Downtown Portland from Hawthorne Bridge (photo by Brian Libby)
BY FRED LEESON
Nostalgia can hit in unexpected ways. As the City of Portland goes about trying to draft a Central City 2035 plan to guide downtown and inner-East Side development in the next quarter century, I found myself looking up the famed Downtown Plan of 1972.
In the summer of 1971, I was a summer intern at the now-departed Oregon Journal newspaper, where I was assigned to be the newspaper’s only night general assignment reporter on weekday evenings. Thus I found myself attending and often writing about meetings of the Downtown Plan’s Citizen Advisory Committee, chaired by Dean Gisvold, a young Portland attorney.
It’s amazing to look at that plan today, which is available on the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability web site. Superficially, it was still the era of the typewriter; the maps and graphics are surprisingly elementary viewed against today’s professional standards.
Yet the content of the plan is incredibly striking and clear. It’s impact is obvious today: North-south transit spines of Fifth and Sixth Avenues; east-west spines on Morrison and Alder Streets; a central downtown public square; a pedestrian-oriented Waterfront Park available for big and small events; increased downtown housing; a high density building spine along the north-south transit spine, stepping down towards the river; transit; commercial and pedestrian-friendly uses on ground floors; increased transit, pedestrian and bicycle use at the expense of automobiles.
The plan even makes a passing nod to housing and commercial opportunities on 26 acres of mostly vacant railroad yards in Northwest Portland. Today we call it the Pearl.
The motivations for planning in the early 1970s were different than in 2011. Today the process is mandated, bureaucratized and institutionalized under statewide rules and regulations. When the Downtown Plan was initiated in the final years of Mayor Terry Schrunk’s administration there were no state rules. The motive was desperation: Downtown Portland as it had been known for decades was dying; this was an attempt to make it vital once again.
The 1972 Downtown Plan is hallowed -- and rightly so -- in planning history. It was intelligent and prescient. It was an outstanding roadmap for its day.
One recommendation of the 1972 plan was not been honored, however, and it has ramifications in the 2035 plan. Although there were no designated historic districts in the early 1970s, the 1972 plan recognized the importance of Portland’s historic fabric. “Density and design standards for new buildings need to respect the setting and character of historic and architecturally significant buildings,” the old plan said. At another point, it advises to “protect historic areas from incompatible development.”
Alas, the city government went on to do exactly the opposite. In the 1980s, the City council zoned the heart of downtown, including the national historic districts, as CXd, the densest of the city’s many commercial zones. As the city explains CXd, “Development is intended to be very intense with high building coverage, large buildings, and buildings placed close together.”
The impact of the high-rise zoning on historic districts such as Skidmore/Old Town and Japan/Chinatown has been painful. Owners of vacant lots and low-rise old buildings hold out thinking their land will pay off later as sites for high-rise towers. Cathy Galbraith, director of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation, a historic preservation advocacy group, says the high-rise zoning leads to benign neglect. She also says it makes one wonder whether the city would rather see the historic districts simply disappear over time, in favor of high new high-rise projects.
Fittingly, historic preservation is one of several elements being discussed as part of the Central City 2035 plan. City planners hosted two symnposia in May and June, where several of the brightest minds in development and preservation discussed the challenges, opportunities, successes and failures of preservation in Portland.
As a result of those meetings, an ad-hoc committee of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation is drafting a Platform for Preservation that outlines preservation goals and priorities for the Central City plan. A final version is expected soon. Key members of this informal brain trust included Cathy Galbraith, architects Paul Falsetto and Christine Yun, and Portland architectural and neighborhood historian, James Heuer, also a Bosco-Milligan board member.
Not surprisingly, changes in zoning that would reflect the context and density of the Central City’s numerous historic districts is one key priority. Another issue, not visited in earlier plans, calls for the city to study ways it can encourage seismic bracing of the Central City’s many unreinforced masonry buildings, given new geological evidence about the Cascadia subduction zone and the high probability of a major earthquake in the foreseeable future.
Buildings such as the historic Union Station railroad depot pose a real danger in a major earthquake. Experts predict that the unreinforced campanile would collapse into the main lobby under it, posing a serious threat to the lives of anyone in the building. The Platform for Preservation urges the city to study how other jurisdictions are encouraging earthquake bracing upgrades, with tools such as low-interest loans and property tax incentives. The issue is as much about human safety as it is about retention of historic building fabric.
Other elements of the platform include:
- Undertaking a new historic resources inventory that considers not only the architectural merit of vintage buildings but also sites of social, cultural and ethnic significance. Many buildings that may have played important roles in Portland history may not be significant architectural landmarks, but worthy of preservation for other reasons.
- Establishing affordable, centralized design review with appropriate design guidelines for historic districts. The Platform for Preservation envisions a central Historic Preservation Officer and a staff that can give building owners timely, constructive advice on renovation projects.
- Recognizing positive energy conservation and sustainability aspects of preservation. Cutting-edge research shows that even the “greenest” new buildings take 40 to 60 years before they hold an advantage over an older building that is reasonably upgraded with insulation and other energy-saving devices. This research contradicts conventional thinking that often favors demolition of old buildings to create a carbon-reduction benefit.
- Encouraging the city to be a better steward of its own historic resources, including Union Station, the North and South Park Blocks, and publicly-owned items both large and small of historic and public importance.
Professional planners and a citizens’ committee headed by historian Chet Orloff are expected to prepare a final proposed Central City plan late this year. City Council action is expected sometime in 2012.
One hopes that the final product will be as intelligent, useful and outstanding as the 1972 original.
Fred Leeson is a Portland journalist and president of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation and its Architectural Heritage Center.
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The quote above about the Portland zoning code is somewhat selective. The full paragraph reads:
"The Central Commercial (CX) zone is intended to provide for commercial development within Portland's most urban and intense areas. A broad range of uses is allowed to reflect Portland's role as a commercial, cultural and governmental center. Development is intended to be very intense with high building coverage, large buildings, and buildings placed close together. Development is intended to be pedestrian-oriented with a strong emphasis on a safe and attractive streetscape."
And quite right too. Portland's central city is at the heart of a metropolitan region in which more than 2 million people. It should be dense. Cities are about interaction and exchange, and this happens best when the land is used most intensely. I'd argue that the biggest problem with Old Town/Skidmore/Chinatown/Yamhill collectively face is the lack of economic activity in them. There just aren't enough people living and working in those areas. Development along the lines of the Brewery Blocks or the ZGF building would do wonders for these areas. Density is also great for the environment. (What's the greenest city in the US? New York, a direct result of how dense it is.)
While it's a shame that so many historic buildings have been lost and turned into parking lots, covering the whole of downtown with CS zoning rather than CX zoning isn't going to bring them back. It's an interesting premise that "high rise" zoning prevents investment on vacant lots and low rise buildings, but I'd like to see some evidence of it.
While I regret the loss of certain historic buildings in Portland, including in recent years, I think the blame lies at how weak historic building preservation laws are in the US; not at a City Government that believes in development in the center of the city.
Posted by: Maccoinnich | July 12, 2011 at 08:17 PM
High urban density is certainly a reasonable goal for much of Portland's downtown area, but there is no reason why the Central City has to be turned into monolithic blocks of 300 foot tall buildings. Indeed, the city's own Buildable Lands Inventory demonstrates vividly that all the growth in downtown office and residential capacity projected for many decades into the future can easily be handled by areas outside of the Historic Districts.
And the example of New York illustrates that there is merit in having a variety of building heights across the central core. While New York may be a paragon of low intensity energy use, it is not exclusively because of its clusters of very tall skyscrapers. The average building height across the 5 boroughs is only 2-1/2 stories, and even Manhattan is comprised of large expanses of 4-5 story 19th and early 20th Century structures. The truth of the matter is that New York has a vast, almost fully electrified, system of subways and commuter rail routes that, depending on the metrics, is from 3 to 5 times larger and more heavily used than in any other U.S. city. While the density of office space in Mid-town Manhattan and Lower Manhattan contribute to the continued viability of New York's transit network, that network also provides vital transport across all 5 boroughs where density is much lower. If there is a lesson for Portland in this, it's that we need to press on with our light-rail and streetcar expansions while introducing electrified heavy rail commuter service along the I-5 corridor where the facilities permit and traffic justifies it.
It is certainly true that lack of economic activity, especially in Skidmore/Old Town and China Town, is what makes those areas dull, but the culprit is obvious to anyone walking around those areas... vast surface parking lots do not a vibrant neighborhood make. What is needed is a combination of sensible infill that respects the many surviving historic buildings accompanied by sensitive rehabilitation (and seismic retrofits) of those not already rehabbed. Those actions are what are being impeded by a combination of inflexible seismic regulations and the perverse effects of high-rise zoning in Historic Districts.
One doesn't need a whole lot of "evidence" to understand the economic effects of high-rise zoning in a Historic District where the design guidelines would otherwise restrict building height to 45 or 65 feet. The arithmetic is simple. You have bought property on the cheap 40 years go. It is used for a surface parking lot that earns a very handsome return on that long-ago investment. If you build to the 65' height limit now, you make $X when the building is sold to investors -- once the building is built, the costs of tearing it down to replace it with a true high-rise will be prohibitive for many years. If you hold out for some future time after the city has caved in and you can build a 300' tall building, you will have made dramatically more from the deal. From my comparisons of current land values inside the Historic District with those where high rises have been OK'd, I've estimated that the increment in market value of the land from "breaking" the Historic District guidelines for Skidmore/Old Town/China Town would total around $150 million to the small group of property owners involved. That is plenty of incentive to wait out the City, especially given the ongoing revenue stream from the surface parking lots. Remember, that the owners in question are not like most of us worrying about how to afford their next mortgage or rent payment. They have a decades-long view of their investments, and can easily imagine a future time when political sentiment or de-designation resulting from demolition by neglect make possible covering Skidmore/Old Town with 300' tall buildings.
Posted by: Jim Heuer | July 13, 2011 at 01:40 PM