form of sustainable conservation.” - Guiding Principles of Sustainable Design, National Park Service, 1993  

The Sustainable Preservation movement has its roots in many places throughout the U.S. and for many, preservation is inherently sustainable, but Portland can claim leadership.

Portland in particular has been a leader in this movement with some of the most noteworthy examples of sustainable preservation projects including the Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center (Ecotrust), the Brewery Blocks with the laudable LEED Platinum Gerding Theater (Portland Armory), as well as the University of Oregon Portland Center (White Stag Block).  The Mercy Corps Global Headquarters (Skidmore Building) is nearing completion and the Centennial Mills rehabilitation project is on the horizon.  With more than a dozen outstanding examples of how to most effectively reuse historic buildings, Portland has been a proving ground for the emerging movement. 

Further, if we use the balance of the “triple bottom line” of sustainability (environment, economy, equity) to weight the options, clearly the sustainable preservation of the Memorial Coliseum is the most sustainable choice.

Environment: 

One of the principal environmental arguments for sustainable preservation is the conservation of embodied energy and resulting avoided impacts of reuse rather than replacement.  Existing buildings have a sunk cost to the environment from all of the energy and materials that went into the original development.  While we cannot take credit for those costs, we can avoid many of the environmental impacts associated with the demolition of the existing building and especially the impacts of a new arena and the environmental toll related to the extraction, manufacture, transport and installation of an entire building’s worth of new materials.

Preservation and rehabilitation in nearly all cases requires less energy than demolishing or deconstructing and building anew.  To be clear, preservation of older buildings is a key strategy in mitigating climate change.  How can we consider the immense release of CO2 from the demolition and new construction in a city that is working to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions to meet stringent targets?

Many great historic buildings are inherently flexible and adaptable.  Reuse opportunities for the building range from moderate upgrades to gutting of the interior for a new use, the Memorial Coliseum provides that potential as demonstrated by the proposed design schemes for the building.

Economy: Jobs, revenue, etc. 

The main economic impacts related to this potential project are the current and potential revenue, jobs for construction and during operations and the impacts on the local economy.  The findings of professor William Macht, associate director of Portland State University's Center for Real Estate, clearly articulate the flawed business model of the Memorial Coliseum as it currently stands, but other proposed schemes for the facility could bear better fruit if implemented.  And while the demolition and new construction of a replacement arena are attractive for construction jobs, research shows that money spent on rehabilitation generate more jobs per dollar than new construction projects and pump more money into the local economy.  Rehabilitation and reuse of the Memorial Coliseum could provide a dramatically better economic return for the city than a new arena project.

Equity: 

What is the value of historic buildings and what are our values when we build or demolish our public buildings?  Many citizens develop a pride of ownership of public buildings.  For some it is because of the reason the building was built, for others it is memories of events they attended there, and others it has to do with the design or architectural significance related to the edifice.  Certainly, the Memorial Coliseum can claim citizens that love the building for one or all of those reasons.  The Memorial Coliseum was designed and built for the "advancement of cultural opportunities for the community and to the memory of our veterans of all wars who made the supreme sacrifice."  The building is certainly a product of it’s time, a stark modern glass, steel and wood structure that stands as a memorial to those who lost their lives in war.  This memorial was a gift to the citizens of Portland.

The National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places was created by the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966, six years after the Memorial Coliseum was built.  The Register recognizes buildings associated with important people, events or distinctive design or construction types.  Listing on the National Register is in a way a strong proxy for valuing the cultural contribution of a building to the city and the nation.  A building must be at least 50 years old to be listed on the register; the Memorial Coliseum is one year away from reaching this age.  Listing on the Register also affords the building protections from public agencies efforts to alter or demolish the building.   This gem of modern architecture would most likely be considered eligible for listing.  The fact that the building has stood long enough to make this milestone is a testament to its value to the community.  

“The building’s survival through time – this alone- is a circumstantially strong indication of its value.  If time is a dimension that clarifies and enriches things, the conservation of such buildings would seem worthwhile.” – Nathan Silver, Lost New York, 1967

The rehabilitation and reuse of the Memorial Coliseum represents a golden opportunity for the City of Portland to once again demonstrate its leadership in sustainability and turn the existing underutilized building into a living, vital and essential part of our community.  Please consider the significance and value of this building and work with the citizens of Portland this help make the Memorial Coliseum a Living Building once again.

Sincerely,
Ralph DiNola
Board of Directors

Cascadia Region Green Building Council
 

Reed all about it: Hennebery Eddy's campus Language House

Earlier this week, on one of those surprisingly warm afternoons with temperatures pushing 80, I visited the new Spanish Language House at Reed College, designed by Hennebery Eddy Architects.

The residence hall is designed to complement the historic Woodstock Language House complex originally designed as faculty housing by legendary Portland architect A.E. Doyle in the 1920s.

Hennebery Eddy’s new building is larger than the Doyle language houses (just under 9,500 square feet with three stories), but it fits in nicely. Like the other language houses, it includes dormitories (for 16 students in this case), a kitchen/dining room, and living room-like public gathering spaces. It’s a small little environment within the campus where those studying a particular language can live together; a professor also lives in each of the language houses—like a frat house without the alcohol binging and health code violations.

On the ground floor, the $2.75 million building has large storefront glass windows, giving the Language House a slight but appropriate sense of being something other than an ordinary house. After all, it’s a hybrid residential-institutional campus building. In a similar way, the style includes several aspects of traditional pitched-roof residential style, yet the design never at all feels like a caricature of history. “Don’t design a cartoon,” Hennebery’s Alan Osbourne told me was their guiding principle in this regard.

I was also impressed by the materials here. There were oak floors throughout public areas, as well as paneling and doors with a natural wood look. Sure beat the crumbling 16-story building that served as my dorm. Like where I resided while matriculating, though, the Reed Language House is naturally ventilated, making it a very efficient building to cool and allowing a simple radiant heating system.

One of my favorite things about the design was how the architects carved usable spaces into what otherwise would be unused, pass-through areas. At windows throughout the upper hallways, and even some of the stairways, there are built-in seats where people can study or and hang out.

There is also a new central outdoor plaza connecting the new Spanish language house with the other buildings in the language complex. I saw a barbecue already set up there.

General Contractor for the project was Reimers & Jolivette, structural engineering was performed by  James G. Pierson, mechanical engineering from Hunter-Davisson, and Mayer/Reed was the landscape architect.

Hennebery Eddy has somewhat quietly won a handful of design awards over the years for projects like the Loyola Jesuit Center, and co-founding principal Tim Eddy has been active as a member of the city’s Design Commission.

Memorial Coliseum: rally and party tonight, vigilance afterward

It was with great excitement that we head Mayor Sam Adams announce yesterday that his office will seek to preserve Memorial Coliseum by building the planned AAA baseball stadium next door to the arena, not in its place.

In fact, we're not quite sure whether to call tonight's rally in support of Memorial Coliseum a rally or a victory celebration.

But just for a little longer, let's call it a rally. Mayor Adams' announcement was reason to be happy for all those looking to preserve the Coliseum. But it's still possible that when City Council takes this issue back up a week from Wednesday, they'll try to tell us they tried but the Coliseum just wouldn't fit with the baseball stadium and parking garage they have to have.

By the way: Remember what a perfect weather day it was yesterday, with temperatures around 80 degrees? Perfect night for baseball, right? Well, the attendance at last night's Portland Beavers game was just over 1,900. This is the team people want to wipe out the Coliseum for?

At the same time, particularly since there was a small handful pro-MLS protestors demonstrating outside City Hall yesterday, let's be clear: We on the Preserve Memorial Coliseum side are very much in favor of the Portland Timbers joining Major League Soccer. So if there are any Timbers fans reading this, please don't consider the Coliseum preservation effort a threat. Unfortunately some already have.

Meanwhile, whether the Coliseum really is saved or just slightly less threatened than before, we urge all those who love modern architecture, who support preservation and process, and who share our affection for Memorial Coliseum, to stop by the AIA Center for Architecture (403 NW 11th Avenue at Flanders) at 6PM tonight to share a beer and solidarity before we cheer on the Blazers at 7.

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.

Memorial Coliseum: SAVED?! Adams announces city now plans to build baseball stadium next door to classic arena

In a press conference at City Hall this afternoon, Mayor Sam Adams announced to a room full of reporters that the City of Portland has altered its Rose Quarter plan to include the preservation of Memorial Coliseum.

The mayor said the new idea will be to site the Portland Beavers baseball stadium on the Rose Quarter site but adjacent to the Coliseum instead of on the Coliseum site.

There are still many questions and details that will have to be worked out, and the saving of Memorial Coliseum isn't necessarily a done deal. However, today's announcement could very well signal a great day for Portland architecture.

The City Council will now postpone Wednesday's scheduled vote on the Rose Quarter by one week. After that, presumably, Council will either reject or approve the plan with Memorial Coliseum included.

One surprise from the press conference: the City plans not to demolish the large parking garage also on the Rose Quarter site, because "we need the money," Adams said, from its revenues. So fitting the Rose Quarter, Memorial Coliseum, a AAA baseball stadium and a parking garage all on the Rose Quarter grounds will be very difficult. I'd thought that if they built the baseball stadium next door to the Coliseum, it would have to claim the parking garage space. After all, couldn't they just put parking underground, underneath the new stadium? A parking garage shouldn't be the front doorstep for the Rose Quarter anyway.

Even so, while it's not yet time to drop our caution and sense of vigilance about seeing the Coliseum be preserved, for those of us in this preservation effort, I think Mayor Adams deserves our thanks and praise assuming the Coliseum preservation plan goes through.

Survival for the Coliseum will not include the building remaining intact as we know it. If the baseball stadium goes next door, the Coliseum will apparently be renovated and transformed into the open-air venue sought by the Blazers. But as long as the design is done right, in a way that preserves the Coliseum's integrity, I think this is a very reasonable idea.

We are still having a rally tomorrow (Tuesday) for Memorial Coliseum, at 6PM at the Center For Architecture. Perhaps it can now be called a celebration, a victory party. I'm hesitant to go that far just yet while the Coliseum's fate still hangs in the balance. But I am very, very pleased at the apparent progress made today.

Hooray for Memorial Coliseum!

Blazers were reticent about baseball stadium at Rose Quarter, preferred to renovate Coliseum

Even if there's a lot of bad feeling about our leaders tearing down Memorial Coliseum, we needn't blame our beloved Portland Trail Blazers franchise.

According to one source I recently spoke with who has attended numerous meetings about the future of the Rose Quarter, the Blazers are aware of the affection that exists for Memorial Coliseum and the campaign to preserve the building. And even before the idea of replacing the Coliseum with a minor league baseball park was floated, the Blazers were looking to instead transform the Coliseum into their planned open-air performance venue.

So why didn't the Blazers stand up against Paulsen and the City to oppose the baseball stadium on the Coliseum site? Well, there has been a lot of bad blood in the past between the city and owner Paul Allen, be it over the original building of the Rose Garden or the financial troubles and bankruptcy that ensued in recent years. The Blazers aren't the ones driving the runaway train here, but they're also not really motivated to fight the plan.

Sources say the main supporters and instigators of the AAA baseball stadium at the Coliseum site, beside Merritt Paulson and his company, have been two members of Portland's city council: Mayor Sam Adams and Commissioner Randy Leonard. Adams took a beating from constituents during Columbia River Crossing negotiations for yielding to Vancouver's desire for a 12-lane bridge. So the mayor decided to back to being the Sam Adams we know: trying to make things happen.

Memorial Coliseum deal was structured for the arena to fail

In today's Sunday Oregonian, the Opinion section includes two essays about Memorial Coliseum: one by Barry Johnson in favor of its preservation, the other by David Sarasohn calling for its demolition.

Sarasohn's argument--that the Coliseum has been failing for 14 years as a viable arena seeking to turn a profit--is fundamentally and fatally flawed. But I'm almost glad that Sarasohn made this Gargantuan error, because it brings up an important point.

As shown by research the findings of professor William Macht, associate director of Portland State University's Center for Real Estate, Memorial Coliseum has been designed to fail as a business venture ever since the Rose Garden was built.

Macht writes in PSU's Urban Development Journal that after the new arena opened in 1995, the following deal was set up:

"While Paul Allen's Oregon Arena Corporation (OAC) has the obligation to cover any operating losses at the Coliseum, it must pay 60 percent of any net income from the Coliseum to the City, retaining 40 percent of net income as a management fee. Events at the Rose Garden are not so burdened," Macht writes.

"While the City may have believed that the agreement was favorable to it, one must realize that it is in the economic interest of the manager to hold just enough events at the Coliseum to keep it at a break-even level, but no more, because there is not incentive to exceed that level, especially when all the profit is available for holding the same event in the Rose Garden. The agreement does not address or resolve that conflict of interest," the professor goes on.

"In addition to receiving 40 percent of the net income from the Coliseum as a management fee, the Oregon Arena Corporation passes the full costs of operating the two parking garages owned by the city, including OAC's management fees, on to the city along with any parking revenues generated by events at the Coliseum. This does not constitute an incentive to hold more events at the Coliseum. The City is obligated to pay for all capital improvements to the Coliseum as well as all major repairs and maintenance. Since the Coliseum has been kept at a break-even point, the City has had no incentive to repair and improve it."

"Furthermore, the Oregon Arena Corporation was granted and enjoys development rights for any non-public development that would occur on the Coliseum site but has no such rights for public development. It is in the City's sole discretion to determine that the Coliseum is not needed for any public use. It is in OAC's economic interest  for the City to declare there is no public use for the Coliseum, and over the years it has advocated solutions that demolish it."

Without any doubt, the plan to demolish the Coliseum is a set-up and seemingly was from the start of its tenure beside the Rose Garden. If the City of Portland, Merritt Paulson's Peregrine Development (a peregrine is a preying falcon that eats other birds), or Oregon Arena Corporation tell you the Coliseum has had its chance as a public arena and failed, they are basically trying to sell you snake oil or the Brooklyn Bridge.

And even if an otherwise very respectable and veteran columnist like David Sarsohn (whose work I otherwise admire) tells you that the Coliseum has been "a ghost at the party for 14 years", it's very much at the behest of the people running the show.

I'm not trying to vilify anyone here. Maybe there were valid economic reasons the deal was set up this way originally. Even so, economics are not a viable argument for tearing down the Coliseum when it was engineered to generate less revenue than its newer neighbor.

Talking with Bill Rouzie, one of Memorial Coliseum's original architects

At least if Memorial Coliseum has to be threatened with demolition, it has caused the community of architects and fellow design enthusiasts to come together. A case in point: the call I received yesterday from Bill Rouzie, a retired architect who was part of the bravura team at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill that designed the Coliseum.

"That building is marvelous," Rouzie says.

Talking by phone, he recalled visiting the Coliseum in 1960 shortly after the building was finished, on a day its curtain was opened to allow natural light to stream into the arena, which on that day had a skating rink set up inside. "The sunlight was streaming through. Everybody was skating on the ice in their costumes," he remembers. "It was just a beautiful sight."

Rouzie came to Portland in 1957 from SOM's Chicago office, where he had worked closely with one of the firm's best known architects, Walter Netsch, to design the Air Force Academy cadet building in Colorado. (It would go on to become a landmark of modern architecture in its own right.) The Coliseum was the first project he worked on in the Portland office, which was initially headed by SOM partner John Merrill. (Architects like David Pugh, Richard Ritz and Ned Kirschbaum would also distinguish themeselves there.) The Portland branch had emerged out of legendary architect Pietro Belluschi's office. And Belluschi, of course, had taken over that same office from A.E. Doyle. Rouzie had also attended graduate school for architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for which Belluschi served as dean.

A few years later, Rouzie was also part of the design team at SOM that designed a new home for the Oregon Ducks football team: Autzen Stadium.

The whole concept behind Memorial Coliseum's design, Rouzie says, was to give the arena a sense of transparency and connection to the outside - something anathema to most large performance spaces.

"We were thinking, we’ve got this oval bowl that is going to sit in a glass box," the architect recalls. "When you’re in the bowl looking at something happening, you can either have light or not with the control of the curtain. To get out of there, or at halftime, you walk out into a space and instead of being in some blind corridor, you come out and you’ve got glass and you can see the city. You know where you are, and whether it’s day or night." 

"That was the whole point of the design," Rouzie adds. "You never feel lost there. I can even get lost in some of the buildings I've designed, especially the hospitals. But not the Coliseum."

Rouzie remembers the powerful influence held by the timber industry in Oregon. "They even had a preliminary design for it," he recalls of the Coliseum. "It was going to be a big wood dome structure. That wasn’t exactly what SOM had in mind. But we worked with them. The entire glass wall is supported by huge glulam slabs that hold up that whole curtain wall all the way around. They got their share of wood in it."

If the timber industry was a powerful force, so was Gordon Bunshaft, one of SOM's New York-based partners and a legendary architect in his own right, known for such masterpieces as Lever House in New York City (which I think compares favorably to Mies Van Der Rohe's famouse Seagram Building directly across Park Avenue). Bunshaft wanted Memorial Coliseum to be made of glass all the way up to its top, and SOM had, Rouzie remembers, figured out how to make it a reality. But the Coliseum's distinctive white band around its top, made of wood, became part of the compromise. It also helped keep the project from going over budget: Bunshaft's all-glass cube was too expensive. Today, though, the white perimeter seems indelibly part of the Coliseum: the glass cube's headband.

Besides the transparency of the building, the Coliseum is noteworthy for how the concrete seating bowl is completely independent from the glass box. There are only four columns in the whole building, and as Rouzie proudly points out, "Those columns are completely outside the perimeter of the seating form. There’s one point where they come close together but they don’t touch. They never touch."

Rouzie says he will try to make it to the pro-Coliseum rally we have planned for Tuesday at 6PM at the Center for Architecture, but regardless, it was a treat to speak with this living legend of Portland design. And needless to say, while exceptionally modest on a personal level, Rouzie is understandably against the notion of this architectural gem that helped define his career being laid to rest unnecessarily.

The transparent building

On Tuesday night, immediately after the open house at Leftbank with Mayor Sam Adams about the Rose Quarter and Memorial Coliseum, I decided to take a walk to the Coliseum next door. The sun was setting and, after the stuffy room and its contentious debate during the hearing, it felt soothing to walk outside in the springtime sunset and look at the site itself.

The accompanying couple of photos aren't the best I've taken. They turned out slightly blurry because the light level was low and, despite not having a tripod, I didn't want to use a flash. But I think they capture one of the most essential qualities of Memorial Coliseum: its transparency.

I'm not sure if the interior curtains were only partially closed (instead of all the way) or if they don't stretch to the corners of the building, but the incredible see-through quality of Memorial Coliseum (the very thing that all other arenas lack) was very noticeable. Usually arenas and concert halls seem monolithic and closed-off to people outside, but the Coliseum is the most inviting large public building of its kind that I've ever encountered when you're up close to it. 

Maybe the transparency doesn't seem obvious when you're driving on Interstate 5 or even on Interstate Avenue. But up close, the Coliseum is almost like a minimalist greenhouse, a cross between artist Donald Judd's boxy sculptures and the grand botanical architecture of Kew Gardens outside London (below).

Standing outside the Coliseum's front entrance, I and the two architects who came along (Paul Falsetto of Carleton/Hart Architecture and Scott Pitek of Colab) could see through the east wall and the north wall of the Coliseum to the sky and sunset. Meanwhile, the Rose Garden across the street, dark and lifeless without a game inside, seemed like a boulder to the Coliseum's diamond.

Coincidentally, although the Rose Quarter site was otherwise completely empty as our trio toured the Coliseum perimeter, we twice passed Mayor Adams and a small group of his colleagues. I'm not sure if they walked to the MAX stop and changed their minds, or were taking a look at the Rose Quarter site just like we were. Our two tribes exchanged very brief pleasantries and expressions of thanks as we passed - no added theatrics. I feel like there's a metaphor in here somewhere, but I'm not sure what it is.  

It's true the Coliseum is in disrepair. And if it should be blessed with another chance at life from the City Council, who will decide its fate in the days ahead, the tarnish on this building will need to come off. That will take money and effort. Lots of it. But if there's anything to be gained from this threat to a landmark of Portland architecture--the biggest historic preservation emergency in my 10 years of covering design here, without any doubt--it's that the Coliseum is special, and we can't take that for granted any longer. And it sure looked beautiful, sitting there silently at the blue hour after the voices had gone.

 

Incidentally, here are a couple additional photos of Memorial Coliseum taken by a regular Portland Architecture reader, Andrew, that show off the building's transparency better than my shots. You can see more of Andrew's Coliseum pics here.

Meanwhile, I leave you a quote from the New York Times' editorial from 1963 called 'Farewell to Penn Station':

"Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baseball near OMSI would better fit city's future growth (and save Memorial Coliseum)

Portland resident Forrest Smith emailed me earlier today with an intriguing idea: building the Portland Beavers' AAA baseball park not at Memorial Coliseum, nor at previously-suggested alternate sites like the Rose Quarter parking garage, the Lloyd Cinemas lot, or north of NW 23rd & Vaughn, but instead adjacent to the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry and the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge.

This is the same neighborhood where the new MAX and pedestrian bridge over the Willamette will be built. It's also where outgoing City of Portland Chief Urban Design Strategist Arun Jain identified a broad swatch of future high-density development in his talk last week at the American Institute of Architects' Center For Architecture.

The bridge and MAX are already going to transform the OMSI area. Why not make the ballpark a helpful anchor for that space?

In discussions about this idea on the SkyscraperPage.com forum, one commenter pointed out that the OMSI site isn't necessarily very close to freeway entry points. But I-84 east would be accessible only about a half-mile up Grand Avenue, and I-5 north would be accessible  even closer at the Morrison bridgehead. I-5 south would have to be accessed across the river, but the Ross Island Bridge connects directly to it from just a few blocks away as well. Then there's the fact that MLK and Grand are technically Highway 99E, which you can drive all the way to Eugene.

Plus, you'd have a MAX stop right by the stadium - closer than the Rose Quarter stop would be to a Beavers ballpark at the Rose Quarter, even. There will also be a streetcar on Grand and Martin Luther King Boulevard coming soon, which also would jive nicely with siting the stadium at OMSI.

This is the kind of plan that City Council needs to strongly, strongly consider before destroying one of the very few most important works of architecture in all of Portland.

Mercury reports Rose Quarter developer Cordish has been chastised for strong-arming, racism

I swore I wasn't going to write about the Coliseum until I got some more sleep and until I wrote about something else for a change, but some recent reporting in the Portland Mercury is worth passing on.

In a feature story hilariously titled "Little Dubai", Sarah Mirk and Matt Davis report that The Cordish Company, the developer that would oversee redevelopment of the Rose Quarter into "Live!", a new entertainment district (minus the Coliseum), has irked residents and elected officials in Kansas City, site of one of its other biggest developments, the Power & Light District, as well as people in Louisville, home of another Cordish development.

"After receiving nearly $300 million in public money," Mirk writes of the Kansas City project, "the district is not meeting its revenue forecasts—in part because Cordish missed construction deadlines. The president of Cordish has sent Kansas City’s mayor abrasive all-caps emails demanding the Power and Light District receive top priority."

Louisville, Kentucky, has had similar problems with the Cordish-developed Fourth Street Live! project. (It's their exclamation point, not mine, by the way. Are these titles thought up by teenage girls?) The Louisville Metro Council, Mirk adds, "publicly berated Cordish for using $950,000 in city money to bring its own sports bar to town. 'In our city they do whatever they want, over some pretty strong protest, and we just keep giving them money,' says Kelly Downard, a Louisville metro councilor who says Cordish wooed the Louisville mayor to secure a $1 lease on city land valued at $17 million."

In today's Mercury, Mirk reports that in Kansas City, Cordish tried to institute a racist dress code that banned "white t-shirts, baggy pants, men wearing necklaces and shorts that hung below the top of one's calf. Many Kansas City citizens and a majority of City Council members felt the ban on very specific clothing items clearly discriminated against black people." The city ultimately banned restrictive dress codes, but only after the ACLU got involved and a former City Council member in Kansas City shouted in one hearing, "You want to invite us down to picket you? I'm embarrassed black people stand up here and advocate discrimination!"

Is this the kind of outfit you want overseeing the new Rose Quarter? Is this a good reason to demolish one of Portland's most beloved architectural landmarks?

A neon rose by any other name would seem just as ridiculous

As I wait here in City Council chambers for the chance to testify against demolition of Memorial Coliseum, Council is right now hearing argument from Randy Leonard for adding a neon rose to the Portland Oregon Visitors Center building, designed by the great John Yeon, when it becomes home to the Rose Festival Foundation.

A neon rose? On the waterfront? Sitting on top of Yeon's building? Is this a joke?

If I weren't so busy arguing against Memorial Coliseum's razing, I would be fighting this to the hilt. Putting a neon rose on the building makes me want to wretch. It's a slap in the face to the building Commissioner Leonard wants to save on behalf of the Foundation.

If you feel similarly, please consider making your voice heard.

The Rose Festival Foundation is a wonderful institution, and it's great that they will be the tenants of this building. It's also a great boon to the city that the building will be preserved. But the neon rose is just absoluely preposterous and in very, very bad taste.

Live from City Hall

This post is coming to you live from City Council chambers at City Hall, where I am waiting to address Council regarding the planned demolition of Memorial Coliseum. I hope they don't lump me in with the Adams protesters, or the crazy guy currently discussing vomit and garbage on Burnside. He actually dumped a bunch of trash on the table for testimony, so now they have to take a 10-minute recess.

Last night there were hundreds of people at Leftbank to protest the demolition of the Coliseum. When oppisition was expressed for the Coliseum, it drew the strongest applause of the night -- by far.

I will write in greater length about last night's event when I'm not embroiled in this morning's event here at City Hall. But I had to pass one astonishing bit of information. Last night we learned from the City that a Portland Beavers baseball park would actually fit in the Rose Quarter site without Memorial Coliseum being demolished, but that such a plan would require demolition of the Rose Quarter's above-ground parking garage. And the garage is a revenue stream for the Rose Quarter.

That's right: the City of Portland is looking to tear down Memorial Coliseum in order to preserve a PARKING GARAGE. A parking garage! Can you believe that?

If the City of demolishes Memorial Coliseum to preserve a parking garage, it will be the single greatest act of lunacy in Portland's history.

Everybody, I'm told that Commissioner Dan Saltzman may be the swing vote on this matter. If you support the Coliseum, please consider contacting his office.

Pink Martini's Thomas Lauderdale: Memorial Coliseum "one of the best buildings in the city."

He's not an elected official or business leader of any kind, but musician Thomas Lauderdale one of the city's most admired figures in the arts & culture scene. His band, Pink Martini, is also internationally renowned.

Lauderdale was among those who organized a press conference at City Hall in support of Mayor Adams when the scandal involving Beau Breedlove broke out

But now, he says that while he doesn't necessarily regret defending the mayor against a rush to judgment happening during the Breedlove scandal, he is dismayed that the mayor is planning to demolish Memorial Coliseum.

"I am extremely disappointed in the position that Mayor Adams has seemingly taken," Lauderdale said this afternoon by phone. "Memorial Coliseum is one of the best buildings this city has, and one of the most beautiful."

Also, Lauderdale added, "We're a growing city and we don't have a comparable other facility. And certainly nothing we build now will be as beautiful. Look at the recent attempts by the city like the Rose Garden, or even the Portland Building. When you compare the Rose Garden to Memorial Coliseum it's clear which is the greater building."

"I also find it curious and alarming that all of this is happening in such an accelerated fashion, without a proper public process. This is unacceptable."

The pianist and composer whose Pink Martini work has been broadcast on French television, PBS, and staged at the Cannes Film Festival, recalls seeing the Oregon Symphony and numerous Trail Blazer games at Memorial Coliseum over the years. And this September, Pink Martini will be playing a concert at the Coliseum, which Lauderdale says will be part of Oregon's 150th birthday celebration and may also become part of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's Time-Based Art (TBA) Festival.

"He’s told the veterans he’s promising them a better building," Lauderdale adds, "which is why the veterans are behind this. They’re not going to get a better building. We’ll be left with something as ugly as the Rose Quarter or the Portland Building. And then it will be too late."

Memorial Coliseum: two alternative sites for baseball stadium proposed (updated)

First of all, let me reiterate two very important public events tonight and tomorrow, to which any supporter of Memorial Coliseum is implored to attend.

There will be a public open house tonight at the Leftbank building (240 N. Broadway) from 6-8PM, and a City Council hearing/vote Wednesday morning at 9:30AM at City Hall (you have to be there by 9AM to register to speak).

Meanwhile, two Portlanders have contacted Portland Architecture with proposals for alternative sites for the Portland Beavers baseball stadium.

I was especially intrigued by a proposal from architect Rick Potestio: to build the minor-league baseball stadium on the site of the Lloyd Cinemas surface parking lot.

It wouldn't have seemed to me that the parking lot has enough room for a baseball stadium, but if we're talking about a 9,000-seat minor league park, Potestio has done the math and says the needed square footage is there.

The Lloyd Cinemas lot is also right next to a MAX stop, making it closer than the Rose Quarter stop would be to the Coliseum site. Below is a drawing by Potestio of the possible Lloyd location with baseball.

Unlike PGE Park, the Lloyd site would have ample parking: across the street in the multilevel Lloyd Center parking garage. The garage would also mean that eliminating the Lloyd Cinemas lot would not pose a big problem to Lloyd Cinemas. In fact, one would expect the movie theater to benefit from having a baseball stadium next door. Up to 9,000 more people could be coming there 50 times a year.

Obviously the Lloyd Cinemas site is privately owned, and it would take extra effort to make this site work for that reason. Even so, it would be a benefit to that private landowner. And if it could save Memorial Coliseum, why not condemn the property if we have to? If Randy Leonard is willing to do so for the integrity of a neon sign, why not to save one of Portland's most significant and popular works of architecture?

Potestio also believes that Memorial Coliseum could be transformed into the open-air concert venue and beer garden the Blazers and developer Cordish Company are suggesting. He sees a retractible roof being placed on the Coliseum or part of the roof being removed altogether, and the west, river-facing facade being cut into in order to create connections to the river and a smaller structure (the beer garden) on the riverside.

Many, myself included, have focused on the Portland Public Schools-owned site north of the Rose Quarter for the baseball stadium. But a member of the mayor's staff told me last week that the PPS site is not under consideration because PPS has said they're not ready to move. But as it happens, the Lloyd Cinemas site may actually be better for the stadium than the PPS site anyway. It's much closer to a MAX stop, and it would help integrate the Convention Center, Rose Quarter and Lloyd District. That's a major goal of the Portland Development Commission, one that wouldn't be achieved by erecting a baseball stadium on the Coliseum site.

Another alternative site for the Portland Beavers stadium was suggested by Steve Linder, who has spearheaded efforts to preserve the landmark Riverdale School (designed by legendary architects A.E. Doyle and Pietro Belluschi). Linder has identified a parcel of vacant land in Northwest Portland where 23rd Avenue meets Yeon Avenue and Nicolai Street.

The parcel, where an industrial building was previously demolished, would be enough for the baseball stadium, particularly if you combine it with an adjacent vacant lot. This site would also, like the others being proposed, have excellent freeway access. And because it's close to both Naito Parkway and 23rd Avenue, there is every reason to believe a streetcar or MAX connection could be made. After all, the streetcar already goes into NW Portland and 23rd Avenue at Lovejoy and Northrup streets.

Of these two ideas, I like the Lloyd proposal the best. But anything is better than choosing the Memorial Coliseum site. Councilors Leonard, Fish, Fritz, and Saltzman, are you listening? Mayor Adams?

One other idea, which seems less plausible but is nevertheless quite intriguing, was forwarded to me by a couple people: what if we transformed Memorial Coliseum into the baseball stadium? Obviously major alterations would be required, but again - anything is better than losing one of Portland's biggest architectural jewels.

National Trust For Historic Preservation urges City Council to preserve Memorial Coliseum

Those seeking to preserve Memorial Coliseum just got an assist from the nation's largest nonprofit historic preservation organization: The National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Below is a letter sent to City Council members today from Althea Hartig, Ph.D., Director of the Trust's western region and Brian Turner, Law Fellow for the Trust.

Dear Mayor Adams:

On behalf of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, we are writing to express our support for the preservation of Portland’s Memorial Coliseum. We were alarmed to learn of your proposal to demolish this architecturally-significant modernist building and brazen pledge to seek City Council approval for demolition within a month. As detailed below, the unique qualities of this structure and its importance to the community require a careful evaluation of alternatives before demolition is considered. We are also highly skeptical of claims that the demolition of this Portland landmark is a “sustainable” solution. In fact, demolition followed by new construction would be a dramatic step backward in Portland’s goal of becoming the world’s most sustainable city.

The Memorial Coliseum is an historic building that contributes significantly to the community of Portland and the State of Oregon. Designed 1958-1960 by the firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (established in 1936 in Chicago), the Coliseum is architecturally notable for its cantilevered steel-truss roof floating over a free-standing concrete arena bowl, the whole enclosed by a glass curtain wall. An all-glass exterior façade is an uncommon treatment for arenas of this era. The rarity of this style contributes to structure’s historic significance.

In 1961, the building won an Honor Award from the Oregon chapter of the American Institute of Architects and is currently listed on the City of Portland’s Historic Resource Inventory as a “Rank 1” structure. A Rank 1 rating distinguishes Memorial Coliseum as one of the most important historic properties in the City, distinguished by outstanding qualities of architecture, historical values, and integrity. Buildings with this ranking are the highest priority for landmark designation and eligible for National Register status.

The City of Portland has long been a patron of modern works and maintains an important collection of period resources, including Pietro Belluschi’s 1944-48 Equitable Building and 1951 Central Lutheran Church, as well as the 1966 Lovejoy Fountain Plaza by famed landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.  Memorial Coliseum is the result of both community effort–voters approved an $8 million bond in 1954 to finance the building–and the work of local building professionals, including the Portland-based Hoffmann Construction, a well-known company that has contributed substantially to the built environment in the northwest and is the recipient of more than a dozen architectural awards and commendations for its work in the City.

Preservation of Memorial Coliseum has received strong community support from a number of organizations, including Bosco-Milligan Foundation, AIA - Oregon/Portland Chapter, Recent Past Preservation Network, Docomomo WEWA, local Veterans groups,and a host of well-respected architects and designers. Brian Libby, a nationally published writer living in Portland, expressed “shock, sadness and anger” when he learned of the plan to “demolish one of the greatest works of architecture, and one of the most historic sites, in the entire City.”  This action, he asserts, “sends the worst kind of message about how the City respects its history and sustainability.”

With the successful reuse of this building, Portland can demonstrate its leadership in the preservation of historic architecture and work cooperatively towards developing a practical model for communities that are debating new uses for their aging arenas. In 2002, William P. Macht, an adjunct professor of urban planning and development in the College of Urban & Public Affairs at Portland State University, put forward four alternative plans for the preserved coliseum, created as part of a three-month development planning workshop. These particular options -- a headquarters hotel, an arts complex, a sustainable technology center and an urban home center –prove that alternatives do exist and should be more fully explored by the City before any further decisions are made.

Finally, we are concerned that the Mayor has supported demolition of the Coliseum under the mantra of “sustainability.” We question the accuracy of this assumption. Choosing new construction over reuse is rarely the most sustainable choice. New construction requires a massive expenditure of energy to manufacture or extract building materials, transport them to the construction site, and assemble them into a new building. A substantial amount of energy is already embodied in the Coliseum’s sizable steel and glass frames. The replacement of existing structural components with newly manufactured and newly extracted materials must be factored into the environmental cost if the City is to tout sustainability as an objective of this plan.

In light of community support and significant historic evidence, the National Trust asks that the reuse and renovation of Memorial Coliseum be the City’s first priority regarding the future of Rose Quarter area. The Trust also asks that the City consider the historic importance of the building relative to the rapidly diminishing number of significant modern works of architecture in the State and nationwide.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation was chartered by Congress in 1949 as a private nonprofit organization for the purpose of furthering the historic preservation policies of the United States and facilitating public participation in the preservation of our nation’s heritage. 16 U.S.C. § 468. With the support of our 235,000 members nationwide, including more than 2,200 members in Oregon, the National Trust works to protect significant historic sites and to advocate historic preservation as a fundamental value in programs and policies at all levels of government. The Trust has seven regional offices around the country, including a Western Office in San Francisco, California which is specifically responsive to preservation issues in Oregon.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this important issue. Memorial Coliseum is an asset to Portland’s heritage and all effort should be made for its preservation. We hope that in light of these concerns your office will re-evaluate its preference for demolition and instead consider a full range of alternatives for adaptive reuse. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,

Anthea M. Hartig, PhD.

Brian Turner, Esq.

Coliseum update: City Council hearing Wednesday morning, 9:30AM

Please excuse any confusion this might cause, but it turns out that while Tuesday night's open house at Leftbank is a great opportunity for public testimony regarding the planned demolition of Memorial Coliseum, an even more important chance to show your support for the building will be this Wednesday in City Council chambers at City Hall.

On Wednesday at 9:30AM, Council hear the reading of the proposed ordinance, #427 on the agenda:

"Authorize Sole Source Acquisition and Predevelopment Agreement and authorize Sole Source Acquisition of an Operating Agreement, both with Peregrine Sports, LLC for Major League Soccer and Triple-A Baseball stadiums, pursuant to ORS 279b.075 and City Code Title 5, Section 5.33.120   (Ordinance)"

Obviously, things are moving very quickly and it will be difficult to coalesce a large public response in such a short time.  Nonetheless, please consider going to work a little bit late in order to show support for this threatened landmark.

According to one inside source I've emailed with, the Tuesday night open house is intended as a mere gesture of listening - a rubber stamp, even. The Wednesday morning affair is the chance to actually hold the City Council right then and there as they vote.

When the Major League Soccer plan for PGE Park was approved a few weeks ago by the City Council, Portland Timbers fans made a boisterous show of support. Between architects and other members of the community concerned about design and history, couldn't we do the same? Add a few Blazer fans to the mix, and it could really show the City Council that Memorial Coliseum matters.

Oregonian op-ed compares losing Coliseum to New York's tragic loss of Penn Station

I was disappointed to see the Oregonian editorial board today expressed support for tearing down Memorial Coliseum to build a baseball stadium for a minor league team 1% of the city cares about. But luckily, the paper (which I also freelance for) was also good enough to publish this op-ed from architect Ryan Yaden:

In 1963 New York's Penn Station was demolished to make way for Madison Square Garden. Since then generations of New Yorkers have lamented its loss. We shouldn't let Portland's Memorial Coliseum become our Penn Station.

Manhattan's original 1910 Pennsylvania Station by McKim, Mead and White was a classic of turn-of-the century Beaux Arts architecture with massive stonework and soaring spaces. But by the 1960s it was viewed as old and out of date. Obsolescence and operating expense were cited by the owners as reasons to tear it down and replace it with a new complex of modern concourses, offices and an arena.

As the great structure was razed, The New York Times wrote a heated eulogy: "Until the first blow fell, no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished, or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age."

Today Memorial Coliseum faces a similar fate. 

A new Triple A baseball stadium that was approved as part of a package to bring Major League Soccer to Portland is most often shown on the site of Memorial Coliseum. The timeline puts the need for a plan to be accepted by this fall, so there isn't much time. The site was doubtless chosen for its prime location and size, and in recent years the coliseum has generally been described as obsolete, redundant and expensive to operate.

Sound familiar?

Looking past the (very real) practical issues, we see one of the great buildings of an era. Three years prior to the demolition of Penn Station, in 1960, Skidmore Owings and Merrill completed Memorial Coliseum, dedicated to the "advancement of cultural opportunities for the community and to the memory of our veterans of all wars who made the supreme sacrifice."

It's a sophisticated glass box with a gentle curving bowl set inside for the arena. Inside on the concourse is one of the great views of downtown Portland set against the Willamette River. It signifies a hopeful and progressive time in Portland and since its dedication has hosted some of the more memorable shared experiences for the city.

Most of us who grew up in Portland have some significant childhood memory associated with the coliseum. Don't let its demolition be the lament of future generations simply because we couldn't appreciate its significance in our own time. Beaux Arts structures were thought of as irrelevant in the 1960s, and since then we have learned that a lost masterpiece like Penn Station simply cannot be re-created. It's a nonrenewable resource: When it's gone, it's gone forever.

Now, I'm an avid soccer fan and player, and I'm thrilled that Major League Soccer has chosen Portland for its expansion. Likewise, I'm looking forward to watching both baseball and soccer in stadiums that are more conducive to each activity. But that shouldn't come at the expense of one of the great buildings of its era.

It's time that Portland put its considerable energy and progressive thinking toward adapting Memorial Coliseum to a new and financially sound use. As with any large project, the political, legal and development issues are formidable. It's a difficult problem, but not more challenging than what we have solved in the past.

For the same reasons, people said we couldn't draw a line around the city to preserve our rural lands from development. But we did, and the Urban Growth Boundary was born. People said we couldn't use federal transportation funds for mass transit instead of highways. But we did, and the MAX light-rail system was born.

We have a legacy of accomplishing unconventional change when it improves the quality of our environment.

Go visit the coliseum if you haven't recently. Step back a moment and appreciate the elegant structure for what it is. Look at the details and picture the spirit of that era. Stand on the concourse and look at the city that has grown up so much since 1960.

Yes, the building is a little worse for wear, but for a structure that's almost 50 years old, that's to be expected. With any luck, it won't be the last time you see it.

In the end, Penn Station's demolition did have a silver lining in becoming the example of how devastating lost heritage can be. I hope that won't be the legacy of Memorial Coliseum.

Ryan Yaden of North Portland is an architect and urban designer with Firm 151.

Please consider contacting City Council to protest razing of Memorial Coliseum

Mayor Sam Adams
Phone: (503)823-4120
Email: Samadams@ci.portland.or.us

Commissioner Randy Leonard
Phone: (503)823-4682
Email: randy@ci.portland.or.us

Commissioner Amanda Fritz:
Phone: (503) 823-3008
Email: amanda@ci.portland.or.us

Commissioner Nick Fish
Phone: (503) 823-3589
Email: nick@ci.portland.or.us

Commissioner Dan Saltzman
Phone: (503)823-4151
Email: dsaltzman@ci.portland.or.us  

Potestio's protestio: tearing down Coliseum "absolute stupidity"

Award-winning architect Rick Potestio is the latest to join in the growing crusade to save Memorial Coliseum, and has written the following guest post:

The Memorial Coliseum should not be torn down to make way for either an "entertainment environment" of the sort that is viable in Kansas City, or a minor league baseball stadium.

Portland is a growing city. As such, it will need multiple venues for sports, concerts, entertainment and so on. The more the city grows, the more the need increases. As we know, costs only go up, and in historically cheap Portland, we are always challenged to make the projects happen or happen well.

Replacing a viable, fully functional, and extremely well built 12,600 seat multipurpose sport and concert venue with a (most likely budget driven, therefore cheap) 9000 seat single purpose/sport stadium makes absolutely no sense.

I repeat, it makes no sense to replace 12,600 fully paid for, top quality, all weather multipurpose seats for a (who knows how the heck we will pay for it and for how long and at what compromise, mortgaged to the hilt), mediocre 9000 seat, summer only, (and not in a rain-out) single purpose venue.

This is absolute stupidity. It reminds me of the mentality that tossed billions of dollars at Wall Street, and the saw a whole hell of a lot of it go to the dogs that created the junk financial products that have tanked our economy.

From the standpoint of pure one-to-one economic value, this deal stinks. But there is more.

Consider the location as it relates to baseball.... Is this really the best location for the stadium? Is the school site better?

I say no to both. Neither is well served by transit. Yes, there is a stop at the Rose Garden, yet would people walk from that stop to the school site? There are freeway on/off ramps, and these dump vehicles onto Broadway/Wiedler. That has not been a great situation for NE, and extending traffic jam season to year round doesn't make sense... but I expect people will choose to drive over mass transit.

Placed in another part of town, the stadium would provide economic stimulus. It might as well at the MC site, but lets face it... it is not Fenway Park, or Wriggly Field or even the new Giants Stadium. Those are in neighborhoods, old and new, and energize the areas around them... but the Rose Quarter is not a neighborhood, and will not become one. It is a parking lot complex next to a convention center on one side and an industrial area on the others.

From an economic impact consideration, the only area that would benefit would be the Rose Quarter.

The MC is both an architecturally historic and artistic statement, a major work of modernism. It is also a war veterans memorial. It was also built by the people of Portland, and is owned by them.

The Blazers, who manage but do not own the Coliseum, have mothballed it such that it is a drain on the city, and failed to responsibly maintain the building such that it would seem ready and prime for demolition.

This is wrong. The building has merit as a work of architecture, as a memorial, and as a historic venue, a place where many great moments in sports and culture have occurred.
Anyone who has been in Portland long enough to see the leaves change color knows that we will go ballistic to save buildings with far less merit in terms of architecture or historic value. In fact we even save that which we do tear down. Ask the Rebuilding Center.

Tearing the MC is not an act of sustainability. It is not adaptive reuse. It is not justifiable on any terms if we state we respect the imbedded creative, physical, and material energy the building represents. It is not sustainable if we consider the great energy of sport and art, and audience the building has hosted—let alone the bad karma of tearing down a memorial building paid for in part by children’s' door-to-door fund raising efforts.

Tearing down the MC tears down more than a building. It tears down a vessel of memories and a monument to remembrance of sacrifice.

Further, the MC is a uniquely community oriented building. The concourse level is mid-bowl. Therefore it is at a mid point between the most expensive and the least expensive seats. In the old days, when every one in Portland at least said they were born here, the concourse was the great unifier. Everyone came to the center before and at half time, and promenaded around the bowl taking in the great views of the city and saying hi to friends they would run into. In later years, bars were set up in the corners, and often fans were still out side the arena well into the second half of a game... as well, people would cruise the inner ring between the two principal levels of the bowl and scan the crowd for friends.... try to do either at the Rose Garden... or any other venue in this country.

The MC reinforced Portland’s sense of community, expressed in the purest and most egalitarian of architectural terms and enhanced by stunning views of the city.

By comparison, the Rose Garden is a segregated experience that is all about money and status.

Portland can and should fight back against this stupid and shortsighted plan.

American Institute of Architects calls for City Council to save Memorial Coliseum

The groundswell of support for saving our beloved Memorial Coliseum is building. A letter was sent from the American Institute of Architects on Friday to City Council members Nick Fish, Randy Leonard, Amanda Fritz, and Mayor Sam Adams.

The letter is signed by the presidents of AIA's Portland chapter and Oregon chapter, as well as the Institute's key committee chairs and several of its 'Fellows', the most honored and senior members of the local architecture profession (designated by 'FAIA' after their name). These are people who have collectively built the MAX line, much of the Portland International Airport, the Nike campus, much of Portland State University, and much more. Here is the letter:

Dear Commissioner:

The American Institute of Architects/Portland with additional support from The American Institute of Architects/Oregon and participating committees, the Fellows of the AIA, the Downtown Urban Design Panel and the Historic Resources Committees would like to request that you join a large contingent of citizen groups and interested individuals to speak against and vote against the proposed development agreement advocated by the Office of the Mayor in support of a baseball stadium benefiting Peregrine LLC to the long-term detriment of the Rose Quarter.

To date an inadequate public process has failed to discuss the merits of a master plan providing alternative locations for a new baseball stadium within or outside of the Rose Quarter and failed to consider viable reuse options for the Memorial Coliseum, a building that is listed on the City of Portland’s Historic Resource Inventory and is significant for the following reasons:

• The Memorial Coliseum is an important and beloved landmark even for those unaware of its architectural pedigree;

• It is dedicated to our veterans and is held high as an emblem of our collective honor for what they have given;

• The Coliseum currently hosts hundreds of events each year serving many different sectors of our community, whereas a baseball stadium would be used a few dozen times a year for one interest group.

• The site is too restricted to permit subsequent expansion of a baseball stadium on that site – it may be necessary to look beyond the bounds of the Rose Quarter to find a site that makes long term sense.

In addition, the Office of the Mayor is advocating a development agreement that lacks adequate funding and proposes work that far exceeds the financial capacity of both the City of Portland and Peregrine LLC to achieve success without undue burden on the citizens of Portland.

Your vote against the development agreement would signal the need to develop a Rose Quarter master plan inclusive of all interested parties, has broad local support, and is more reflective of past successful planning efforts within the City of Portland.

We thank you for your support.

Greg Flinders
President, The American Institute of Architects/Portland

John Blumthal, AIA
YGH Architecture
President, The American Institute of Architects/Oregon

James McGrath, AIA
Co-chair, Downtown Urban Design Panel

Paul Falsetto, Assoc. AIA
Carleton/Hart Architecture
Co-chair, Historic Resources Committee

Paddy Tillett, FAIA
Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership
Co-chair, Fellows Committee

Thomas Hacker, FAIA, Thomas Hacker Architects
Joachim Grube, FAIA, Yost Grube Hall
Don Stastny, FAIA, StastnyBrun Architects
Stan Boles, FAIA, BOORA Architects
Martha Peck Andrews, FAIA, Andrews Architects
Larry Bruton, FAIA, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership
George Crandall, FAIA, Crandall Arambula
Robert Thompson, FAIA, TVA Architects
Ned Vaivoda, FAIA, YGH Architecture
Ron Grownowski, FAIA, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership
Bing Sheldon, FAIA, SERA Architects
Roger Shiels, FAIA, Shiels Obletz Johnsen
Robert Hastings, FAIA, Trimet
Brooks Gunsul, FAIA, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership
Nels Hall, FAIA, YGH Architecture

Sustainability Center open house today

The public and the press and invited to attend an informal open house on the Oregon Sustainability Center, Friday, April 10 from 4 pm - 6 pm. The open house will be held at Gerding Edlen Development's offices in the Brewery Blocks at 1120 NW Couch Street, Sixth Floor.

The open house is the culmination of a week-long series of workshops and technical design sessions held April 6-10 to explore the vision for the Center as well as its more technical aspects: programming, energy, water use, the building envelope and materials. The Center’s development team and public sponsors will be present to discuss the project.

Public sponsors of the Center are the Portland Development Commission, City of Portland, Oregon University System, Oregon Living Building Initiative, Portland+Oregon Sustainability Institute, and Portland Community College. The development team of Gerding Edlen Development, Green Building Services, GBD Architects and SERA Architects is currently completing a feasibility study for the Center as the first living building to be located in downtown Portland.

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.

Rosales on hybrid bridge: "You're going to win all the awards"

Last night I attended a presentation at City Hall from architect Miguel Rosales on the new hybrid bridge being proposed for the Willamette River's new MAX and pedestrian/bike crossing.

Rosales called this "an important time" for Portland, and the bridge "an opportunity that will not come again for fifty or sixty years."

He said the design is based on three requirements: that it be memorable and not like any other, that it be technologically advanced, and that it fit the site. The cable-stay option for the bridge, which is the more off-the-shelf design, Rosales called "too tall" and "too common." In the 1950s it was unique, he said. Now cable-stay bridges are everywhere.

"To have a cultural impact, you need to innovate," he said. "A bridge, it's for everybody. It has an enormous influence."

More importantly, the cable-stay design would be bigger all around than the hybrid. It's towers would be significantly taller, and also much thicker than the hybrid because they'd need to be accessed from inside. The cable-stay's cables would also be more numerous than the hybrid, reducing views and transparency, and its cables would extend to beyond the edge of the bridge in a way the hybrid's wouldn't.

Rosales also talked about how the bridge is going to be a strong development tool. Before the Zakim bridge in Boston was built (from his design), that stretch of the river "was like the lost mile of Boston," he said. Now it's teeming with activity.

This was an encouraging point, because the bridge is being located in a counter-intuitive way when it comes to access for most Portlanders. Instead of being located close to downtown, it's being placed down by the South Waterfront district. So it's nice to know eventually this arguably ill-advised placement will work out.

In reference to the wave design that he previously said he liked best (and would have been the first of its kind), Rosales also emphasized that the hybrid bridge is "not a compromise." In fact, he added, "some things are better" with the hybrid versus the wave. It's more transparent, so people crossing will have a better view.

Even so, Rosales did not address some of the misinformation that has existed about the wave. Trimet advocated against choosing the wave because it was said to be more expensive. But that is not necessarily true, say the designers.

The hybrid will achieve its elegance, the architect said, from its cables. He compared the design to a well-tailored suit. This is probably a good metaphor, because the hybrid is indeed much more individually tailored to this site than the cable-stay. At the same time, most business suits, however well tailored, give off a conservative look. Maybe the wave would have been more like more casual designer clothing: Prada instead of Saville Row. (Trimet's cable-stay option being The Men's Wearhouse or J.C. Penny in this metaphor.)

Portland Spaces editor Randy Gragg served as the quasi-emcee for the talk, offering brief remarks before Rosales spoke (I believe he also helped organize the event). Randy seems to be arguing for the design community to get behind the hybrid concept and support it because the hybrid is decidedly better than the cookie-cutter-cable-stay. And he's absolutely right in that logic. The hybrid is a bridge we can love, or at least learn to love, and it's vastly better than the alternative that the engineers want to pull of the sales rack.

Even so, as one commenter said on my last post about the bridge, the misinformation being given out about the wave perhaps ought to act as impetus for re-opening the conversation to include it as a possibility. We needn't eliminate what may still be the best option simply in order to fight the worst one.

But again, if those reading this post decide not to support the re-opening of the wave discussion and instead to get behind the hybrid, I say: more power to you. If the hybrid bridge comes to Portland, we'll be better for it. As Rosales said, "You're going to win all the awards," if the hybrid gets built. There are worse things than that.

Save Memorial Coliseum! (updated)

It was with shock, sadness and anger that I learned that the City of Portland and the Portland Trail Blazers have joined together to demolish one of the greatest works of architecture, and one of the most historic sites, in the entire city: Memorial Coliseum.

Demolishing the Coliseum is wrong for Portland, wrong for the Rose Quarter site, and sends the worst kind of message about how the city respects its history and sustainability.

And all to build a minor-league baseball park. Let me ask all of you: How many of you have paid to see a Portland Beavers baseball game in the last decade? How many of you passionately follow the Portland Beavers?

Even if you are a Beavers baseball believer, though, placing a stadium on the Coliseum sight is all wrong. Any stadium or arena is to a city's urban grid what a swallowed mouse is to a snake. It's too big to go down easy. Having anything next to the Rose Garden arena other than a stadium or arena would have been better.

Portland has established a well-deserved reputation for sustainability over the last decade. But one of the paramount principles of building green is to renovate buildings instead of tearing them down. You could build something with a LEED Platinum designation on the Memorial Coliseum site, but it's not truly green--not at all--if you tear down a building to do it.

In case there are people reading this who haven't read my previous posts (or others') about the Coliseum, it's worth reiterating that the building, however much it may seem to be in disrepair (which can be fixed), has tremendous architectural significance and historic value. Memorial Coliseum was designed by the legendary firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. It's one of the great arenas to come out of the mid-20th century, for which nostalgia and preservation efforts around the world have been growing. The building itself is noteworthy and unique for how the seating bowl is enclosed by a glass box. It gives the Coliseum a sense of transparency that virtually no other enclosed arena has. That's also an architectural quality that would be conducive to many types of renovations.

The Blazers' plans for the Rose Quarter could easily accommodate the Coliseum. They want to have a covered entertainment venue for shows. Couldn't the Coliseum be altered to serve such a purpose? Anything would be better than razing it.

Adding salt to the wound is that a better and actually even available site lies across the street: the outmoded Portland Public Schools Blanchard facility. Why not have the stadium there and only add to the "synergy" (to use the team and developers' words)?

Another idea for the Portland Beavers stadium: the suburbs. Many supporters of the team are said to come from Southwest Portland and Washington County. Why not put the stadium on the MAX line in Beaverton or Hillsboro? I'll bet those towns would welcome the economic development potential of a minor-league stadium and not snicker (like I admittedly do) at the team or what its home will destroy.

Mayor Sam Adams is, from what I understand, supporting the stadium at the site of Memorial Coliseum. Considering his fall from political/popular grace this year, I can understand the mayor not wanting to take on the Blazers and Merritt Paulson on this. But I think it would be a boon to his popularity if he rode in with a win-win solution like brokering a deal for the Blanchard site to host the stadium instead of the Coliseum destruction.

It's also the worst possible irony that the Blazers are looking to demolish the sacred ground where the team won the 1977 NBA Championship. What are you going to do next, Blazers, use the championship banner as a welcome mat at the Beavers' empty stadium? (Nearly empty on game nights.)

It gives me great pain to be arguing against the wishes of the Blazers. I live and breathe Trail Blazer basketball. If the team wins another championship in my lifetime, that's all I'll ask for from God again. The Blazers should be protecting the Coliseum with a whip and a chair against any hungry lions. Instead, they've hired a corporate developer to generate a very, very cheesy sounding entertainment district that seems to have more Las Vegas or Los Angeles DNA than that of our Rose City.

I'm also gravely disappointed that leaders in Portland's city council have allowed this to happen and even maybe encouraged it. Obviously they want the best for the city, but this is just not it. Maybe it conveniently solves the issue of where to put the Beavers' stadium since the Portland Timbers' MLS squad will take over PGE Park. But solving a multimillion-dollar case of musical chairs by destroying one of the most beloved buildings ever built in the city is not the way to do it right.

As Portlanders we can not stand for this horrible plan that is contemptuous of history, sustainability and even the Blazers team itself. We need to start talking right away about petition drives, protests, back-door meetings--anything to prevent this tragedy from happening. Who's with me on the picket line?

 

UPDATE: Friends, Blazer fans, Portlanders, take note. There is a Rose Quarter Redevelopment Public Open House Event coming up:

Tuesday, April 14, 2009
6:00-8:00 p.m.

Agenda:
6:00 PM Public review of proposed redevelopment concepts
6:30 PM Presentation of redevelopment concepts
7:00 PM Community feedback session

Location:
Leftbank Building, 240 N. Broadway

Modeling the hybrid Willamette bridge

Beginning today at City Hall at 6PM, a new model of the proposed Willamette River Crossing, the new span connecting MAX light rail and pedestrians that is planned for a space between the Ross Island and Marquam bridges, will be on display.

Sponsored by the Architecture Foundation of Oregon, the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and Portland Spaces magazine, a reception this evening will include not only the scale model's unveiling, but a lecture at 7PM by the bridge's designer, architect Miguel Rosales of Boston-based Rosales + Partners.

The model will be on display at City Hall through April and then move to other to-be-determined locations for public viewing.

I was given a brief sneak preview of the model yesterday by one of the engineers involved, Philipp Wenger of Stuttgart, Germany-based Schlaich Bergermann und Partner. And compared to the previous renderings we've seen of this suspension/cable-stay bridge hybrid, the bridge now looks undeniably better. When the hybrid and the wave protoypes were first unveiled in renderings, the wave's design had been more refined because Trimet and the advisory committee involved had more questions, and because the hybrid concept was introduced at a later date. So to see a more refined version of the hybrid definitely does the look of this concept justice.

The hybrid is a much better bridge for this site than the off-the-shelf options it draws from. A cable-stayed bridge would require much taller towers rising to over 250 feet, which would be out of scale with the site. (It's equivalent to the height of the tallest South Waterfront condo.) The hybrid option, however, brings that height down to something more reasonable: about 180 feet. The towers are also noticeably more slender.

Even so, a variety of people with knowledge and passion about design, including Portland Spaces editor Randy Gragg, whose magazine is co-sponsoring tonight's event, believe there is still a danger that Trimet will push forward a more conservative option in the off-the-shelf cable-stay bridge. This is a time for the design community to get behind the hybrid as a better, more unique option for Portland.

At the same time, while the wave-bridge concept seems close to dead now, I continue to have serious reservations about how that concept was discarded based on misinformation.

Trimet's case for going against the wave was said to be based on cost and extra difficulty doing such a unique bridge - the wave would be the first of its kind. "You don't want to give a false bridge type and say we think a wave frame is a great type of bridge here but we can't afford it," David Unsworth, project development manager for TriMet, told The Oregonian's Dylan Rivera in a March 4 article. "Do you want a popularity contest on something we can't afford?"

But many of the costs and challenges have been unfairly exaggerated. The wave has been said to require high-performance steel produced by only one company in the United States, for example, which was a major strike against the concept. But according to Wenger, those details could easily have been overcome to make the wave competitive on price and with more common types of steel.

"It was stated by the client that only one source in the US could supply high performance steel with 4-inch plate thickness," Wenger explains. "High performance steel is available in Portland rolled up to approximately 3.5" thickness. The plate thickness could easily been overcome during the ongoing design phase, in order to comply with local supply and a wider choice of sources."

We're at a stage where all the bridge prototypes would need a lot of these details worked out. So to say the wave would cost vastly more is misleading.

I can't help but feel Trimet's conservativism and over-attention to budget are the Achilles' heel of this bridge design process. Isn't Portland supposed to have a trail-blazing, pioneering spirit and a progressive character that favors innovation? So why are we acting like Topeka when it comes to the wave?

That said, at tonight's reception, I plan to strongly support Rosales and the notion of a hybrid bridge instead of the off-the-shelf cable-stay option that is clearly very wrong for this site. In fact, at this point, the most politically advantageous position would likely be to argue solely for the hybrid as the pragmatic choice. It's not as innovative or appropriate as the wave, but it's not as bad as the cookie-cutter option that conservative Trimet seems to be pushing for.

But I can't yet commit fully to the idea that the wave should be dropped. In my heart of hearts, I see Portland missing out on the best bridge out of fear and naivete. It's been 35 years since Portland built a bridge. We don't have the institutional expertise in Trimet or other parts of city government to push for strong design from the get-go. If Trimet had a bridge-design expert on staff, or there were someone else at the city pushing for strong design at the start, perhaps a design competition or other tweaked process could have created a better set of conditions for getting the right bridge.

As things stand now, we have a good bridge designer (Rosales) and engineer (Schlaich Bergermann), but maybe Portland is not the right bold, confident client to go forward with the weave. It's too bad, because our identity is supposed to be that of an innovative, progressive city. And yet the best bridge option out leaders seem willing to commit to is the one that's the second best, patting ourselves on the back for not choosing the cheapest and the worst.

Regardless, I do have great confidence in Rosales and his design team partners. After all, they've explicitly said the wave seems best but that they like the hybrid a lot, which seems about right. What's more, if the city goes forward with the hybrid option, we'll be getting a very nice bridge. Go see for yourself at City Hall tonight or in the days ahead.

Offices by Emmons, YGH

The slumping economy has meant Portland's once robust collection of construction cranes erecting new buildings has dwindled to a scant few. 

And while offices buildings such as One Main Place and B-side 6 are soon to open their doors, many companies have chosen to renovate spaces in existing buildings rather than build from the ground up.

Recently two Portland firms, Emmons Architects and YGH Architecture, saw completion of new office projects in existing buildings.

The Emmons design, for financial services firm RV Kuhns & Associates, which I visited last month, occupies a few floors in the historic Smith's Block on Naito Parkway at Ash Street, just across from Waterfront Park. The Smith's Block was originally built in 1872 and designed by architect William W. Piper. Piper also designed the better known New Market Theater, which was built the same year and restored to wonderful effect by SERA Architects and architect William Hawkins in 1983. (The two photos at right were taken by Stuart Emmons.)

Both the Smith's and the New Market are among Portland's are among the oldest surviving cast-iron buildings in the city. The building is actually comprised of four narrow, virtually identical structures. "If you like this particular Italian Renaissance style," writes Bart King in An Architectural Guidebook to Portland, "tough luck; the rest of the several buildings that once sported it in this area have been demolished. (Even the southern portion of this block was razed for parking.)

Inside the new RV Kuhns offices, Emmons Architects highlighted the building's original interior brick walls by using glass and skylights to dramatic effect to introduce more natural light. Shafts of light carry illumination through the roof and down through lower floors, while also acting as a bold, almost monolithic piece of functional interior sculpture. Stairways are enclosed in glass as well. It's not only a treat to be in an old building so bathed in soft natural light, but also to see historic and contemporary design elements blended together so seamlessly.

Stuart Emmons, the Harvard-trained head of Emmons Architects, has often been known best in Portland for his outspokenness, writing editorials and taking stands on a variety of city policies and design decisions. This activism is a credit to Stuart, and example to architects about getting involved. That said, it's also possible that Emmons Architects' work can be a bit overshadowed as a result, which is too bad, because the design is very good. Emmons Architects performed master planning for much of the South Waterfront district as well as the Naito Parkway area, and the firm has been close to getting major commissions a couple of times over the last decade.

Meanwhile, YGH Architecture (known for most of its history as Yost Grube Hall) has also completed offices in the US Bancorp Tower (a.k.a. 'Big Pink') for the law firm Smith Freed & Eberhard. Big Pink was originally designed by the Portland office of venerable national firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in collaboration with legendary Portland architect Pietro Belluschi.

The 25,000 square foot project showcases 360 degree views of the city and includes a reception and conferencing center located on the north side of the building, large lunch room for employees located in a premium location (the Northwest corner of the building); offices and general office space. (The photos above to the right are by Pete Eckert.)

This is a relatively small interior office project for YGH, but the firm has also been responsible for many larger offices, like the LEED Gold-rated North Mall Office Building in Salem, the City Development Center in Portland, and even the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi. Then there's the plethora of international work YGH has done, spearheaded by principal Joachim Grube, in developing countries like Sudan and Kazakhstan. Grube received a lifetime achievement award at last year's inaugural Root Awards from Portland Spaces magazine.

Congratulations to YGH Architecture and Emmons Architects, not only on jobs well done but on finding ways to chug along in tough economic times.

Riverdale preservationists seek your support as demolition nears

Riverdale Grade School, the historic schoolhouse designed by one legendary Portland architect (A.E. Doyle) and renovated by another (Pietro Belluschi), is inching nearer toward demolition. But an intrepid band of preservationists is still fighting the good fight to save this local landmark. And they want your help.

Steve Jewell, head of Preserve Riverdale, writes: 

"Those wishing to demolish the Doyle building are seeking land use approval to build a massive, two-story structure on Breyman Avenue where the Doyle building stands today.  Plans show this new building would tower above and close to the street, dominating the adjacent neighborhood. It is the antithesis of the architectural sensibilities A.E. Doyle so gracefully created in his own design."

The proposed additions, crafted by Mahlum Architects, would result in a huge increase in the size of the Riverdale campus - 64% larger - in spite of flat or declining enrollment. It's incredible to think of all the funding problems that inner city schools like Jefferson High have just maintaining the space they have, and yet Riverdale wants to balloon out when there isn't a substantial growth in enrollment and when it would sacrifice a building with tremendous architectural pedigree.

Jewel and Preserve Riverdale ask that those who favor preservation of the original building write to the city's land-use hearing officer, Sylvia Cate (sylvia.cate@ci.portland.or.us), expressing their objections to the Type III Conditional Use Permit being requested.

In a sample letter to the hearing officer, Jewel writes, "...the proposed expansion, particularly the proposed central classroom building is massive. It will dwarf anything and everything in the neighborhood. Its location at the top of a slope and close to the street will cause it to loom over the sidewalk, street, and neighborhood."

He adds that "the decision to demolish the existing historic and beloved A.E. Doyle building was made without sufficient public notice or input. The process was marred by suppression of dissenting voices and lack of transparency."