Centennial Mills (photo by Brian Libby)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
Recently I wrote a CityLab article called "Can an Art Collector Save a Portland Ruin?" about the efforts of Portland developer Jordan Schnitzer and his company, Harsh, to renovate the historic but badly decayed Centennial Mills along the west edge of the Willamette River north of downtown into a vibrant mixed-use destination.
"Walking through Centennial Mills...t's easy to see both deterioration and potential," I wrote. "With a golden patina to their aged brick, these former flour and seed mills provide a striking contrast to the shiny new condo towers of the adjacent Pearl District, and their proximity to this burgeoning area could also make for an ideal riverside destination. But since operations ceased in 2000, the combined 11 buildings have decayed swiftly. On a recent visit, swaths of water-damaged upstairs floors were marked with spray paint to warn of potential cave-ins. Raccoon tracks were among the subtler examples of animal intrusion, and visitors had to wear face masks."
In researching the story, I had long conversations with Jordan Schnitzer and representatives of the Portland Development Commission, including executive director Patrick Quinton and project director Bruce Wood. But only a relatively small portion of those exchanges made it into the story. I'd like to share some of those extended conversations here.
Schnitzer, whose company manages some 130 buildings in Portland and beyond, is also one of the nation's foremost art collectors. His family is the most prominent group of philanthropists in the city. For him, tackling Centennial Mills is a community investment and a personal one.
"When I was a little boy, my father would always drive us down Yeon Avenue, because that’s where his father had a scrap yard, and my father worked as a young boy and, after World War II, as a young man," Schnitzer told me. "I guess I’m wearing my civic hat first on this. Certainly if we wanted more real estate projects there would be easier ways to do it."
When PDC first tried to jump-start Centennial Mills almost a decade ago, Schnitzer and his co-developer, the late Art DeMuro (perhaps the city's greatest developer-champion of historic preservation), sought the contract but lost out to a California developer. But the project fizzled during the Great Recession, and ultimately Harsch, after DeMuro's passing, took over on its own.
"Originally we felt we would be able to preserve a lot of the buildings," Schitzer said. "As time went on, in the second round [of proposals] about two and a half years ago, there was so much more deterioration. We tragically discovered that in hindsight the city probably should have spent some money doing some level of preservation to at least preserve the option of preserving the building. Because left to their own for 12 years now, with roofs that were left open, the deterioration was huge. Imagine for your readers if they took the roof off their house and left it for 12 years what it would be like. If they had just put up some tarps and maybe spent a few hundred thousand bucks, we’d have more to work with today."
PDC, however, cautions that the original plan created in 2000 was to level all the buildings and build a park. So preserving the Centennial Mills buildings was not seemingly necessary. Only after public outcry about demolition did an alternative preservation plan materialize.
"We had a plan that, prior to the recession, was a viable plan," PDC's Quinton said. "Once the recession hit, nothing got done during that time period. There was always the question about what made sense for us to invest in the building without a project moving forward. And the dollars it would have taken to invest in the building to maintain it would have been of a scale that it took away from our dollars to re-invest in the project."
"I think you can go to cities that have preserved mill structures like this, and there have been success stories," Quinton added. "And there are cities that have demolished mill structures and re-used the land to make a success story. I don’t think there is one formula for dealing with this. Pittsburgh basically reclaimed their entire riverfront, cleared out all these mills, and there are industrial and high-tech parks pointed to as the ground zero for the transformation of their economy. So there’s definitely successful tracts either direction you go."
Currently PDC is offering to contribute $16 million toward the project. But Schnitzer believes the subsidy should be larger given the financial circumstances. "This site would probably cost about $20 million if you level everything. Not even making it into a nice park—just leveling it," he said. "Why? Because you have such complex demolition, environmental costs. Plus you’ve got a big hole there you’ve got to fill. And then you’ve got the greenway issues. So the city’s got a real issue. To do nothing, in essence, costs you 20 million bucks." Why would the city spend more to demolish Centennial Mills than in contributions to its restoration?
Although Harsch's business activities are separate from the Schitzers' philanthropic efforts, Jordan Schnitzer also knows and seems to embrace the notion that, at times, his and his family's resources can help Portland do the right thing, as happened in the past with projects like Director Park and the restoration of the Astoria Column.
"Everyone throws the word legacy around. What’s that mean? For me what this means is just as we today in this community, just as others in other communities, get the benefit of others who proceeded us, who did things for and on behalf of the community, we have an obligation to fulfill their legacy so that others will look back and have the respect for what we’ve done, taking care of this village, this community, just as others did for us," Schnitzer said.
But he also believes it's not simply a question of money so much as intent. "So many people are just driven by squeezing every last nickel out of it, realizing that you’re impacting things aesthetically, operationally, you’re affecting people’s lives," he added. "Stand back a second and realize: good design doesn’t cost more money."
Jordan Schnitzer (image courtesy Schnitzer Family Foundation)
And while Schnitzer acknowledges that not every great old building or site can be saved, Centennial Mills has added historical significance in addition to being a beautiful series of buildings and an ideal waterfront locale. He says Centennial Mills is "one of the few sites left on the waterfront that tell and talk of a time and place in the past, that was a critical building block of this community. The milling business, just like the forest products business and so forth, those were two of the major industries that helped build this state," he added. "And yet we don’t have many examples of that left. That’s why I think there was a human cry when the city bought this site and was going to tear it all down. Citizens rose up and said, ‘Hey, let’s be more thoughtful about what we’re doing.’ You could say, ‘Who is the arbiter of good design?’ But there’s an awful lot of stuff built where if they just pushed the envelope a little bit further in terms of pushing themselves and letting their heart balance with their mind."
So what will happen there? What should? "We don’t have many great spots to hang out by the river," Quinton told me. "This holds the opportunity to be both a natural place to be along the river but also adjacent to it a kind of plaza—a Director Park on the river kind of thing. I think that makes it pretty unique. Riverplace is kind of the 30-years-ago version of that, but I think it never really achieved that kind of vision. I think this is an opportunity to do that in an updated way where you have different ways of being by the river, so it’s not simply walking along the greenway."
Continuing the comparison of Centennial Mills to Riverplace, Quinton added: "I think this location is so much closer to a high concentration of city residents that I think it has advantages over Riverplace in terms of having people access it and the obstacle of crossing Front is different from what they have to do to get to Riverplace. Riverplace you have to go seek it out unless you’re coming from Waterfront Park. This one, even without a pedestrian bridge, you’re crossing at a streetlight from another really attractive park, and then one of the densest residential communities in the city. There is a built-in population there. I’m actually less concerned about whether or not people from the adjacent neighborhood can access it and more how we can get people from Gateway. From an access standpoint, if we do it right, that’s how it will be viewed. Of course people from the Pearl will walk over. But I think we have to make it feel more accessible for a wider audience."
Quinton also believes the improving economy helps. "There’s a ton of housing being built, and we’re also beginning to see new office being built. So in some respects it gives us the luxury of not having to solve any type of need for office space and housing with this site," he added. "This is really a place-making opportunity for us. What type of mix of activity will make this a great place? As opposed to some quota for 200 housing units. We can think of different mixes and profiles that makes this a more interesting place. This project benefits from the fact that this is becoming such a dense area. This project gets to tackle this thing of how we make this a great place, a continuation of Jamison and Tanner Springs and The Fields. It’s more along that legacy."
"It was originally purchased as part of a plan to create a park. During the process of demolition, a lot of citizens said, ‘Don’t tear it down.’ I do think it says a lot about the values of Portland," PDC's Bruce Wood added. "Mayor Potter at the time heard that. They put together a large task force of citizens and said, ‘Let’s take a look at that.’ It was a huge effort. Here we are with a plan that actually addresses that framework plan set in motion in 2006."
The plan now is to save two of the largest and most iconic flour and seed mill buildings and to fill the rest with new construction, including an events center that Schnitzer says he has reached out to Frank Gehry about designing. The hope is also to create a place where citizens can get up close to the water, including a boat dock.
"I think most cities would wrestle with this project and say, ‘What’s the tradeoff?’ The other odd thing in Portland is in other cities, property values and rents are such that the private development community will naturally preserve these developments because they’re cooler, basically," Quinton said. "Here, because of the economics and the seismic issues, the public has to intervene. Otherwise they don’t happen. We have more public conversations because the market isn’t at a level to act on its own. Places like Boston and New York, they know they can fetch top dollar. I think it’s about capital and deep pockts. Harsch is one of the few entities in town that has the capital to take a big-picture view of the project. There just aren’t as many large real estate companies that are well capitalized and can hold them and be patient and curate them."
And that's where Schnitzer and Harsch come in: not simply as a developer, but not strictly as a philanthopist. "Jordan is very charismatic," said Wood, who previously worked for Harsch before coming to PDC. "He’s very passionate about the things that he loves. He’s at his very best when he’s involved in civic item because he loves that stuff, whether it’s art or the High Desert Museum or Astoria Column. I think he enjoys those things even more than running his company. He has an amazing ability to get things done in that public realm, like the Astoria Column. He raised a ton of money to get that done. Same with the High Desert Museum. I think that’s the gift that he has. He’s got a very good, strong team. In some of those areas where he’s not as technically proficient, he’s got really good people around him."
When I visited Harsch's offices, it was impossible not to notice the incredible array of contemporary art placed throughout: on cubicle walls, in the lobby, by the bathroom: everywhere. I didn't see a single photo of a Harsch project there. Wood remembers when the office was reconfigured in the 1990s, to add more art.
"The desks, the furniture and everything were placed not just for their function but because of the art placed on the walls. I always thought that was a great lesson," Wood told me. "I remember the maintenance guys having a hard time with these heavy desks as Arlene and Jordan figured out the best places to place the desks in a way that would compliment the art. But that building is like a home. It’s run like a family enterprise, and they have a different metric. It’s about art and legacy. And this project needs something like that. Because if you look at the numbers on this project, it would never happen. This project is that complicated. It needs somebody who’s going to put a little more effort into it."
Which Schnitzer seems to understand. "Being in Portland, we’re a pretty new city," he explained. "The cities on the East Coast aren’t even that old. You go to Europe and you see things a thousand, two thousand years old. So therefore I think we have an obligation here to preserve those things we have because we have so few of them. We don’t have a lot of old churches. We don’t have a lot of old stuff.’ He says, ‘That’s exactly right. Jordan, in a hundred years, it will be 175 years old. In 500 years, it will be 575 years old. So don’t start comparing this to the Sphinx. You’re doing this for the right reasons.’ And that’s why some of this should be restored. That’s the perspective that I think isn’t coming across too well to a lot of people here. Therefore it’s the job of people like me and people like you to say, ‘Hey, we’re not going crazy. We’re not trying to save everything. But we have an obligation and a responsibility to save those things that others in the future will be glad we saved. Therefore you have to put that into a different context."
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