UO students tackle Ankeny/Burnside plan

 

Sinnott House/Simon Facade concept (rendering by Blake Scott)

BY HENRY C. KUNOWSKI

The issues for moving key elements of the Ankeny/Burnside Development Framework Plan forward created an excellent opportunity for investigation by an urban design studio at the University of Oregon’s Department of Architecture.  The studio held its mid-term “pin-up” on Friday, February 4th at the UO Portland Center in the White Stag Building with a series of outside-review critiques.

While a complex set of interrelated dynamics are involved—urban, social, cultural, architectural, economic—the fundamental question posed is whether the development issues of zoning, floor-area-ratio and height are approached from a performance-based standpoint rather than fixed prescriptive numbers? 

Since its completion in 2007 the Ankeny/Burnside Plan and its proponents have attempted to move several concepts forward to fruition with little success.  While the plan itself is a example of what stellar documents city bureaus, PDC and effected stakeholders can produce, it has not fully achieved what it supported. The fundamental vision for the area, refined through a multi-faceted visioning process, is to “create a vital and vibrant district that retains and reinforces the history and character of the Ankeny/Burnside area.”  No one involved with the creation of the A/B Plan or even those not involved will argue with this vision. Why is implementation of this vision such a difficulty with the appearance of no forward movement? While there are five implementation strategies recommended, few have been advanced.

Site analysis sketches by Jennifer Pecenka

As noted in the A/B Plan the five priority implementation strategy action items are:

• Development of six catalytic opportunity sites
• Demonstration of support for Saturday Market
• Improvements to the public realm
• Revisions the existing regulatory framework
• The identification of a management entity for the district. 

The second and third strategies moved forward to some significant degree while items four and five have stalled. A national review of five case study sites investigated for the A/B Plan found items four and five critical for a successful implementation. Nevertheless, the first strategy has been the focus of at least two recent proposals that have ended with no resolve.

As a research, study and design vehicle for a senior/graduate level urban design studio, the key issues raised in the A/B Plan are what constitutes an “Edge Opportunity Site” and whether the current perspective on density and zoning height limitations in this duel historic district area the right approach.

The design studio is investigating the Edge Opportunity Site located on Block 28, between NW Third and Fourth Avenues and NW Couch & Davis Streets. The principle focus is the KIDA Company site at NW Third and Davis, but for the purposes of the studio, the entire block will be studied.  This approach offers a greater opportunity for addressing the broader urban design issues that cannot be addressed by looking at any one single development parcel. 

The project site is located within two historic districts, Skidmore/Oldtown National Historic Landmark and New Chinatown/Japantown Historic District and as such contains a split zoning height limit with the eastern half at 75-feet and the western half at 100-feet and hence will not serve to function as a “transitional site” to the remained of a “modern city” as noted in the A/B Plan.  In reality, Block 28 is not an “edge” but the heart of two historic districts and is viewed as such.

Study for building on Third Avenue (rendering by Jennifer Pecenka)

To further add another layer of complexity to the design context, the Skidmore NHL is listed for its architectural significance, primarily the 19th century cast iron of the Victorian era Italianate style with influences of the Richardsonian Romanesque and Chicago/Commercial styles.  On the other side of the spectrum, New Chinatown is listed for its significance as it relates to the early settlement of the Chinese and Japanese communities, in other words, there is no architectural record of this district but a cultural one.  The only building in the New Chinatown area that reflects the cultural traditions of the Asian population is the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, CCBA, built in 1911 and located at 312 NW Davis.

There are 15 students in the class with eight of them working on the two historic buildings, the circa-1883 Sinnott House, 1883 and Simon Façade dating to 1892.  The other 7 students are working on designs for two new buildings to replace the extant non-historic structures, the KIDA Company and Great China Bldgs, both facing NW Davis.

The studio is charged with three primary objectives:

Objective 1: Design two new adjoining mixed-use developments with criteria that are viewed from a “performance-based” approach to compatibility in the historic context vs. a “prescriptive approach” that works with the current and proposed height increase. The KIDA Co. site may also utilize the Simon Building Façade.  New developments will evaluate their impacts and effects on the adjacent historic Hung Far Low Building, 1916.

Objective 2: Design an “adaptive reuse” of the extant historic Sinnott House, 1883, as a either a “Boutique Hotel” or student housing; including consideration of a roof-top addition.   Use of the Sinnott will also utilize the adjacent historic Simon Building Façade, 1892. The adaptive reuse should satisfy the requirements of a “certified rehabilitation”, if not, use of the Secretary of the interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation and the proposed Skidmore/Oldtown Design Guidelines with the inclusion of the Richardsonian Romanesque and Chicago/Commercial style as building types. 

Objective 3: All developments will be following the guidelines of the “Living Building Challenge” 2.0 for environmental sustainability. 

Four of the 5 parcels on the block will be redeveloped to meet the strategies identified in the A/B Development Framework Plan, i.e. mixed-use as noted in City’s Title 33 Planning and Zoning Code, Chapter 33.130 (Table 130-3) Commercial Zones: CX.  For the purposes of this studio a “mixed-use” will encompass; Residential, Retail, Commercial and Professional uses.  The specific uses for each of the 4 sites are defined in the site parcel description.  Further, the specific retail and commercial uses will be defined by an informal class survey of extant similar uses in a three block area surrounding the Block 28 site.

Assumptions: Air rights above the one-story Hung Far Low Restaurant on the corner of NW 4th and Couch have been secured to prevent future high-rise development on that site and open the view-shed for the adjacent properties.   The KIDA Co. site and the former Great China Restaurant site will be co-developed so that, in concept, they will share a central light-well type court or, to put it another way, independently they may have a basic “U” shape plan configuration.  The Simon Building Facade site could also be developed to utilize this area for a possible hydraulic parking structure to serve either/both the Sinnott House and the KIDA Co. development. 

The final design studio solutions will be presented for design review critique the week of March 7th in either Eugene or Portland with details and schedules pending.

Henry Kunowski is an architectural historian and adjunct instructor of architecture and historic preservation at the University of Oregon. He is a past Chair of the AIA/Portland Historic Resources Committee and is currently working for Dewberry + Davis, Consulting Engineers in Fairfax, Virginia and Zaik Associates in Portland Oregon.

 

Comments

[Jim Heuer]

The frustrations with the Ankeny/Burnside plan are really a piece of the larger issue of how to promote appropriate development within all of the Skidmore/Oldtown and Chinatown Historic Districts. The "prescriptive" approach Mr. Kunowski refers to is the set of design guidelines which establish height and massing limits consistent with the existing buildings and which further encourage architecturally compatible designs alongside the existing structures.

There is a perfectly good set of design guidelines paid for by City money and reviewed favorably by the City Landmarks Commission that is crystal clear on what is and is not allowed in the District. The preservation community had been told prior to that point that it was a lack of clarity and ambiguity in the old design guidelines which prevented development in the area. OK, so that got fixed. But rather than adopting the guidelines, the City proposed the idea of "opportunity sites" for the District. Simply put, the opportunity sites were to be major chunks of the Historic District where the rules would be suspended and the owners would be allowed to put up pretty much anything they wanted -- certainly much taller structures than what would otherwise be allowed.

These "sites" Mr. Kunowski makes reference to in his post. The preservation community fought the concept of these "sites" and the city -- with its Mayor under an ethical cloud at the time -- pulled back and did nothing.

Behind all the semantic fog -- "performance based" vs "prescriptive approach" -- is the simple fact that land owners in the District have been waging a quiet war for years to increase the value of their properties by forcing the city to back away from the accepted standards for new development in the Historic District. The key here is that it's property value not "multi-faceted visioning" that's at the core of the problem. One imagines that a "performance based" approach is just another way of saying that we need to break the District design guidelines to allow taller buildings.

Back in 2010, I did a back of the envelope calculation comparing property values from Portland Maps.com in these two Historic Districts with that just outside and came to the conclusion that the property owners in the District would enjoy roughly a $150 million increase in property values if they were allowed to build to the full height allowed in the "modern city" to the south. This financial incentive explains why they have been willing for something like 20 years to accept the returns from surface parking business rather than attempting to move forward with development under the current height and design rules. As the potential for profit from breaking the District rules gets greater with each passing year, there is never any incentive for immediate development under the current rules.

Of course, if the owners at some point were to come to the simple conclusion that they will never be allowed to build a 150 or 250 foot tall building in the District, and they may as well maximize the value under the current guidelines, you'd see bulldozers ripping out the old parking lots the next day.

Now, taking as a given (which I realize many readers of this blog will not) that Skidmore/Old Town is worth preserving, not just as a bunch of old buildings but as an urban ecosystem that thrives and encourages investment to fill in the many blank spaces, it can be argued that the very scale, size and massing of those old buildings must be an essential ingredient of that emerging ecosystem. In that context, the "opportunity sites" which would allow "transition" (read much bigger) buildings to be built in the District are the last thing we need.

While the project that Mr. Kunowski describes appears to have many admirable elements, it would have been nice to hear a focus on working within the existing and well defined guidelines for new construction in the district rather than giving further encouragement to those who would eliminate or dramatically weaken them.

It would have been even nicer to hear some reference to the possible re-use of the very large collection of cast iron building components salvaged during the great demolitions of the 1950's and 1960's. There is a tremendous opportunity to recreate some of the fabulous buildings so unwisely demolished using the actual, original materials from which they were constructed!

The Architectural Heritage Center prepared a much-too-unheralded plan for reusing the salvaged cast iron during the summer of 2010. You can see details at http://cipdx.visitahc.org/CIpdx/Future/RestorationAll.html. While it may be too late for the U of O students to take it into consideration (if they even knew about it), I'd hope that the AHC's proposals will reach a wider audience as development in the District continues.