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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The idea reminds me of Mill City Museum in my hometown of Minneapolis. A beautiful icon turned into a historic destination amid the ruins. Although it is also located right next to the water, there wasn't a ton of stuff around there, but over time things changed and arts organizations popped up including the acclaimed Guthrie Theatre. Designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Jean Nouvel, the Guthrie along with the Mill City Museum, firmly rooted this Twin City neighborhood on the map. The Museum's programming is amazing, especially with a riverside park perfect for concerts and art fairs. I definitely see this as a case study for what Centennial Mills and its adjacent area could become and agree that it's certainly worth saving.
https://www.mnhs.org/millcity
Posted by: Jen | June 06, 2019 at 04:34 PM
You make great points, Brian. I have no faith that the fourth go-round by Prosper Portland will fare any better than the previous fiascoes. Having been involved in the process through my position with Restore Oregon, I believe one root of the problem is that PP wants way too much money for the property. They screwed this up big-time, and now need to let it go at a price that will make the numbers pencil out for a developer with the right plan that embraces its history... even if that price is $1.
Posted by: Peggy Moretti | June 08, 2019 at 07:37 AM