The decade in review (part 1): renovations

photo by Sally Schoolmaster 

In looking back at the years 2000-2009 and searching for dominant themes, a handful stand out. There has been the rise of sustainable and energy-efficient design. There was the overall building boom and, within that, the proliferation of high-density condominiums and apartments; they came to both existing neighborhoods and former industrial enclaves like the Pearl District and South Waterfront. There was also a continuing commitment to mass-transit infrastructure during this decade, as seen in the additions of more MAX and streetcar lines and even an aerial tram.

Equally significant, and tied to these other dominant themes of the decade for Portland architecture, was a plethora of renovations.

The decade began with what is arguably the most extraordinary of all the decade’s rehab projects: the opening of the Wieden + Kennedy headquarters in 2000 (pictured above). I’d go so far as to say its the most compelling and singular architectural space created in Portland during the decade.

A five-story warehouse originally built in 1910 (architect unknown) and called the Fuller Paint Company building, the renovation’s design catapulted the local architect responsible, Allied Works, to the national spotlight.

As author Bart King notes in An Architectural Guidebook to Portland, “For years, pedestrians walked past this five-story building, rarely giving the boarded-up box a second look.” It spent many years as a cold storage warehouse, which led to extensive wood rot. But W+K head Dan Wieden envisioned the building, as King also notes, as a kind of cultural magnet recalling Andy Warhol’s “Factory". The ensuing design by architect Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works utterly transformed the inside, leaving virtually only the exterior of the original structure intact.

The only thing that nags at me (and this is a sensation I rarely feel about old building renovations) is that given how special the W+K building is on the inside, it might have been better to let the architects use their imagination and take more liberties with the building's exterior. This is my favorite renovation of the decade, and yet part of me wonders if W+K should have been a renovation at all. Then again, I do think somehow the way the project turned out out feels fitting for Portland: something incredible inside an unassuming package.

photo by Brian Libby 

Inside, what makes the Wieden + Kennedy building extraordinary is its central atrium (pictured at the top of this post). It acts as a social nexus for its creative employees but also brings a bounty of natural light into the interior of the building. There are catwalks circling the top of the space, and an auditorium that feels like a modernist high school gymnasium. The W+K building has a simple palette of reclaimed wood and concrete, but this is no ordinary concrete. The finish is so exquisite that it almost resembles a luxury material like marble.

As if the synergy of W+K’s creative energy and Cloepfil’s design weren’t enough to celebrate, the project was also the first of many renovations in this western portion of the Pearl District by developer Gerding Edlen.

The company would go on from W+K to redevelop the vacant Blitz-Weinhard brewery into the five-building Brewery Blocks. 

photos by Brian Libby

Although some of the buildings were new construction, the GBD Architects-designed Brewery Blocks renovated and retained the historic brew house along Burnside Street into mixed-use offices and retail, making the brewery’s circular smokestack (pictured above) a celebrated local architectural icon and a symbol of the industrial age transitioning into the age of sustainability. The Brewery Blocks were all LEED-rated by the US Green Building Council, some of the first structures in Portland to earn that distinction.

Gerding Edlen was also responsible for another of the city’s most noteworthy renovations of this decade, a building just across NW 10th Avenue from the Brewery Blocks: the Portland Armory. Renovated into the Bob and Diana Gerding Theater (also by GBD), the Armory is now home to Portland Center Stage theater company. This was the first building in the nation listed on the National Register of Historic Places to earn a top-level Platinum LEED rating. It’s a fitting tribute to Bob Gerding, co-founder of Gerding Edlen, who passed away this year after a long battle with cancer.

 photo by Brian Libby

Also in the Pearl District was another landmark of sustainable architecture and historic renovation in the 2000s: the Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center, more commonly known as the Ecotrust building for the nonprofit organization that developed the project and is headquartered there. Designed by Holst Architecture, Ecotrust was the first historic building of any kind to earn a LEED rating.

And because the City of Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development was headquartered there throughout the decade (before Mayor Adams merged it with the Portland Bureau of Planning upon taking office in early 2009), the Ecotrust building became a social and professional hub for the city’s burgeoning sustainable design community. I have attended a host of events over the last decade in one of the Ecotrust building’s conference rooms.

 photo by Brian Libby

Another Holst project in the Pearl District, the Pacific Northwest College of Art, was one of the top rehab projects of the 1990s. And during this decade, the building was repainted in an incredible way. Designer Randy Higgins, who had been at Holst when PNCA was designed, "came up with an abstract pattern of gray and chartreuse rectangles that resembles a Piet Mondrian painting," as I wrote in a Metropolis article, "giving this previously drab gray square box an exterior that not only catches the eye but also feels familiarly architectural." 

If Ecotrust was a major green renovation at the beginning of the decade, the 2000s were bookended at the other end by an equally impressive rehab: the White Stag Block in Old Town at the west edge of the Burnside Bridge. Rehabbing two historic buildings with LEED certification, the Fletcher Farr Ayotte-designed project is now home to the University of Oregon's Portland satellite campus.

 

photos by Brian Libby  

Surrounding Pioneer Courthouse Square downtown is a host of early-20th Century buildings that form the core of Portland’s architectural past, buildings like the Jackson Tower and the Pioneer Courthouse itself. One of those jewels, the A.E. Doyle-designed Meier & Frank building, also saw a spirited renovation.

The impetus was a buyout of the M&F department store chain by Macy’s, but more compelling than the facelift to the store itself was the new Nines Hotel created on the upper floors, including a central atrium and a rooftop bar that allow one to enjoy Doyle’s elegant white brick building like never before. The project was overseen by SERA Architects, a firm noted for both its sustainable and its historic preservation credentials.

photo by Brian Libby 

Also downtown there was the renovation of the former Masonic Temple on the North Park Blocks into the Portland Art Museum's Mark Building. The renovation, completed in 2005, was overseen by Ann Beha & Associates of Boston. It included sprucing up the existing large and small ballrooms there, and carving space on the south side of the building for the museum's new Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art. At the time, I wrote an Oregonian feature in which three architects - specializing in arts facilities, historic preservation and planning, respectively - evaluated the building. The consensus was that the Mark Building (pictured below) was handsome in many ways, and the added museum space was welcome, but that the overall scheme felt rather tame.

 photo by Brian Libby

All the projects I’ve mentioned so far were on the west side, but the east side of the city has also seen numerous renovations. Here, rather than Gerding Edlen, the most prominent developer was Bradley Malsin and his company, Beam Construction. Malsin first gained notice with the Diloreto Architecture-designed Eastbank Commerce Center, located at the east edge of the Morrison Bridge.

Although not a spectacular building – more like a middling old warehouse – the ECC was one of the first to demonstrate how the burgeoning creative class in Portland could bring alive the Central Eastside Industrial District. With white-hot restaurant clarklewis on the ground floor and a host of design industry tenants, the building showed a new way forward as the Central Eastside became in the 2000s not just a place for closed-off industrial buildings, but also a place for designers, artists, and artisans.

Several more Central Eastside renovations followed. Another Malsin-developed warehouse project, the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, was even larger in scale than the sizable ECC. It also showed off the talents of rising-star firm Works Partnership. Here the architects had more opportunity to craft compelling public spaces from a palette of wood and concrete. And the RiverEast Center, another successful warehouse renovation in the Central Eastside, transformed a circa-1951 warehouse at the east edge of the Hawthorne Bridge into a hub for Group Mackenzie (the architect responsible), a software company, and the Portland Boathouse.

photo by Brian Libby 

A few blocks up the street, the circa-1915 Ford Building at SE 11th Avenue at Division (pictured above) was once the only assembly plant for Ford automobiles in Oregon. Now, courtesy of Portland's Emerick Architects and a California developer, the massive 82,000 square foot brick building has new life as a flexible office and retail space intended for creative industries, from Gallery Homeland’s art exhibits to Duchess Clothier’s tailored suits.

Then there was Leftbank, the long-vacant building (or actually a trio of conjoined old buildings) on NE Broadway that was once home to the Dude Ranch jazz club. Leftbank’s most notable historic architecture is clearly the Hazelwood building, which was built in 1923 and designed by legendary Portland architect A.E. Doyle with elegant arched windows and a stately brick façade.

photo by Brian Libby 

Diloreto Architecture was once again the architect of record, although Andy Powell, a non-licensed architect, acted as a kind of hybrid designer-developer along with building owner Daniel Deutsch. Inside, Leftbank is home to architects, a microbrewery, and myriad other creative-industry tenants. In fact, the building may represent a trend in that the Leftbank has been very deliberate about the tenants it selects, seeking to make the overall space a creative hub that is greater than the sum of its parts by fostering a collective creative energy.

Some of the noteworthy renovations around town were more humble overhauls of small storefronts, such as The Hub and other retail projects on North Williams that transformed the entire neighborhood. The same is true on nearby North Mississippi Avenue with humble renovations like the Mississippi Studios music venue.

Looking ahead, renovations will continue to be a big part of Portland architecture, particularly as the green building community embraces even more the idea that historic preservation and sustainable design needn’t be mutually exclusive.

Recently the Portland Timbers soccer team released initial renderings of a renovation plan for PGE Park that will transform the circa-1923 A.E. Doyle-designed baseball stadium into a soccer-only facility. The new design is being provided by Ellerbe Beckett, a firm with national reach that specializes in sports stadiums.

photo by Brian Libby 

But an even bigger and more significant project still awaiting renovation is Memorial Coliseum (pictured above), which represented the biggest preservation effort for a Portland building in 2009, and arguably for the entire decade. The modernist landmark, completed in 1960 from a design by the legendary firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, was threatened early in 2009 with a plan to build a minor league baseball stadium on the site.

After a vigorous and community-wide protest that included not just architects but veterans, historic preservationists, green building supporters, sports fans and the arts community, the Coliseum was spared from demolition and received a listing on the National Register of Historic places. However, its ultimate fate is still being determined, as the Mayor Adams-led Stakeholder Advisory Committee vets a variety of ideas from an amusement park to a peace museum to a botanical garden. More serious proposals, such as a previously discussed Memorial Amateur Recreation Complex from developer Douglas Obletz, may still come forward. Meanwhile, the Portland Trail Blazers seem to envision a more hands-off approach that would preserve the interior seating bowl and would keep the Coliseum an arena (although one with a smaller seating capacity) as part of an overall scheme called “Jumptown”, but some remain skeptical given the team's association with Baltimore-based developer The Cordish Company and talk of early schemes involving chain entertainment inside the building.

If we’re talking about old buildings given new life, we have to also mention the buildings that could have been renovated but weren’t. The A.E. Doyle-designed Riverdale School in Southwest Portland, for example, was destroyed so a larger school could be built on the same site. The Rosefriend Apartments, one of downtown’s most beautiful historic courtyard-style apartment buildings, was also leveled so the landowner, First Christian Church, could build underground parking and their development partner, Opus Northwest, could build the Ladd Tower apartment building.

Even so, for all the crass and ill-advised demolitions of quality old buildings that took place in Portland during the decade, there are far more renovations. And while the city skyline was most changed by new towers rising in the Pearl, downtown and in South Waterfront, it is the revitalization of the existing building stock in Portland that best represents the soul of local architecture and design.

Comments

[The Sock]

lol @ "community-wide protest" - enjoy the new Fuddruckers at Chumptown.

[Brian Libby]

We'll see, Sock, my prophetic friend. We'll see.

I'm not saying anyone out there has a perfect Memorial Coliseum plan by any means. But the Blazers are so far the only entity proposing the MC remain the multipurpose arena it was intended to be. I agree a Fuddruckers style corporate entertainment feel is indeed a continuing threat given the track record of the developer (Cordish).

Thanks for your eloquent contributions to the conversation.

[holz]

'rise of sustainable and energy-efficient design.'

i would say the rise in the awareness of energy efficient design, but for all the LEED abortions popping up in the NW, the majority of them aren't hitting substantial energy reductions over baseline.

[Lyle]

Brian,
Another year, another decade ... and thanks for your hard work keeping this blog going with good topics and insights. Maybe I missed it, but is the Decade in Review (Part Two) going to feature some of the new projects that have come along in the past 10 years?

I think it is interesting to evaluate based on form, concept, awards, etc, but also ... measure success from the users point of view. Perhaps you can might provide a follow up (in the new year) that looks at these buildings from the user's perspective?

Happy New Year.

[Brian Libby]

Lyle,

Thanks for the feedback. It's great to get something other than a complaint for once! :)

You're right: I do plan to do a Decade in Review post focusing on new construction. I hadn't decided yet if I will write about all new construction projects in one post, or break it down into categories like housing/condos, offices, public buildings, etc. Any opinion on how best to do that?

I also think it's a good idea to try and write about success stories somehow from a user's perspective. One of the other decade-in-review stories I had planned to write about is sustainability, and I'm thinking maybe occupant comfort will be a part of that, given that sustainability is largely about things like air quality and natural light.

Thanks to Lyle and everyone for reading the blog during these past five years.

[Lyle]

Brian,
I would like to see the new construction in one post. What do you consider the handful (or two) standout new construction projects of the decade? Are there any that will become timeless? Perhaps later when focusing on the users perspective you can break out the success stories by type of use.

Sustainability is a broad topic and certainly the ideas about how to measure sustainability have evolved as we continue to set the bar higher.

Cheers.

[Shawn]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the excellent piece and continued work.

I put up a quick mention over at Portland Built.
http://www.portlandbuilt.com/design/remodeling/portland-architectures-renovation-review

Cheers!
Shawn