Portland Architecture

Discussing Lever Architecture's Fivesquare house

Fivesquare residence (photo by Jeremy Bitterman)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Recently in The New York Times, I had the opportunity to write about a unique approach to expanding an old house.

David and Sarah Altman almost did what many other new homeowners in Portland have done: tear down an old house on a large lot in order to build something new and modern. They even hired one of Portland's best firms, Lever Architecture, to come up with a design. But budget concerns got in the way, and so they instead bought a classic early 20th Century house, an American foursquare, dating to 1910. The intent was to do a "light remodel," as they put it, and sell at a profit in order to build the new house; they'd even kept the other lot and small house, renting it out.

But as the couple explored with Lever how best to expand the foursquare (as they sought a family room-like space), the firm offered a bold kind of addition that would blend their desire for modern architecture and their burgeoning love of this old house: a modern cube that would be built in the old attic space and essentially become a new third floor. Instead of trying to blend in with the existing early 20th Century style of the foursquare, the new addition would be juxtaposed against it.

“When we came up with this idea in the studio, everyone liked it,” Lever's Thomas Robinson told me. “I was thinking, ‘Their neighbors are going to hate them — and the historic people are going to think we’ve desecrated this little iconic house.’ But it was intriguing.”

The house will be part of this Saturday's 2015 Homes Tour, put on by the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

As is often the case, in writing a relatively short feature (about 650 words) one accrues lots of interview text that can't be used in the story. So I thought I would pass on the comments of Thomas Robinson and the Altmans here.

When we began the interview, I asked Robinson about the challenge of doing a single-family house. After all, Lever is best known for a series of mixed-use and commercial spaces at larger scales, such as the ArtHouse residence hall for the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Union Way shopping complex in recent years, as well as upcoming office buildings in the Zidell Yards and the Pearl District.

Fivesquare residence from the backyard (photo by Jeremy Bitterman)

But Robinson said that as he began his career, houses were what he was most interested in. "I’d done a lot of work on houses for Joseph Esherick when I worked in the Bay Area," he recalled. "Actually when I was there, I started on big aquariums, and I worked my way down because I really wanted to work with Joe Esherick. All he did at that time—he was in his 80s— was houses." And since founding Lever a few years ago, Robinson added talent with the form, including Scott Miller, who came from Allied Works and had worked on a lot of Brad Cloepfil's acclaimed residential designs.

Although the cube makes a bold and unexpected addition to the Altman residence, Lever's intent was to honor the integrity of the original foursquare: not to gut the interior into wide-open great rooms but to retain its sense of partition.

"I think the foursquare, it’s a really iconic building type within Portland," Robinson said. "If you say, ‘I live in a foursquare,’ in Portland everyone knows exactly what you live in, and they have, I think, an image of what it is. It’s probably Portland’s most prevalent single-family housing type, within the city proper. The thing that’s not so great about them is they just divide the space in a way where there’s no hierarchy and there’s no sense of generosity in any of the rooms on any of the floors. There are a lot of examples where people have taken a traditional house like a foursquare and then they’ve added so much onto the back of it or altered it in such a way where you lose what it is." Even so, he added, "You can’t just fight that. Because otherwise you just have to rip down the whole house and rebuild it. How do you leverage the fact that that’s what it is and try to open it up? We actually thickened the division but then punched holes through it."

Standing in the combined kitchen and dining area, for example, they were still separated by a wall, but the doorway had been expanded so widely that the division almost disappeared. Yet inside these room divisions, Lever thickened the partitions to allow added storage.

Third-floor cube (top) & first-floor kitchen (photos courtesy Lever Architecture)

Approaching the question of the upstairs expansion, David Altman explained: "We started talking about the attic space. It was just a normal foursquare attic. It wasn’t really used. And we said, ‘Well, we should really try to use the attic space,’ both from a program basis and from a value basis to add some square footage. We could just throw a dormer out the back." And indeed, Lever produced several design options including just expanding out the back. But the clients were curious about what else Lever could do there. "We came in one day and said, ‘Well, you know how much we’d obviously love for you guys to do modern stuff. Come up with something cool,’" Altman recalled. "And that’s how we got to here."

"We said, ‘Let’s put this studio, glass box that really just sits on the top,’ because it has great views of the neighborhood," Robinson said. "We were playing around with it, guys in my office, and we said, ‘Okay, what if we just moved it in a way just to play with the idea of this other box or this other square coming out of the foursquare. And when we came up with this idea we all liked it, but internally I’m thinking, ‘Oh my god.'" He worried about the response. "I remember coming in and saying, ‘Here’s the two options.’ And they said, ‘We really like that one.’ And I said, ‘Are you sure? Because we like it too. But you’ve really got to own this one. Because you’re going to get some blow-back.’ And they were like, ‘Okay, we’re going to go for it.’ And that was the thing."

"And then I remember playing with the design a little bit," Robinson added. "We were looking at where to put the stair and trying to figure that out. What I realized we could actually do was by actually twisting the box it allowed us to transform the experience of the upstairs of the foursquare, in a way that this wall and this punch transforms the downstairs. What I think is most interesting about what it does is it actually opens up the second floor in a way that you will never experience in any other foursquare. And by putting the stair where we put it, we actually could create just a very unique spatial experience, which I think for us is probably the most important thing, and then bring daylight into a part of a foursquare that never gets daylight, and then also tuck that into where the closet is. It made sense from a design point of view on the second floor."

Stairway to the 3rd-floor cube (photo courtesy Lever Architecture)

"We changed our priority when we saw what this really could be," David Altman said. "We kind of were like, ‘This could be our house. We don’t need to do anything else if we don’t want.’ This was going to be our dream house."

"I was probably more worried than you guys were," Robinson said to the Altmans during our interview. "I said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I was really pushing back, because I was really worried about it. And now I’m not worried about it at all. Because I see really crappy speculative modern houses selling for a million that are not near as nice as this."

Though the third-floor cube certainly stands out, especially in back, it's also nestled into the roofline of the foursquare in an interesting way. That's especially noticeable standing inside the cube, where its tall windows are shaped almost like a mountain range on the bottom, because they are "completely defined by the existing geometry of the roof," Robinson explained.

"The stairway to the box is like a sculpture," Sarah Altman added. "We walk up there and it’s just jaw-dropping. You walk up the stairs and you don’t expect it, and in fact it’s right in the place where an old unused second chimney was. So talk about closed-off, dark space. No light got into that realm, and now it’s this beautiful sculpture with this unusual glass and this curvy stairway. So I think our first impression was like, ‘Wow, that’s cool.’ We love modern architecture and we love these guys, so why wouldn’t we be a little creative with a space that we absolutely love that adds something to it?’

Robinson also talked about how his experience living and working in Europe in past years, for the internationally renowned firm Herzog & DeMeuron, shaped his thinking. "I think having a romantic vision of these beautiful old European houses and great design when I was there, but then also having the experience of having these Swiss architects come with me to LA, for a project, and driving down this strip-mall street with all these palm trees and hearing them go, ‘Wow, this is so cool!’ It was refreshing to see them excited about all this ticky-tacky architecture. Coming back to the US it gives you a new appreciation for the kind of plain, simple fabric of a city like Portland. You could actually take that and leverage that and make it interesting and take care of it but also play against it. I think we’re always interested in that interplay of old and new, and not saying, ‘It’s all old here, and it’s all new here.’ You don’t have to compartmentalize. You can mix it up a little bit. But it is actually a lot harder to do that, to be honest with you, and have it feel okay, than actually just going all new. You’re a little bit in the gray zone. You could ask, ‘What windows in here are old and which are new?’ You’re playing a little bit of a game. You’re saying, 'That’s part of the old even though we’re moving it. And this is the new even though the old is inside of it.' But I think the driving thing for us is what is the overall experience and feel of each space, and then the details and decisions come out of that decision."

Fivesquare's cube visible from an angle but not in front (photos by Lever Architecture)

The Altmans have received mostly positive responses from the neighbors. "People thought we were building a real third story that was going to tower over everything," David Altman said. "There were questions, and people had their own opinions. Some are going to like it and some aren’t. But it’s so well done, and it’s pretty subtle from the street." It's a reminder that architecture is about scale as much as it's about style. Regardless of the question of modern and traditional and how they interact, the cube is simply smaller than a regular third-floor addition, and it makes the Fivesquare house, as it's called, still more slender than some of the completely new but faux-historic styled builder homes that are going up all over town.

"It feels like one house," David Altman added. "You’re walking through it and it feels like one house. There’s juxtaposition, obviously, but it doesn’t feel different. It feels like one really beautiful house."

"I think about all the teardowns happening the city, and it’s this black or white issue: you either tear it down, or you don’t," Sarah Altman said. "And I don’t think that’s the question. I’m not for tearing everything down, but some could be better or more creative. It’s too bad there’s such a dichotomy: tear down and build something icky, or don’t. But we have all sorts of choices to add more creativity in the world."

 

 

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The Architect's Questionnaire: Bill Tripp

Bill Tripp (image courtesy of the architect)

BY LUKE AREHART

Although not a household name, Portland architect Bill Tripp easily ranks among the city's most talented and thoughtful practitioners. Whether it's a house like the Packer residence (featured in the documentary "Coast Modern"), his competition entries or his theater sets, Tripp is both an architect's architect as well as one willing to explore design in ways beyond architecture.

Portland Architecture: When did you first become interested in architecture as a possible career?

 Tripp: I’ve wanted to be an architect for as long as I can remember; it was never a conscious decision. I’ve never imagined doing anything else. The earliest moment that I thought about having a job or career, I knew I was going to be an architect. It’s interesting though, that over the last several years I’ve been doing more drawing and painting and theater set design, so maybe I’m branching out finally!

Where did you study architecture and how would you rate the experience?

I started at the University of Oregon in 1972.  I took a year off, and graduated in 1978. It was a great time to be at U of O.  All of the Louis Kahn people were there and the Pattern Language was going on as well. It was a really fertile time. There were a lot of exceptional teachers like Philip Dole, Earl Moursund, Thom Hacker, Richard Garfield, Gary Moye, Bill Kleinsasser and on and on. It was a time when the program was teaching design as the core to everything.  Also at that time John Reynolds was teaching and Ed Mazria was writing The Passive Solar Energy Book.  It was the early days of what’s now called sustainable architecture.

Then I did some graduate work at Princeton back when Michael Graves was there, when he was working on the Portland Building, which was really interesting. I decided to go to Princeton because I didn’t feel like I studied enough history and theory at Oregon. The design teaching wasn’t as strong at Princeton as it was at the U of O, but there were still some great teachers there such as David Coffin, Tony Vidler, and Alan Colquhoun. It was really rich. And Don Genasci was there at that time.

So I think I was very fortunate to be at both of these very different and very good schools at just the right time.

Packer residence (photos by Stephen Miller)

What is your favorite building project that you’ve worked on?

The Packer House is one of my favorites for sure. In the great room there is a tall wall of glass that looks out over the Tualatin River Valley. We came up with an idea of how to make that wall in a way that was inspired by, and relates to, the experience of the distant landscape. The inspiration came from being in a Douglas fir forest and moving toward a clearing. As you emerge from the forest there is a certain spacing of the trees that happens and that was the idea. It wasn’t a conscious or deliberate thing at the time, but I realized later that’s where it came from. The spacing of the 4x6 mullions is somewhat random but also a syncopated rhythm that goes from very narrow openings to much wider ones. I didn’t want a grid, because grids are arbitrary: there’s no room for poetry or mystery. I also didn’t want to try and do something without mullions because I wanted to acknowledge that the glass needs support. It was thrilling to come up with that idea and it’s one of the things about that house that I really love.

The other project that I enjoyed working on was the renovation and remodel of Central Lutheran Church in Northeast Portland, originally designed by Pietro Belluschi. It was a chance to get inside Belluschi’s head, so to speak, to learn his language and how he used various elements to order the building and to communicate that order. After you work on a project like this you realize ‘Oh, this is how he did what he did.’  We were then able to use his language in a new way with slightly different construction methods and requirements, and that was really great. 

Central Lutheran Church (photo by Stephen Miller) and Guggenheim Helsinki entry

The most recent project of ours that I like is the Guggenheim Helsinki competition, which was great fun to work on. We came up with some interesting ideas of how to view art in a room that has a kind of internal emphasis, while at the same time is also related to the City of Helsinki beyond.

Who has been an important mentor among your colleagues?

Amongst my teachers, Gary Moye has been an important influence and we remain good friends.  Gary knows more about design than anybody I know. As a critic, he can analyze a design and bring multiple layers of consideration to bear at the same time. He has such a thorough, such an integrated understanding of architecture.

More personally, Norm Zimmer was very important to me. When Norm retired from ZGF, he and I and Alex Zimmer and Jim Van Duyn formed Pacific Studios. We worked together for a few years before Norm passed away. It was one of the most enjoyable parts of my career. Norm taught me a lot about the broader artistic and cultural context of architecture. And he had such great stories to tell about the early days. The practice of architecture has changed so much. I think retiring from ZGF really lifted a big weight off Norm’s shoulders. We had a lot of fun at Pacific Studios.

What part of the job do you like best, and as an architect what do you think you most excel at?

Well obviously I love to draw and design. And from my education, my research, and my own teaching I have developed an interest in design analysis and ways to communicate design theory to students and the general public.

I am interested in the search for meaning in human experience, and its manifestation and expression in architecture. Meaning in architecture is experienced with all the senses, and it’s experienced over time and involves memory and imagination.

So this experiential meaning in architecture is not about form or shape or any kind of an image of architecture, but how you fully live in it and especially how you live in it over time. It’s about understanding the kinds of significant human experience that architecture can give you.

Currently much of my work is focused on what I call “threads of continuity,” and I’m especially interested in ritual space. The most meaningful projects I’ve been working on lately are memorial designs, especially the WWII Memorial competition and a private memorial we are doing in Massachusetts. And we just entered the WWI Memorial design competition (we collaborated with Place Studio on this). In these projects we design not only the ritual space, but also the rituals themselves. The connection, the integration, of meaningful, deep experience with space, form, material and light: that’s what it’s all about.

WWII competition entry (renderings by Stephen Miller)

One of the real problems today is the commoditization of architecture. This is combined with the reduction of architecture to the purely visual: images that we carry around on our iPhones. We are all doing realistic renderings at the very beginning of schematic design, which is ridiculous. Trying to make a photo-realistic image of a building that hasn’t been fully designed is ludicrous, but you pretty much have to do it. Clients and competition juries demand it. But it diminishes architecture.

This is related to the decline in architectural literacy amongst architects and students. Ideally when a student gets out of school, you can give them two buildings to critique and they should be able to do a comprehensive analysis, critique these two buildings, compare and contrast, pros and cons, and maybe explain why one is better than the other. Fewer and fewer students can do this. Again, this aligns with architecture being reduced to image. Most of the significant and important aspects of architecture can’t be communicated by rendered images; they have to be experienced. Without the full content of architecture a critique is reduced to little more than a statement of preference.  And there is no appreciation of the mystery, the poetry, and the power of architectural experience.

Clients and the public see this proliferation of images, especially on the Internet, and think that they understand architecture. So we now have to educate clients that there are aspects of the building that they are not going to understand until they are living there. And it’s the good stuff that you won’t understand until you are there and living with it for a good long while. We are asking our clients for an enormous amount of trust, but that’s how you get the good stuff.

What are some Portland buildings (either new or historic) that you most admire?

There are a lot of great buildings here in Portland and it’s hard to single out one in particular, but certainly all of the Belluschi churches and John Yeon houses. I don’t think that there are any one or two or three specific projects, but these categories encompass extraordinary buildings. There have been a lot of good residential architects in Portland over the years. And Portland has many great churches.

What is your favorite building outside of Portland and besides any you’ve worked on?

I lived in Finland for six months and I am very fond of the work of Alvar Aalto, Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz. I’ve also been to some Kahn buildings that are fabulous:  Exeter Library and the Salk Institute, for example. I was at Oregon when there were a lot of Kahn’s guys there. I love Kahn’s work. And not too long ago I visited a couple of Fay Jones’s chapels, which are amazing and stunningly beautiful. One of the things that I am interested in is what makes their work, which is so different from one another, equally compelling? I’m very interested in that idea.

Aalto's Mt. Angel Abbey Library (photo by Brian Libby)

One of the things that I discovered is that really good architecture is an accumulation of layers of meaning. Each layer might be really simple: the circulation, for example, the spatial hierarchy, the proportion of the façade, elements of the program positioned within the building and in relation to external conditions and so on. And these layers are connected, integrated, and this connection is what gives a building its meaning. The thing about Aalto’s work and Kahn’s work is that there are thousands of these layers of meaning. Kahn organizes them concentrically and Aalto organizes them in a more free-form way, with a more painterly approach. But the common thing is that there exists many layers of meaning and they have been studied and studied and studied. Both architects never let up, are never satisfied, and are always working and re-working to get even more layers in there. Contrast that with somebody like Frank Gehry where there are very few layers of meaning. There is the sculptural layer of meaning, which is very beautiful and very compelling, but it’s not very deep because it’s not integrated with other layers of meaning, like structure for example, or light, or the relationship of interior to exterior.  In my view his work falls dramatically short of someone like Aalto or Kahn. Any architect that is doing really great work, you find the same thing: many, many layers of meaning threaded together into a beautiful whole, a kind of tapestry of architectural experience and meaning.

Is there a local architect or firm you think is unheralded or deserves more credit?

Well I think over the course of this interview series most of the contemporary unheralded architects have already been named, but there is a wonderful, under-appreciated architect from years past, Richard Sundeleaf. He did a range of work from historically inspired houses to wonderful commercial buildings. My landlord’s building across the way, for example, the Bearing Service Co, is a fabulous building. It’s so subtle, very sophisticated, good proportions and it has some whimsy in it. I would love to see somebody do a study of Sundeleaf’s commercial buildings; he did a ton of work and it’s easy to spot them. You’ll be driving around town and pass a small commercial building from the 40’s or 50’s and notice that there is something unique about it. This is cool because you can see the attention to detail and the careful proportions, and these were simple and inexpensive buildings when they were constructed.

Sundeleaf's Bearing Service Co. building (photo by Brian Libby)

What would you like to see change about Portland’s built environment in the long term?

I’ve been involved in urban design studies and zoning projects in Portland for several years. The current zoning code is designed to regulate development of private parcels of land by individual property owners. A few months back the Bureau of Planning [and Sustainability] was giving an update on the comprehensive plan to the Urban Design Advisory Panel and I asked, “Why aren’t schools and libraries shown on the Comp Plan Map? They are significant public institutions that help define community.” Nobody had an answer for it.

Toni Lettiere and I are doing a study of ritual space in Portland. What I would like to see, what I think we desperately need, is what you might characterize as the next Park Blocks. That is, significant urban public spaces, especially on the east side, which are unrelated to development of commercial property or housing but instead related to community and cultural centers. This means parks and schools, churches and other places that give meaning to people’s lives and their community. Rick Potestio has been talking about taking schools and parks and making them focal points for development. We’ve had long conversations on this topic because I grew up in New England and we have a town common in my hometown, around which are all the public and religious buildings, and it’s a place for the whole community to gather. How do you create public outdoor rooms like this in Portland: spaces that are related to the non-commercial aspects of community life: churches, schools, libraries, meeting halls, community centers, and soccer fields, for example? I think we need to look at these kinds of places as the organizing principles of urban design instead of transit routes and clusters of commercial development.

I worked on the Mixed-use Zones Study and we were out in the community doing these walk-abouts and people were saying, “When you have a public space, like on Division there’s a small plaza where Nature’s used to be, we need more of that.” It’s not just the street and the sidewalk; it’s an actual place, an outdoor room. I think there is a lot of hunger for more places like that. It’s great developing commercial spaces and having the grocery stores and Starbucks nearby as well as places to eat, but I think people want more than that; they want to feel some sense of the heart of their community; they want to know where their neighborhood center is: the place where they can gather as a community. I think Rick Potestio is on to something here by suggesting that we start looking at the schools and parks as neighborhood community focal points.

How would you rate the performance of local government like the Portland Development Commission, or the development and planning bureaus?

Generally they are all really good people doing a difficult job. It relates to the topic we just talked about on how to not just regulate private development but to do more significant urban design. That’s probably not going to come out of the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability because there is a lot of risk involved in making strong design proposals for major urban public space. It’s going to have to be a design competition or something similar. Even Rick’s ideas about increasing development around schools, I don’t see this coming from the existing bureaucracies in Portland. This is an idea that is going to take a long time to grow, to be developed, by designers who are free from political pressure.

I think the other thing that’s happening is that in our culture there is a kind of “bean-counting” mentality that is taking over. We run up against this all the time; the bureaucratic barriers for getting things done are getting more and more difficult to overcome. The process takes a long time and it’s very expensive.   This is a real problem. Twenty years ago all of the plans examiners and building inspectors were builders and architects. They were people who came from the building industry and chose to go to work for the city. Now, a lot of folks go to plans-examiner school, or building inspector school, and they study the building or zoning code. That’s an order of magnitude removed from what you are actually doing, which is making communities and making buildings. It’s like studying recipes to learn how to cook, without actually cooking. Or like writing restaurant reviews based upon reading the recipes rather than actually tasting the food. This is a significant problem in our culture in general: focusing upon the letter of the law, the minutia of the regulations, without actually taking a step back and looking at the problem and applying common sense. Portland has been a really great city to work in because the city staff are smart, well-meaning people. My critique is not laid at their doorstep per se, but the system is in fact broken and we need to fix it.

Who is a famous architect you’d like to see design a building in Portland?

Forgive me but I think it’s the wrong question. The question isn’t who is going to design the building, but what kind of building are we going to design, and how well is it designed. What we need to do is work on designing the next layer of significant public space in the city. Much contemporary architecture is trying too hard and over-emphasizing the purely visual. There is too much emphasis on buildings that stand out when there are a lot of buildings that shouldn’t stand out and should be made as part of an urban fabric.

The best architecture grows out of a very thorough and careful consideration of a problem. There are local architects that do this just as well as famous architects. There are famous architects that can’t design their way out of a paper bag. I think we should focus on the work itself regardless of who does it.

Name something besides architecture (sneakers, furniture, umbrellas) you love the design of.

In my practice I do urban design, architecture, theater set design, and I draw and paint and make sculpture. I’ve also had the opportunity to design door hardware and furniture. I love it all. A few years ago we designed the art display panels for Aalto’s Mount Angel Abbey Library, which involved designing the mounting hardware. To make it all work we invented a foot-operated wrench to keep your hands free during installation. That was a lot of fun.

What are three of your all-time favorite movies?

I don’t really have favorite movies per se, but there are a couple of films that have extraordinary cinematography, that have a very powerful sense of space and light and landscape: “The Spirit of the Beehive” by Victor Erice and “Gerry” by Gus Van Sant.  There’s this wonderful sense of time, of slowness really, in these films.

 

 

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Skylab's Jeff Kovel discusses the new Yard tower

Yard from NE Couch Street & MLK Boulevard (rendering courtesy Skylab Architecture)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Since its founding in 1999, Skylab Architecture has produced a host of memorable designs both in Portland and beyond, be it restaurants and watering holes like Portland's Doug Fir or Departure Lounge, houses like the local Hoke Residence (made popular by its appearance in one of the Twilight movies), company headquarters like Brooklyn's Flavor Paper, and public buildings like the Columbia Wastewater Treatment Plant in Portland.

But until recently, the firm had never seen completed a major tower that could be seen from afar as part of the city's skyline. (Its signature Weave Building in downtown went unbuilt thanks to the recession.) That will change with Yard, the 21-story mixed-use residential and commercial building under construction at the east end of the Burnside Bridge and due to open next year. Although not downtown, upon completion it will occupy a prominent position on the skyline, helping to extend the downtown core across the river. And like all of Skylab's work, Yard has a blend of clean-lined design, space-age cool, and a sense of kinetic energy. The building has an angular, almost origami-like triangular geometry, particularly at its base. 

Recently I talked with Skylab Architecture founder Jeff Kovel about the project: how it was conceived, how it will transform its immediate area, and what it means to the firm. Kovel will also be part of a public talk with Randy Gragg and the leaders of Works Partnership Architecture about the Burnside Bridgehead on October 12.

Portland Architecture: How does it feel to have a building that, while not downtown, will really be part of Portland’s skyline?

Jeff Kovel: The bridgehead transplants the scale of downtown across the river. It wouldn’t be a notably tall building downtown but it will be on the east side. It’s one of the first buildings you see when you come down I-5 from the north, and when you come around the bend on I-84. There’s something fascinating about contributing to the visual fabric of the city in this way…. being able to see the project interact with the city from so many vantage points. Architecture and design for me is about contributing in a meaningful way to the discussion and to our built environment. There isn’t a more lasting way to do that then with a building with such presence, permanence, and scale.

And Burnside itself is a gateway too. It’s the only street that touches Southwest, Northwest, Southeast and Northeast.

The gateway aspect of this project was cemented in place by the verticality of the building at 21 stories and the adjacency to the bridge. We studied the form from both directions of the Burnside/Couch couplet and sought the rotated tower as it mimicked a gate valve in plan. We thought the way this softened the approach to the form heightened the gateway moment of the vertical edge. More importantly we hope this building serves to connect the east and west rather than demarking their borders.

Views of Yard's site at the Burnside Bridgehead (courtesy Skylab Architecture)

Could you talk about the challenge of working at this greater scale? Or is it really the same as doing a smaller building?

It’s been really fun… getting to play with bigger toys. This is our first building with a tower crane and concrete formwork trays. Utilizing these elements impacted the process of designing the building. We were able to switch the structural grid around and make a design that had the insight of the construction system integrated into it. This helped cross the pricing hurdle and get the project into development. On the one hand it’s nice to tackle new challenges, but to be able to transform those learnings into insights that help realize a more dramatic scheme or just realize the project at all is exciting.

How did you win the commission?

It’s been a really interesting process. We were working on a concept for the Templeton building. We had a grant from the city to look at it as a music venue. While that was in process, PDC sent out the RFP for the Burnside Bridgehead. We didn’t have enough parking for our site, so we thought we could take a swing at some of the land under the bridge. The idea was to connect the two sides under the bridge. We were fortunate PDC selected us as a participant. We had indicated interest for about 8,000-10,000 square feet of land. In the end, we were asked to look at the whole 36,000-square foot block. This was a big moment between us and Key Development. We hadn’t built anything together yet. We were getting to know each other through looking at the Templeton. We set down this path when it was the recession. It didn’t seem like a full city block project would make sense on the east side at that time. We studied half and quarter blocks. But the preferred solution emerged as a one full-block scheme. And by the time we’d come to that conclusion the market was there in a strong way. This project is a convergence of people and career paths. For Jeff and Key, it’s their first project in Portland. For Skylab, it’s our largest constructed to date. There’s a lot of passion from both sides to make it the best building we can make it.

Could you talk about curating businesses for the building the mix of skills beyond architecture that a project like this needs to be successful?

Skylab has always tried to be a little bit unconventional in terms of how we approach our projects and where the boundaries might be. We’re often ideating and expanding the program and bringing relationships to the table so it might be different than without us. That’s important here with a neighborhood of tenants. We’re designing some amenities in-house and helping create the brands. We are also involved in the tenant discussions. It’s a very collaborative process, maybe not in the typical architectural way. It’s a more holistic approach to design and development.

Night rendering of Yard from NE 2nd & Davis (courtesy Skylab Architecture)

How did the design evolve over time? And how much did your unbuilt tower downtown on Burnside, the Weave Building, influence this one?

It’s a really complex site. It’s in an industrial area, traditionally. That’s evolving now. But when we were designing it, Eastside Exchange hadn’t started. With the skate park, the site being 30 feet below the bridge, and the Pacific Coast Fruit trucks across 2nd Ave, it was a tall ask to bring people to live on this site. 

You were asking about the Weave. I think that had a very innovative rooftop garden solution. It was small but innovative in the sense that the city agreed we could use it to store, and filter the water. That led to the Columbia building, a much more deep exploration of green roofs and stormwater management. It’s a really significant building for us. Out of that, this scheme evolved. We thought what if conceptually we took the whole parking lot and made it a park? The goal was to retain as much of that greenscape as possible as the project progressed. By lifting the park up to the bridge level and tilting it, it acted as a stormwater management device. We saw it as a metaphor to the riverbank before we populated the city and turned it into industrial land: the wild bank that was there, a native vegetative restoration piece. We infilled below the sloping landscape with the parking garage and surrounded its perimeter with pedestrian commercial space, to conceal the above-ground parking. I think everybody knows the challenges with above-ground parking and how that can kill an urban corridor if not done really well. 

The main tower is placed diagonally against the street grid. What was the thinking there?

We had proposed a certain composition, almost like a donut with commercial, parking, and rooftop garden. Then we went down a long exercise of trying to place the tower. Conventional wisdom says it needs to orient orthogonally with the grid of the parking. We were having a hard time with that on this site. Because of the small units, studios and one-bedrooms and a few two-bedrooms, the floor plates aren’t very wide. Typically you’d see an L-shaped building or two bars. We didn’t find that very interesting. The bar either had north-facing units that didn’t get natural daylight or an east-west façade, which would be bad from an energy impact point of view. By going diagonally, we could make the bar longer and fit more units per floor, and allowed the north views to get morning light. They’re north and northeastern. They get morning light from the east. The west is actually facing southwest. That means all of the units face the peak of the city to the river. It’s really powerful what that does. So that was sort of the big epiphany: the diagonal move. And we lifted up the tower so the garden could flower underneath and create amenity space. That’s what we took to design review.

Residential units at Yard (renderings courtesy Skylab Architecture)

How about the challenge of creating foot traffic and energy at a spot where traditionally there hasn’t been much?

There was some interesting dialogue in Design Review, primarily around the nature of the rooftop amenity space. By putting it at level five instead of level 21 and putting it on display, would it feel right that this was a private space? We all agreed we’d like it to be a piece of the public fabric. But how do you manage that in a private dwelling? By placing businesses there, they’d be responsible for managing the clientele. It’s open to the public, but there are people actively running it. So we moved a restaurant space up there, a bar, a meeting space, and what we call the hot springs; it’s like an Oregon version of a Turkish bathhouse. That piece came out of dialog with Design Review, the idea of activating the podium roof publicly. 

The other piece of Design Review we wound up negotiating: they wanted us to address the Second Avenue corner more than we had planned at that time. So we wound up proposing a canopy and an elevated sidewalk. That’s now going to be a restaurant space.

We started thinking: This site was disconnected by the couplet. How could we connect to  it and the Burnside Bridge? We identified this sliver, Block 76 west, the portion cut off by the couplet. We started rendering a building there. The idea was the landscaped roof [of the tower podium] would touch down there. That would become the gateway to our site. We had a lot of positive feedback from the Design Review committee. Everybody got excited about the ideas. The development team negotiated an agreement to purchase that site. We went to a full city block plus an 8,000-square foot adjacent site.

Why the adjacent site too?

I think our proposal is progressive from a development point of view. We have 20,000 square feet of commercial space in an arguably disconnected spot from foot traffic. To me there’s this idea of critical mass. If you are doing that much, maybe more is the right solution, so you’re not asking these businesses to survive as islands. The building across the street is 20,000 square feet of additional commercial space, for a total of 40,000. Which has a scale that with the other buildings there, it’s a real neighborhood. Even more significant than putting something on the skyline may be putting together a new neighborhood. I think that’s very much our intention, to make this feel native to this place. And the topography of this on multiple blocks, it’s an unusual opportunity to do this, especially with a private developer. And if you go back and read the Bridgehead Framework plan, that was part of our consciousness. The Couch Street couplet evolved out of that, and that’s part of this folded landscape down to Second Avenue. But there was a lot of discussion of developing multiple levels and connecting across with skywalks and creating a progressive approach to the urban landscape. This was part of the drop to the riverbank, with these unusual vertical alignments with the bridge. I feel like a lot of that made it into this: we’ve essentially created a new landscape that’s going to be an amenity for the city. 

Didn’t the Big Pipe project also affect the building? Could you talk about the physical challenges of the site?

The design of this building is very site specific. The Big Pipe runs diagonally under this site. Ironically it ends at our Columbia project. Here it became quite challenging structurally. We had to rotate the tower pretty deep into the process once more to get the deep foundations off the pipe. Our solution, it’s extremely well aligned with the site factors, and they make for this sort of eventful architecture, that in a conventional approach would have really struggled. You couldn’t have built an L-shaped tower or an east-west bar because of that. So there was a nice alignment there. In this case the unusual aspect of the site created an interesting building. The most difficult aspect of the project we turned into its’ biggest advantage.

There’s quite a cool foundation under here where the pilings of the building are diagonally driven back, because the soils drop off into the river underground in a way that’s unsupportive. We had essentially a cantilevered foundation just for one part of the building. The foundation of this project is really an incredible feat. You have a square site that in one direction the soils are falling off and then the pipe is slicing through that diagonally. It made for an incredibly inventive solution that was necessary to solve that problem. KPFF did that. 

Will the building be welcoming when you approach it below like it is when you enter from MLK Boulevard?

The epiphany is when you come out from under the fabricated hill and emerge onto the city-facing roof deck. We’ve created this covered walkway that is focused on The US Bank Tower and the Portland Oregon sign. As you get to the western edge, we flare the building wall to the south and the cityscape emerges. It’s this incredibly powerful experience. I’m really excited for this to be available to the community, and to craft it out of thin air.

 

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Will Centennial Mills be the next historic landmark demolished?

Centennial Mills, 2013 (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

As demolition begins this month on the Portland GasCo building, earning ire from preservationists, another century-old structure along the Willamette may be facing the wrecking ball: Centennial Mills.

In the August issue of the NW Examiner, Allan Classen reported that Mayor Charlie Hales now favors demolishing the entire structure. Hales’ aide, Jillian Detweiler, delivered that message last month to the Pearl District Neighborhood Association, which has long advocated that at least some of the structures from what was initially an 11-building development be preserved. Detweiler cited a $16 million shortfall between the $20 million in River District Urban Renewal Area funds and the $36 million requested to restore the site by Harsch Investment Properties, the firm chosen by the Portland Development Commission as developer two years ago.

Past mayors, in trying to preserve Centennial Mills, had simply “kicked the can down the road” Detweiler was quoted as saying in Classen's article. By calling for demolition of these historic early 20th century industrial buildings to be leveled, she added, Hales was showing responsibility.

Demolition crews have already been busy since March tearing down much of the multi-building complex, leaving all but two of the larger structures. Since 2000, the Portland Development Commission has controlled Centennial Mills, and some have criticized how little the agency did over the past 15 years to limit deterioration. When I toured the property late last year for a CityLab article on efforts to save the major buildings there, large portions of water-damaged upstairs floors were marked with spray paint to warn of potential cave-ins. Raccoon tracks abounded, and visitors had to wear face masks.

When I interviewed Harsch's Jordan Schnitzer back then for the CityLab article, he argued that neglect in the past 14 years (since PDC's takeover) had done more damage to Centennial Mills than the previous 90 or so years had. So in a certain respect, Hales may simply be acknowledging reality there.

Recently I spoke by phone with Schnitzer, who expressed his flexibility but also took the city to task for backtracking.

"After roughly 18 months of planning, I presented the mayor seven different plans of potential redevelopment on the Centennial Mills site, ranging from doing nothing to a $200 million redevelopment," Schnitzer explained. "He asked me what I thought. I said, 'You know Mr. Mayor, growing up in Portland, there wasn’t much happening down in the Northwest waterfront area, except industry. Now there’s no shortage of apartments, office, retail. What there’s a shortage of is open space.’ I said, ‘I think we should preserve whatever buildings we can preserve, but the rest should be public space.’ At the time he said it should be a balance of private and public space. So that’s what we presented to the PDC almost a year ago in October."

Schnitzer believes part of the problem is the Portland Police Bureau's horse stables, the Mounted Patrol Unit, adjacent to the Centennial Mills complex. Since the initial agreement to develop the site, " I think the city has found itself in a quandary about the MPU," the developer and philanthropist explained. "They should have known how much it would cost to move it. But in the RFP for Centennial Mills that we responded to almost four years ago, it clearly stated it would be gone, and that we should approach it that way. We did everything PDC asked us to. Now that the city has decided the MPU may stay, it totally screws up the plans that we’ve come up with."

Centennial Mills (photo by Brian Libby)

Yet Schnitzer says he can roll with the changes. "Now the mayor is going back to what my initial recommendation was, which was maximize the open space. In terms of being supportive of this new approach, absolutely."

"The latest idea," Schnitzer added, "is to form a steering committee I’d be part of along with a distinguished broad-based group of community leaders, to determine the best use and open space. Whether any of the buildings can be preserved as time goes on that gets to be more costly and therefore less likely. Who knows what it may come up with? Maybe some buildings will still be preserved. Maybe they’ll be preserved differently. Maybe not."

"I think it’s a shame whenever historic buildings are not preserved," Schnitzer concluded, "but there’s always a balance between cost and legacy. And I’m not in a position to control all the city budgets. If I were, maybe we’d preserve a few more."

It's one thing if there is a wide gap between the $20 million the city has on offer and the $36 million Schnitzer says is necessary. But couldn't $20 million still go a long way toward preserving some or at least a building or two at Centennial Mills?

All that said, the city and Mayor Hales are facing a crisis with several historic and architecturally significant structures needing attention and funds at the same time, such as the Portland Building and Veterans Memorial Coliseum. It's true that not all old buildings can be preserved, either because of deterioration, or a lack of funds, or both. Centennial Mills, or what's left of it, is certainly in bad shape.

It's a bit surprising how willing Harsch seems to be to go along with demolishing everything, even if the company had always advocated for some open space to be included. When I interviewed Schnitzer last year for the CityLab article, he spoke ambitiously of bringing in world-class design talent like Frank Gehry and Maya Lin to contribute, and the possibility of adding new buildings or even a pedestrian bridge over Naito Parkway to connect the Mills with the Pearl District. He also seemed to indicate that if necessary, the Schnitzer family might be willing to dip into its family fortune to contribute to a good solution. All the while, there did exist this gap between what the city was offering and what Harsch said was needed. But straight from Gehry and Lin to a pile of rubble and no complaints?

Maybe something Portland Development Commission project manager Bruce Wood told me last December for the CityLab article was telling. "It's run like a family enterprise, and they have a different metric," Wood, who worked at Harsch in the early 1990s, said of the company. "It's about art and legacy. Jordan is very charismatic, and he's at his very best when he's involved in civic causes because he loves that stuff. And this project needs something like that, because if you look at the numbers … it would never happen. This project is that complicated. It needs somebody who's going to put a little more into it."

Perhaps Harsch felt like ultimately the city was trying to squeeze the company to spend a little more than was prudent or fair without remaining committed as a strong, unflinching public partner. Or maybe the circumstances simply changed, or it became apparent that even $20 million wouldn't save a single building. Perhaps this sad Centennial Mills story says something about the relative lack of private-sector wealth and philanthropy in Portland. I think in larger, more affluent cities, it's possible more would step forward to save a historic structure.

No matter who is most directly to blame for a potential Centennial Mills demolition, it's clear that to let the entire complex succumb to the wrecking ball is not just an opportunity lost or a grim but prudent acknowledgement of financial realities. It's a failure of leadership: not simply on the part of the current mayor or the public-private partnership that came about to save the Mills most recently, but the succession of people who got in the way. For the past 15 years, Centennial Mills has been city-owned and waiting to be renovated. Had we started back then, much of the architecture could have been saved, and today we would have a successful mixed-use complex that celebrated and embodied Portland's heritage. It's true that in 2008 PDC awarded a contract to California-based LAB Holding to renovate and transform Centennial Mills, and that the recession seems to have doomed that effort. But the reality is still that our own inaction and our deference to a horse paddock occupying prime riverfront land slowly destroyed the complex.

No one is yet saying that the entirety of Centennial Mills will be destroyed. Maybe this mayoral call for outright demolition is just part of an ongoing behind-the-scenes negotiation over a new public-private partnership. But at the very least, after numerous past announcements that progress was being made, Centennial Mills' future is looking bleaker than ever before. And if this grim scenario plays out, it won't be a matter of kicking the can down the road: it will be a matter of obliterating the can. And that's not a legacy anyone should want.

 

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Design calendar: September 16-30

Watzek House (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Health Product Declarations & Environmental Product Declarations
In this AIA Continuing Education event produced by the chapter's Committee on the Environment, Mike Manzi and Amy Running will provide an overview of material disclosure tools such as Health Product Declarations (HPD) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD). They will illustrate the importance for designers to understand the different types of disclosure to successfully design healthy indoor environments for clients. The session will also discuss how HPDs fit within the materials ecosystem and provide detailed content of HPDv2.0. AIA Center For Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 12PM Wednesday, September 16. $15 ($10 for AIA members).

AIA Historic Resources Committee
At this monthly gathering of the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects' Historic Resources Committee, Randy Gragg, the longtime architecture writer and critic, who also heads the University of Oregon's John Yeon Center for Architectural Studies, will discuss the center's numerous endeavors, including operation of the Yeon-designed Watzek House and The Shire. AIA Center For Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 12PM Wednesday, September 16. Free.

How To Research The History Of Your House
Ever wonder who lived in your house before you did, or what your house looked like originally? Historians Tibby O’Brien and Morgen Young will discuss how to uncover the history of your vintage house (as well as any other building). Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. 10AM Saturday, September 19. $12 ($8 for AHC members).

South Park blocks walking tour
The eleven-block downtown area comprising Portland's South Park Blocks was first platted and donated to the City in 1852, transforming a fire break parcel into the most desirable residential area of its day –complete with schools, playgrounds, stately homes and places of worship. On this Architectural Heritage Center tour take a stroll through the groves of elms as tour guides recount stories oft the area’s history and architecture. The South Park Blocks stand alone as a place of revitalization, refreshment and cultural allure. Tour meets outside the First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park Avenue. 11AM Sunday, September 20. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Milwaukie modern architecture tour
The local chapter of DoCoMoMo (Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement) will celebrate the MAX Orange Line opening with a guided walking tour of Milwaukie’s finest mid-century architecture: Milwaukie City Hall, Key Bank, Ledding Library, and St. John the Baptist Church. Tour begins in front of Milwaukie City Hall, 10722 SE Main. 1PM Sunday, September 20. $16.82 ($11.54 for DoCoMoMo members). 

Architects Without Borders: Charrette for Elman Peace & Human Rights Center
The Oregon chapter of Architects Without Borders is seeking ideas for the Elman Peace and Human Rights Center in Mogadishu, Somalia via a design charrette. The chapter will be developing a master plan and individual building designs for the center, bringing together six EPHRC programs currently dispersed throughout the city. After a project introduction the meeting will break into small groups each focusing on a specific aspect of the project: master plan, women’s shelter, children’s rehabilitation center, and vocational school. AIA Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 6PM Wednesday, September 23. Free.

Portland's Great Boom And The Shaping Of Our Historic Streetcar Neighborhoods
West coast cities boomed in the early 20th Century, propelled by soaring international trade and exploding growth of agriculture and natural resources. Portland was no exception, growing by 130 percent from 1900-1910. The rapid growth and early adoption of electric streetcar transportation led to the rise of new developments across the east side of the city. This lecture by Jim Heuer and Robert Mercer explores the confluence of architectural taste changes and urban development that resulted. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. 10AM Saturday, September 26 and 7PM Wednesday, September 30. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Reedwood Neighborhood walking tour
Located just north of the Reed College campus, Reedwood was platted as a suburban style neighborhood only 10 minutes from downtown Portland. Along the way in this Architectural Heritage Center tour attendees will see an eclectic mix of mid-century homes, including the work of architect Roscoe Hemenway. One will also learn about Way W. Lee, a long-time Reedwood resident who designed and built many of the homes in the neighborhood, and you’ll see first-hand how new development is impacting neighborhood character. Tour meets at SE 32nd Avenue and Steele Street. 11AM Sunday, September 27. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

 

 

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NW Natural beginning demolition of landmark GasCo Building

Portland GasCo building (image via An Eccentric Field Guide)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It looks as if one of Portland's most beloved old buildings has reached the end of its lifespan.

NW Natural is beginning demolition this week on the Portland GasCo (or Portland Gas and Coke) building, a circa-1913 administrative structure on its Willamette River site near Linnton and the St. Johns Bridge. According to Melissa Moore, a spokesman for the company, demolition will take six to eight weeks.

"You might recall over the past two years that we met with a very nice community group and gave them the chance to raise the money to save the building, since we couldn’t charge our ratepayers for a non-utility item like that," Moore wrote by email. "Unfortunately despite their best efforts, they could only raise $4,000. So they told us in February that they would stop the effort. There is one remaining committee member, Scott Becker, who still wants to try to save it, but we’ve let him know multiple times that we are moving forward with demolition."

Becker, by the way, has a different version of the story, acknowledging that some but not all of the Save the Portland GasCo Building members abandoned the effort, but by no means had the group or its efforts effort ended. 

Indeed, it would have been a tall order to raise in less than a year the $1.55-2.05 million that NW Natural was asking for. It's also true that the site, including the ground underneath the GasCo, was contaminated, and that NW Natural has been working for many years to clean it up. NW Natural clearly felt that it was obligated to continue with the cleanup, and that the GasCo building stood in the way.

Portland GasCo building (image via Friends of the GasCo)

Even so, the company's behavior was disappointing even if it wasn't surprising. Even if one acknowledges and accepts the logic of the company's unwillingness to charge rate-payers for GasCo preservation, and even if one gives credence to their openness in meeting with preservationists, it still seems like the company could have been more accommodating and creative about saving a building that people love, or at least preserving it as a ruin. This wasn't just an albatross for them; it was an opportunity to do something special.

I've also yet to hear NW Natural say that the land underneath the GasCo building is contaminated, and I've yet to hear that they have another building planned for the site.

And make no mistake: however long this building has sat empty, and no matter how unsuccessful a group of grassroots preservationists were in meeting the corporation's gargantuan financial demands, this is a work of architecture that has long occupied a place in the cultural imagination. It's a building that people loved, even if only from afar. When I first wrote about the GasCo building being threatened a year or so ago, for example, the post garnered the most visits in the 10-year history of the blog. The building has inspired artists like musician-author Colin Meloy, the Decembrists frontman who made it a veritable character (and cover art) in his children's book series with wife Carson Ellis, The Wildwood Chronicles. For years I've been receiving emails and questions about this building.

No one was ever asking NW Natural to renovate the building and make it habitable again. As Moore noted in her email, it had been abandoned for decades and it would have been almost impossible to get this decayed structure suitable for occupation again. Even to earthquake-protect it would be silly. But preserving the building as a ruin, as organizations like Restore Oregon called for, seemed like a plausible solution. After all, it had already been happening for decades. I'll bet NW Natural's contamination cleanup could have happened around and under the building if the company had truly been committed to the idea of preservation. After all, the company is spending all those years and all that money to clean up that land. Why not make it a park someday, with the GasCo ruins in the middle? But perhaps it's asking a corporation too much to be creative like this. I doubt many other similar companies would have behaved differently.

The GasCo building was on my mind over two weeks in August as I traveled through England. Many of the greatest and most inspiring works of architecture I saw there were ruins. On the Yorkshire coast, for example, I visited the stunning Whitby Abbey, its architecture dating to the 13th century. On a high cliff overlooking the town, it continues to inspire as it has done for centuries. Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula while living in Whitby, even used the abbey ruins as the setting for the opening of the novel as the vampire comes ashore.

Whitby Abbey (photo by Brian Libby)

In another nearby coastal town, Scarborough, I visited the ruins of Scarborough Castle, which dates to the 12th century and also sits on a high cliff overlooking the town. The settlement there even dates back to Roman times some 2,000 years ago. It is this sense of the continuity of history, as well as the compelling frozen drama of these remains, that makes them worth preserving.

The Portland GasCo building's heritage was a tiny fraction compared to those English ruins. Yet because Portland lacks that long history (at least as a white European settlement), it is all the more important that we do protect what heritage we do have. That's what the GasCo's admirers knew in their bones, and that NW Natural's leadership either didn't understand or refused to acknowledge or at least act on. They were caretakers of a part of Portland's cultural heritage, and while they offered to comply if someone else stepped up, their role could have been greater. I hope if any of their leadership reads this post, they will step away from thinking of this incident as PR damage control and start looking in the mirror, as we all should.

Scott Ray Becker, last of the GasCo preservationists (image via Becker)

By no means can we solely blame NW Natural. To save the GasCo building, we needed everyone to step up. The community could have done more to rally and raise the funds to pay the building's quasi-ransom. Organizers of the Save the GasCo group could have kept fighting instead of all but one of them giving up over six months ago. I certainly could have done more to raise awareness and take a stand. (After all, a Willamette Week headline last year asked, 'Can Brian Libby save the Gas and Coke Building?' Clearly the answer was no.) Perhaps fighting to save Memorial Coliseum for six years has humbled me, or at least taken away some of my energy for these kinds of fights. Even so, no one person can change the course of an owner determined to demolish.

Certainly NW Natural could have done more too. Even if one concedes that it was a reasonable stance not to burden rate-payers with GasCo costs, the company could have been more active in trying to be a partner in raising the money. Instead, they gave a massive figure to the preservationists and pretty much dared them to try and raise it. Now, they're free to raze the building instead - and a beloved part of Portland's history as well.

Shame on them, and shame on all of us.

 

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