Portland Architecture

Design calendar: July 1-15

Willamette River and former West Linn Paper Company site (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

South Park Blocks Walking Tour
This eleven-block portion of the downtown area was first platted and donated to the City of Portland 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 one can take a stroll through the groves of elms and recount some of the stories they would love to tell about the area’s history and architecture. The South Park Blocks stand alone as a place of revitalization, refreshment and cultural allure. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 10AM Tuesday, July 2. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Historic Willamette Walking Tour
The historic town Willamette—now comprising a portion of West Linn—was established in 1893 upriver from Oregon City on the west side of the Willamette River. Over the next decade, Willamette became home to hundreds of power plant and mill workers and their families, as industry took over the land surrounding Willamette Falls (only now being returned to public use some 125 years later). The need for safe drinking water from the river led to annexation by West Linn in 1916. Today, as evidenced on this Positively Portland walking tour, the historic core of old Willamette is now a compact 16 block National Register residential historic district that features a vibrant concentration of shops, restaurants and other services. Tour begins at Lark Cafe, 1980 Willamette Falls Drive, West Linn. 10AM Friday, July 5. $15.

Portland Architecture on the World Stage Walking Tour
In the decades before Michael Grave’s Portland Building grabbed global headlines, local modernist pioneers John Yeon and Pietro Belluschi brought fame to the city with architectural designs of their own. They were soon followed by big name firms such as Skidmore, Owings & Merrill as well as a few “starchitects” of their time, namely Charles Luckman (whose firm designed the Wells Fargo Center) and Hugh Stubbins (designer of the PacWest Center). Added to this mix was the exceptional work of landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and a plethora of local firms including ZGF.This tour takes a look at the work of these and other architects that have left their mark on downtown over the past several decades. While gaining insight into Portland’s architectural recent past and near future, attendees on this Architectural Heritage Center tour will also learn about the impacts of urban renewal as well as concerns over pedestrian access and sustainability. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 10AM Saturday, July 6. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Foster/Holgate Neighborhood Tour — Then and Now
The intersection of Foster Road and Holgate Boulevard in Southeast Portland has a history that spans the early settlement days to the Streetcar Era and Mid-century automobile-centric period of Portland history. Today there are signs of neighborhood revitalization in the commercial and residential sectors of this neighborhood also known as Mt Scott/Arleta. Join us for a leisurely stroll and exploration of this transitional Southeast Portland neighborhood. Recently, the Portland Bureau of Transportation's Foster Transportation and Streetscape plan has become a flashpoint of controversy in the neighborhood. Tour begins at Pieper Cafe, 6504 SE Foster Road. 10AM Saturday, July 6. $15.

West End Walking Tour
In recent years, the area bounded by West Burnside Street, 10th Avenue, and I-405 has been revitalized as a popular shopping, dining, and night spot. In many ways the area once again reflects its early 20th century development with several hotels of varying sizes and a variety of commercial buildings. This Architectural Heritage Center tour examines a portion of the West End filled with buildings ranging from First Presbyterian Church to the Sentinel Hotel. Along the way, one will learn the fascinating social and architectural significance of the neighborhood, while seeing firsthand, the work of important Portland architects, including William C. Knighton, A. E. Doyle, and several others. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 10AM Tuesday, July 9. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

IIDA Oregon 2019 Annual Celebration
Join the Oregon chapter of the International Interior Design Association at its annual celebration. Titled ‘Grow,’ the evening will start with a state-of-the-chapter address, offering a review of the past year and a look ahead at forthcoming initiatives. Enjoy drinks and food from local producers, and enter collection of raffles with prizes provided by IIDA vendor partners. The Redd on Salmon, 831 SW Salmon Street. 5PM Thursday, July 11. $70 ($50 for IIDA members, $40 for non-member students, $30 for member students and board members).

Downtown Portland Moves West Tour
After repeated Willamette River flooding in the late 19th century, Portland's central business district began to move west of Second Avenue, embarking on an era of building construction that utilized popular new materials, often coupled with classical design motifs. The results included some of the city's first tall buildings and by the 1910s, Fifth and Sixth Avenues had become the heart of this new business district. This Architectural Heritage Center tour examines downtown's temples of commerce, located mostly along Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Along the way one will see banks resembling classical Greek and Roman temples and learn about the early 20th century architects who left an indelible impression on Portland — in particular A. E. Doyle, Whidden & Lewis, and Reid & Reid. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 6PM Thursday, July 11. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Walking Tour of Historic Forest Grove
Missionaries and Oregon Trail pioneers arrived on the fertile West Tualitin Plain in the 1840s. In 1849, Tualitin Academy, later to become Pacific University, was the beginning of the community that grew into Forest Grove. The arrival of the railroad in the 1870s established Forest Grove as a trade center for the surrounding agricultural community. Much of the late 19th and early 20th century architecture can still be seen at the downtown intersection of Pacific Avenue and Main Street. This Positively Portland Walking Tour will start on the west end of Pacific University in front of Marsh Hall and have a look at some of the most significant historic buildings on campus before exploring the downtown district and continue for a look at a few of the most interesting historic houses in the city. Tour begins at Diversity Cafe, 2104 Main Street, Forest Grove. 10AM Friday, July 12. $15.

Portland's Downtown Bridges Tour
One of Portland's most common nicknames (along with monikers like Rose City and Stumptown) is Bridge City. This Architectural Heritage Center tour surveys the design, construction, and history of Portland's downtown area bridges, including the Hawthorne, Morrison, Burnside, Steel, Broadway and others. Along the way, attendees will learn about the historical forces that led to bridge construction, answering not only why they were built, but why they were built where they are. You're sure to come away from this tour with a better understanding of how our bridges have shaped Portland's growth and continue to impact the urban landscape. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 10AM Saturday, July 13. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Party on Patton
As part of the Architecture Foundation of Oregon's Dine & Design fundraiser series, which opens up homes and architectural spaces of interest for small public events, savor this re-envisioned residence by Giulietti Schouten Architects on a former three-acre sheep farm. Overly large mid-century derived eaves provide year-round outdoor living and create a protected walk to the two-level guest house, converted from an old farmhouse, with views to protected wetlands above and below the main house. Hosted Giulietti/Schouten architects and Don Tankersley Construction's Mike Horton and Pam Hroza, it's a chance to sip cocktails poolside and relax to the sounds of Giulietti’s band, Bleuphonk, on the outdoor dining terrace — all as a fundraiser for the AFO's scholarships, fellowships and K-12 educational programs. Location revealed with ticket purchase. 7PM Saturday, July 13. $75.

 

 

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Auditing the Portland Building reconstruction, pre-completion

The Portland Building under construction, 6/20/19 (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In an article for CityLab published yesterday, I wrote about the latest in a long line of controversial moments for the Portland Building, that flawed landmark of Postmodernist architecture that is now in the final stages of a transformative renovation and reconstruction.

This latest round of press, not just my article but a host of different national design publications and local media, has resulted from an announcement by the City of Portland's independent auditor, Mary Hull Caballero, found a lack of transparency as the budget has grown to $214 million and equity grants not been given out. What really interested me, though was the audit's finding that from a historic preservation perspective, the project was "on track to meet the baseline renovation goals but will fall short of other aspirations.” In particular, “the exterior design chosen to address water leaks will result in the circa-1982 building’s de-listing from the National Register of Historic Places.”

I was surprised by this last part of the audit, because when I wrote about the renovation design by DLR Group in 2017 for an article in Architect magazine, I remember the city's spokesperson, Kristin Wells of the City of Portland’s Office of Management and Finance, making it clear that they were willing to lose the building's National Register listing in order to pursue an over-cladding to the original concrete facade in order to stop the leaks once and for all. "In our kickoff meeting, the first thing we said was, ‘We will absolutely solve our envelope issues—period’,” Wells explained in that article.

What I wanted to know about the audit and its criticism was whether anyone from the City of Portland, as the Portland Building's owner, had ever explicitly, in writing or verbally, identified the National Register listing itself as the measuring stick for honoring the historic integrity of the building. I posed this question to city  auditor Tenzin Gonta, who works under Caballero. She cited project records “that reference historic integrity being part of scope. Each references the listing on the National Register as background about the building but not maintenance of that status as a specific goal.” That was what the audit was criticizing the City of Portland for: not losing or potentially losing the National Register listing, but rather in not coming out and explicitly saying it was worth paying that price.

"It’s not the auditor’s job to say, ‘This is or isn’t historic preservation.’ But if you go back, the team [of client and architect] really presented it as a historic preservation project," said Kate Kearney, president of Docomomo Oregon, in a portion of my interview for CityLab that didn't make it into the article. "They made a case for it. But in reality, they never came out and acknowledged that it could be de-listed."

It's not that the aluminum over-cladding is the only big change being made to the building, nor is it the only one that will substantially change its aesthetics. Simply switching the dark glass for clear glass gives the exterior a different composition. But nobody seems to argue much with that decision because it is so transformative for the interior. As DLR Group's Erica Ceder explained in the CityLab article, “The old glass that we pulled out of the building had a visible light transmittance value of 7 percent,” Ceder said. “The replacement glass is 77 percent.” That and trading drop ceilings for higher exposed concrete structural ceilings (painted white) has made the interior transformation absolutely incredible, as I saw on a recent construction tour.

Rather, it's the over-cladding that seems to be the rub for some preservationists, and understandably so. Other landmark 20th century buildings have had their facades replaced, like the UN Secretariat building by Oscar Niemeyer and Lever House by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, both masterworks. But those were essentially in-kind material replacements, whereas the Portland Building is putting metal over the painted-concrete facade.

"If you cover the character-defining features, how is that historic preservation?”  Kate Kearney, president of the Oregon chapter of Docomomo, argued in the CityLab article. “Personally, I don’t think that holds up."

 

Rendering of the Portland Building renovation (DLR Group)

 

Could they have patched the leaks without the over-cladding? Absolutely. “What the city said was, ‘We want you to give us a warranty for 10 years,’" architect and historic preservation expert Peter Meijer, who wrote the Portland Building's National Register listing in 2011, told me in the 2017 Architect story. "A repair of the existing façade will get you a warranty for three to five years, depending on the sealant, but not a 10-year warranty. The city raised the bar on their expectations to the point where there is only one solution: to completely cover it up with a brand-new skin. But metal panels will really never be able to have the same look as a painted concrete building.”

It was enough to prompt some critics, such as Antonio Pacheco of Archinect, to declare that the building has done more than lose its National Register listing. In Pacheco's words, or at least the headline-writers at Architect, the Portland Building is "no longer historically significant." On Twitter, Pacheco even went so far as to say he wished the building would have been torn down if the original architecture was not preserved. At least then, he argued, it could have served as an inspiring cautionary tale.

But buildings aren't museum pieces. I wonder if Pacheco ever walked the building, seeing its astonishingly dark interiors illuminated by oppressive fluorescent lights, or inspecting all the water damage.

Kristin Wells from the City of Portland got more specific about that patch job in today's CityLab article. "Keeping punched windows in a concrete shell sets us up for leaks again. At the end of the day, you’re still relying on caulking and re-caulking every five to 10 years," she said. "We do not want to be back in this situation again.”

A preservationist could still argue that caulking and re-caulking the Portland Building every five to ten years was not an unreasonable responsibility, and done right, it could stay ahead of the leaks. I mean, some beauties just require more maintenance. I used to own two old BMWs, and the first one in particular was, in my mind, more beautiful than any new car in production in 2019, and by a long shot. But the upkeep on that Bimmer was so expensive that it actually made it costlier to own a 1983 car than to buy a brand-new one. Eventually I had to get a Volkswagen. So has the Portland Building gone from a BMW to a Volkswagen? No. It's a BMW with some new parts that made it no longer authentic to its showroom-floor self. But it's a better ride than ever.

If one goes looking at the Portland Building with an eye for precedents, sure, there's reason to be alarmed. "It’s precedent-setting," Kearney said. "If it’s okay to over-clad a building from this era, then you’re going to perhaps make it okay for others. What if this happened to City Hall next door? Would we be okay if it was clad in metal? The era is not the issue." Of course that's a bit much. It's stretching the argument to an extreme hypothetical example. But it's also an argument rooted in principle, which has to be respected. We need people making these kinds of principled arguments, even if the Portland Building may be an exception.

Speaking of which — this notion of deciding whether or not this renovation is right or wrong — the one thing that frustrates me a little about the audit is the timing. I love that the City of Portland has an independent auditor. That's an effort to bring integrity to what the city is doing. It's very much a good idea to audit the Portland Building process. I even remember at the time being somewhat shocked by the notion of the over-cladding and openly wondering if such drastic action was a good idea when all that really was required to make the old facade work was essentially just some extra pro-active maintenance.

 

Portland Building reconstruction, 6/10/19 (Brian Libby)

 

Yet I decided back then that I would ultimately withhold judgment until I'd walked the completed building and had a chance to live with the renovation a little bit, and talk to the people who work inside. You don't need to wait for that later date to talk about the principle of a landmark building's facade replacement with an altogether different material, because that discussion is not about whether or not the inside of the renovated building is better. Of course it will be better — but at what cost to history? That's the question. Yet even having said all that, I find it odd that the audit is prompting another round of debate about the Portland Building that is neither at the design stage nor at the completion stage. It feels like the mother is in labor and we're in the waiting room arguing about whether to have the kid.

The one decision I do already find myself moving towards, or anticipate having after the building is completed, is that maybe there is no definitive answer. It reminds me of my days as a movie critic back in the late '90s and early '00s. Some movies had clear good guys and bad guys. Some movies ended with closure for the characters — they'd ride off into the sunset after surviving the big plot complication. But other movies came with antiheroes and ambiguous endings. The stars weren't solely virtuous and brave, nor were they demonically evil. They were actual people in evocatively real-life situations, and part of the essence of the story was that you have to accept the ambiguity and lack of closure.

I find the Portland Building as architecture to somehow aspire to be one of those movie heroes: the pure good guy with transcendent power. But it turned out to be the flawed hero in search of a final resolution that may never come.

I think it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that the interior of the new Portland Building blows away the interior of the old Portland Building, and besides, that old interior lacked Graves's fingerprint. "I didn’t do the interiors,” Graves reminded me in 2014 interview for Architect magazine. “I’m blamed for them, because of the [dark] windows. But I didn’t do the interiors of the building.”

These interiors are not just so much more full of light and with bigger, less compressed volumes of space thanks to the removal of the drop ceilings, but they connect the inside of the building to the outside so much more. You're not relying solely on the tiny square windows anymore because the middle portions of the facade wash the whole space with light and give the eye more of a sense of panorama coming from a view across the different windows.

Yet I do suspect that in some ways the be paid will be a slight bit of authenticity lost that one learns to live with, much as the rebuilt old buildings of Germany and Japan that I've visited have felt. Visiting Nuremberg and Berlin and Tokyo, and seeing some "old" cathedral or temple that was essentially rebuilt from rubble and a couple of standing walls after World War II, I knew that they were not as purely old and historic as, say, a cathedral in Britain or elsewhere in Europe or Asia that survived. (In Japan it seemed less of a conundrum because their culture ritualistically rebuilds some of its most sacred architecture.) But it's hard to argue definitively against those cities' desire to rekindle the best of their cultural heritages, and reclaim them from fascist' manipulation and corruption of heritage.

The Portland Building is not some ancient relic, of course. Just the fact that it had such systematic problems a mere 35 years after its completion says something: through the City of Portland's own cheapness, it was inherently flawed from the start. You have to respect the fact that it's not inherently flawed anymore, either in terms of its construction or the user experience. But the ambiguity of its authenticity, or at least the multi-faceted and mult-era nature of that fingerprint, has to be considered an indelible part of the Portland Building story. That's not just true right now, however. In a way, it's always been true. After all, that's really what the architectural language of Graves's design and Postmodernism are about.

As I've said before, maybe it's fitting that the renovation of this Postmodern landmark is itself postmodern. The Portland Building: postmodern Postmodernism.

 

 

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Design calendar: June 17-30

Montana 12 by Architecture Building Culture (Reina Solunaya)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Garthwick Neighborhood Tour
Located just south of Sellwood and north of the Waverly Country Club, this hidden residential neighborhood provided a great outdoor laboratory for architects and builders working in the most popular residential styles of the 20th century. This Architectural Heritage Center tour explores one of Southeast Portland's lesser-known historic neighborhoods. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 10AM Tuesday, June 18. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Tour of Marshall Elementary and McLoughlin Middle School
As part of the CSI Education Series from the Oregon chapter of the Construction Specifications Institute, attendees on this tour of Marshall Elementary and McLoughlin Middle School in Vancouver, designed by LSW Architects and part of CSI's Learning and Libations series, can learn about the complexity of joining cross-laminated timber with Tilt-up Concrete panels as well as the coordination involved with properly locating mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems. The tour will be led by Larry Curran of Skanska, the schools' general contractor. Skanksa Trailer near 5802 Macarthur Boulevard, Vancouver, Washington. 3PM Tuesday, June 18. $10 ($5 for students).

Sprouting a Green School
Green and high-performance school buildings offer students and teachers healthy and productive learning spaces and deliver cost avoidance on utility expenses to put money back into classrooms. Delivering a green school requires an integrated design process, agreement of project goals, dynamic team communication and utilizing absolute energy targets to design and construct. During this interactive discussion, the second in the 2019 Growing A Green School discussion series from AIA Portland's Green Schools Committee, panelists will discuss stakeholder engagement, building assessment, design process, and technology applications used to guide their green school design projects. Moderated by Glumac chief sustainability strategist Nicole Isle, the panel will also include Energy Trust of Oregon outreach manager Elin Shepard, Oh Planning + Design principal Deb France, and Bassetti Architecture principal Joe Echeverri. Gensler, 811 SW Sixth Avenue, Suite 300. 5PM Tuesday, June 18. Free.

InProcess: Pigeon Toe Ceramics and Architecture Building Culture
As part of the InProcess quarterly lecture series presented by AIA Portland, which explores the creative process of local architects, designers, makers, and creators, come presentations from Lisa Jones of Pigeon Toe Ceramics and Brian Cavanaugh of Architecture Building Culture. With an aversion to the excess of mass-produced goods, Jones formed Pigeon Toe in 2008 fresh out of art school with a vision to create uniquely beautiful objects grounded in American crafts and manufacturing. Her work has been featured in publications from Dwell and the New York Times to Sunset. With over 25 years of experience, Cavanaugh's firm has designed a variety of residential, hospitality and mixed-use projects around the Pacific Rim, winning local, regional/state and national awards from the AIA as well as the 2012 AIA Young Architects Award and the 2014 ABC AIA Northwest & Pacific Region Emerging Firm of the Year Award. AIA Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 5:30 PM Tuesday, June 18. Free.

Broadway and Mid-Town Tour
Beginning in the 1890s, the area downtown between Southwest Broadway and Ninth Avenue underwent a dramatic change from a residential neighborhood on the edge of town to a bustling commercial and cultural district. This Architectural Heritage Center tour takes a look at what are today some of the most well recognized and architecturally significant buildings in the city. Attendees will see the work of some of the premier Portland architects of the early 20th century, including A. E. Doyle, John V. Bennes and Morris Whitehouse, while also hearing stories about the city’s first public library and one-time park blocks that were lost to development. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 10AM Thursday, June 20. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Material Transparency PechaKucha
Hosted by the Oregon chapter of the International Interior Design Association, this event will include a rapid PechaKucha-style event (wherein presenters can show 20 slides for 20 seconds each) featuring subject experts who will cover a variety of topics including material transparency resources, software tools, and updates from local sustainability organizations. The presentations will provide a quick overview of how the Architecture and Design community can include material declarations into specifications, gain access to software and resources becoming standard in the industry. Grit Building Solutions, 919 SW Taylor Street, #800. 5:30PM Thursday, June 20. $20 (free for IIDA members and students).

Historic Laurelhurst Walking Tour
Laurelhurst is one of the most architecturally distinctive neighborhoods in Portland. With beginnings as a planned streetcar suburb, this area has a high concentration of early 20th century Arts and Crafts-influenced residences as well as some grand Colonial Revivals. This Positively Portland walking tour will include several landmark residences, including the  the Doyle/Albee House (1913) and the Green/Bitar Mansion (1928). Tour begins at Petit Provence, 3420 NE Sandy Boulevard. 10AM Friday, June 21. $15.

Build Small, Live Large: ADU Tour
A self-guided tour of 17 accessory dwelling units sprinkled throughout the Portland area. Now in its sixth year, the tour is also a chance to meet the homeowners, builders, and designers who built them. Tour begins at Caravan - The Tiny House Hotel, 5009 NE 11th Avenue. 10AM Saturday, June 22. $30.

Historic Downtown Gresham Tour
The village of Gresham, originally known as "Campground", was a stop-over place for pioneers on the Oregon Trail in the last stage of their epic journey from the East. The village was later named for the US Postmaster who granted the small village a post office. By the turn of the 20th century the interurban railway connected Gresham to Portland and the population grew quickly. We'll start the walk with a tour of the Gresham Historical Society and then have a walk around downtown to look at the remaining historic commercial and residential buildings and speculate on what may be the future of this growing city. Tour begins at Gresham Historical Society, 410 N Main Avenue. 10AM Saturday, June 22. $15.

Old Town Tour
The commercial district near the Skidmore Fountain and the oldest standing buildings in downtown comprise this tour of Portland’s only National Landmark Historic District. Visitors on this Architectural Heritage Center tour will see the work of Portland’s earliest architects, learning how cast iron played a central role in their designs and how the city developed so close to the river. Along the way, visitors will also learn about some beautiful but long-lost buildings while also seeing great examples of historic preservation. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 10AM Saturday, June 22. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Historic Albina Tour
Once a separate city from Portland, Albina has a lengthy and diverse history – along with some fascinating architecture. This Architectural Heritage Center tour explores old Albina from stories of early proprietors and its development as a railroad town, to its transformation into the heart of Portland's African-American community and the impacts of urban renewal. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 10AM Saturday, June 22. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Montgomery Street Residences Lecture and Tour
The Pacific Northwest regional chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art plays host to a combined lecture, tour and drawing class over consecutive days. The event will begin with a lecture on French-American architecture by Stephen Chrisman, a principal at New York's Ferguson & Shamamian. The ensuing day's tour will focus on historic period houses from the era of American Beaux Arts eclecticism, beginning with a private viewing of the A.J. Lewthwaite house, desugbed in the French Renaissance Louis XVI style by Albert Parr & Francis Ward of San Francisco and completed in 1926. Other residences on the tour will include the circa-1922 Tudor-style Max S. Hirsch residence by Ellis Lawrence, the elegant Jacobethan-style Leon Hirsch residence from 1922 by Sutton & Whitney, the Colonial-style William P. Hawley residence by Lawrence from 1927, A.E. Doyle's English Cottage-style Coleman Wheeler residence by from 1923, and Doyle's Jacobethan masterpiece, the Frank J. Cobb residence from 1917. Lecture will be held at Emerick Architects, 321 SW Fourth Avenue, Suite 200. 5PM Saturday, June 22. Tour begins at 1715 SW Montgomery Drive. 10:30AM Sunday, June 23. Free.

Portland Heights and Vista Avenue Tour
This Architectural Heritage Center tour explores Portland Heights,  a mostly residential Southwest Portland neighborhood with Vista Avenue running through its center. It was once a very difficult area to build in, or even get to, before it became a popular residential district, as transportation options increased in Portland during the late 19th century. Today the mixture of homes, ranging in style from Colonial Revival to Art Deco, is a veritable “who’s who” of Portland architects and their masterworks. Attendees will see homes designed by the likes of A.E. Doyle, Emil Schacht, Edgar Lazarus, and Morris Whitehouse. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 10AM Tuesday, June 25. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Garden + Lecture Series: Steve Bloom
As Part of the Portland Japanese Garden's Garden + Lecture Series, CEO Steve Bloom will share insights and stories from his recently-completed residency in Japan and beyond. During six months in late 2018 and early 2019, Bloom visited gardens and arts organizations in Japan, Singapore, Brazil, China, and the United Kingdom: telling the story of the Garden, building new connections, and seeking opportunities for collaboration and exchange. He’ll reflect on what he learned and on new ways that the Garden can build on its role of facilitating understanding to make the world a more tranquil and peaceful place. Portland Japanese Garden, 611 SW Kingston Avenue. 4:30PM Tuesday, June 25. $20 ($15 for Portland Japanese Garden members).

Cascadia Clusters: Building By and For the Homeless
The Oregon chapter of Architects Without Borders welcomes Rafael Toma Solano, project manager and trainer with Cascadia Clusters, a nonprofit general contractor that trains homeless individuals in framing, roofing, insulating, and finish carpentry. Solano will discuss Cascadia Clusters' role in the development of Agape Village, a self-governed community of tiny homes for the houseless, and other local projects, and will highlight design and building lessons learned, as well as the goals and process of Cascadia Clusters' training program. AIA Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 6PM Wednesday, June 26. Free.

Refresh at Providence Park
Originally Multnomah Field, the stadium now known as Providence Park has been a part of the Portland cityscape since 1893. It first became a stadium in 1923 in a design by the great A.E. Doyle, and has undergone numerous name changes and renovations through the years. The latest update, designed by Allied Works, includes a multi-tier, vertical wall that puts viewers on top of the action, enhancing the stadium’s already legendary atmosphere. This Architecture Foundation of Oregon fundraiser offers a stadium tour and the chance to hear about the re-design of this Portland icon from Providence Park’s new Duracell Deck. Providence Park, 1844 SW Morrison Street. 4:30 PM Thursday, June 27. $60 ($45 for AFO members, $15 for volunteers in the AFO's Architects In Schools program).

Lair Hill Neighborhood Tour
It turns out that Lair Hill is not named for a hill. Named for pioneering Portland lawyer and newspaper editor William Lair Hill, this residential neighborhood and subject of an Architectural Heritage Center tour is one of Portland’s oldest. Lair Hill contains a fascinating mix of historic homes, along with notable buildings significant for their connections to the city’s early immigrant populations. It’s also a neighborhood that was impacted by urban renewal and freeway development. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 6PM Thursday, June 27. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

South Park Blocks Tour
This eleven-block portion of the downtown area was first platted and donated to the City of Portland 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 one can take a stroll through the groves of elms and recount some of the stories they would love to tell about the area’s history and architecture. The South Park Blocks stand alone as a place of revitalization, refreshment and cultural allure. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 10AM Saturday, June 29. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Willamette Heights Neighborhood Tour
Some of Portland’s most notable architects, including Emil Schacht, designed homes in Willamette Heights, an area that borders the site of the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition. This Architectural Heritage Center tour is strenuous walk through this hilly neighborhood. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 10AM Saturday, June 29. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

 

 

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Watching the Rose Parade from Memorial Coliseum, 10 years after it was nearly demolished

Last Saturday's Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

If there is a signature song for Veterans Memorial Coliseum, perhaps it ought to be "Louie Louie."

Sure, you could make the case for the Trail Blazers' unofficial theme song, the instrumental one with the horns from the old TV broadcasts. Or you could go for an early Beatles song given that they (with apologies to Hendrix, Dylan and others) are arguably the crowning act to have played Memorial Coliseum.

But given that the history of "Louie Louie" and its origins neatly parallel the beginnings of the Coliseum itself, and that it's the most popular song recording ever to come out of Portland, you wouldn't go amiss choosing this Kingsmen standard. "Louie Louie" was written and first recorded by Richard Perry in 1955, about the same time the Coliseum was being conceived. It was re-recorded by The Kingsmen in 1963, at a studio in downtown Portland, just three years after the Coliseum's completion.

Then again, maybe I'm just feeling sentimental after attending the Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade last Saturday at the Coliseum with my mom, who is an endearingly big fan of marching bands and parades. "Louie Louie," I learned on Saturday, is still the marching-band song that seems to get everyone excited — at least the older crowd assembled here.

Why pay $15 or $30 plus astronomical Ticketmaster fees to see a parade you can see for free on the streets of Portland? For that reason, attendance at the Coliseum for the parade is sparse, maybe a couple thousand, as it has been in past years. But for many, it's a chance to have a guaranteed seat in a specific place that's out of the elements. I mean, it rains on Rose Parade day fairly often.

For me, of course, it was a chance not so much to see the parade as to experience Memorial Coliseum the way it was meant — on virtually the only it's possible.

For 363 or 364 days a year, a black curtain blocks the 360-degree view to the outside that's possible from the Coliseum's more than 10,000 seats. It's a one-of-a-kind architectural experience: a venue larger than a couple of Portland city blocks that's transparent on all four sides, in a way that's visible not just from the concourse but the arena bowl itself. But the Coliseum's operators are reluctant to open and close the curtains given their fragile nature, as a nearly 60-year-old mechanism. So it's only open for the Grand Floral Parade and sometimes a Portland Winterhawks matinee hockey game in January.

What it means to have the curtain open at a daytime event is that Coliseum attendees don't feel disconnected from the outside, like would be the case in practically any other arena ever built. Instead, the sunlight pours in. But it's too much of a wild card to touring acts that have never had to account for so much natural light before, so they keep it closed most of the time.

Interestingly, though, introducing natural light into large-scale arenas like NBA teams play in is an unmistakable architectural trend, as seen in recent arenas like the Sacramento Kings' Golden One Center. But it's still a fraction of the glass and transparency that exists at Memorial Coliseum with its curtain properly open. None of them close to giving you a 360-degree view outside like the Coliseum has. The closest I've ever encountered besides the Coliseum is the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin by the great Mies van der Rohe, completed in 1968 — eight years after the Coliseum. But it's an art museum, not an arena.

And of course there's a larger connection between these two buildings: Myron Goldsmith, the lead architect for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill on the Coliseum, studied under Mies. Goldsmith also designed Oracle Arena, where the Golden State Warriors will play their last game tonight, before moving to a new arena in San Francisco.

What occurred to me in days since last Saturday's parade at the Coliseum was that this was the first ticketed event I've attended since April, which marked the 10th anniversary of the grassroots to save the building from demolition.

 

A recent view of the Coliseum (Brian Libby)

 

Back in 2009, Mayor Sam Adams had introduced a plan to tear down the city-owned Coliseum in order to build a baseball stadium for the lower-minor-league Portland Beavers. The Beavers had played for decades in what's now Providence Park (originally Civic Stadium), but lost their home when it was converted to a soccer-only facility.

There's no doubt that the Providence Park conversion was a good idea, because it accompanied and enabled the Portland Timbers' jump to Major League Soccer, setting the table for the ensuing explosion of citywide Timbers and Thorns fandom. But building a minor league baseball stadium from scratch, in the center of the city? Come on. I mean, think of it this way if you're a baseball fan: had we built that stadium, it would now be arguably hindering the current effort to lure a Major League Baseball franchise and build a correspondingly MLB-caliber stadium.

And besides, from a strictly number standpoint, even after the Trail Blazers departed Memorial Coliseum in 1996 for the Rose Garden arena next door (now the Moda Center), the Coliseum remained busy, with well over 100 events a year. While the Moda Center became the first-choice venue for big touring acts as well as the Blazers' home, the Coliseum was quietly the only local venue in that slightly smaller range: bigger than the downtown theaters and auditoriums yet half the size of the Moda.

Credit Adams for ultimately backing away from the baseball-stadium plan after boisterous community opposition. Even I got involved, participating in the formation of what became known as the Friends of Memorial Coliseum. Adams initially explored a range of ideas through what was called a stakeholder advisory committee overseen by the Portland Development Commission (now Prosper Portland), many of them unrealistic and not viable, if not ridiculous. Water park, anyone? Peace garden?

What they discovered—they being not only Mayor Adams but his successor, Mayor Charlie Hales—was that no conversion of a multi-use arena to a single-use venue would make as much economic sense as simply letting the Coliseum do its thing. Mayor Hales did his part by commissioning a third-party economic study that found the arena would turn a profit with even a modest restoration. In fact, even after a very limited $5 million "refresh" in 2017, the building is already doing just that. If a full-scale restoration happened, something more in the $50-75 million range, the study estimated the Coliseum could generate some $2 billion in economic activity over the next 20 years.

You can't talk about Memorial Coliseum and the Moda Center without discussing what a dead zone the collective Rose Quarter property is, and how desperately it's in need of an urban-design fix. You don't need a master's degree in urban planning to see what the problem is, either. It's a trio of above-ground parking garages, one attached to the Moda Center itself and the other two across the street, blocking the two arenas' connection to Broadway, a streetcar-lined major thoroughfare. Actually, it's four garages, because there's also the One Center Court building between the arenas, which is really just a couple of office floors built onto another parking garage.

 

Last Saturday's Grand Floral Parade (Brian Libby)

 

There could be an urban-design textbook called What Not To Do and this wasteland of parking garages would likely be pictured on the cover.

Thankfully there's the Albina Vision, a community-driven initiative that's also rooted in very good urban design. It proposes a series of changes to the Rose Quarter that would not only make it a wonderful, pedestrian and greenspace-oriented space extending to the riverfront, but would also help restore the Albina neighborhood that unfortunately Memorial Coliseum, along with Emanuel Hospital and Interstate 5, largely demolished. Let's face it: like other midcentury urban renewal projects, Memorial Coliseum should have been built somewhere else, somewhere that didn't trample people's homes with a disturbing penchant for neighborhoods occupied largely by minorities. Yet continuing the cycle of destruction by demolishing a beautiful and useful and oft-used arena doesn't make things better. It makes them worse. That's why a restored Coliseum (or at least the presumption of it) is part of the Albina Vision.

Though it's tempting to stop and celebrate that the Coliseum has lived another decade, it's not really saved until it's truly restored. The economic case is already there and now it's a matter of City Council approving the funds. I've heard increased whispering that some funding could become available in the near future, more so than I've heard about in most of the past ten years. It could be one big funding package or a series of smaller restorations. But this also very well turn out to be a mirage given the lack of leadership City Council has shown over the past decade in fixing the Coliseum, particularly under Mayor Charlie Hales from 2013-17. For what it's worth, a majority of the current City Council members have expressed support for a Coliseum restoration.

It's all part of a larger puzzle emerging at the east end of the Broadway Bridge. There's a relatively new Portland Streetcar line, and streetcars are development tools even more than they are transportation. The Lloyd District is burgeoning into more of a high-density, mixed-use neighborhood just to the east, and just north of the Rose Quarter and the freeway overpasses, North and Northeast Portland are experiencing a wave of development. This under-utilized stretch of Broadway between the river and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, particularly when you add the adjacent Portland Public Schools site likely to be vacated in the years ahead, is so centrally located that it would be ridiculous for it not to become a place of increasingly tall buildings where housing, commercial and retail exist together with greenspace and public buildings like the two arenas. 

As I sat in Row G at the Coliseum on Saturday, though, I wasn't thinking about economic impact or urban planning. I was enjoying amateur trumpet and trombone players and drummers marching straight through the floor of the arena, the only such parade-architectural mashup in the country if not beyond. I was looking at the tops of the trees peeking over the seating bowl and through the glass. Think about it: have you ever looked at trees from an arena before? That transparency and volume and light are what modern architecture is all about. And if it happens to the tune of "Louie Louie," as hand-made, flower-covered floats roll by, it makes for an endearing civic celebration in a glorious place. As a Generation X member, there's some part of me that is a little too cynical for rah-rah boosterism, but I really like the combination of this guileless parade in this heroically aspirational yet still slightly run-down landmark.

May they both be around for a long time.

 

 

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The Architect's Questionnaire: Karen Lange

Karen Lange (Waterleaf Architecture)

 

BY JENNIFER WRIGHT

Next in our series highlighting local designers is Karen Lange, an associate at Waterleaf Architecture, Interiors & Planning.

Starting her career working at two large-scale Manhattan-based firms, Lange relocated to Portland in 2006 and quickly found a position as a project architect at Waterleaf. An alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, Lange was greatly inspired by a quote from a former professor: “Architects bear an enormous responsibility as stewards of creation.”  This social responsibility to achieve a higher purpose is what drove Lange to encourage Waterleaf in its pursuit of earning B Corp status, becoming the first architecture firm in Oregon to meet these rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency aligned with benefit corporations. Last year Lange, , the sole female on Waterleaf's leadership team, earned a 2018 Women of Vision Award from the Daily Journal of Commerce.  

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

Karen Lange: I took a drafting class in my final semester of high school for an easy credit, and I found that I really enjoyed technical drawing. I have always enjoyed drawing and various forms of the arts, constantly having the need to create. This class provided training that turned my doodles into something with an actual purpose, and it gave me a way to translate my creative ideas into something tangible and real. I still enjoy the process of distilling messy thoughts into the salient points that really communicate a message clearly. That drafting class was my first inkling that there could be a future using this type of skill. I started out in the engineering program at Notre Dame and quickly found out that all the math and science classes I loved and did so well in during high school got a lot harder. I switched into the architecture program in my second year, and not only did my grades improve but so did my investment in what I was learning. It became clear that this was a field that combined many of my varied interests, from how things work to history and art.

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

I have a bachelor of architecture degree from the University of Notre Dame. The program is based on traditional urbanism and the study of classical architecture with an emphasis on the local vernacular. It also includes a year abroad in Rome, which was fundamental to the curriculum and life-altering in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. I grew up in a small town in New Mexico, with some traveling under my belt but nothing like the intensive experience of living in a place with so many layers and the academic focus to really dig in and inhabit that history. The overall experience at Notre Dame provided me with a solid foundation in history, sketching, composition, leadership, and other critical aspects of the design profession that transcend project types and whatever technology you use as a tool. I also came away with an attitude that as architects and designers we have a responsibility to solve problems and create healthy communities that thrive. Ultimately, this is a career of service.

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

I have a few favorites that come to mind. One is the 2006 Showhouse for Southern Accents magazine, located in Windmark Beach, Florida, which I worked on while at Cooper Robertson & Partners in New York City. This was a dream project in the fact that since the magazine was the client, the design team had almost free rein with the program and there was not really any limit to the budget. It turned out beautifully, plus I got to visit Florida several times.

 

Showhouse for Southern Accents magazine (Cooper Robertson)

 

Another more recent favorite project is the Clubhouse at Domaine Serene in Yamhill County, completed in 2017 with Waterleaf Architecture. The style of this project was very much dictated by the client as it was fitting in with the existing winery campus and was not necessarily something that would normally come out of our office. But the traditional style reminded me of my college studio days fussing over symmetry and molding details, plus the surrounding vineyards could be straight out of Tuscany. So it was nostalgic for me in those ways.

But what I perhaps enjoyed the most about the Clubhouse project was the amazing team I was fortunate to work with, which included a lot of stellar detail work by subcontractors (the project includes a half mile of handcrafted plaster trim). That’s another side of the profession that I pay a lot of attention to; it’s not always what you build but who you build with. It was a very challenging project in many ways but the strength of the team made it a real success.

 

Clubhouse at Domaine Serene (Waterleaf Architecture, Interiors and Planning)

 

Who has been an important mentor among your colleagues?

I think anyone can become a mentor, sometimes in unexpected ways. For example, at one firm I ended up sitting next to one of the marketing staff and that’s how I learned Photoshop – just by looking over his shoulder and asking how he did things. Currently at Waterleaf, I would say that I’ve learned different things from different people. From retired designer Mark Mikolavich, the importance of having a thoughtful process and using the right pen. From retired partner Dick Aanderud, the concept that the person across the table from you “puts their pants on the same way you do.” From managing partner Bill Bailey, that doing business is really about taking care of your people.  From design lead Stephen Lapp, the power of a clean diagram. And from my official office mentor, partner Jon Styner, the value in creating a solid team and saying yes to opportunities. Jon has also been an instrumental ally for me in leading Waterleaf’s efforts to achieve certification as a B Corporation in 2016. Participating in the B Corp community is a way for a lot of us in the firm to bring our personal and professional values together and focus our efforts in using our business as a force for good.

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

The great thing about this profession is there are so many different ways for people to find their niche. I enjoy the schematic design phase quite a bit, where some pieces of the puzzle are still loose and you get to just try out a lot of ideas, draw diagrams, and start to see how things start to shake out.  I enjoy the creative process but prefer some boundaries to work within, and I like the challenge of working through solutions while maintaining a central vision. From a different angle, I think the construction phase is really exciting, when you actually get to see your ideas materialize. There’s a different sort of puzzle-solving when you are working with the contractor to solve issues in the field. I also really do enjoy the paper trail of documentation at this stage, to be honest. It’s a great feeling to wrap up an RFI [Request for Information] and send it off, tracking it all on your spreadsheet. I’m a little nerdy that way.

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

I spend a lot of time walking around downtown and frequently pass by two buildings I really enjoy. One is the Multnomah County Central Library, by A.E. Doyle from 1913. It has so many great details and a real sense of stateliness and grandeur. It’s like a church in the way the entire building is designed for a single purpose. It’s also symbolic of the care that can be taken to ensure landmark buildings (or any building) can last a very long time when properly cared for and appreciated (the library underwent a major structural renovation in the mid 1990s). It’s a grand building that is open for all to experience, not just a fancy façade or lobby you see when passing by. I also just have a fondness for libraries and I love to disappear into the stacks (my first dream career was librarian, because I thought you just got to read all day). Coworkers, if I’m late coming back from lunch hour, there’s a good chance you’ll find me there.

 

Central Library (Wikimedia Commons)

 

Another building that always catches my eye is the Union Bank Tower (originally the Bank of California building), by Anshen + Allen, completed in 1969. I have a feeling this might be a common answer. It’s pretty much the opposite of the library in terms of amount of ornate detail, as it has very clean lines. There’s something compelling about the way the solid material rises up towards sky with a real lightness and the lower volume appears to slide right under the taller volume. I also appreciate the detail of how the green color of the slate that covers large portions of the building is brought down right into the entry paving and steps. The lobby has the same loftiness that the structure’s exterior expresses. I think it’s one of those buildings that is much better experienced in person than in a photograph.

I seem to be feeling the spirit of the library again since the Union Bank Tower sits on the site of the original main library’s location; that library dated to 1893. I also love the contrast to Doyle's US National Bank right across the street from 1917, which is itself a gorgeous building; it's also across the street from yet another bank Doyle designed, the original Bank of California, from 1925. As a side note, this leads me to think about what a career Doyle had, with these and multiple buildings being commissioned one after another in such a small area. That opportunity to create such an impact on a new and growing city is just not something most of us could ever hope to experience in our profession today.

 

Union Bank Tower (Brian Libby)

 

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

The first project in my second-year studio class was to select a building and examine it in depth, culminating in a carefully composed series of ink-washed plans and details. I don’t recall if we had a list to choose from, or how I exactly landed on this choice, but I studied Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel in Florence, Italy from 1443. 

Nestled in the shadows of the adjacent church of Santa Croce, the chapel is a bit quirky and I related to it instantly. It was my first introduction to learning about “real architecture” and it was a fascinating study in the use of perfect geometries to shape an irregular space. So in response to the question, it’s a favorite building of mine in the sense that it was the gateway into the world of architectural design and historical research. I hadn’t ever given much thought to how a building design was achieved. It was an exciting day when I was able to visit in person during my year abroad. It was like a celebrity sighting on the street; the famous person always looks a little bit smaller and somehow disappointingly normal, with their shopping bags or ripped jeans. When I visited the chapel on a warm fall afternoon I was somehow taken aback at first that it was a part of a bustling urban scene, with pigeons and tourists flocking around, and not a perfectly staged, serene vignette as I had always seen it in books. But it was also a joy to be there, to experience how the activity quieted down when you stepped inside the volume of interior space and how it still felt vital after over 500 years. A good friend who was with me that day gave me a sketch of it which now hangs in my dining room.

 

Pazzi Chapel, Florence (Wikimedia Commons)

 

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

This is a tough one. There seem to be a few major firms that get a lot of attention and many of the smaller or residential-focused firms get overlooked. Or, more likely, they just don’t have a large marketing department. I would love to learn more about what some of the smaller fish in the pond have to offer.

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

It’s no secret that Portland has been growing and changing rapidly in recent years. The lack of affordable housing and the social safety nets available for those in need are becoming more and more apparent. I would hope that the long-range vision for Portland includes a focus on working with communities to create a revitalization of close-in, affordable options and investment in improving transit opportunities. As a daily MAX rider I often look out on the river when crossing the Steel Bridge and wonder why we don’t have a water taxi. To be honest, being from a desert town I don’t know much about boats. I also realize a taxi system would not be simple infrastructure or a financially easy thing to achieve, but the impact on waterfront development, tourism, and everyday public interaction with the river could be significant and really fun.

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

Beyond basic interactions with the city permit office and design reviews, I have worked on several projects that were part of the PDC Storefront Improvement Program and most recently with PDC (now Prosper Portland) and the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability on the development of the New Chinatown/Japantown Historic District Guidelines adopted in 2017. I appreciate the continued efforts and deep concern these groups have in the shared desire to make Portland the best city it can be, with a focus on positive actions to promote an equitable economy. We’ve all experienced the challenges of long waits for permits and other aspects of bureaucracy but I believe intentions are in the right place.

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

This is another tricky one. I’d like to ignore the question and repeat my interest in seeing what local firms have to offer, but that being said I see how having an outside architect providing fresh eyes can be valuable. I think Snøhetta is really doing some interesting work and I’m looking forward to seeing their local projects come to fruition – the James Beard Public Market, the OMSI master plan, and the Willamette Falls Project. I admire the way these projects are embracing tricky, underutilized sites and bringing them back to life with a reimagined purpose.

 

Renderings of proposed Willamette Falls Riverwalk (Snøhetta)

 

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

I’d say one is shoes. I’m not much into fashion as a trend but if I find a pair of shoes or boots I like I’m extremely loyal and will wear them until they fall apart. For example, I have had a pair of Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars in constant rotation since the fourth grade.  It’s just an iconic shoe.  Also, a well-designed shoe doesn’t always cost a lot, and an expensive shoe isn’t necessarily comfortable. I think buildings are the same. I’d rather shuffle around in a comfortable, well-worn house then tiptoe around materials I’m afraid to touch.

I’m also very particular about silverware. I think it affects the meal and If it feels wrong I just can’t handle it (all puns intended).

What are three of your all-time favorite movies?

If we take favorite to mean “watched a million times without getting tired of it”, my top picks would include the original Star Wars trilogy, The Princess Bride, and Disney’s animated Robin Hood. I’m also a big fan of anything involving The Muppets. On a design-related note, the recent Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is one of the most visually stunning films I’ve seen in a long time. Even if superheroes aren’t your thing, I highly recommend it.

 

 

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Let's make Centennial Mills a ruins park

Centennial Mills (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Over the past 19 years, the City of Portland's caretaking of one of the most historic sites in town, Centennial Mills, has unfortunately been a comedy of errors. It's time to break the cycle of failed deals that have allowed this irreplaceable piece of Oregon history to crumble.

As I wrote about in a recent Portland Tribune column, the City of Portland and its development agency, Prosper Portland, have spent many years now trying to shoehorn new development onto this historic site, only to break up with the developers it hand-picked three different times.

Each breakup had its reasons. Some were related to the overall state of the economy, particularly the Great Recession. Starting in 2000 there was also the presence of the horse paddock for Portland Police Bureau's Mounted Patrol Unit onsite, which was supposed to be temporary but wound up staying for some 15 years, compromising visions for redevelopment. But the biggest problem, I'd argue, is that we've been trying to add too much development to a place where it's hard to make that happen.

As explained on the Centennial Mills page of the Prosper Portland website, the property "was acquired to fulfill the River District Urban Renewal Plan’s stated objective of enhancing the waterfront with public open spaces and to facilitate connectivity between the River District, the Willamette River and the Willamette River Greenway." So far, so good. Yet later on that same page, the agency goes on to explain of the latest efforts, "The conceptual program includes extension of the greenway trail, public access through the site, mixed-income housing, and renovation of the iconic Flour Mill building."

Notice the difference between the two quotes. While they both mention public open space and connectivity, only the second quote mentions mixed-income housing. If I'm not mistaken, some of the previous agreements Prosper Portland has come to with Costa Mesa's Lab Holding, Portland's Harsch Investment Properties and San Antonio's Lynd Opportunity Partners also included offices. Clearly the city needs lots of housing, so I don't want to belittle consideration of housing at the Centennial Mills site. If it could be made to happen as part of the Flour Mill (the last remaining structure) restoration, that would perhaps be the best outcome.

Yet whether it's housing or offices, after so many years of failed city-and-private-developer marriages at Centennial Mills, I can't help but feel that these additions are part of the problem.

Centennial Mills is both centrally located and isolated. Because Naito Parkway and the railroad act as a barrier between the site and the Pearl District, it's hard to get foot traffic there without a pedestrian bridge, which was called for in previous Pearl District master planning efforts but — what do you know? — never materialized even as the condos  appeared in rapid succession. It's also difficult to build underground parking at Centennial Mills given the riverfront soil, and reserving a large swath of the site for surface parking or a parking garage is not exactly the best kind of high-density urban development where people want to be. And there are big costs involved with renovating the existing Flour Mill building or remaining Warehouse E.

It's worth stopping for a moment to make note of the demolitions that have already happened. In September 2016, the Prosper Portland Board approved Resolution 7208 by a one-vote margin, authorizing demolition of the Feed Mill building. That's the gut-punch that is still painful, because it irrevocably changed the mini-skyline of Centennial Mills. It was a large twin to the remaining Flour Mill building. Everything else is a more common type of one or two-story warehouse.

Instead of hoping the fourth time this approach of partnering with a private developer on a mix of renovations and new construction will be successful, I'd like to see a substantial change in the entire vision. I think we should treat the Centennial Mills site as a ruin and turn it into a park.

The existing Flour Mill building is now the crown jewel of this industrial wasteland, and thankfully it is structurally sound. Unlike the Feed Mill building, which had sunk several inches on one side, the Flour Mill rests firmly upon driven piles. That makes it a candidate for architectural renovation. In theory, you don't want a habitable building to go to waste. And if you spend that money to renovate, it needs to become commercial or residential space of some kind, or at least some kind of tenant you can charge rent and use that to pay for the renovation.  And once you have that renovated building down there where people live or work, you need parking and you need for it not to be so isolated, so you start to imagine development around it.

In other words, the idea of renovating the Flour Mill building is how this notion of redeveloping the whole site (and then seeing the plans fall apart) gets started. But what if, after 20 years, that structurally sound building just wasn't meant to be occupied anymore? What if its role is really what it's already been doing: standing there and gently decaying as a way of preserving the authenticity of its history?

I remember touring the Flour Mill building several years ago and finding its decayed interior absolutely incredible. But it was the patina of the whole thing that made it so. In reality the building felt quite, quite decayed: the province of raccoons and bats more than that of humans. Yet there was undeniable beauty there, inside and out. Renovate it and all that patina is gone.

Filling that Flour Mill building with employees or residents is a nice idea in theory if it serves the important history of this site (usually empty buildings always get demolished). But since three failed development deals have shown us the difficulties of turning that site into a high-density place, it's time to re-affirm what has become lost along the way: that the history of that site is far more important than the economic activity we generate there.

After all, Centennial Mills practically built Portland, given that it was wheat, not timber, which became Oregon's biggest cash crop and even more than timber led economically to Portland becoming a metropolis.

 

Centennial Mills in 2013, before the demolitions (Brian Libby)

 

If we were to assure the Flour Mill building and its iconic rooftop water tower were structurally sound, we could basically seal it off and let it stand as a ruin that honors Oregon's industrial and agricultural history while giving us all the pubic waterfront access that's of specified importance in that River District Urban Renewal Plan.

There are already numerous precedents in other cities where a former industrial site has been turned into greenspace, with the relics becoming the attraction, almost like public art. There's Gas Works Park in Seattle, 19 waterfront acres including the ruins of a gasification plant. In Toronto there's Sugar Beach, another reclaimed industrial area.

It's also worth noting that creating a park was one of the options included in the Centennial Mills Framework Plan that was adopted by City Council in 2006.

I understand that this suggestion is coming at a time when Portland's parks budget is already being cut substantially. And if you consider Centennial Mills merely to be part of the Pearl District, perhaps it's arguable that this affluent neighborhood which already has the block-sized small parks Jamison Square and Tanner Springs as well as The Fields across from Centennial Mills doesn't deserve still more greenspace. Yet this is still central riverfront space that could easily be accessed by people in North and Northeast Portland as well as by people in the central city. It could easily be considered an unofficial extension of Tom McCall Waterfront Park, being only about a half mile downstream. It's also just across the Broadway Bridge from where the Albina Vision proposes adding a high-density neighborhood; a few minutes' walk from the Rose Quarter and one could be at this riverfront park.

Maybe jettisoning Centennial Mills from their portfolio would actually do Prosper Portland some good. The agency seems to want to focus on one big central-city property redevelopment at a time. While Centennial Mills and the Zidell Yards developments sit empty after failed agreements with developers, the former US Postal Service site along NW Broadway is moving forward. Since our city government seems to be continually low on funds for a number of basic services and initiatives, there is only so much public money to go around. If we can't even maintain our existing parks properly, why would we add a costly industrial redevelopment to that when a private developer would be all too happy to take on that cost?

Yet we've already gone down this road. Three times. It has already cost us the accelerated deterioration of much of the site.

To make it a ruins park, we'd admittedly have to go even further and do the very thing I've cried foul over: tear down some more architecture. But the remaining structures other than the Flour Mill building are of lesser historical value.

If budget for making a Centennial Mills ruins park is  the problem, given the historic nature of the site and its riverfront potential as a greenway, I don't see why there couldn't be a public fundraising component to building the park, just as there were for efforts to build now-cherished public spaces like Pioneer Courthouse Square.

Speaking of Pioneer Courthouse Square, which we've been celebrating this year because of the Architectural Heritage Center's excellent exhibit devoted to architect Will Martin, it might be useful to remember the naysayers that nearly prevented that landmark from being built. It took a lot of public pressure to remove a parking garage from that site, and to convince opponents like the development community and then-mayor Frank Ivancie that a public square was the right course of action. To become itself, Pioneer Courthouse Square had to fight off parking and development. That's the same battle Centennial Mills would have to fight.

I realize that it's easy for someone like me to suggest bold changes when I don't have to deal with real-world strictures that constrain our choices at a place like Centennial Mills. But that's my job, you know? I want to see us treat that Flour Mill building as an icon, giving it room to breathe in a park setting that invites the public to linger there, attracted as much to the riverfront as to its history. This is part of a larger multi-generational story: of cities reclaiming their heretofore working industrial waterfronts for public use. Prosper Portland and the River District Urban Renewal Plan have it right in favoring the greenway. We're just getting too caught up thinking about leasable new square footage there, when that's not what this place wants to be. But there's still time to avoid going down the same path a fourth time and instead to change course.

 

 

 

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