Portland Architecture

After 10 years, Albina Fuel site makes way for Grant Park Village

Rendering of Grant Park Village from west (courtesy LRS/Runberg)

BY FRED LEESON

No five-acre tract in Portland likely has undergone more development scrutiny, planning and neighborhood tooth-gnashing than the former site of Albina Fuel Co. at NE Broadway and 33rd Avenue, hard against the I-84 freeway.

After more than 10 years, dozens of public meetings and countless pixels devoted to potential designs, dare we say that construction is at hand? At long last, all parties, even the once-feisty neighbors, apparently hope so.

The Portland Design Commission on January 24 gave its blessing to a plan composed of what will look like five separate buildings all sitting on a two-story podium for 270 parking spaces. The buildings will include 211 units of apartments and townhouses and a retail strip facing Broadway anchored by a New Seasons food market.

The last hurdle, it appears, was convincing the developer, Capstone Partners, and its design team to upgrade exterior finishes on the industrially-inspired buildings that will stretch for some 600 feet along Broadway. LRS Architects of Portland is the local design firm, along with Runberg Architecture Group of Seattle, which has an extensive background in urban mixed-use projects.

With a hefty prod from the Design Commission in earlier meetings, the design team scrapped a skin heavily reliant on metal panels to a more expensive scheme using three-coat sand-finished stucco. “We think we have a path figured out to make it economically viable,” said Jeff Sackett, a Capstone principal.

Rendering of Grant Park Village from the east (courtesy LRS/Runberg)

The various buildings reflect a similar design theme, reflecting the nearby 1920s-era industrial buildings of the former Doernbecher Furniture Co. in Sullivan’sGulch (now a massive self-storage operation) and the Gordon’s Fireplace building just across NE 33rd Avenue. However, Greg Mitchell, an LRS architect, said the intent was to make each of the four and five-story building look a little different by gently changing color patterns and some fenestration. The overall project will bear the name “Grant Park Village” atop a modest tower element at the key 33rd and Broadway intersection.

The five buildings will create a central courtyard that will be open to the public and provide access to the townhouses. A walkway at the southern edge of a roughly triangle-shaped property may someday intersect with a proposed bicycle/pedestrian way along Sullivan’s Gulch.

An earlier plan from another developer to build 319 condos (remember those?) and retail space on the same site won Design Commission approval in 2008 after lengthy scrutiny, but the recession killed that plan.

Carol Gossett, a Sullivan’s Gulch Neighborhood Association resident, said her association and the adjacent Grant Park Neighborhood Association generally favored the plan. Over the years, neighbors were primarily concerned about traffic that would be generated by a large-scale project. The final plan calls for another major signal at Broadway and 32nd Avenue, which would funnel traffic to the Weidler Street vehicular entrance. Gossett said she hopes the economy will allow construction of the Capstone project.

The sloping site posed several design challenges, including vehicle circulation to allow for fire trucks and grocery supply trucks as long as 67 feet. Storm water run-off will be stored in large cistern, allowing for gradual, timed release into the sewer system.

Commission members offered encouraging thoughts about the scope of the project and its impact on the vicinity. One, Tad Savinar, said it would be a significant link between the Hollywood District and the Broadway commercial strip, and add vitality to portions of Broadway that offer “a lot of less than desirable storefronts.” Jane Hansen said she thinks the project will be “a really popular and much-needed development in the neighborhood.”

Commissioners Ben Kaiser and David Keltner lauded the switch to stucco on the major facades. In 20, 30 or 40 years, Keltner noted, the buildings will still look good and people “will have no idea how it was financed at the time.”

If completed as planned, the project will make the vicinity one of the city’s most dense food centers. While some underserved Portland neighborhoods beg for a new supermarket, New Seasons, QFC and the Hollywood Fred Meyer will be competing within just a few blocks of one another.

 

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Design Museum Boston founders reach out to Portland for inspiration, possible expansion

Design Museum Boston's Derek Cascio and Sam Aquillano (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

This Monday evening, the monthly Bright Lights discussion series from Portland Monthly and the City Club welcomes two Boston designers who, although they look young enough to be matriculating at one of the area's scores of universities but instead have transformed how people think about design.

Design Museum Boston may not have any brick-and-mortar home like most museums, but co-founders Sam Aquillano and Derek Cascio say that has ultimately become an asset rather than a liability. "Design is everywhere," the museum's slogan goes. "So are we."

After founding the museum in 2009, the twenty-something industrial designers have reached out to a host of graphic designers, architects, interior designers, planners and other members of the greater design profession. But they've also taken exhibits to every corner of Boston. In 2011, for example, they collaborated with the City of Boston and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design on a National Endowment for the Arts-funded project to use design to build community and increase the livability of the South Boston Waterfront, home to the city’s burgeoning Innovation District. Design Museum Boston has also produced exhibits on transportation design at the city's Logan Airport, acclaimed shows on retail design and sustainability, and even a design competition to produce street furniture for Boston's burgeoning Fort Point Channel.

Monday's Bright Lights talk, hosted as always by Portland Monthly editor Randy Gragg, seeks to offer a sort of summit meeting with the local design and architecture community. The topic will not only be how these young designers created what's already become an institution for Boston's design community, but how to be a conduit for the community to get involved in the conversation.

Portland already has a number of people, programs and events targeting the design community. There is the Museum of Contemporary Craft, which seems to see itself as a design museum as much as one promoting craft. There are member organizations like the American Institute of Architects and the International Interior Design Association, who put on events like the Architecture + Design Festival each October, and the Architectural Heritage Center, which has activities throughout the year. There are events like Design Week Portland, which follow the Boston museum's goal of connecting the design community with the broader public. But perhaps the Rose City, like Beantown, could benefit from one comprehensive approach to design. Too often the various design professions are siloed from each other, with one profession often not as appreciative of another's talents as their own. Portland is more friendly and collaborative than competitive and individualistic, though, and the duo behind Design Museum Boston openly wondered if there might someday be a Design Museum Portland.

A weekend talk with local designers and curators (photo courtesy Namita Wiggers)

In a talk Saturday with local design community members at Southeast Portland's ADX (a workshop and incubator for woodworkers and artisans) hosted by Museum of Contemporary Craft director and chief curator Namita Wiggers, Cascio and Aquillano emphasized that despite design touching upon nearly every aspect of daily life, from the houses and workplaces we inhabit to the can opener we might use to open dinner, there is not an infrastructure in place to celebrate and educate the public. When Design Museum Boston applies for grants, it targets ones for arts and for economic development - because there are no design grants. They also argued that a design museum, unlike museums devoted to art or antiquity, should not be about putting pretty objects on pedestals. "The interesting thing about design is the process," Cascio said, "and you can't put process on a pedestal."

Monday's talk is scheduled for 6:00PM at Jimmy Mak's (221 Northwest 10th Avenue), and Portland's design and architecture community is invited to join what Cascio, Aquillano and Gragg hope will be a kind of town hall on Portland design in all its different yet related incarnations. If it's anything like Saturday's discussion that I attended, these young curators will make a compelling case that unifying the local creative community can help foster a broader message the public unfortunately doesn't hear nearly enough: that design is all around us, and thus should be an accessible and front-burner conversation.

 

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Modish modular: visiting Skylab's HOMB

A cantilevered HOMB upstairs bedroom (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Over the past decade, numerous architecture firms around the country have introduced prefabricated home designs intended to streamline the high cost of building without sacrificing quality. Publications like Dwell magazine regularly tout such designs, but most of the time these projects are one-offs or only produce a handful additional constructions. Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of manufactured and modular homes continue to look bland and cheap. Why isn’t there more of a happy medium?

The excellent new HOMB series by Portland firm Skylab Architecture and Seattle prefab manufacturer Method Homes (with Portland firm Rainier Pacific as one of two general contractors) might not change this dichotomy. It’s impossible to know if the first HOMB in Portland, its final construction and installation happening over the past week, will be a one-off or the beginning of an affordable new line of compelling modern prefab houses sprinkled throughout the region. But visiting the new HOMB in Northeast Portland a few days ago, I wasn’t thinking about the challenges of prefab proliferation or solving the crisis of bad designs in new single-family residential home design. I was just thinking how much I’d like to live in one of these houses.

Delivered in three pieces trucked from Seattle, the newly installed Portland HOMB is an exercise in geometry and volume. It may be prefabricated, but each HOMB can be customized. The design breaks each HOMB down to 100 square foot modules in triangular shapes that can be laid out and configured in different ways. “We’re creating a system rather than a single piece that’s designed,” Skylab’s Jeff Kovel told me in a 2010 interview, when the HOMB concept was introduced.

HOMB from its backyard (photo by Brian Libby)

The houses sell for about $160 per square foot, although of course that’s not including the cost of land. At a rough guess, that seems on the upper end of middle-class affordability. But there are cost advantages too. Construction time is greatly reduced versus traditional construction, for example, as are a host of unknowns that accompany the traditional building process.

The just completed HOMB prototype I visited in Northeast Portland was on the large size, or at least it felt that way inside. It had a four bedroom and 3.5-bathrooms, but what stood out was the double-height great room, with sunlight pouring in through floor-to-ceiling glass.

The fact that rooms are not rectangular may give some residence a challenge when it comes to how to arrange furniture. But in the great room, the problem is partially solved with a built-in modular sofa.

The winding steel staircase, painted white, was another standout. It too was trucked down from Washington as a single piece, and it felt at once cozy like a stairway on a ship yet large and transparent enough to act as a kind of sculptural element. Skylab’s design encases the steel staircase in glass, and when you’re inside it’s an almost cinematic experience going up or down, with light coming in from windows adjacent to the stairs and then bouncing off the glass enclosure.

Top: looking down the stairs, bottom: bathroom (photos by Brian Libby)

The house is also energy efficient with its heat recovery system and radiant heating, and includes alternative power by means of a rooftop solar array.

The kind of effortlessly cool, retro-futuristic style that Skylab has demonstrated in a host of interior spaces from Doug Fir restaurant and Departure Lounge here in Portland to Flavor Paper in Brooklyn comes through in the bathrooms, where tile-clad floors and walls give way to a wall of mirrors.

The triangular pieces from which the HOMB design template is comprised allow for the upper portions of the building to cantilever over the entry and back yard areas. My favorite view was in back, where one of the bedrooms extended out over the grass and decking, the latter of which is made from recycled plastic.

Speaking of materials, the exterior façade is a blackened cedar, and HOMBs are also available with the same cedar naturally stained or painted white. The use of a simple wood cladding also helps create a tie-in with the traditional single-family homes nearby.

Great room of HOMB from upstairs balcony (photo by Brian Libby)

Inside the HOMN in Northeast, the kitchen cabinets were also made from cedar (I love it when the same material is used in different applications in one project such as this), but painted white in a thin application that allowed the grains of the wood to still show through. There is also engineered bamboo flooring and black Ceasarstone quartz countertops in the kitchen.

Only time will tell what’s in store for the ongoing HOMB series collaboration between Skylab and Method, and whether the house I visited in Northeast will be one of many, one of a few, or just one. But there’s no question that modular and prefab houses are going to be a bigger part of the future of residential building, and rightfully so. Architecture is among the least efficient of endeavors. From sailing ships to microchips, we design and build everything faster and more efficiently than buildings. Modular homes have been around for many decades by now, but they’ve also long been mired in a kind of aesthetic ghetto. Projects like HOMB provide both a compelling practical argument as well as a chic vision of what prefab and modular can be.

 

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Ada Louise Huxtable’s Portland

Ada Louise Huxtable (photo by L. Garth Huxtable)

BY DAN HANECKOW

Ada Louise Huxtable, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times and Wall Street Journal architectural critic as well as a celebrated author and preservationist, died on January 7 at the age of 91.

Although New York City was the primary arena for this greatest of American architecture writers, Huxtable often traveled to other cities around the world, including Portland in 1970.

“Doctors bury their mistakes, architects plant vines and Portland covers them with roses.” So began Ada Louise Huxtable’s piece that appeared in the New York Times on June 19 of that year.

A month earlier, Huxtable had been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for architectural criticism. She visited Portland after attending the opening of the Alvar Aalto-designed Mount Angel Abbey Library.

Huxtable, the nation's most influential and acclaimed architecture critic, saw in Portland a prime example of the forces arrayed against American cities, albeit in a spectacular setting. The headline read: "In Portland Ore., Urban Decay is Masked by Natural Splendor."

Her initial impression was positive.

“Small scaled, comfortably pedestrian streets with a cosmopolitan architectural mix are bounded by the hills on the west and the Willamette River on the east, with spreading residential and industrial areas beyond that double the metropolitan population,” Huxtable wrote.

She noted there were battles over whether apartment houses should be allowed on the hills among single family homes, on how to save historic landmarks, and protect neighborhoods from an expanding in-town university.

She rhapsodized on snow capped peaks, a cyclorama sky and 35 miles of rustic foot trails, then concluded, “This is a dreamworld urbanism; a city blessed by nature and by man. It is so lovely that Portlanders are lulled into a kind of false security about its urban health.”

Portland had “a curious apathy,” Huxtable argued, to problems whose symptoms were obvious.

Downtown Portland around 1970

“The scattered bomb-site look of downtown parking lots made by demolishing older buildings that pay less than metered asphalt and the blocks given over totally to parking garages or a combination of open lot and garage, are destroying the cohesive character of the city as decisively as a charge of dynamite wherever they occur. Sixty percent of city ground is now covered by automobiles.”

“Inadequate public transportation was accompanied by rising fares. Suburban shopping centers demagnetized downtown.”

“Everything is not coming up roses.”

She was especially critical of the city’s new corporate skyline. Portland had “… a better-than-average assortment of the Anywhere U.S.A. products of the large, national, big-city architectural firms, with their interchangeable towers and plaza’s multiplying a slick, redundant formula.”

“Against the suave schlock of some of Portland’s current architectural imports, Mt. Hood doesn’t stand a chance.”

First National Bank of Oregon (now Wells Fargo tower)

“This tower will be tapered and rail-finned, with an accessory block-square box, in a manner that finally died unmourned in Detroit but that the Southern California sun seems to keep alive," the Times critic added. "In style, scale and impact it will be alien corn, in every sense of the word.”

“The neatly extravagant Unistyle commercial model by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, suitable for use by any major corporation in any American city, with soap sculpture on the inevitable plaza, rises to 375 feet.”

“No one has stopped looking at the tops of these buildings long enough to see what is happening on the ground. Each one is contributing to the devitalization of the city. Virtually all of them eliminate the life on the street. There is nothing on each square block on which these buildings rise- where there should be window, shops, pedestrian activities- but a corporate entrance and a parking garage."

Georgia Pacific Building (today Standard Insurance Center)

"This deadly design usually employs the most foolproof city-wrecking device ever adopted by architects, for which today’s practitioners must surely be called to account. It is the tower on an elevated plaza, or podium, one floor above ground level, which puts a concrete or marble bunker on the street- a blind, insolent formidable fortress raised against pedestrian humanity, and its friendliest function is to receive cars.”

“The new Portland then, consists largely of towers, bunkers and bomb sites," she wrote. "And the mathematics have not yet been devised that will dispose of all the cars that the working population of each new skyscraper brings.”

Huxtable praised the South Auditorium urban renewal area, somewhat faintly.

“Because the work has spanned the decade from 1958 to 1969, with some later use of rehabilitation for an extension of the original area, Portland was able to learn from the most desolate and early mistakes of other cities. Opinions on the necessity and efficacy of the relocation process vary.” The apartment towers by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill were handsome though. She attributed much of its success to the landscape of fresh lush growth, without which the plan would be sterile.

She adored Lawrence Halprin’s fountain installation.

Forecourt Fountain (today Ira Keller Fountain)

“The project is brought to life by Lovejoy Park – Lawrence Halprin’s fountain plaza, which is the area’s social center and a notable work of environmental space and sculpture. A larger edition is almost finished as a forecourt for the city’s neuter auditorium.” (In a later article she would describe the Ira Keller forecourt fountain as “one of the most important urban spaces since the Renaissance).

Portland’s Park Blocks and “,,,a handful of Victorian of commercial buildings (that) are protected by fierce citizen determination and a special design district designation,” also drew positive notice.

Skidmore/Old Town walking tour map, circa 1970s

Portland was not accustomed to notice by the New York Times. The attention was not entirely welcome. When The Oregonian ran the piece it was retitled to somewhat soften the blow: "Portland’s New Architecture: Towers, Bunkers, Bombsites."

“I don’t like the article and I’m surprised The Oregonian would publish something like this,” responded Ralph Voss, President of the First National Bank of Oregon, whose new building Huxtable described as alien corn. “I don’t know who she is, but I know who Charles Luckman is," Voss said of the First National building's relatively famous businessman-slash-architect. "I think she was just trying to be cute.”

“I guess she’s entitled to her opinion,” Bob Lee, a Georgia Pacific Vice President noted. “But the (Georgia Pacific) building was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, among the world’s leading architects. I think they are probably better equipped than the young lady in question. As a citizen I think for someone to blow into town and write an article critical of all Portland structures is presumptuous and preposterous.”

Others found merit it her observations.

“I wish we had more of the same sort of criticism. She said a lot of things many of us have been thinking, but we aren’t really free to criticize our fellow architects,” commented Gary Mitchell, a former chairman of the civic design committee of the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

“I think she’s brilliant and she’s dead right,” said Richard A. Campbell of Campbell, Yost and Partners (today YGH Architecture).

John Kenward, executive director of the Portland Development Commission, noted cohesive design in Portland was difficult to achieve because 47 percent of the city area was streets. “Full block, or combined block development is encouraged to get around the problem," he said. "Perhaps there is a point in comments about planning, in that we haven’t always given as much thought to it as we should.”

Norman Zimmer, architect (and ZGF principal) noted city dwellers needed to positively assert civic pride to ensure enlightened development and design in the future. “I have the feeling most of the people who make the decisions put on their hats and motor out to Dunthorp at night," he said. "It’s up to us in the city to get public awareness built up”.

Huxtable wound down her 1970 Times piece by writing, "Some day, some American city will discover the Malthusian truth that the greater number of automobiles, the less the city can accommodate them without destroying itself. The downtown that turns itself into a parking lot is spreading its own dissolution. The price for Portland is already alarmingly high. But there are no easy answers, or no American city would be in trouble.”

PDC Downtown Project publication, circa 1976

Two years later, Portland’s Downtown Plan of 1972 would be released. With its emphasis on transit, density, lively street level activity and preservation, it addressed many of the ills that Huxtable enumerated.

In hindsight, her piece was part of Portland’s process in recognizing a need for change. In the architectural community, her observations fell on fertile ground. Even the Oregonian agreed with her that downtown was too automobile oriented.

The results of the 1972 plan - a walkable Portland, lively with a re-magnetized downtown and a more balanced approach to the automobile - continues to be revisited by the New York Times.

Fountain inside Bank of California building

“The Bank of California building even put a fountain in its garage at the incongruous corner where the cars turn around onto the exit ramp. A switch Bernini never dreamed of. In the age of the automobile, it has a kind of ludicrous logic.”

The fountain can still be seen beneath the Union Bank of California building on Broadway between Washington and Stark, with the addition of bike racks next to it.

Two years away from the implementation of the 1972 Downtown Plan, Huxtable ended her article on a note hope, however distant.

"But some day," she wrote, "some American city will discover the Malthusian truth that the greater number of automobiles, the less the city can accommodate them without destroying itself. The downtown that turns itself into a parking lot is spreading its own dissolution.  "

That city to discover the truth and chart a different future, arguably, was the one she had just visited.

 

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Take me to the river: ZGF's Sandoval & Lienhart on Zidell Yards

Zidell Yards (rendering courtesy ZGF)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last Friday in Atlantic Cities, I wrote about the Zidell Yards development and its master plan by ZGF Architects. "Despite its size, Zidell Yards seeks to be a macro development comprised of many different micro-sized parts," the story went, "an urban space of tranquil greenery, or a park disguised as a vibrant city."

As a follow-up, I'd like to share some of the interview text that didn't make it into the story, particularly from Gene Sandoval and Nolan Lienhart of ZGF Architects.

One of the first messages I heard from the duo was that Zidell Yards would be different from South Waterfront, both because of circumstances and because of intent.

"You’ll never have another time like the 90s and 2000s when, I believe, investment in single-family housing could fuel such a development with cheap loans," Sandoval explained. "This plan really accommodates development that is truly real and of the moment. It has the grit and authenticity that you might not find in a macro development where you build everything in a few years."

"The original plan here was mega blocks. We’re developing in smaller parcels now," Sandoval added. "It allows diversity in development. Bigger blocks mean taller buildings. Smaller means shorter and more affordable buildings, because you could have a different construction type, so you can invite a different type of business and use. There’s some blocks that are 200 by 70 feet. It’s very pragmatic. Given the economy, how many of the big developments can you do? It’s place making and space making, but also the practicality."

"If you do this kind of diversity in streets, in building types, you can invite a whole variety of people and businesses and demographics. If you want a successful neighborhood, you need that variety. That’s the dilemma the South Waterfront has, because of its homogeneous nature."

Ross Island Bridge, Zidell Marine Company, the tram and OHSU (photos by Brian Libby)

Sandoval also emphasized that, unlike the strong influence of Vancouver, British Columbia on the design for South Waterfront in the 2000s (lots of tall, thin buildings with wide bases extending to the sidewalk), the team would look further afield. "We’re actually global people, our team. Our precedents are beyond the United States," the architect explained. "The typology we wanted to use was not Vancouver. We used Rome a lot. We used Copenhagen. We looked at Hong Kong, and Venice because of the waterfront. These are thousand-year-old cities. Because authenticity was very important to us. Florence is very similar to Portland. It’s a city of bridges with a great public realm. Venice, not only is it a waterfront city, but it was an artisan city: a city about making. This place is really about making. The Zidell family wanted it to be rooted in their core business of making things. They want to continue that. With this authenticity comes several different traits they want to bring: materiality, making, real, steward, grit, thinking, grounded, craft, creating."

Of course it's easy to be optimistic with master planning: it's an opportunity to create best-case scenarios, free from the inevitable difficulties of real-world building. Some of the first buildings being discussed for the Zidell Yards are class-A office buildings. Is that really so gritty and crafty, having an insurance company or a financial management firm set up shop in a glass tower? The renderings produced so far also don't wow me aesthetically. But renderings, or at least the individual non buildings in them, are a nonfactor at this point: it's still all about the planning.

The Zidell Yards plan seems to be rooted in sound yet tangible ideas: the idea of embracing the Willamette River like few Portland neighborhoods have done before, truly getting the chance to touch the water. The continuing presence of the Zidell barge-building facility at the edge of the property beside the tram will also give the neighborhood some diversity and keep the otherwise all new collection of 21st century medical and condo buildings there feel a bit from feeling too sterile. And the street plan diverts from a traditional checkerboard street grid of 200 by 200-foot blocks in an interesting way. There's the chance for a little more sense of surprise  and discovery as one rounds a corner. The property, as it touches the new light rail/pedestrian/bike bridge and the Collaborative Life Sciences building to its northern edge, also undergoes a fairly significant topography change from south to north.

"You really are creating three neighborhoods in a small development," Sandoval said. "There’s the flats to the south, the village underneath the bridge, and the hill, which will be about two stories. We think it’s going to be healthy."

The plan was based on a few key principles, he explained: "One was there’s no substitute for a place where people want to gather. We want to accommodate many different…in demographics, in construction, in height, in everything else. It’s very antithetical to the South Waterfront project.  We thought by connecting all the dots we connect with the river and tell the story of what the river means for Portland. It’s one of the pearls we can string together."

"There’s been a lot of curiosity about the river. We’ve made such an investment in cleaning it up that maybe it’s a good time to have a conversation about what it means. Fundamental to this is the notion of how you foster environmental stewardship. Their site’s been through huge environmental mitigation. How can we have the site help this place? We thought maybe in the water. So we have a network of north south streets that connect to downtown and to the south, but also streets that connect you to the river. But there is a potential where this greenway path, rather than just running through the site, can start weaving into the urban site, so they great stitch together hand in hand. We think you can have a really incredible public realm with them coming together."

Ross Island Bridge and Zidell Yards (rendering courtesy ZGF)

ZGF has also experimented with making streets facing the Ross Island Bridge (where there will be a park underneath) into universal streets shared by pedestrians and slow-moving cars. "We’re anticipating making it more like a plaza and less like a street," Nolan Lienhart explained. "The obvious precedent for this is Director Park. It seems like it’s working great. It’s clear it’s the domain of the pedestrian, and cars are allowed in it, not the other way around."

The park underneath the Ross Island Bridge is, as it should be, a major focal point for the buildings around it. "We said there’s a lot of merit to being well connected to the park. The building is enriching the park and vice versa," Lienhart added.

The park and the river connections can be simultaneously about providing a gathering place and acting as a treatment system for the river. Now that Portland has spent several years cleaning up the Willamette, it can be more of a place to truly interact.

"We wanted to make it a destination. We thought maybe you could put some barges on the river. It connects to the Zidells and gives people a chance to celebrate the water," Sandoval said. "We want to slope the site to the water and try to catch the water in the park and use the park as part of the overriding organizational elements. Not only is the ground plain doing that but we’re hoping that whether it’s the roofs, the courtyards and gardens, or the catch basins on the streets, the whole thing is a filtration system. The hope is to filter and make the river healthier in a very overt way rather than hiding it."

 

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Imagining a Central Eastside rail trail

Central Eastside railway (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In Tuesday's New York Times, Lisa Foderado reports on an initiative underway in the Queens borough of New York City to replicate the success of Manhattan's High Line park with one of its own.

"It has been abandoned for five decades, a railway relic that once served Queens passengers on the old Rockaway Beach branch of the Long Island Rail Road," Foderado writes. "For all those years, no one paid much notice to the ghostly tracks, long overgrown with trees and vines...That is, until the High Line expanded the possibilities of a public park. Now, the three-and-a-half-mile stretch of rusty train track in central Queens is being reconceived as the 'QueensWay,' a would-be linear park for walkers and bicyclists in an area desperate for more parkland and, with the potential for art installations, performances and adjacent restaurants, a draw for tourists interested in sampling the famously diverse borough."

The High Line in Manhattan has not only proven a successful transformation of unused former raised subway platforms, but also had a kind of miniature "Bilbao effect" for green spaces. All the people flocking to the High Line to stroll or hang out or smell the flowers have helped continue the transformation of the Meat Packing District and Chelsea and act as an economic as much as a natural or cultural resource.

The High Line also had a previous inspiration, the Promenade Plantée in Paris, which in 1993 opened as a parkway in the 12th Arrondissement created from a former rail line.

Here in the United States as well as in many other countries around the world, the consolidation of rail lines has seen numerous abandoned tracks converted into rail trails, be it the Elroy-Sparta State Trail in Wisconsin, which in 1965 became the first abandoned rail corridor in the United States converted into a recreational trail, or the more recently completed Saucon Rail Trail in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which I have walked through numerous times while visiting in-laws there.

In the Saucon Rail Trail's case, it has had a powerful effect: an area in decline for over a generation, with the abandoned Bethlehem Steel plant towering over the city, saw the trail as a symbol of the city's rebirth.

Saucon Rail Trail, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (photo by Brian Libby)

In some respects we're talking about different things here: parks made from rails in high-density urban areas and ones stretching across small towns and rural areas; ones built on elevated train tracks and those on the ground. Depending on the project, the cost range could be enormous. But they all involve converting land once used for trains into park and green space. As a result, I started thinking about one rail line in Portland that, if it could go away, would provide a compelling opportunity to re-imagine the center of the city.

Today the rail line running through the Central Eastside is one of its most emblematic presences. This industrial district was originally located along the river as ships coming down the Columbia and Willamette rivers came to port with goods and food, some of which immediately left on trains or trucks, and some of which wound up in the neighborhood's countless warehouses. Though no current plans exist to change the Central Eastside's zoning, it has already been transformed over the past decade as a generation of creative-class companies, small-scale artisans and restaurants have moved in alongside the traditional manufacturers and produce distributors.

Today they all seem to coexist well, these old and new Portland businesses. But given how centrally located the (aptly named) Central Eastside is, one can't help but imagine its untapped potential in the long as a higher-density, mixed-use neighborhood.

Usually when we imagine a game-changer for the Central Eastside, it is either a re-zoning to allow housing and mixed-use architecture or a removal of the riverfront I-5 freeway overpass. Just this year, for example, Mayor Sam Adams had the city again study the viability of burying a portion of I-5 in order to free the freeway from its stranglehold on the riverfront . But there exists a third game changer, costly as it would be: burying the railroad underground too.

Today every visit to the Central Eastside is a roll of the dice: if there's a freight train going by, which is several times a day, one is likely to be stuck in place anywhere from two to maybe 15 minutes. Waiting a few seconds at any one time is no big deal, but collectively it adds up: in lost time for hundreds or thousands of people at once, in wasted carbon monoxide from all those idling cars, and in noise pollution from train horns. If we're going to look in the future to the Central Eastside as a kind of second downtown, as it has the potential to be, burying the railroad - even as much of a multimillion dollar project as it would inevitably be - would have to be part of that discussion. What's more, burying the railroad would ultimately pay for itself in the economic activity resulting from the ensuing transformation of all those scores of real estate blocks. Overnight they would become more valuable, and subject to investment and transformation.

Although we already have the East Bank Esplanade along the Willamette just a few blocks away, a green strip along the rail tracks a few blocks to the south could act in tandem with the Esplanade to introduce more of nature to this overwhelmingly prick and concrete enclave. It reminds me of the plans across the river for the Zidell Yards, where a master plan by ZGF Architects has focused, in part, on not just having greenery along the riverbank, but bringing it blocks inward, both as a beautifier of urban space and as a practical means of filtering stormwater.

"There is a potential where this greenway path...can start weaving into the urban realm, so they stitch together hand in hand," ZGF's Gene Sandoval said of the Zidell Yards in a story I wrote for Atlantic Cities. "We think you can have a really incredible public realm with them coming together."

What's more, if the railroad were buried underground, there would no longer be any need for the Hawthorne and Morrison bridge overpasses, so not only would the opportunity exist on the ground, where the rail was, but also for a High Line-style park on either or both of those. Imagine if the Central Eastside were crisscrossed by three parks!

Hawthorne Bridge ramp (photo by Brian Libby)

Portland may have already committed itself to a major public works project with the Columbia Crossing bridge, and there are already MAX and streetcar lines to pay for. And it would be an extra tall order to have the double-whammy of removing the I-5 freeway overpass from the Central Eastside while burying both that and the railroad.

Yet it's worth at least dreaming about, because it's very difficult to deny how much these moves would transform the most centrally located and under-utilized parcel in the city. The Central Eastside, even if it takes another generation or two, is destined to be for Portland what the Left Bank once became for Paris, what the South Bank did for London or Brooklyn is today for New York: a splitting of the urban atom that allows the city to fulfill its potential and then some.

Portland is enjoying a kind of moment in popular culture today, prized for its quirkiness and innovation. One of our city's best qualities is that we don't just grow tall and wide for its own sake. Yet the reinvention of former industrial space, especially along riverfronts, is arguably the dominant urban phenomenon of our time.

If Portland wants to continue being progressive about how we create imagine urban space, the Central Eastside is the biggest and best canvas we have. That two major infrastructure projects (burying the freeway and the railroad) inevitably come with that is both our big challenge and our monumental opportunity.

 

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Dinner hour at the restored Ladd Carriage House

Ladd Carriage House (photo by Brian Libby)

BY FRED LEESON

One of downtown Portland’s oldest and most charming buildings enters a new era this month after a twisting saga of architectural preservation that needed California entrepreneurs to complete.

The 130-year old Ladd Carriage House, one of downtown’s few remaining wooden buildings, opens soon as the Raven & Rose restaurant and pub. If the new upscale eating and drinking establishment achieves financial stability, it will mark a glorious turnaround for the historic building once seriously threatened by plans for a high-rise condo-turned-apartment tower next door. 

Today, the asymmetrical three-story Victorian Queen Anne former horse barn sits proudly on the same site as it did in 1883, notwithstanding a four-block move and a 16-month sojourn in 2008-09 while five stories of underground parking were dug out below.

But even after that dramatic move - and followed almost immediately by a major economic recession - the partly restored Victorian antique sat vacant for two years while local brokers tried to find a new use and a buyer. It took a Northern California family to see the potential for the brainchild of Lisa Mygrant that soon awaits Portland diners.

“They seemed to understand the significance of the building and the opportunity it presented almost immediately,” said Paul Falsetto, a preservationist with Carleton Hart Architecture in Portland. The job of making Mygrant’s vision fit into a tightly-regulated landmark on the National Register of Historic Places fell largely on the shoulders of Falsetto and Tracey Simpson, of Innovative Designed Environment Associates.

Ladd Carriage House and Ladd Tower (photos by Brian Libby)

Falsetto’s primary challenges included restoring the exterior as near as possible to its original design, adding a veritable boatload of mechanical equipment and vents into nearly non-existent spaces and reusing as much original architectural fabric as possible.

Ironically, for as old as it is, no photographs of the building have surfaced from near the date of its erection in 1883. Door and window configurations changed a number of times between its last use as a horse barn in 1923.

One fuzzy old picture showed a long-departed cupola in the center of the roof. “We could have refabricated it,” Falsetto said, “but we would have had to support it structurally all the way to the ground.” Doing so would have wiped out much of the restaurant’s tightly-planned open kitchen.

Falsetto worked with Portland architect and historian William J. Hawkins III in analyzing the facades and trying to replicate what might have been original appearances. “It is an asymmetrical building, but if you look at it in sections, the sections have a lot of symmetry to them,” Falsetto said. “We were really trying to get into the head of Joseph Sherwin,” the English-born architect who designed the carriage house for William Sargeant Ladd, a pioneer banker, mayor and philanthropist whose fingerprints also touch Portland’s earliest schools, library and churches.

Getting enough air in and out of the building without adding rooftop vents also took detailed planning. “Commercial kitchens suck in and pump out a lot of air,” Falsetto said. Intakes and vents with vertical louvers tucked under first-floor windows on the building’s north side provided much of the solution.

Working with Simpson, the interior designer, Mygrant wanted the feel of a comfortable English-style pub without trying to replicate any specific location or to look “cute.” Simpson leaned heavily on earth-tone colors with high dark wainscot on the walls and floors of salvaged oak and slate. The main-floor restaurant features several distinct small seating areas, including a wooden counter near a wood-fired brick oven built with bricks salvaged from an unneeded chimney. The main-floor ceiling includes several strips of original beaded ceiling boards, flanked by covered channels that hide densely-packed mechanical systems. The designers specifically eschewed open ductwork that festoons the ceilings of many old buildings.

Ladd Carriage House from SW Broadway (photo by Brian Libby)

The main bar is located on the second floor, accessible by elevator (“We did our best to make it disappear,” Falsetto said) or an L-shaped stairway. One’s eyes are attracted immediately to the scissor-style wooden braces that make the space unlike virtually any other in town. Careful eyes will note a few places where new, smoother boards were added for structural reasons to the original rough-cut timbers.

Research indicated that the eastern third of the building was used to house groomsmen for the horses and domestic help who worked in the Ladd mansion on the block now occupied by the Oregonian building. The restored building subtly retains the same proportion by putting offices, staff rooms and some baking facilities on the second floor and a mezzanine overlooking the second-floor bar.

Part of the formula that allowed for construction of the Ladd Tower and preservation of the carriage house included demolition of the charming Rosefriend Apartments on the same block. 

Demolition of the Rosefriend Apartments (video by Brian Libby)

Preservationists rued the loss of the Rosefriend at the same time they celebrated preservation of the carriage house.

“There never really was any choice,” Falsetto said. “The Rosefriend had no formal landmark status,” making it much easier to demolish than the carriage house, which was n the National Register. “That’s one of the reasons why the city (government) really needs to update its historic resources inventory,” Falsetto added.

Fred Leeson is a Portland journalist and board president of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation/Architectural Heritage Center.

 

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