The nine-story addition adjacent to the original Grove (Ennismore International)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
It's been quite a journey for the Grove Hotel building at NW Fourth and Burnside, or as it's now known, the Hoxton Hotel — part of a chic London-based boutique hotel chain with locations only in London, Amsterdam, Paris, Brooklyn, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Located next to the Chinatown gate, the Grove was completed in 1907 as a residence hotel, one of scores in Old Town at the time. For much of its early history, it was known as the Hotel Philip. Portland's working waterfront, like those in other West Coast cities, offered temporary employment that had workers moving from city to city and job to job as needed; in those days residence hotels weren't flophouses but more like the Residence Inns of their time. As times changed and most such hotels disappeared, the Philip/Grove mostly soldiered on, although for a time there was also a theater in the back toward Couch Street.
The three-story, stucco-clad building is far from its original condition. In 1931, five years after the Burnside Bridge was completed, an ambitious Burnside Street widening project resulted in building fronts up and down the street (from the river to the Park Blocks on the west side) being chopped off in order to add an extra automobile lane.
Before it was purchased and targeted for renovation by the city through the Portland Development Commission (now Prosper Portland) in 2007, in part because the building had become quite deteriorated as well as a place of crime, the Grove had 70 single-room-occupancy units. Initially, a development team of David Gold and John Jay had an agreement to turn the Grove into an approximately 50-room youth hostel, which in some ways might have been more invigorating for the neighborhood than a luxury hotel. (Jay, the former Wieden + Kennedy creative director and now leading the parent company of Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo, has impeccable taste and was highly involved in the hostel's design.) But the deal collapsed, apparently in part over concerns about the Right 2 Dream 2 homeless encampment across the street.
In May 2014, Prosper Portland selected a new team led by Naito Development, which brought on New York-based Eagle Point Hotel Partners and Filament Hospitality. That team proposed pairing the original building with a nine-story tower at Fourth and Couch, which is what happened: a $22 million building project designed by Surround Architecture. But on the eve of their hotel opening in November 2017, the hotel was sold to London-based Ennismore International, parent of the expanding Hoxton Hotel brand, which worked with London firm Fettle on the interiors.
Bedroom and lobby at the Hoxton (Ennismore International)
Visiting the new Hoxton Hotel a few weeks ago, I enjoyed experiencing how the combined new and old spaces fused together (particularly on the ground floor) as well as the smart, comfortable interior design style of the hotel itself, from the wood paneled ground-floor coffee bar to the comfortable, plentiful sofas in its lobby — all of which is to say nothing of the highly anticipated new food and drink establishments there from the likes of Ava Gene's and Tusk chef Joshua McFadden.
To learn more about the project, both in terms of its new-old architectural fusion and its interior design, I talked (separately) with architect Mark VanderZanden of Portland's Surround Architecture and with Chris Stringfellow, a senior designer for Ennismore. In VanderZanden's case, I expanded the conversation to include a little bit about his broader career at Surround, which since its establishment in 2000 has developed an interestingly eclectic portfolio.
Portland Architecture: Mark, could you talk about the Grove Hotel's origins and how you got involved?
Mark VanderZanden: We were hired when Naito during their feasibility study before they fully closed on the property with PDC. I had first started working for Bob Naito on a project on Hood River in about 2005 and completed a few projects together over the years. He told me he liked that I’m a nuts and bolts guy but also creative. Their proposal for the Grove was initially to take that existing building of about 50 rooms and their pro-forma was maybe $5 million at the most. I gotta tell ya: I walked in that building the first time, and I thought it was going to fall over.
Hotel Philip, 1927 (City of Portland Archives)
Is that when the tower idea came about?
Yes. I was sitting there looking at this thing with my piece of tracing paper and I did a sketch. There was a space behind it, around the corner on Fourth, that used to be a little vaudeville theater and was 50 feet wide by 100 feet deep, this little dog leg. In the Naito proposal they were going to make it back of house. We were up against the limit of occupants we could put in the old building. The thing had been so narrow because it had been chopped in half by the widening of Burnside. The limitations were so great. I did the sketch and said, ‘If you tear down the back side and build a real hotel next to it, you can probably make this work. But otherwise I think I’d punt.’
So the tower both made the original Grove price out by expanding the number of rooms, and it helped stabilize it structurally, right?
Exactly. You could actually use the new building to brace the old one. You could do all the ADA stuff in the new building. You could transfer the FAR [floor area ratio]. You had up to 66,000 square feet. I showed it to Bob and said, ‘This is what you ought to do.’ He said, ‘I don’t think we’d be able to do this,’ and started listing all the difficulties. Looking back, I think this was one of the more successful things we’ve accomplished, the way the sketch came to fruition. It’s in a historic district and the existing building contributes to that.
What about the height? Was that a tough sell?
The consultants told us, ‘You’ll never be able to go 100 feet high.’ Bob’s consultants were pessimistic and negative about it. He came to the conclusion that this was the only chance they had of it penciling out. If not, they were going to punt it back to PDC. So that was the proposal. We met with the Landmarks Commission and I said, ‘I think this is the best opportunity you’ll ever have to save this building.’ Everyone worried about the height. It came down to, ‘Show us a design that will make us feel comfortable with the size.’ So that’s what we did. It was a little bit contentious. There were a couple people on the Landmarks Commission focused on limiting height. But there was enough support that it worked out in the end.
Today (Ennismore International) and rendering of 2014 design (Surround Architecture)
Can you talk about the materials, massing and style? Maybe it’s just the fact that the tower is dark-toned gray and the Grove building is white, but the tower actually seems to be deferential to the much smaller original building. But it’s also quite retro-industrial looking to my eyes. What was your approach?
I find a lot of those industrial buildings, even when they’re brick, to be inherently modern. They’re expressive of structure. To make this blend in: that was the notion. I agree. I believe the only successful approach was to make this more or less a background building, perhaps with a little bit of personality to it. To me a lot of those industrial buildings in the Pearl or Chinatown, or the cusp between the two, are inherently modern. To me it was this interesting opportunity to create something that was vernacular, if you will—I’ll call it playful. It certainly has to work as a hotel. To me it was taking that and applying the circumstances of our program and the site, etc., and developing something that fit.
What about how the new building cantilevers slightly over the Grove building?
The windows on the south side, that big bay that projects out, everybody told us we’d never be able to get approval for cantilevering in Chinatown, which is funny because in Asia, buildings cantilever all over the place. The Landmarks Commission tried to encourage you to provide some sort of Asian themes. I’d argue the cantilever projection was inherently Asian. I don’t know if I ever got anywhere with that one, but that was always my inclination.
Doesn’t that Asian reference continue a bit with some of the ground floor screening?
Definitely. On the ground floor is this mild Asian storefront. You could call it Mondrian or Chinese screen—take your pick. To me it was this wonderful little chance to do something that was blended in yet had personality.
What about the sale to Ennismore and the transition to a Hoxton Hotel?
That was fascinating. We became sort of a critical go-between. They needed to understand what they were buying. Their goal was to re-design it, re-brand it, to the extent that somebody could come through the front door and recognize it. What they wanted to do was to redo the lobby, which at that point was yet to be built out. The ground floor restaurant space was also yet to be built out. And there was some retail space in the Grove they would probably repurpose. But ultimately that’s really all that changed. They did tweak the rooms a little bit. All that paneling and cabinetry, that was all original to the Grove design. They changed out the furniture in those rooms and the pendant light fixtures, and they changed the carpet. They didn’t really change much else. They left the roof bar and the basement bar intact. And they made some minor changes in the back of house. They brought in their interior designer from England, Fettle, and hired us to implement everything. Otherwise nothing really changed on the exterior.
They actually came to Portland the intent to purchase another building. They didn’t like it when they saw it in person. As they were immersing themselves in Portland, they wandered past the Grove and said, ‘That looks like a Hoxton.’ That’s how they explained it to me. Apparently, some people at Ennismore knew some people who were part of the Naito ownership group.
Tope and La Neta at The Hoxton (Ennismore International)
Chris, could you talk about the Hoxton design philosophy? How is Portland's similar to and different from other Hoxtons?
Stringfellow: We really get the freedom to completely change it up between locations, but you’ll always get that familiar comfortable feeling. We always have a large lobby-cum-bar-cum-restaurant on the ground floor. We collaborated with Fettle Design here in London and with our Hoxton in L.A. We always try to make them a place where locals as well as hotel guests want to hang out. Very residential. You can order drinks or breakfast anywhere. Or you can pop into the restaurant.
The bedrooms, there are of course functional requirements that vary slightly by location. But we like to try and keep a refined residential feel. There will be things like timber finishes or paneling details which we pull for that location. Brooklyn is more industrial with x-shaped concrete ceilings and rough-cut timbers on the floors. Portland, we looked at the Northwest modernism movement. You’ll see rich timber paneling, more midcentury shapes in the future: patterns synonymous to the area seen in things like rugs and kitchens. For artwork, we worked with local gallery Upfor.
I was particularly taken with the lighting: very curvy and sculptural.
Lighting is one of those very important things in projects. We’ve taken care to get the color of the light just right. I think that helps with that residential feeling.
Chandeliers inside the Hoxton lobby (Brian Libby)
Doesn't Hoxton tend to favor renovations of old buildings?
Most of our projects are renovations, but there’s almost always a new build element to each of those. The fusion of old and new can be really powerful. That works especially well in Portland, and in our Paris hotel: these original features juxtaposed against the new. In Portland, the transition between the two is lovely inside. We’ve taken the old part down to the bones. You can see stripped down columns juxtaposed against the new finishes in the new building.
Coming from London to Portland to scout the property, what were some of your initial impressions?
Portland is such a diverse city with so much going on. There are a lot of makers and amazing vintage furniture shops. What also hit us was the smell of pine in the air. We’d never experienced that. I’d probably say it does feel quite spread out. There’s a real mix between residential areas where restaurants and bars seem to be interspersed. Here in London they’re only in specific areas. It encourages you to see more of the city. And the food scene, it’s incredible.
Mark, going back to you once more: how does this project fit into the larger narrative for Surround? The firm has been around for nearly two decades, with an interesting mix of retail, residential, hospitality and more. How did that come about?
VanderZanden: I started the firm in 2000. I’d been a senior designer at Bora Architects and I got the opportunity to work on these branded environments for ESPN. Believe it or not, Bora didn’t want to do them. So I took the opportunity to start a firm.
Most of my other projects for Bora had been out of state. I was the designer for a building at the University of Washington. I worked on the Experience Music Project; Bora was a player on that project doing interior design stuff. I was the designer for the Trail Blazers’ practice facility in Tualatin. I was the lead for all the Niketown projects that Bora was the architect of record on. It was working with Nike’s incredible design staff and translating that into architectural drawings. Prior to Bora I’d spent some time at Miller Hull in Seattle, a great place to learn interesting things about craft. Their design style is very appealing to me as a Northwest guy.
Can you tell me a little more about the branded environments for ESPN? What did that entail?
The first one was one of those trailers that expands in all directions. It’s a fan-experience thing and it goes across the country. I worked with Sandstrom Design to create an architectural experience for fans that was immersing people into the ESPN brand. We also did these other ESPN fan-experience things, kiosks or whatever you want to call them, in a variety of stadiums. We actually developed an ESPN hotel room at one point for Hilton. We worked briefly with the Baltimore developer, Cordish. But ESPN was demanding so much time for their licensing at that time that it never came to be.
I was always fascinated with the idea of communication in architecture and the user experience. My training in school was 180 degrees from that. When I was in school, everybody was opposed to symbolism and narrative and communication. Even now, architecture training is not so much about that. Working with Nike and ESPN in that way was really fascinating. But it also informed how I've looked at other projects.
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