Gresham City Hall (photos by Matthew Ginn, Homestead Images)
BY MATTHEW GINN AND BRIAN LIBBY
Continuing Portland Architecture's photographic tour of metro area city halls large and small, granite edifices and mobile homes, our shutterbug correspondent Matthew Ginn ventured to the end of the MAX light rail line.
This eastern suburb had a somewhat lengthy journey to becoming a city in its own right. For several decades before it was incorporated as a city in 1905, it was known as Campground, because it was a routine stop for pioneers during the Great Migration, who stopped to spend the night before moving on to intended settlements in Portland and the Willamette Valley.
Perhaps similarly, Gresham - named for the US Postmaster General at the time of its incorporation - has had a bit of a scattershot history when it comes to its city hall. Or rather, city halls.
First a city hall was erected in 1912 on one site. But by 1951, according to a Gresham Outlook article, the building was "in ruins". Voters were asked to approve a levy of $50,000 to build a new City Hall, which was combined with funds provided by veterans groups to give Gresham would have the money for a new $120,000 facility.
Gresham City Hall (photos by Matthew Ginn, Homestead Images)
In 1979, City Hall moved to a circa-1961 building across the street from the current location According to the signage, at least, it still hosts the council chambers (as well as Police, Fire, and Gresham-Barlow School District offices.
The current city hall, three stories and totaling just over 85,000 square feet, was built in 1996 from a design by Portland's Yost Grube Hall, a venerable firm with an impressive portfolio that includes work across the world as well as Oregon projects like the award-winning, LEED Gold-rated Kelly Engineering Center at Oregon State University and Portland State University's Academic and Student Recreation Center.
PSU Recreation Center, Kelly Engineering Center (image courtesy Yost Grube Hall)
Gresham City Hall was a cornerstone in the Civic Neighborhood Plan, a transit-oriented development plan adopted by Gresham in 1995 which called for 885 residential units, 390,000 square feet of office space and 332,000 square feet of retail centered around the City Hall MAX station. However, it appears to have been partially executed. Gresham Station was opened in 2003 and some residential units have been built, but large tracts in the center of the district are undeveloped, and the northeast corner is occupied by a large department store.
In fact, this area remains dotted large surface parking areas and buildings set back on huge lots between Eastman Parkway, Division and Burnside streets. It makes the area feel anything but the dense, pedestrian friendly quarter envisioned in the Civic Neighborhood Plan.
Gresham City Hall (photos by Matthew Ginn, Homestead Images)
The current city hall was used as a study point for University of Oregon architecture students in 2009, who noted a series of challenges to the architecture:
- Dreary and unwelcoming exterior, does not present the image of a city hall
- Poor use of space (Daylight access in storage room but not mail/process work room)
- Long corridors in upper levels
- Inefficient building layout. Plan need to be reversed to function and serve the public more efficiently
- Lack of open, central, gathering space
- Lack of visual access to the outside that would help employees mark the time of day
- Empty, unused concrete plaza
- Long winding, confusing access to large conference center
- An 8am-5pm building on weekdays and deserted on weeknights and weekends
UO students also working on solutions to another problem: Gresham City Hall's substantial summer overheating problem on its west-facing offices. Among their solutions were a living wall similar to what SERA Architects designed for Portland's Edith Green Wendell Wyatt Federal Building downtown.
UO student Bill Kirkwood's proposal for Gresham City Hall
Another unfortunate fact about Gresham City Hall is that the south entrance to the building—the one facing the MAX station—is closed to the public. City Hall visitors arriving by rail have to walk the entire length of the building to get to the front entrance.
In terms of the structure, perhaps the buiding reflects Gresham in the mid-1990s. Then, as now, Gresham sought to assert itself as an independent, modern, important city in its own right, and shake off the image of being a bedroom community to Portland: the modern day "Campground" mentality of pass-through space.
To some, the building may come across as something a suburban office building, albeit an impressive one: perhaps something a mid-size dot-com company might have built. In fact, with its off-white and blue color palette the building is vaguely reminiscent of the desktop computers of the era. It has a sleek, clean, corporate look, particularly on the north, east, and south faces where the long banks of blue glass give it just enough distinction to be, well, distinct. In contrast, the uniform rows of windows on the west elevation seem less corporate and more institutional. Combined with a main entryway that is small relative to the rest of the building, the structure is a bit more fortress-like than the designers probably intended.
Gresham City Hall (photos by Matthew Ginn, Homestead Images)
Even so, from certain vantage points there is a subtle poetry at work here too. The building rests on a series of columns, so it appears to hover over its foundation - not unlike the work of legendary Swiss architect Le Corbusier. Its billowing facade can give the impression of ripples on the Columbia River nearby. Yet, at 15 years old, Gresham City Hall is nevertheless somewhat clearly a product of the 1990s. Some may feel that makes it dated, but at least it takes a specific statement of style. Fifty years from now, those qualities might make the difference between a distinctive historic structure and just another old building.
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