Portland Architecture

Architecture + Design Festival begins Thursday, continues through October

This October marks the second annual Portland Architecture + Design Festival, the successor to the old Architecture Week. This monthlong, city-wide celebration of the local built environment and design community features architectural tours, film screenings, public exhibitions, design lectures, and more. The Portland Architecture + Design Festival presents the opportunity for each of us to participate in an extended conversation about design in the Rose City while discovering the buildings, landscapes, neighborhoods, and urban spaces that make Portland special.

Here is a calendar of the fest goings-on throughout October:

September 30

Opening Night Party: 6:30-9:00pm. AIA/Portland Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. (Free.) Music by DJ Drew Groove with libations, and hors d'ouevres.

October 1

Structure + Architecture Symposium: 8:00am-5:00pm, Ecotrust Building, Billy Frank Jr. Conference Center, 721 NW Ninth Ave, Suite 200. ($150 AIA, AGC or SEAO members, $220 general.) This symposium aims to illuminate the importance of the collaboration between architect and structural engineer, and to examine technology that integrates architectural and structural design. It will investigate the idea of structure as a generative force in the design process and consider structural innovation through research and practice.

October 4

Textiles 101: 7:00pm, Museum of Contemporary Craft, 724 NW Davis Street. (Free.) Presented by the International Interior Design Association Oregon Chapter, Textiles 101 presents designers with the opportunity to learn about the textile process, enabling them to make the best textile choices for their installations. The course familiarizes participants with animal, plant, and synthetic fibers. It covers yarn production and types and a variety of dye processes. Detailed information about fabrics is presented, including basic weave constructions and special techniques. Fabric characteristics and application guidelines are also discussed. Hundreds of illustrations and physical examples of fibers, yarns, textiles, and installations are incorporated into the course. Each participant receives an illustrated glossary of textile terms.

October 7

Exhibit opening - "The Mirror and The Frame: John Yeon and the Landscape Art of China and Japan", AIA/Portland Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Ave. (Free.) The buildings of the self-trained Portland architect and landscape conservationist John Yeon (1910-1994) are known for their close affinity with their natural surroundings.

To mark the centennary of his birth, this exhibition curated by University of Oregon architecture professor Kevin Nute explores parallels between techniques used to integrate buildings and landscapes in Yeon's work and the traditional Chinese and Japanese art he collected throughout his career. (Runs through October 29.)

Swann House by John Yeon, Portland (photo by Brian Libby)

Buddhist temple, Kyoto, Japan (photo by Brian Libby)

Exhibit opening - Mel Douglas, "Eventide", Bullseye Gallery, 300 NW 13th Avenue.  (Runs through November 20.)

October 8

Lecture - Re-Building South Portland: 7:30pm, The Architectural Heritage Center, 701 Southeast Grand Avenue. The lost and surviving remnants of South Portland – now the Lair Hill and Corbett Neighborhoods – have much to tell us about the processes that re-made the socially conservative Portland of the 1950s into the more progressive city it is today.

October 9

Design Matters: A Tour of Portland Homes:  10:00am-4:00pm. Explore six amazing residences designed by leading AIA Portland architects during this daylong self-guided tour. Featuring projects designed by William Kaven Architecture, Emerick Architects, Giulietti/Schouten Architecture, Webster Wilson, Integrate, and Works Partnership Architecture.

October 10

Architecture + Photography Workshop: 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm, AIA/Portland Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Ave. (Tickets $20.) Explore architectural treasures through your camera lens with local photographer Lincoln Barbour, whose work has been published in Elle Decor, Portland Monthly and Gourmet, among others. This three-hour walking tour  will lead you to the most photo-friendly buildings around the Pearl District, providing professional guidance on how anyone can take better snapshots of their built environment.

October 13

A Conversation with Jeff Kovel: 6:00pm, Rejuvenation, 1100 SE Grand Avenue. (Admission $20 suggested donation to Street of Eames fund.) Host Becca Cavell of THA Architecture interviews Kovel, founder of Skylab Architecture.

12 + Alder (image courtesy Skylab Architecture)

Kovel arrived in Portland in 1996 after receiving an architecture degree from Cornell University (listed by some publications as the nation's top architecture school) and founded Skylab Architecture three years later. The firm's portfolio includes the popular Doug Fir restaurant and club, the Departure Lounge atop The Nines Hotel, the 12 + Alder mixed use building, and the Hoke Residence, used as a backdrop in the firstTwilight film.

October 14

Pecha Kucha Night: 7:30pm, The Plant, 939 SE Alder Street. Pecha Kucha (Japanese for 'the sound of conversation') was devised and is shared by Tokyo based architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham (Klein Dytham Architecture) and has spread worldwide. This event creates a forum for designers, architects, and artists to meet, network and show their work in public. Presenters are allowed 20 images, shown for 20 seconds each. Pecha Kucha Portland is produced by Project CityScope.

Pecha Kucha night (image courtesy AIA/Portland, Project CityScope)

October 16

15th Annual "Riches of a City" Heritage Auction: 6:00pm, Governor Hotel, 614 SW 11th Ave. (Tickets $100 for members, $150 general. ) Presented by the Bosco-Milligan Foundation, funds raised at the auction support the historic preservation educational programs and operations of the foundation's Architectural Heritage Center.

October 18

Rosalind Reed Dwight Lecture & Scholarship Closing Party: 7:00pm, AIA/Portland Center for Architecture, 403 NW Eleventh Avenue. (Free.) In 1989 the Portland design community lost one of its own with the death of Rosalind Reed Dwight. Following her death, friends and colleagues established a memorial fund which subsequently funded several AIA lectures and ten scholarships. As a ceremonial closing of the fund, Roz's former business partner, Bea Sennewald, will present a lecture followed by a party with light refreshments and music from their last time with Roz: the 1980s.

Bright Lights Discussion: Portland Redesigns a Slice of Arabia: 6:00pm, Jimmy Mak's, 221 NW 10th Avenue. (Free.) Portland's SERA Architects and Interface Engineering are designing a sustainable city for one of the hottest and driest places: the United Arab Emirates. The project's urban designer and engineer share a glimpse of one future for the Middle East with host Randy Gragg, editor of Portland Monthly. 

October 20

The Great Portland Barscape: 6:00pm. (Tickets $10.) This self-guided tour event will highlight five architect-designed watering holes in the Central Eastside. Each location will uniquely showcase what it takes to create a space worthy of many a happy hour partaking. For your paid voucher, the featured bars have selected either a free brew or a discount on a specialty liquor or wine for bar crawl participants.

October 22

AIA/Portland Design Awards - Jury Presentation and Critique: 5:30-8:00pm, AIA/Portland Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Ave. (Tickets $10.) Every year AIA Portland assembles a nationally renowned group of architects to jury our Design Awards Program. An Evening With the Jury provides both members and the public with the opportunity to meet our distinguished jurors and learn more about their work and their approach to design. The 2010 AIA Design Awards Jury, which includes John Peterson of San Francisco's Public Architecture and Reed Kroloff, Director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, will also share their impressions of Portland design and of this year's submitted Design Awards projects

IIDA Oregon Design Awards Gala: 6:00-9:00pm, Melody Ballrooom, 615 SE Alder Street. (Tickets $45 for members, $25 students, $65 general.) The Design Awards is IIDA Oregon's premier event, showcasing Oregon's unique design talent. Interior Designers and Architects are welcome to submit projects for the competition. Join us as we celebrate these award winning built environments.

October 23

Mid-Century Modern Bus Tour. ($50, includes lunch and wine at the Gordon House. Call the Gordon House at 503-874-6006 for reservations and information.) The first bus stop on the tour will land you at the future site of the Belluschi Pavilion and Griffith Residence in Marylhurst where Tony Belluschi will tell you about Oregon's latest architectural vision. The next stop is the Abbey Library in Mount Angel, one of only two works in the United States designed by Scandinavian Modern architect Alvar Aalto. Continue on to the Gordon House located in Silverton - the only Frank Lloyd Wright designed house open to the public in the Pacific Northwest! 

Architecture + Design Festival Gala Celebration: 7:00pm, Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Avenue. (Tickets $100 for full dinner, awards, & after party, $30 for awards, dessert & after party only.) A festive evening celebrating innovation and excellence in local design.

October 27

Through a Lens: Architectural Photography Show: 5:30 pm, AIA/Portland Center for Architecture, 403 NW Eleventh Ave. (Free.) This photography exhibition will feature striking images of architecture and design through the eyes of Portlanders. This show is open to all, and welcomes 8" x 10" images from Rose City denizens that capture their particular views on the built environment. Each photograph will be for sale during the reception as a fundraiser for the Center for Architecture. One winner will be selected by a local architectural photographer and Pro Photo Supply, and the recipient will receive a $350 gift certificate to Pro Photo Supply.

October 29

Form Function Fashion Show: 7:00pm, Center for Architecture, 403 NW Eleventh Ave. (Tickets $20.) Taking its cue from other design disciplines, this show will explore the broader definition of how the human form and proportion influences fashion. Does fashion build upon Louis Sullivan's notion that form follows function, or does ornamentation have its rightful place enveloping our bodies as we move through architectural space?

 

Contemplating Portland's food cart explosion from a design perspective

Food carts at 10th & Alder downtown (photo by Brian Libby) 

In the past two years, Portland has seen an explosion of street food vendors throughout the city, from high-density downtown locales to suburban sites far afield. There's no disputing that food carts are about food first and carts second. But as they have exploded throughout the city proper, I also have come to think of how food carts are designed and built, and how they work (or don't) collectively.

With the economy struggling, these carts have offered inexpensive food and a tantalizing variety of cuisines, as well as a point of entry to the market for aspiring brick-and-mortar restaurateurs. There isn't a Polish restaurant in Portland, for example, but there is a Polish food cart downtown. No restaurant could survive by serving just one dish, but the Nong's Kao Man Gai cart has become one of the city's most acclaimed and popular by doing just that: serving an exquisitely succulent chicken-and-rice concoction bursting with flavors of cilantro and ginger. And in both these cases, and many others, you can eat very well for about seven bucks.

I could go on and on talking about my favorite food cart meals: the pork sopapilla from Nuevo Mexico at the North Mississippi food cart pod; the wood-fired-oven pizza from Pyro Pizza at "Cartopia", the 12th & Hawthorne pod; the corn dogs from the Violetta truck on Southeast Belmont; the espresso from Spella Cafe on SW Alder; burritos from the former King Burrito cart on SW Fifth; or Korean tacos from the mobile Koi Fusion truck. But for the purposes of Portland Architecture, I've sought to consider what's best about the food cart phenomenon as they relate to our sense of place, and what could be better.

Sip Juice Cart, SE 21st & Tibbens (image courtesy Von Tundra) 

Obviously you don't hire an architect and contractor to build these vehicles, although occasionally when thoughtful builders like Von Tundra get involved, the result can be an award winner.  

More often than not, food carts are rough around the edges and are designed and built in a utilitarian, do-it-yourself manner. They've been stripped, hammered and nailed together in a way that provides cooking space and maybe a little shelter for customers. The fact that many of these structures were recycled from something else, like old Winnebagoes or storage trailers, seems also very much in keeping with a city passionate about reclaiming and re-using. Even the sites themselves are a nice brand of recycling: they turning the deadest kind of urban space, a parking lot, into active place for people again. Jane Jacobs would love that.

Food carts are also a testament to the power of social media. These places don't advertise, at least not in conventional print or broadcast-media ways. With the help of Twitter, Facebook and blogs like Food Carts Portland, word travels fast about which of the more than 200 Portland food carts has cuisine worth seeking out. I'm not sure food carts would have exploded in the same way 10 years ago without social media. We had food carts back then too, but the movement wasn't expanding. Now it's exploding.

Sometimes I've wondered if a food cart pod could be designed wherein a rudimentary series of uniform small structures could be created for various vendors to move into. When I visited Beijing three years ago, this setup existed in the Night Market near my hotel. Each vendor was independent and unique, and this was a place for ready-to-eat food, yet they didn't have to worry about creating a structure for themselves. They could focus on serving up tasty bugs and funny meats.

But in the end I always come back to loving the different food carts precisely for their warts and imperfection: the collective personality emanating from the chaos. One could get prissy about the anything-goes nature of food cart design and lack of any unifying aesthetic, especially given that this is a matter of careful attention for Portland through means like design review and the historic landmarks commission. Food carts aren't always pretty in the conventional sense, unless you see beauty in duct tape and overflowing garbage cans. And no food cart shows much concern for aping its neighbor. Yet it's precisely the low-tech  and DIY nature of these carts that adds to their appeal. Portland may have built a lot of glassy, shiny condos in the last decade, but food carts are arguably closer to the outsider, DIY personality of this city and what's left of its hallowed seediness.

There are small bits of nice design in food carts. Visiting the Nong's Kao Man Gai cart on a rainy day, for example, I took note of their transparent plastic awning. Many are also painted in wild colors, something frowned upon with most architecture. 

Food carts at 10th & Alder downtown (photo by Brian Libby)

The question of food-cart individuality reminds me of the classic children's book by Daniel Pinkwater, The Big Orange Splot, which Wikipedia describes thusly:

The main character, Mr. Plumbean, lives on a 'neat street' where all the houses look the same. A seagull flies over his house and drops a can of bright orange paint on his roof, but instead of repainting his house to look like all the others on the street, Mr. Plumbean paints it to look like all his dreams. His neighbors send people to talk him into repainting his house to look like theirs, but everyone he talks to ends up painting their houses like their dreams also. In the end, all the neighbors say:

"Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all our dreams."

At the same time, carts are also also a heartwarming sort of entrepreneurship. In many cases the man or woman selling you food was also the person transforming an old Prowler trailer or cargo container into a food service facility. Any architect who is a sole practitioner, any PR person working out of their extra bedroom, or any graphic designer flying so can sympathize with the labor, imagination and energy necessary to be both boss and rank & file.

These carts are, for the most part, not subject to health inspections and laws that other restaurants face. Occasionally that has brought protest from traditional brick-and-mortar restaurateurs such as former Greek Cusina owner Ted Pappas. But they are a point of entry into owning a more substantial real restaurant with a roof and seats and ADA access. That's good for the city's long-term economic vitality.

Corporate earnings get all of Wall Street's attention, but small businesses comprise a vast majority of the companies out there. And these aren't just small businesses; they're a new class of micro-retail, tiny but mobile and full of personality.

 

 

Food cart pod at North Killingsworth and Greeley (photos by Brian Libby) 

When I visit food cart pods, I'm often reminded of the street festival that occurred every year in my hometown of McMinnville when I was growing up: Turkey Rama. Or I think of state and county fairs. That's the DNA from which today's food carts were born. There is something inherently fun about ordering food outdoors from a tiny vendor. In the past that has meant mostly just hot dogs and burgers, and only in summer. That this notion of communal, entrepreneurial places for food is now happening year-round and with exponentially more types of cuisine is even better. Given Oregon and Portland's devotion to high-quality and local, organic, sustainable ingredients, these carts are also offering something much better (or at least wholesome) than a Turkey Rama pronto pup.

And the variety of these carts, how they are created in most cases by the food purveyors and each decorated with its own personality, is also part of the fun. One wouldn't want to trample the youthful, festive, entrepreneurial spirit of these carts by enforcing lots of restrictions.

Food cart pods also make me think of food courts existing in places shopping malls. The foundational idea is the same: several small food vendors gathering together with common seating to attract diners with a variety of choices. But on those exceedingly rare times when I happen upon a food court like the one in the basement of Pioneer Place mall, it's a frustratingly antiseptic environment with mediocre food at not very good prices. The localness of food carts trumps these places, and although vastly more money was spent on food court environments versus food cart pods, the pods have a more compelling environment even as they exist in banal parking lots. Portland food carts are the antithesis of corporate mall food courts, and the latter ought to take a lesson from the former in the value of local food made and sold by passionate locals.

 

Food carts at 10th & Alder downtown (photos by Brian Libby) 

At the same time, traditional food courts (be they in malls or elsewhere) have one advantage over some Portland food cart pods: a commons. This is something food cart conglomerations have a spotty record on at best. Go to some pods such as that on North Mississippi and there is one shared and covered seating area for all diners. There's even a bar next door that allows food cart patrons to use its outdoor seating area.

But at other pods, such as at Cartopia at 12th and Hawthorne, there is a mess of awnings from most of the different vendors and no completely shared common area. What's more, there is the issue of keeping the commons presentable and clean. If you and a few other roommates share an apartment, who is responsible for cleaning the living room? It's often the same here. From outhouses to winding cords and cables, trash cans to trash on the ground, at some pods no one seems too concerned with the collective sense of place.

At the same time, forcing food carts to pony up dollars for a lot of collective infrastructure defeats the purpose. The whole notion of these carts is they’re relatively inexpensive to manage as a business. The higher the cost of shared infrastructure, the higher the cost of rent and doing business.

Schnitzelwich food cart at SW Fifth and Stark downtown (photo courtesy Philadelphia Inquirer)

Whatever criticism I have of the makeshift mismatch of materials and design in food carts, or their occasional lack of a commons, it is greatly outweighed by a desire to celebrate the positive and quintessentially Portland vibe happening here: one of low budget ingenuity and creativity that meets the most basic of hungers and desires, and a movement that is born of the past even as it reinvents it for today's values and passions. Carts aren't a new phenomenon, but Portland's carts of today have their own identity. They speak to the sustainable, organic, locally oriented food we prefer today, and to the diverse array of creative people who have enlivened this once sleepy city with youthful energy. Going to food carts is about getting food, but it's also a kind of meet and greet for the younger, more diverse city we are destined to become.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a crepe (or an order of Belgian fries, or an arancini rice ball, or a Venezuelan arepa, or a pork sandwich, or a plate of pierogies) with my name on it.

The Portland Loo: design, entrepreneurship, NIMBYism

Portland Loo at SW Taylor and Naito (photo by Brian Libby)

In recent years as the central city grappled with proper ways to deal with homeless and transient populations, employing legally questionable means like the sit-lie ordinance but also devoting resources to projects like the Homeless Resource Access Center, a less politically combative and less expensive means of serving a basic urban need - the provision of public toilets - emerged in the Water Bureau. The solution is a success story for budget-conscious design, although it has also revealed a certain lingering ugliness a portion of the population has demonstrated in not wanting these facilities. And as it happens, public toilets aren't just for people living on the streets. Everybody's got to go now and then while away from the home base, and we can't depend on Starbucks or McDonald's to accommodate them all.

Seattle has already grappled with this issue, both on the technical and the social front. In 2004 the city committed to spending $700,000 a year to maintain five public toilets downtown and in the Capitol Hill area. But by 2008, after spending some $5 million altogether, the city scrapped the plan amidst difficulties with toilets becoming "so filthy, so overrun with drug abusers and prostitutes," wrote The New York Times' Christopher Maag, "that although use was free of charge, even some of the city’s most destitute people refused to step inside them."

Several other cities have experimented with public toilets, such as New York, Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco, with varying degrees of success or failure. Obviously a public toilet in a public place needs continuous maintenance. But then again, what toilet doesn't? Seattle and most of these cities utilized an high-tech automatic flushing toilet, which is why the cost was so expensive. These stand-alone structures open at the press of a button and stay closed for up to 20 minutes, cleaning themselves (disinfecting the seats and power-washing the floors) after each use.

Portland Loo diagram (courtesy City of Portland) 

Local codes and regulations of advertising have played a substantial cost role. New York and certain other cities have received the toilets virtually free of charge, with advertising companies paying to provide, operate and maintain them for the municipality in exchange for a right to place ads on public property like bus stops and kiosks. Revenue from the advertisers is shared by the company and the city.

But Seattle, like Portland, does not permit such advertising, meaning potentially millions in revenue from advertising doesn't come. So Seattle's real problem with its automated toilets may have been not that they were always destined to be drug and prostitution havens, but instead suffered from a lack of proper budget to devote to keeping them clean and safe.

“Other cities around the world seem to be able to handle toilets civilly,” said Richard McIver, a Seattle city councilman, in Maag's 2008 Times article. “But we were unable to control the street population, and without the benefit of advertising, our costs were awfully high.” 

The Portland Loo, designed in collaboration with Curtis Banger, seeks to solve these issues with simple moves. Instead of being fully automated, it is a simple utilitarian toilet with a hand-washing feature on the outside. So the loo isn't so private that it makes a tempting destination for doing drugs or having sex, the top and bottom of the walls are clad with angled louvers. (That way, law enforcement can see if there are two or more persons inside.) The middle portions of the walls are made with stainless steel panels that can easily be replaced. The loo is lightweight; it can be delivered on-site as a complete enclosure. It's powered by integrated solar panels on its roof, and lit naturally in daytime with a translucent skylight. All of the cleaning and maintenance implements, as well as the electrical components and solar batteries, are housed in the cabinet at the rear of the unit. They are ADA-accessible, and big enough to bring your bicycle inside. There's even artwork on the front door, each unique to that loo.

The Portland Loo may be the only American loo design that is not made in the conventional brick-and-mortar manner. The city hopes to sell these loos to other cities for about $87,500, so besides being a self-generated local design, it could also be an export and a revenue source. And it's a good buy for either those other cities or Portland's own agencies. Building a brick-and-mortar restroom at places like state and city parks, for example, can cost in the realm of half a million dollars.

Portland Loo at SW Taylor and Naito (photo by Brian Libby)  

So far there are Portland Loos in two locations: one on NW Glisan between 5th and 6th, and one SW Naito at Taylor (Waterfront Park). The next two planned locations are SW Naito at Ash (also Waterfront Park) and then at Jamison Square in the Pearl District. There are other places the toilets could have been installed, such as the new parks being created in South Waterfront and the northern Pearl District, but a more traditional and expensive option was chosen instead. The bureau of Parks & Recreation also keeps many of its parks closed during the night, and the loo is meant to be available 24 hours a day, so that's out. And so far there are not any loos at TriMet stops. The private sector may have reservations as well. I was also told by one city staffer employee of a large local retailer and humanitarian organization that each rejected a loo on their property. Although the Pearl District Neighborhood Association voted in favor of the loo at Jamison Square, some neighbors were explicitly against it.

“It’s very easy to turn us into a bunch of elitists. I don’t think that’s it at all,” Craig Derby, an anesthesiologist who lives in the Pearl, told Oregonian columnist Steve Duin. “These are people who care about their neighborhood. I’m much more interested in serving the needs of the thousands of people who come to Jamison Park every summer than I am in having bathrooms at night for those who don’t live there, and are using those facilities for prostitution and drug-dealing over by the Greyhound station.” Reading that quote, suddenly I'm the one who needs some anesthesia.

But Amanda Fritz, in an email response Duin quoted in his column, had a proper answer: “The needs of the people who live in the Pearl and don’t have access to bathrooms at night trump the needs of the people who live in the Pearl and do, in my opinion,” she adds. “There is no room for compromise when you need to use the bathroom and don’t have one available.”

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Guest post: Rose Quarter development rights…and wrongs

Rose Quarter development map (image courtesy William Macht) 

EDITOR'S NOTE: In an effort to make Portland Architecture a multi-contributor site, the following is a guest post by William Macht, adjunct professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. Macht is also a member of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee assembled by Mayor Sam Adams and the Portland Development Commission to address the Rose Quarter and Memorial Coliseum. (The SAC's next meeting is September 28.)

As you'll see, Macht is critical of the development agreement that exists between the Blazers and the city, but supportive of Mayor Adams' defense of Memorial Coliseum. 

If you'd like to submit a guest post to Portland Architecture, email editor Brian Libby at brianlibby@hotmail.com.

To understand the right course for the Coliseum and the Rose Quarter, one needs to remember Santayana’s famous dictum, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Mayor Adams seems to be on a course to do so.

In 1960, Mayor Terry Schrunk and the Council hired leading national architect Gordon Bunshaft and his SOM firm, who designed an innovative building with a roof that covers 3.25 city blocks and is supported by only four columns topped with ball bearings that allow it to flex. Its 60’-high glass curtain walls yield spectacular views across the river to downtown from its concourse, which is democratically placed in the center of the stadium, so that those in the most and least expensive seats meet in the middle, unlike the windowless Rose Garden whose seating and services are economically stratified.

Memorial Coliseum (photo by Julius Schulman, from the book Modernism Rediscovered) 

Mayor Schrunk and Council gave the City a precious multipurpose gift to be used for a wide variety of public purposes. Unlike what some would have us believe, the Coliseum was not built for the Trailblazers who would not exist for another decade. Nor was it built for private pro-fit. A public entity, MERC, that now runs the Convention, Performing Arts and EXPO centers, ran it in the public interest for over 30 years.

Shortly after Paul Allen, then reputedly the world’s second richest man, acquired the Blazers in 1988 for $70 million [now valued by Forbes at $338 million], he sought public support to build a new stadium for his team. He convinced the City to put up $45 million, which he matched in what was termed a “public-private partnership”, to build the Rose Garden that he would own. A consortium of bondholders led by TIAA-CREF financed the balance with 8.99% bonds that Allen refused to personally guarantee. 

In February 2004, after interest rates had fallen sharply and his team was doing poorly, Paul Allen defaulted on the bonds and put his Oregon Arena Corporation [OAC] into voluntary bankruptcy to escape the then $198 million debt. Having lost the Rose Garden to the creditors, Allen went into bankruptcy court and offered $90 million to buy it back, and did so in 2007. While the repurchase price has not been revealed, Allen forced the creditors to take an apparent loss of over $100 million.

In this “public-private partnership” with the City, Allen insisted on another public contribution, effectively a 30-year non-competition operating agreement through Allen’s OAC management of the Coliseum, as well as the Rose Garden. 

Although the deal on its face was structured to look very favorable for the City, since the city gets 60% of net income from the Coliseum, and the Blazers must pick up any operating losses, when one looks at the whole deal, it emasculates the Coliseum as a City asset. Under this arrangement, if the Blazers stage an event in the Coliseum they get to keep 40%, but if they schedule the same event in the Rose Garden, they keep 100%. As rational economic beings, they profit most by putting just enough in the Coliseum to keep it close to breakeven, so they need not pay operating losses and can reap the larger returns in the Rose Garden.

Rose Quarter and environs (image courtesy William Macht) 

And because the City must pay any capital repairs and improvements to the Coliseum, it has not accumulated reserves to pay for them. Deferred maintenance at the Coliseum makes it less competitive, a circumstance that is in the Blazers’ economic interest. Apparently, Allen had done the same thing at the Rose Garden because when Allen lost ownership of it, his company insisted that the creditors invest $40 million in renovation to make it what it called “a first class facility.” 

Despite the Coliseum operating agreement, and allegations that the Coliseum is a money-loser that should be demolished (which the Blazers were happy to endorse in the 2001 Rose Quarter plan) the City has actually realized a modest profit there. Using business accounting, the city has made $3.7 million in the last 10 years, even though that includes three years of the bankruptcy and three years of the Great Recession. Yet when I pointed this out recently on OPB’s Think Out Loud, Allen’s business manager had the temerity to say that it was  “the City’s good deal” that was the reason that Allen had to declare bankruptcy, somehow equating the annual $380,000 average city profit with $198 million of defaulted Blazers’/OAC debt.

So the real problem with the Coliseum is not its physical structure, but rather its deal structure. Despite claiming to have lost money managing the Coliseum through OAC [now PAM], Blazer president Larry Miller stated “The current agreement is also very important to our business model, so any changes to the agreement will need to add significant benefits to PAM. At present, it is difficult to envision changes to the agreement that would fully protect interests vital to PAM…PAM reserves the right to decide in its sole discretion whether it will agree to any such changes.”

Without PAM profits, that ‘business model’ which PAM seeks to protect must be the non-competition agreement protecting the Blazers’ economic interests in the Rose Garden. The non-competition agreement has now been in effect for over 17 years, longer than a patent, and its continuance will preclude any other proposal, as well as optimization of the profit and community potential for the City. 

Despite repeated requests, throughout the yearlong planning process the PDC and the Blazers/PAM have failed to produce operating income and expense data for the Coliseum, programmatic history and other data of the type normally published by operators of publicly-owned arenas. PAM has withheld such information on the stated ground that its disclosure would “reduce the competitiveness of the Coliseum as a facility”. Yet publication of more detailed data by the public owners of the Spokane Arena, for example, has not harmed its competitiveness. It is logical to expect quite the reverse to occur; that is, publication of lower event rental fees for the Coliseum would reduce the competitiveness of the Rose Garden, which PAM apparently seeks to prevent by non-disclosure.

 

Reasonable arguments can be made that the operating agreement extension option rights in 2013 and 2018 are extinguished by the event of default caused by the voluntary bankruptcy, and/or, that the anti-competition agreement’s 30-year potential term is void as against public policy. Even if the legal challenge did not succeed, through the voluntary bankruptcy and anti-competitive behavior, the Blazers have proved themselves to be unfit private partners in any future public-private partnership.

Under its 1992 development agreement with the City, negotiated under Mayor Clark but amended several times when Mayor Adams was chief-of-staff to Mayor Katz, the Blazers were given what are erroneously referred to as “development rights” to the Coliseum and portions of the Rose Quarter, and which are scheduled to expire November 24th of this year. In fact, these are actually “Development Rights of First Proposal” since any Blazer development proposal, even if exercised, could be simply rejected by the City without consequence to it, which would be free to solicit proposals from other developers.

In addition there are many preconditions to any rights, many of which have not been met. The City has not declared the area "available for non-public use development", nor could it because it has not examined the need for public-use development, which is defined in the agreement to include "recreation." On that score alone, the Obletz MARC proposal, and others are ripe for real consideration.

Nor have the Blazers submitted a proposal with adequate specificity for review. In fact, the mayor has said publicly, and been quoted, that the Jumptown proposal floated earlier was “terrible.”

Furthermore, the agreement requires the Blazers to develop and submit a “master plan”, which the Blazers have not done. The "master plan" required to be submitted by OAC/PAM for this proposal was in fact the 1992/2001 urban design review done without regard to current conditions a decade later. Nor was it a true development plan and certainly not one prepared by OAC/PAM. Yet it was accepted by the Council in 2001 when Adams was chief-of-staff to Mayor Katz. This legerdemain is not worthy of a public-private partnership in the public interest, nor worthy of the ostensibly transparent public process initiated by the Mayor a year ago.

2009 Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade, Memorial Coliseum (photo by Brian Libby) 

Under Mayor Adams’ task force, headed personally by the Mayor, the PDC solicited concepts for “repurposing” the Coliseum.  Proposals for the rest of the 40-acre Rose Quarter were expressly excluded. From 96 proposals submitted, three proposals were selected for review to be made by a more detailed request for proposals [RFP] from the three. The Mayor aborted the RFP process when he determined that none of the three proposals could be implemented with available resources, as we in the minority had warned, and when his personal effort to meld the three proposals was unsuccessful.

Nevertheless, the Mayor has now announced that he is negotiating with the Blazers/PAM a pre-development agreement, one element of which could be extension of the development rights. In other words, the Mayor is treating the Blazers/PAM as though they were the winners of an RFP competition selected through a public process, entitled to negotiate a new public-private partnership, even though the competition was only for the Coliseum and was, itself, aborted by the Mayor. If the Mayor negotiates a pre-development agreement prior to expiration of the right of first proposal, both the perception and reality of unfairness will be obvious.

Beyond the procedural unfairness lurk the substantive problems of the Coliseum and Rose Quarter that remain unsolved. Nothing is being done to remedy the underlying deal structure that condemns the Coliseum to marginal public use. Nor is anything being done to remedy the complaints of the Coliseum’s major tenant, the Winterhawks regarding the condition of the building. And nothing is being done to determine and undertake those select improvements that could expand and optimize public and private uses of the arena, concourse, meeting rooms and 40,000 SF exhibit hall without reducing the Coliseum’s competitiveness for larger events.

Instead, the Blazers/PAM plan to reduce the seating from 12,000 to about 7,000 seats is a thinly veiled plan to permanently make the Coliseum less competitive with the Rose Garden. There is no public benefit in reducing seating capacity because it is the largest events that are the most profitable. The reduction of seating capacity precludes events like the Davis Cup tournament and full house events like popular concerts, graduations, and the Obama and Nader rallies. 

The Blazers justify the reduction contending that fewer seats make the bowl more intimate. Yet without reduction of bowl size, it is difficult to understand how fewer seats and larger holes in the same sized bowl leads to greater intimacy. What is clear is that fewer seats make the Coliseum less competitive with the Rose Garden for larger, more profitable events. A more intimate venue could be done flexibly in a way that preserves the ability to hold larger events, for example through use of a collapsible band shell, curtains or other temporary devices.

Moreover, both the Blazers and the Mayor labor under the illusion that increasing the sports and entertainment functions of the Rose Quarter will solve its underlying problems. In fact, since those uses are primarily event-driven, and mostly occur on some evenings and weekends, further development of such type will exacerbate the crowding during event times and do nothing to complement it during slack times. 

The major urban planning problem of the Rose Quarter is that it is disconnected from the urban fabric both programmatically and physically. Go there any time other than event time, most any weekday, and more than 2500 parking spaces will be vacant, garages locked, and there is activity too minimal to even support the succession of retailers and restaurants developed by the Blazers/PAM.

There could be actions that would ameliorate these conditions and begin to bring the Rose Quarter back into the city. A very simple and potentially profitable first step would be to remove the City garages from Blazer control and add them into the SmartPark system to provide needed parking for the Left Bank and other businesses across the street. But until the Mayor and Council let the development right of first proposal expire and challenge/terminate the operating agreement, nothing can change. 

The Mayor’s effort to bring the Rose Quarter within the Interstate Urban Renewal Area to absorb large portions of its tax increment funds for an entertainment complex to be developed by urban entertainment center developer Cordish with the Blazers/PAM would be throwing a good deal of money, time and talent toward solution of the wrong problems. It would also take scarce resources away from many potentially viable and needed projects within the Interstate URA.

However, rather than being roundly criticized by the Oregonian editors as having “caved in to a few puffs of pressure – and took razing the Coliseum out of the picture” Mayor Adams should be commended for learning its architectural value and changing his mind. Moreover, no editor has explained the fiscal folly of demolishing the Coliseum, a public asset valued by the county assessor at $57.1 million, that can and does operate profitably 365 days a year for up to 12,000 citizens, in order to spend $55 million of scarce new capital for an open-air stadium for up to 7,000 baseball fans that would host home games on only 70 days during the summer and could not even begin to cover its debt service.

Having intelligently changed his mind on Coliseum demolition, so too should he change it and end negotiation of a pre-development agreement with the Blazers/PAM, and at the same time challenge/terminate the operating agreement. 

Mayor Adams has amassed all of the City’s development resources under his control.  One wishes that he would use them as wisely as did his predecessor Mayor Terry Schrunk and the Council in 1960 when they had designed and created an innovative and democratic architectural landmark, for public use to benefit diverse segments of the public, in honor of its veterans, and dedicated to service of the public at large, not private monopolistic profit.

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Of Kennedys and herefords: remembering the Congress Hotel

Congress Hotel, demolished in 1980 (photo courtesy Oregon Historical Society, image #103485) 

All that's left of a hotel where Bobby Kennedy still has an unpaid bar tab is the entrance to a fondue restaurant. 

Downtown on Sixth Avenue and Main Street today stands the Congress Center building, a glassy office tower built in 1980. But the previous occupant of this corner site was once an intrinsic part of the city's culture and built environment: the Congress Hotel.

Recently, as part of the Portland Development Commission's Storefront Improvement Program, the street level windows of the Congress Center office building were outfitted with an informational display and photos configured by Portland retail design firm Vizwerks intended to evoke the history and feel of the old hotel, which was demolished in 1977.

Congress Hotel (photo by Hugh Ackroyd, courtesy Thomas Robinson) 

The Congress Hotel has a colorful and compelling history. Completed in 1912 from a design by architect Herman Brookman, it was the city's first reinforced concrete Class A building. Concrete was mixed onsite and winched up the eight stories by a primitive elevator. The hotel itself was also a progressive project for being spearheaded by a woman, Hedwig Smith according to an Oregonian article from 1977. Her husband had become wealthy from the Smith Brothers Iron Works company but become ill, leaving Hedwig and their son to found the hotel. After World War I made Smith Brothers even bigger, she expanded the hotel in 1924.

The 119-room Congress Hotel was the place to stay and to hang out in Portland, particularly with its Pompeiian Room lounge. Local Congresswoman Edith Green and mayor Frank Ivancie held victory parties there. Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy and even Robert Kennedy stayed there. The hotel actually had difficulty with the bills for all three. According to an Oregonian article from 1977, "The ex-vice president's tab, including the T-bone steaks he ate with catsup, was finally paid. A settlement was reached with McCarthy. The Kennedy bill was written off."

Standing there today, the Congress Center is a rather oppressive building in terms of its interaction with the street and nearby architecture. Although it has a handsome enough hexagonal form, courtesy of architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (this, along with the US Bancorp Tower - "Big Pink" - was one of the last SOM buildings in Portland), its darkly tinted windows allow for no transparency, and its granite base seems incongruent with the lighter structure that rises from it.

Congress Center today with (at top and bottom) Congress Hotel display (photos by Brian Libby)   

Part of what killed the Congress Hotel and made the Congress Center possible was the building of the downtown Transit Mall. According to one of the hotel's final owners, Bill Martin, in the Oregonian article, during construction the hotel's business dropped by 41 percent. Giant piles of dirt and debris were even said to be left directly in front of the Congress's mahogany front doors.

If TriMet works hard to help businesses survive amidst construction today, as with the MAX construction on the Transit Mall in recent years, perhaps it's because the agency learned the hard way the importance of doing so. After all, while one it's not productive to blame the Congress Center building itself, in the hindsight of history I'd argue that Portland today would be better off with the hotel than the office that replaced it. Of course the Congress Hotel might have gone out of business anyway; there's no guarantee it would be around today even without the Transit Mall difficulty in the mid-'70s, as much for its cultural history as its architecture, although I admittedly find the old terra cotta and concrete hotel preferable stylistically to the '80s office tower with its almost oppressively unwelcome tinted glass.

Photo collages of downtown Portland (courtesy Vizwerks)  

For the Congress Hotel display project now at street level, the Vizwerks team (including Shauna Stinson, Erik Scholtes, and Randy Higgins with help from journalist Lisa Radon and former Oregon Historical Society director Chet Orloff) created a series of collages made from historic photos of the hotel and the streetscape as it then existed. In their research, Vizwerks also found in the Oregon Historical Society archives a street photo of pre-World War I Portland taken by the legendary photographer Minor White; it's the bottom left photo in the collage above.

A couple other fun factoids I learned from the 1977 Oregonian article about the Congress Hotel's closure and demolition: A 913-pound Hereford was once the honored guest at a banquet. And, according to the paper's BJ Noles, one in-house lunch spot, The River Room, "is swamped at lunch time with politicians doing a little log rolling over Chef Charles Altorfer's London broils. Chef of the Congress for 23 years, Altofer's sesame shrimp Fridays are a Portland tradition."

  

Original Congress Hotel arches at Sixth & Main (photos by Brian Libby) 

Perhaps it's fitting, then, given its foodie history, is that the one place you can still find physical remnants of the Congress Hotel is at the entrance to the underground Melting Pot fondue restaurant. Here the hotel's original terra cotta arches are festooned with fruits, flowers and rams.

"So what is spelled 'progress' for downtown," Noles concluded in 1977, "is spelling 'demolition' for the 65-year-old dowager and entertainer of lumbermen, politicians and show people."

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Two homes tours, 27 houses

Harpoon House (image courtesy City of Portland) 

Two upcoming homes tours should give design enthusiasts and aspiring home owners/builders plenty of good ideas about the way to build sustainably and with cost-effective quality.

First comes the "Build It Green!" home tour on Saturday, September 25. (I don't need to put the name in quotation marks, but I don't know how else to deal with the exclamation point.) The self-guided tour features 21 different homes. Tickets can be purchased online, but if they're ordered after this Friday, September 17, they will have to be picked up at Ecohaus (819 SE Taylor). Cost is $15 for adults or $10 students, senior citizens or those going car-free. Tickets are free to children under 14. For more information call 503-222-3881.

Here are some of the homes on the Build It Green (!) tour:

Curtis Creative Small Infill (image courtesy City of Portland)

The Curtis Creative Small Infill project, owned by Morgan and Connie Curtis, is (as the tour describes) "an open home for joining creative people who share a common interest in making music and art." Features include natural ventilation, daylighting, and salvaged barnwood floors. Design is by Departure Design and the contractor is Hammer & Hand (which, in full disclosure, is a Portland Architecture sponsor).

Another house of interest is the Harpoon House (pictured at the top of this post), a highly-efficient, three-story dwelling on a small 50'x50' lot designed by the owner Matthew Kirkpatrick and his firm, Design for Occupancy. It features three ecoroofs and open indoor/outdoor spaces. Features include FSC-certified wood a cedar exterior rainscreen and Brazilian Koa wood, better known as "tigerwood". The house is also teeming with natural light.

Doleman Strawbale Dwelling (image courtesy City of Portland) 

The Doleman Strawbale Dwelling, designed by Communitecture and built by Flying Hammer Productions, is an accessory dwelling unit that's part of the Foster Village co-housing community. It is also Portland's first permitted residential strawbale structure. A compact floorplan features an earthen floor, clay plaster walls, salvaged tile and wood details and has 20" thick walls. The co-housing community has several small dwellings, shared chickens, food garden, a food drying box and a cob oven.

On Saturday, October 9, from 10:00am to 4:00pm comes "Design Matters: A Tour of Portland Homes", part of the Portland Architecture and Design Festival 2010. Tickets are $40 and the tour headquarters is the AIA's Center for Architecture at 403 NW 11th Avenue.

 

To: Interchange Residence (photo by Brian Libby), Bottom: Northwood Residence (image courtesy Emerick Architects) 

Obviously the cost is a little steeper for the AIA tour, and for the chance to see six homes instead of 21. But these are particularly good projects, four of which I have written blog posts about in the past: the Interchange Residence by William Kaven Architecture, the Tandem Duo duplex by Works Partnership, the Northwood Residence by Emerick Architects (the city's first stand-alone LEED Gold-rated single family house), and the Mt. Tabor Residence by Webster Wilson. Also included are the Gracehaus by Philip H. Sydnor and his firm, Integrate, and the King Residence, a bold historic-home remodel by Giuliette/Schouten.

 

Top: Interior of King Residence, Bottom: GraceHaus (images courtesy AIA/Portland) 

Gracehaus sits on a narrow six acres of forested property outside downtown Portland. The one-story residence is designed on an East-West axis providing northern exposure and views of the property from every window. The unusual massing is emphasized by the individual roofs, circulation 'knuckles,' and a central hallway connecting the different living spaces and forming a central courtyard at the back of the house. Materials and features include core-ten steel cladding, exposed glulam posts and beams, bamboo and cork flooring, gutterless eaves and a French drain system, wind-fallen and locally harvested timber, and eco-friendly carpets, paint and stain.

For the King residence, a circa-1912 Arts and Crafts style home, the owners appreciated its historic charm but desired more usable space. The design goal of this whole house remodel and addition was to honor and expand on the Arts and Crafts exterior while introducing modern elements and details to the new interior. These can be seen in the salt water fish tank that screens the kitchen and the entry, the organic inspired metal railings and exterior screens and the full-height double sided concrete fireplace separating the living and dining rooms.

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Architecture interview series continues with PATH's Corey Martin

Butler Residence, PATH Architecture (photo by Ty Milford) 

The Street of Eames tour may have concluded earlier this year, but the organizers are continuing with community activities such as an architect interview series at Rejuvenation, thereby still benefitting the charitable cause for which the tour was funded: after-school programs for homeless youth.

This Wednesday at 6PM, architect Becca Cavell of THA Architects, host for the series, will interview Corey Martin of PATH Architecture. (Ticket info can be found here.) A graduate of the University of Oregon, Martin previously worked at Allied Works Architecture (contributing heavily to the Maryhill Overlook project) before co-founding his own firm with Ben Kaiser.

PATH has distinguished itself in recent years designing numerous housing projects, both single-family residences and multifamily apartments and condos. In some cases, the firm also acts as its own developer. Martin was instrumental in putting together last year's 11xDesign homes tour that featured all local housing projects developed by the architecture firms that designed them, such as PATH, William Kaven Architecture, Atelier Waechter, SEED Architecture, Design Department and Webster Wilson.

Corey Martin (photo by Brian Libby) 

Two of my favorite PATH projects are recently completed homes: the single-family Butler Residence in Southeast Portland and the Park Box duplex in North Portland. In each case, a boxy form is given life with natural wood cladding, ample natural light, and cantilevering that seems to gently lift the facade off the ground. PATH's work has also been part of two past Street of Eames tours.

Because this is a charitable fundraiser, suggested donation at the door is $20. But for those of you light in the pocketbook, keep in mind that this is a suggested donation. Back in New York as a poor college student, I used to pay a penny to get into the Metropolitan Museum of Art rather than its $7.50 suggested admission. For those of you up to it, though, the Street of Eames Fund makes a worthy cause. Admission also includes free wine and snacks from Pour Wine Bar.

 

 

Butler Residence, PATH Architecture (photos by Brian Libby) 

As for the talk itself, Cavell told me by email, "I like to keep these talks very informal - sort of "fireside chat" format. I try to forget that there is an audience and just focus on the guest.  Interviewing Corey will be a lot of fun because he's really at the cutting edge of design in Portland.  His work has been one of the highlights of our Street of Eames tours, and I can't wait to hear him talk about his work and influences."

Format-wise, Cavel explains, "Questions are submitted ahead of time through Rejuvenation's website, or on the evening directly from the audience. And I always have a few questions of my own in reserve. I see my role as an introducer (I give a little background information  on each guest) and then interviewer as I channel the questions. So far it's been a lot of fun for the guest and the audience. And for me. I'm looking forward to it."

And while it's easy to feel arts event overload this time of year with the Time-Based Art festival and a host of other fall happenings, I recommend coming to hear and interact with Martin, who arguably represents the best of a younger generation of Portland designers, and the people perhaps destined to become the Brad Cloepfils and Thomas Hackers of tomorrow.

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Portland's way, but not right away: Burger King at Broadway & Burnside finally gone

Abandoned Burger King at Broadway & Burnside (photo by Jason McHuff via Flickr) 

For all the development that happened during the last decade's economic boom years, a major eyesore and symbol of destitution has remained for years at one of the most prominent intersections in the city of Portland, at Broadway and Burnside: a boarded up Burger King. But last Tuesday, the long-vacant fast food franchise, first built in 1978, finally disappeared. It wasn't flame broiled or fried like a slab of ground beef, but demolition crews were certainly doing this, to borrow from a past BK slogan, our way if not right away.

As Lost Oregon blogger John Chilson notes, this Burger King was actually once lauded for its design. The local chapter of the American Institute of Architects actually gave the this Whopper of a fast-food outlet a design award in 1978. And if you look at it a certain way, noticing the sloping overhangs, it does kind of gently recall northwest modernism, or at least a bastardized form rendered in 70s corporate fast food form.

The same Burger King in 1978 (image courtesy John Chilson, Lost Oregon blog) 

More than any design award, though, this Burger King was long renowned for its less than ideal urban vibe. Apparently lots of drug dealers, prostitutes and petty thieves appreciated the royal treatment having a burger their way (unless it's fried, of course). One commenter on Chilson's blog recalls working there in the 1980s:

Great education in real life for a teen, I must say. Working the register left you open to threats, propositions, lost international tourists with travelers’ checks, crazy people, and shifty money-changers.

People were always trying to reach in and grab the till drawer at the drive-through–one of my coworkers kept a section of broom handle at that station so she could beat them on the arm. I just slammed the window as hard as I could. I also remember a coworker defending herself with a pot of hot coffee (yikes).

Addicts would nod off in the back dining area, and homeless would sleep there as well (most of the dining room, and the bathrooms, were completely out of the line of sight of the front counter–how stupid a design is that?!).

I had to clean the bathrooms sometimes and it was a real horror show. The mirrors were broken quite often, and there would be urine-soaked clothes laying around, and razor stubble from street guys trying to keep clean in there. Needles, flooding, you name it.

We used to slip the 'waste' (food that had been sitting longer for X number of minutes) to the homeless. The managers forbid us to give it to those in need, so there was an extra incentive to do it. That place is loaded with bad karma.

And that wasn't even the worst of it. Also in the '80s, a transient was crushed to death in the hydraulic trash compactor. "Supposedly, the man crawled in looking for thrown-away food (or possible just a place to sleep it off) when an employee threw a bag of garbage on top of him and flipped the switch," Chilson explains. "Although the homeless man’s cries were heard almost immediately, it was too late."

Burger King actually vacated this particular franchise in about 2002. Why has it sat vacant for eight years? After all, it's not as if there wasn't a very robust economic boom that could have revitalized this prominent street corner with housing, retail, office space or some mixed-use combination.

Rendering of future Broadway Recovery Center (image courtesy SERA Architects) 

Regardless, now the BK site will be transformed into a $19 million health clinic, The Broadway Recovery Center, run by Central City Concern and expected to open in 15 months. The three-story, 44,000-square-foot building, designed by Portland's SERA Architects, would be adjacent to the Richard L. Harris Building,  which houses the Old Town Clinic. The plan is to eventually knock down walls between the buildings. In one location, Central City Concern would then own two buildings and run programs offering health care for as many as 40,000 patient visits a year.

As The Oregonian's Tom Hallman reported, the first moments of demolition last Tuesday garnered cheers from the assembled crowd, which included Congressman David Wu. (Hopefully this is a kinder, gentler, more justified version of the architectural blood lust thrust at Memorial Coliseum.) But if you look at the comments section from this post (which admittedly I should remember never to do), it's not universally celebrated. Some feel the addition of more social services for the homeless and addicted will actually be worse than a boarded up burger shack.

"We don't need more of these losers in our city," writes the (unsurprisingly) anonymous commenter 'PDX97204'. "How much more do you want to spend on these people? And how many more from out of the area do you want to attract to our community?"

Another commenter believes the $19 million Central City Concern is devoting to this project a relative waste. "I wonder how many jobs would be created if they would have made Portland 19 million dollars easier to navigate, attracting new employers, and just plan being more customer/business friendly toward residents when delivering their services," writes commenter 'tombdragon'.

Rendering of future Broadway Recovery Center (image courtesy SERA Architects) 

Luckily these are just common misconceptions. The City of Portland doesn't control, and can't control, how many transients and homeless people come here. Portland has a mild climate that may attract those at the bottom of the social spectrum, and a liberal political climate given to progressive social services that help people in need. If doing so is wrong, let's not rush to make it right. What's more, although perhaps Portland's economic development climate is another conversation entirely, it's not as if that $19 million could magically be moved from a nonprofit into some sort of kettle reserved for business incentives and tax breaks. In fact, one would expect downtown and Old Town businesses to be glad for this treatment center. If Portland really does have a problem with too many destitute panhandlers, drug dealers, perennial alcoholics and transients, a new facility like this is the way to handle the problem.

Somewhat ironically, Central City Concern actually was founded in 1979, within a year of the Burger King opening at Burnside and Broadway. It's just a coincidence, naturally, but perhaps it collectively says something about the late 1970s in Portland and beyond: a time when downtowns were crumbling as the middle class continued a suburban exodus. In the '80s, the franchise might have fared better if it sold rot-gut alcohol or crack cocaine. Funnily enough, the BK franchise itself was an example of suburban, automobile-oriented America coming to downtown Portland. Other fast food franchises like McDonald's exist downtown, but they are built into mixed-use buildings. The Burger King at Broadway and Burnside was, on the other hand, a standard single-story, drive-through fast food franchise, no matter its local design award. Clearly the award wasn't for urban place-making.

Today, though, the boarded-up Burger King at Broadway and Burnside may be an indicator that, despite the decades of under-performing and the current cloudy economic climate, the NW Broadway corridor may finally be transforming into something better. Pacific Northwest College of Art is renovating 511 Broadway, one grand old piece of architecture down the street. The moribund Daisy Kingdom Building has been renovated into an art-gallery hub (rechristened as the DeSoto Buiding). NW Broadway is the border between the Pearl District and Old Town/Chinatown, and while the Pearl has long been thriving with art galleries, condos and restaurants, Old Town and Chinatown are showing new signs of life as well. Some local businesses remain concerned that there is too much clustering of social services in Old Town, and it's true that no city should seek to ghettoize its less fortunate. Successful urban planning is about creating a mix, a melting pot. And with Powells Books just two blocks up Burnside and Pioneer Courthouse Square a five-minute walk away from the old Burger King site, it's not as if Old Town is some wasteland of people without mailing addresses or healthy livers. It's called a city, and replacing industrial fast food with social services is what Portland, like any progressive place, is all about.

Oh, and fried burgers are way better than flame broiled. If you're missing your Whopper fix, I recommend a far superior cheeseburger a couple blocks away at Fuller's Coffee Shop.

One room at a time with Hiromi Ogawa

Architect Hiromi Ogawa (photo by Brian Libby) 

Not only are fewer people buying and building single-family homes amidst these tough economic times, but even when the economy was booming less then ten percent of these projects designed by architects. But architect Hiromi Ogawa and her eponymous firm have sought to carve out a market niche by helping clients with limited budgets to imagine expanded and remodeled homes that are planned together but may be carried out separately, sometimes with years in between.

Earlier this week I visited an Ogawa-designed project in North Portland: an expansion of a small two-bedroom cottage that adds two additional bedrooms and a bathroom. Built by Lorence Brothers Construction, this particular project is obviously a case of Ogawa taking it more than one room at a time, but the principle remains. The homeowners eventually will gut the interior of the original portion of the home and, with Ogawa's help, re-imagine the space. But for now, this is a traditional cottage with a modern extension in back.

 

 

Ogawa's project seen from front, back and in model form (top and bottom photos by Brian Libby, middle photo by Hromi Ogawa) 
 

"The project to me shows the possibilities of modern expansion on a typical Portland home," Ogawa told me, "for people who want to stay where they are, but explore design options and improve the architectural fabric of their neighborhood."

Although Ogawa takes pride more in helping the clients find a style they're happy with than crafting one of her own, the contrast between the old and new portions of the house reflects her outlook as a designer: honest and simple. The rear addition is flat-roofed in a contemporary fashion, but in order to bring in ample natural light from the north (the ideal direction for best light), the roof is slightly tilted to make room for a band of clerestory windows along the perimeter. In so doing, the gentle slant of the flat roof ties with the pitched roof of the original little cottage.

Top: windows in master bedroom, right: reading nook in hallway (photos by Hiromi Ogawa)  

Window placement was also carefully approached. Along the central hallway spine is a floor-to-ceiling sliding glass door that looks out onto a future deck. The bedroom, bathroom and master bedroom all share the same aforementioned strip of upper windows, while in the bathroom a playful tall, thin band of glass bisects the shower space. In the master bedroom, where one seeks the most privacy, there are two corner windows counter-intuitively placed at floor level. Here the glass is about natural light, while in public areas such as the hallway and in the dining room of the cottage bordering the new addition, the glass allows the proper views outside one expects.

The interior was built using sustainable materials like cork flooring, a hemlock ceiling and durable Douglas fir windows. The owners and also worked with Clean Energy Works to improve the existing house's insulation and seal the exterior from leaks or drafts.

Ogawa was born in Tokyo and received her B.A. in Architecture from Cornell University in 1997. In 2001 Ogawa received the Eidlitz Fellowship to study design in Paris. Before starting this practice in 2003, she worked for a selection of firms in the Bay Area, including Swatt Architects and Esherick Homsey Dodge Davis. A licensed architect in Oregon and California, she holds a position as adjunct professor of design in the architecture department at Portland State University.

 

 

Top to bottom: bathroom, bedroom, master bedroom (photos by Brian Libby)   

Her partner in the firm, Lynn Fisher, is based in the Bay Area and hods an urban studies degree from Stanford University as well as a master's degree in architecture from Rice University. Before joining Hiromi Ogawa Architects in 2006, Lynn also worked for San Francisco's Esherick Homsey Dodge Davis. She is a licensed architect in California. She is also a LEED-accredited professional, with a strong interest in and knowledge of sustainable design.

Ogawa, like many women in the architecture, runs her practice while raising a family with her husband and son. But that also makes her an empathetic designer as her firm focuses on working with families seeking to enliven Portland's small older neighborhood houses in a way that gently fuses modern style with a respect for the past, by letting each one be distinct.

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Return of the Hung Far Low sign

Hung Far Low's September 2 re-installation (photo courtesy Dennis Theriault/Portland Mercury) 

When is a decayed building sign from a long-gone Chinese restaurant more than that? Put another way, what inspires people to spend $77,000 in a terrible recession to re-erect an obsolete chop suey sign?

If you're one of the owners of Ping restaurant or a leader with the Portland Development Commission, the decision was much less counter-intuitive that in might seem.

"It’s something more than simply a funny iconic part of tourism," says John Jay, a co-owner of Ping (located at the base of the building previously housing Hung Far Low) and the Executive Creative Director at Weiden + Kennedy ad agency.  "Sometimes we need these icons, these visual symbols to say there is something happening here. That symbol for us is a very much a glue or a magnet that’s attracting future generations and the past."

The Hung Far Low Building was completed in 1917. It was first a millinery factory and shop. While the Chinese were forbidden by law from owning property, it was secretly purchased by one of Chinatown's most influential residents, Wong On. He created the Hung Far Low Restaurant in 1928 and operated on the second floor until its move to SE 82nd Avenue in 2005. The sign was removed during the 2008-09 renovation of the Hung Far Low building, which now houses Ping. Portland citizens rallied to restore the 2000-pound landmark, raising more than $8,600. PDC closed the remaining gap with approximately $45,000 in grant funding.

For years people have enjoyed how the name seems to euphemistically allude to sizable male endowment. It was (and is) a pop cultural icon of Portland, both for the joke and for its role as the primary visual symbol of the city's Old Town/Chinatown neighborhood - even more so than the Chinatown gate on Burnside.

Hung Far Low's September 2 re-installation (photo courtesy Dennis Theriault/Portland Mercury) 

As it happens, Hung Far Low translates as "almond blossom fragrance" in the Chinese dialect of Taisan, which once ruled the streets of Chinatowns in midcentury America but has now been supplanted by Mandarin (and English). 

Yet, the sign's return comes  at a time when many Chinatown restaurants and businesses have moved to 82nd Avenue. Is this an effort to bring back the past or to mythologize it?

"Obviously we would invite any of the families or business to return, but that’s not the sole purpose," says Jay, who partnered in Ping with Kurt Huffman, Andy Ricker and wife Janet Jay. "Our goal is a new vision that is not simply restoring a neighborhood. The world right now is being inspired right now in many ways from contemporary culture coming from Asia. We hope it’s not just a return of Chinatown but an evolution of a neighborhood that speaks to greater Asia."

I've interviewed John Jay numerous times before, including for this 2007 profile for Oregon Business magazine. Although he is often on the road at W+K's offices in Tokyo, Shanghai and New Dehli, Jay is passionate about Portland as a creative capital and the source of youthful outsider energy that the rest of the world is already well enamored with. He's got his hands in numerous different projects, such as Ping, as an adviser to Pacific Northwest College of Art, his curating an art show last year in conjunction with the Portland Art Museum's "China Design Now", and his efforts to bring Asian market Uwajimaya to Old Town/Chinatown. Jay also comes from humble origins in Columbus, Ohio at a time when Chinese culture and cuisine was a point of entry to millions of Americans to Asia. It was very important in restoring the Hung Far Low sign, for example, that the original phrase "chop suey" be restored, because that dish was a staple of 1950s and '60s Chinese-American cuisine.

Ping partners Kurt Huffman, Andy Ricker, John Jay and Janet Jay (photo courtesy Lee Emmert/The Oregonian)

"I grew up in a Chinese laundry with immigrant parents," Jay adds. "There is a certain energy and magnetism that sign causes us to have warm feelings about. I think today Chinatowns all over America are very diverse. They have Thai and Vietnamese restaurants. The sign is a bridge. I always say...i just spoke to graduating seniors of Chinese descent from Portland high schools. It sounds a bit cliché, but I told them to remember the shoulders you’re standing on."

When I heard that PDC committed $45,000 to the sign's restoration, part of me felt skeptical. In this kind of terrible economy, couldn't that money have gone to something more (if you'll pardon the pun) constructive? At the same time, when one sees the sign back in its place, which it has been since its return on September 2 with an outdoor celebration (including Hung Far Low owner Bruce Wong and his family), it's hard to feel anything but glad to see it's back. I think it's true that sometimes a sign is more than a sign, just like aging architecture is worth something more than the sum of its square footage and land value. Surely some will shake their heads at spending $77,000 to restore the sign from a restaurant that is no longer there and say it's another case of Quirky Portland. But if celebrating local symbols that combine pop cultural and world cultural history is wrong, let's not race to be right.

Mourning the Portland Beavers, celebrating Memorial Coliseum's survival, and rejecting a false choice

Memorial Coliseum (image courtesy City of Portland)  

Today the Portland Beavers will play their final minor-league baseball game at PGE Park. After playing in our city for the better part of the last century, the franchise by tomorrow will have played its last ballgame here.

But if you read so-called experts like John Canzano of The Oregonian, trying to blame Memorial Coliseum and the efforts of a supposedly few "sentimental architects" for the Beavers' demise, don't be fooled.

It is indeed too bad for the Portland Beavers that they were forced out of their longtime home by the effort to make PGE Park a soccer-only facility without being given a proper home of their own. (Although I say this in full support of the Portland Timbers and their journey to MLS.) As a native Oregonian, I've been watching the Portland Beavers all my life. I saw my first live Beavers game back in 1980. I don't want them to leave.

It's also too bad that owner Merritt Paulson and his close ally at city hall, Commissioner Randy Leonard, attempted to make this issue a Beavers versus Coliseum choice. It never had to be that way. In fact, it never was that way.

Signs outside Mayor Adams' Beavers Rose Quarter stadium-plan open house, April 2009 

Nearly 18 months ago Paulson, Leonard and Mayor Adams floated the proposal to demolish Memorial Coliseum for a minor league baseball stadium. The response was abundantly clear from the public: Don't do it. This was not simply the will of a few architects. No matter how many times Leonard, Canzano or anyone else try to pin that untruth to the wall, it won't stick. A broad spectrum of Portlanders made themselves loudly heard in support of a historic building that was built as a tribute to our veterans, and which is a one-of-a-kind building in the world.

There was never any organized action from the Portland Beavers fan base. No Beavers fans came to City Hall to make their opinions heard. No Beavers fans showed up last year when the Rose Quarter stadium plan was introduced to cheer for the idea.

Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that even by the Portland Beavers' own estimates, attendance would have gone down a few years after building and moving into the new stadium. [The Oregonian argued the opposite in an editorial this morning, but evidently they forgot to look at the team's own numbers.]

Merritt Paulson tried to find a home for the Beavers anywhere else in the entire Portland metropolitan area, and to his credit. But nobody wanted them. Beaverton backed out. Clackamas backed out. Lents backed out. Vancouver backed out. The story here isn't just that the Beavers couldn't convince Portland to tear down the Coliseum. It's that they couldn't convince even any of its suburbs.

If the Portland area really wants the Portland Beavers back, there will be a genuine effort to build them a stadium on a site that makes sense for everyone, or a least a site that doesn't draw such ire.

The saddest irony of historic preservation is that societies often want to save the 100-year-old building but then act like it's crazy to worry about the 50-year-old one. Memorial Coliseum exemplifies a whole generation of buildings constructed in the 1950s and '60s that are becoming historic and qualifying for historic-preservation protection under the law but for which society hasn't come to see their status as historic. Most early post-World War II buildings will be torn down, and that's alright. But the very best buildings should be preserved, especially if they still retain a very viable function. That's abundantly true with Memorial Coliseum, for it is a design unmatched anywhere: a masterpiece of midcentury modern architecture, one offering a 360-degree glass view of the city that does not exist in any other building in the world. Cities at their best are collections of great buildings from every era, and the Coliseum is mid-20th century architecture at its finest.

It's too bad that The Oregonian has devoted page after page after page, be it in editorial or column or regular reporting, to the loss of the Beavers and to the Rose Quarter process itself without ever talking to readers about what's great about Memorial Coliseum and why its preservation matters. The Oregonian has utterly failed this story, and John Canzano is only the latest.

Go ahead, mourn the Portland Beavers' departure. I do. But don't be fooled by those telling you we'd have been better off tearing down a Coliseum that belongs to and represents us all just so several hundred baseball fans can sit in a half-empty ballpark built on the ashes of the best of us.

Director Park: a great summer piazza, but what about winter?

Director Park (photo by Brian Libby) 

The block behind the Fox Tower has traveled a circuitous route to become Simon and Helen Director Park.

Developer Tom Moyer, owner of the block, sought to redevelop it since the 1970s. Downtown parking magnate Greg Goodman proposed to turn the block into a 550-space, 12-story parking structure in 1995, which was to be called the Park Avenue Plaza. In 1998, Moyer and ex-Portland mayor/Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt proposed not only turning this parcel into a park, but razing several consecutive buildings along the street for greenspace as part of a larger plan to connect the North and South Park Blocks.

Director Park is the compromise, although an attractive one and mostly very well done. It is first and foremost a 700-car underground parking garage, as one is reminded from the numerous above-ground entry structures here. But this is also a piazza where people can congregate at outdoor tables and kids can play in a fountain. On two sides of the park, granite paving blurs the line between park and adjacent street, giving off a pleasant European feel. The most striking feature, however, is Director Park's 1,000 square foot glass awning. (More on that later.)

At one point this was to be called Marilyn Moyer Park, after Tom Moyer's deceased wife. He had previously donated $1 million to the park and requested the name in her memory. Moyer also, of course, donated the land for Director Park itself. But the city and its public steering committee later decided to give away naming rights in exchange for further funding. Jordan Schnitzer, from the wealthy local family whose name dots many institutions, donated $1.97 million for the plaza and asked city commissioners to name it for his maternal grandparents, Simon and Helen Director, Russian and Polish immigrants who met in Portland in 1916. I wonder if that decision has to do not only with finances but also with the fact that Moyer's Park Avenue West Tower, now partially constructed across the street from Director Park, effectively killed the chance to extend the Park Blocks.

With all due respect to the memory of Marilyn Moyer and of Simon and Helen Director, I don't like to see public spaces simply named after whomever the biggest donor wants. It seemed more fitting when these spaces were named after those who have led or contributed to the city in a substantial way, such as former governor Tom McCall (after whom Waterfront Park is named) or the late gallerist William Jamison (after whom Jamison Square in the Pearl is named). Marilyn Moyer also already has the Marilyn Moyer Meditation Chapel at The Grotto named after her, and while this is the first naming honor to go to Simon and Helen Director, it is about the 100th thing named after a member of the Schnitzer family. 

Instead of Director Park, what if we'd called it Bill Walton Square, after the hero of the Blazers' lone championship? Or Mel Blanc Park, after the virtuoso cartoon voice artist who came from Portland. Name it Dick Bogle Plaza, after the former City Council member who recently passed. Dedicate it to James Beard, the father of TV food chefs. Or Clark Gable Square after the actor who once lived in Portland. Or Mark Rothko Park after the legendary painter who got his start here. Or if news turns out for the worst, what about even Kyron Horman Piazza?

Director Park (photo by Brian Libby) 

Director Park comes with impressive designer pedigree. It's a partnership between Portland firm ZGF Architects and celebrated landscape architect Laurie Olin.

The involvement of ZGF in this park, because of its glass canopy, recalls another design by the firm that I love: the glass canopy at Portland International Airport. It's one of my favorite works of architecture and engineering in the city. ZGF also recently completed the Jaqua Center at the University of Oregon in Eugene, another glassy marvel, as well as its own headquarters as part of the 12 West building. Suddenly ZGF is doing much of the most interesting glass work in the city and beyond.

A Harvard graduate who has taught and chaired landscape architecture departments at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard since 1976, Olin's eponymous firm received the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Design in 2008. Earlier this year Olin was on the winning team in the competition to design the new United States Embassy in London with architects KieranTimberlake. Olin is also a Guggenheim Fellow and was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Olin's list of past projects is hugely impressive. In New York he worked on Bryant Park and Battery Park City as well as a renovation of Columbus Circle. Olin also collaborated with celebrated architects Daniel Liebeskind on the Jewish Memorial in Berlin and Richard Meier on the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. In short, Olin is another star landscape architect contributing to Portland, joining the ranks of Lawrence Halprin, Peter Walker, and the Olmsted brothers.

 

 

Director Park (photos by Brian Libby) 

This summer, the public has flocked to Director Park. A World Cup soccer match between England and the USA filled the park with revelers to watch on a giant-screen TV. Tonight there is a viewing party for the masterful Vincente Minnelli musical An American In Paris with Gene Kelly. And during the several times I have visited Director Park, there have always been people there. Particularly I think people gravitate to the tables and chairs dotting Director, the simplest of design moves but something noticeably lacking in Pioneer Courthouse Square. What's more, for all the wonderful energy of the downtown food cart scene, there are very few places to sit down and eat your lunch. The 10th Avenue food cart pod is just a couple blocks from Director, making it an ideal spot to eat.

Actually, though, you can eat without leaving the park at all. One of Tom Moyer's provisions for donating the land above the underground parking for a park was that 30 percent of the space be devoted to commercial activity. Enter Violetta, a smart little cafe that makes some of the best corn dogs I've ever tasted. The kitchen is adjacent to the glass canopy, encouraging visitors to sit back and people watch in the piazza.

Some, myself included, wondered before Director Park's construction whether it would mean too much public space clustered together in this portion of downtown with Pioneer Courthouse Square and the North South Park Blocks each only a block away. So far, though, I think Director has carved a niche for itself as a different kind of park space from the others nearby. This isn't a wide open expanse like Pioneer, nor is it an intimate tree-lined setting like the Blocks. Director is the place to sip espresso at an outdoor table on a sunny afternoon. "It's growing on me," one prominent Portland artist and curator told me of Director Park yesterday as I found him at one such table chatting with a friend.

Materials also help make the park what it is. The light granite surface creates a series of subtle but attractive patterns. Better yet are the wood benches placed along two sides and around the perimeter of the fountain. 

 

Director Park (photos by Brian Libby)  

Much as Director Park has impressed with its instant success at place-making, its complementary feel to nearby Pioneer Courthouse Square and the many fine details of the design, I am plagued by a lingering worry that the design will only work in the summer. Specifically, I'm skeptical of the glass canopy. It feels too tall and skinny to keep away the rain. Although I'm admittedly yet to test this theory, I'm concerned that during the long rainy months Director Park's signature canopy will be a place people hope to congregate only to find that the drops are still hitting them. 

For many years I've yearned for Portland to have a winter-garden, a partially or fully enclosed glass structure where people can still enjoy the sensation of being outdoors (natural light, air) yet protected from the elements. When you're inside Memorial Coliseum's concourse (outside the seating bowl) this sensation comes through dramatically, but the MC is not a place where the public can congregate freely without a ticketed event. As Director Park was being designed and built, I had great hope that it would serve that role: Portland's public indoor-outdoor winter garden. I hope I'm wrong about Director Park, that the canopy isn't really too tall and thin to be that kind of year-round space.

Director Park (photo by Brian Libby) 

What's more, I realize the canopy isn't the only criterion for judging Director Park. Visiting there in recent days, it felt like the congregating point of downtown Portland as much as beloved Pioneer Courthouse Square if not even more. And if Moyer's Park Avenue West Tower eventually finishes construction, the park will be bookended with retail including a new Nike Town store in that building as well as, hopefully, a re-opened Guild Theatre on the west side of the park.

It's because of this kind of good feeling about the design of Portland's newest downtown public space, though, that one wants it to last throughout the year.

Breaking down TriMet budget and service woes

 

When an economy is suffering, that's when people need mass transit the most: buses and rail to take to work when they might not be able to afford a car anymore. That's why it is all the more disappointing to see transit agency TriMet doing the opposite amidst this Great Recession: cutting service and raising fares.

I'm not the only one who is frustrated, either. A protest of TriMet cuts is happening downtown today, from 4-6PM in front of City Hall.

This month TriMet will initiate a series of cuts approved by its board in May: reducing its bus system's overall vehicle hours by 5 percent while hiking fares 5 cents, or 2 percent for an all-zone ticket. Bus routes 27 and 157 will be eliminated and almost all other lines will come less frequently at some times or see shorter service hours.

TriMet says the cuts and fare hike were needed to help close a $27 million shortfall in its fiscal year 2011. The agency made the cuts based on which routes and times were least used, whether alternative rail service (MAX or WES) was available nearby and whether cuts would fall heavily on low-income and minority communities.

There's no arguing against the agency trying to balance its books. But when a budget shortfall happens, there are two ways to address it: cutting services and raising fees. TriMet is doing both, to an extent. It's cutting services and raising ticket prices.

TriMet receives about 55% of its operating funds from a payroll tax paid by businesses located within the TriMet district boundary. Another 21% comes from fares, which is typical for transit agencies. The rest is made up by federal or state grants and what the agency simply calls "other sources."

Payroll and self-employment taxes, which provide operating revenue for TriMet, are collected and administered by the Oregon Department of Revenue. Effective January 1, 2010, the rate increased to 0.6818 percent ($6.818 per $1,000) of the wages paid by an employer and the net earnings from self-employment for services performed within the TriMet District boundary. For an employee making, say, $30,000, the tax would be $204.54. If you're an employer with a sizable staff, paying $200-$400 per employee (or more) could add up fast.

What I'm wondering is, how could TriMet raise sufficient operating funds without cutting service? Would it be better to initiate a larger ticket price increase, or to increase the business tax? Or better yet, might there be some other kind of funding mechanism that could better fund the agency's operating budget? What about a gas tax in the counties where TriMet operates? Even a penny per gallon spent by each driver in the Metro area would surely add up fast, and this could also have the added plus of inspiring more drivers to get out of their cars. But gas taxes are political hot potatoes, even in progressive Oregon. What would charging $2.15 or $2.25 do for TriMet's ability to offer sufficient service?

 

In case you're wondering, TriMet's operating budget is not to be confused with its capital budget. Capital funds come from a different pool of money, largely in the form of grants from the federal government, and are often allocated many years in advance. The agency also receives a small amount of state and federal money for other capital improvements. So if one argues, "Why don't we just eliminate the new MAX line to Milwaukee?", unfortunately that wouldn't help bring back any service cuts. That said, however, having a line to Milwaukee in the future might mean TriMet's operating budget becomes even more strained. Building MAX lines from the capital budget doesn't have any direct impact on the operating budget at first, but it inevitably does (if you'll pardon the pun) down the line.

The bottom line is that the transit agency is doing what it can given the resources that exist. TriMet has to balance its books, and given that it's much easier to raise ticket prices and cut service than it is to get more money from tax revenue, it's no surprise that's what they are doing.

Yet it just feels wrong to see Portland's transit agency cutting whole bus lines and having existing lines run less often precisely when people need these buses the most. I'd rather see additional steps taken, whatever they are, to make TriMet service at its most robust when economic conditions necessitate customers' and the community's greatest need. No doubt every new or existing expenditure has to be paid for sooner or later, but providing proper transit infrastructure for people to get to work is precisely how the state of the economy will be improved.