Portland Architecture

After 10 years, Albina Fuel site makes way for Grant Park Village

Rendering of Grant Park Village from west (courtesy LRS/Runberg)

BY FRED LEESON

No five-acre tract in Portland likely has undergone more development scrutiny, planning and neighborhood tooth-gnashing than the former site of Albina Fuel Co. at NE Broadway and 33rd Avenue, hard against the I-84 freeway.

After more than 10 years, dozens of public meetings and countless pixels devoted to potential designs, dare we say that construction is at hand? At long last, all parties, even the once-feisty neighbors, apparently hope so.

The Portland Design Commission on January 24 gave its blessing to a plan composed of what will look like five separate buildings all sitting on a two-story podium for 270 parking spaces. The buildings will include 211 units of apartments and townhouses and a retail strip facing Broadway anchored by a New Seasons food market.

The last hurdle, it appears, was convincing the developer, Capstone Partners, and its design team to upgrade exterior finishes on the industrially-inspired buildings that will stretch for some 600 feet along Broadway. LRS Architects of Portland is the local design firm, along with Runberg Architecture Group of Seattle, which has an extensive background in urban mixed-use projects.

With a hefty prod from the Design Commission in earlier meetings, the design team scrapped a skin heavily reliant on metal panels to a more expensive scheme using three-coat sand-finished stucco. “We think we have a path figured out to make it economically viable,” said Jeff Sackett, a Capstone principal.

Rendering of Grant Park Village from the east (courtesy LRS/Runberg)

The various buildings reflect a similar design theme, reflecting the nearby 1920s-era industrial buildings of the former Doernbecher Furniture Co. in Sullivan’sGulch (now a massive self-storage operation) and the Gordon’s Fireplace building just across NE 33rd Avenue. However, Greg Mitchell, an LRS architect, said the intent was to make each of the four and five-story building look a little different by gently changing color patterns and some fenestration. The overall project will bear the name “Grant Park Village” atop a modest tower element at the key 33rd and Broadway intersection.

The five buildings will create a central courtyard that will be open to the public and provide access to the townhouses. A walkway at the southern edge of a roughly triangle-shaped property may someday intersect with a proposed bicycle/pedestrian way along Sullivan’s Gulch.

An earlier plan from another developer to build 319 condos (remember those?) and retail space on the same site won Design Commission approval in 2008 after lengthy scrutiny, but the recession killed that plan.

Carol Gossett, a Sullivan’s Gulch Neighborhood Association resident, said her association and the adjacent Grant Park Neighborhood Association generally favored the plan. Over the years, neighbors were primarily concerned about traffic that would be generated by a large-scale project. The final plan calls for another major signal at Broadway and 32nd Avenue, which would funnel traffic to the Weidler Street vehicular entrance. Gossett said she hopes the economy will allow construction of the Capstone project.

The sloping site posed several design challenges, including vehicle circulation to allow for fire trucks and grocery supply trucks as long as 67 feet. Storm water run-off will be stored in large cistern, allowing for gradual, timed release into the sewer system.

Commission members offered encouraging thoughts about the scope of the project and its impact on the vicinity. One, Tad Savinar, said it would be a significant link between the Hollywood District and the Broadway commercial strip, and add vitality to portions of Broadway that offer “a lot of less than desirable storefronts.” Jane Hansen said she thinks the project will be “a really popular and much-needed development in the neighborhood.”

Commissioners Ben Kaiser and David Keltner lauded the switch to stucco on the major facades. In 20, 30 or 40 years, Keltner noted, the buildings will still look good and people “will have no idea how it was financed at the time.”

If completed as planned, the project will make the vicinity one of the city’s most dense food centers. While some underserved Portland neighborhoods beg for a new supermarket, New Seasons, QFC and the Hollywood Fred Meyer will be competing within just a few blocks of one another.

 

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HPLO seeks seismic safeguards for thousands of historic brick buildings

Gilbert Building, downtown Portland (photo by Brian Libby)

BY FRED LEESON

Architects and builders gave no thought to earthquakes in the nineteenth and much of the 20^th centuries when they built literally thousands of brick buildings across Oregon. 

Now that scientists have learned about tectonic plates under the Pacific Ocean and the likelihood of major earthquakes affecting heavily populated areas of Oregon, those unreinforced masonry structures pose a serious risk to students, residents, office workers and shoppers who use them. 

Besides harm to human life, destruction of those buildings would wipe out numerous historic landmarks, the hearts of historic business districts, thousands of low-rent housing units, dozens of schools and the vintage architectural fabric that gives us  a sense of place and human continuity.

Can these buildings be “saved” in advance?  How to do it?  What tools and incentives are needed to upgrade more than 4,800 unreinforced masonry buildings (likely a low estimate) in Oregon?

The Historic Preservation League of Oregon, a statewide preservation advocacy organization, has spent the last year probing those questions and looking for potential answers.  “Resilient Masonry Buildings,” the HPLO’s special report (available at historicpreservationleague.org)  suggests eight potential steps, ranging from more complete inventories to revised building codes and financial incentives.

“We didn’t solve all the problems,” says Brandon Spencer-Hartle, the HPLO’s field representative who wrote the report after meeting with some 250 interested parties in four locations around the state.  “This is just a starting point.  We heard a lot of ideas out there.”

Spencer-Hartle said the study looked at more than just seismic issues.  He said difficulties with Americans with Disability Act access and internal elevators make many older brick buildings dysfunctional on their upper floors.

The study attempted to get a grasp on the number of Oregon buildings erected with unreinforced masonry.  Only Portland and Medford have done inventories, and even those numbers may be suspect.  “Without an engineer, it’s hard to determine what is unreinforced masonry and what isn’t,” said Natalie Perrin, a preservationist who worked on the report.  Regardless of the number, “It’s a massive amount of square feet,” she said.

An intriguing suggestion raised in the report is creation of a voluntary, standardized ranking system for seismic bracing that would let tenants and prospective building users know how resilient an improved  building is.  It would be akin to the LEED ranking system for energy and environmental design.  “Recognizable plaques placed on the exterior of qualifying buildings would boost public awareness, activate market demand and generate better pay-back for investments in retrofitting,” the report states. Spencer-Hartle said such a rating system is being studied in Northern California, another high-risk earthquake region.

Earthquake bracing is expensive work, especially for being an “invisible” improvement.  The HPLO report suggests that new financial incentives are needed to assist building owners, including state, local and federal possibilities.  “If it is a public good,” Spencer-Hartle says, “how should public money be directed to preservation?”

One idea is trying to leverage federal FEMA funding – the idea being that repairs now will reduce damage in a future emergency.  Spencer-Hartle said Oregon needs to revisit state incentives.   At present, owners of designated landmarks qualify for  10-year property tax abatements, with the idea being  that money saved on taxes is directed to preservation needs.  Spencer-Hartle said the 10-year tax break is inadequate for financing large-scale preservation projects.

Spencer-Hartle said the HPLO will convene meetings in 2013 aimed at exploring rehabilitation incentives in greater detail.  In the meantime, the clock is ticking for Oregon’s unreinforced masonry buildings.

 

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Compatible but not caricature: Landmarks Commission approves Goose Hollow row houses infil

Rendering courtesy Argo Architect

BY FRED LEESON

The design solution would not be easy. For starters, the site at 2004-2010 SW Madison Street slopes downhill in two directions. It also sits in a corner of Portland’s Kings Hill Historic District, meaning that the design would have to be compatible with, but not a replica of, older buildings in the district, mostly erected between 1882 and 1942.

And because the new plan would have to be approved by the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission, two or more public hearings likely would be needed to reach a design satisfactory to the city’s historic design review body. Add to the stew: another developer, back in 1997, once proposed a seven story building that was fought by the Goose Hollow Foothills League (without success) at both the Landmarks Commission and the state Land Use Board of Appeals. For whatever reason, it was never built.

Well, new problem solved – with surprising speed.

Beaverton architect Ted Argo presented plans for two row houses, covered by a single hipped roof form with dormers and pediments over the front doors. The bottom floor is encased with cedar lap siding and the upper floor and dormers with cedar shingles.  Brick veneer wraps the concrete foundation. Unlike plans for most new buildings in historic districts, Argo’s plan for Encore Homes won approval in a single brief public hearing.

Based on a recommendation from David Skilton, Argo didn’t bother with an advisory session before submitting plans for approval. “I felt pretty good about where we got,” Skilton told the commission at the meeting’s start.

Rear of proposed project (rendering courtesy Argo Architect)

“We knew we did not want copies of existing buildings, but there are compatible precedents,” Argo said. He took advantage of the slope to tuck off-street parking under the building.

Jerry Powell, a veteran planning committee member of the Goose Hollow Foothills League, criticized the plan, albeit with some reluctance. “It’s difficult to sit here and say I like it but I don’t like it,” he said.  Powell said he felt it lacked “a certain amount of grace,” and said he thought the small front porches looked “kind of tacked on.”

But Argo’s plan drew little criticism from the landmarks commission. Brian Emerick, an architect-member of the review body, called it “a good infill design in keeping with the district without being a replica.” He added that he wasn’t “wild” about the exterior color scheme, but noted that the commission does not review color choices. “On balance, I think it will be a strong contribution to the neighborhood and a strong development,”  Emerick said. The plan was approved by a 4-0 vote.

The vacant site was once home to an Arts and Crafts era apartment building that burned many years ago.  Powell, the Goose Hollow representative, said, “The whole neighborhood is sighing with relief that finally there will be a building on that corner instead of a tent camp.”

 

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"What's the right thing to do?" Remembering developer, historic preservationist Art DeMuro

Art DeMuro (image courtesy Venerable Properties)

BY FRED LEESON

Portland has been blessed with several architectural preservationists over the years.

Eric Ladd, who died in 2000, is often recognized as the first, with his efforts to help move the Kamm house and plans for his never-completed Ladd Colony in the 1960s. Then one can turn to architects George McMath, father of the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission and municipal landmark designations, and William J. Hawkins III, whose grasp of history and detail is well preserved in his architectural history books and restoration projects. Certainly one must include the late Bill Naito, who showed that old buildings could have creative new lives in Old Town and elsewhere, and the McMenamin brothers, who built a thriving, whimsical empire on beer, old buildings and history. 

But none may have more lasting significance than Art DeMuro. In hardly more than 20 years in Portland, the Chicago-born preservationist/developer restored many significant landmarks for decades of continued productive use. And in the months and days before his untimely death at age 57 in September, DeMuro made financial commitments intended to bolster Oregon’s preservation community and to train generations of additional preservation experts.

His largest gift, $2.8 million, went to the University of Oregon Historic Preservation Program. It likely will go to an endowed chair in preservation. This past January, in announcing the gift, DeMuro said, “My hope is that the passion of us who engaged intimately in the field spreads to become a more common social ethic throughout our culture….Once a historic building is lost, all of that history is gone. If I can train and inspire other people to do the same thing when I am gone, there are 10 people in my place to carry on. I need to know that I did all I possibly could to support what I care about; my hope is that others will want to join in and make it a bigger effort.”

Art DeMuro (image courtesy Venerable Properties)

In the days before his death, DeMuro also committed to donating $750,000 to the Bosco-Milligan Foundation, to pay off outstanding debts on the foundation’s Architectural Heritage Center and to start a permanent endowment. He also committed to giving “a very sizable amount” to the Historic Preservation League of Oregon, according to its executive director, Peggy Moretti. The HPLO is a state-wide preservation advocacy organization that works in association with local preservation groups such as Portland’s Bosco-Milligan.

Cathy Galbraith, Bosco-Milligan’s executive director, said she hopes to build an endowment totaling $1 million during the next year. At a 5 percent return, that would generate $50,000 per year in operating revenue without shrinking the long-term next egg. Galbraith said the endowment would be a major step in achieving “financial sustainability” for the 25-year old Portland-based preservation foundation.

Craig Kelly, DeMuro’s long-time partner in the Venerable Group, announced the commitment to Bosco-Milligan at the organization’s annual fund-raising auction on Oct. 20. Kelly choked with emotion when he read DeMuro’s comments about expanding support for preservation. “It is still hard for me to say Art’s words,” he said later. 

In some ways, DeMuro was an unlikely success in Portland. In a city often noted for its insular business networks, he was an “outsider” who arrived in 1991 after working in the family real estate business in Phoenix, Arizona. And in a city often noted for its casual behavior, DeMuro seldom appeared in public without a dark suit and tie, shined shoes and his jet-black hair, neatly styled.

After hardly more than 10 years in Portland, he was appointed to the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission in a seat designated for a “developer.” But as Galbraith noted, he was no pushover for developers. He proved to be a stickler for architectural details and preservation of as much historic fabric as possible when renovation plans came before the commission. In his final three years, serving as landmarks chair, he used gentle humor whenever possible to ease tension and make the review process more comprehensible to applicants.

Ladd Carriage House (image courtesy Wikipedia Commons)

DeMuro’s firm accomplished more than a dozen restoration/renovation projects in Portland and Astoria. The best known are the Ladd Carriage House, which had to be moved several blocks and then returned to its original location atop new underground parking, and four buildings linked together in Old Town’s White Stag block to become the Portland branch of the University of Oregon’s architecture school. At his death, the Venerable firm was working on plans to renovate the old Washington High School into housing and other uses – a project that DeMuro had called his most complicated ever. His business associates plan to carry on with it.

Historic preservationist Paul Falsetto, who worked on the Ladd restoration, recalls an episode in which a major structural flaw was uncovered. Work had to be stopped while engineering options were studied and costs evaluated. When the options were presented to DeMuro, Falsetto said DeMuro asked only one question: “What’s the right thing to do?”

If DeMuro’s legacy does motivate a new generation of preservationists, perhaps that’s the best question for them and all preservation activists to remember.

Fred Leeson is board president of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation and its Architectural Heritage Center.

 

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Renovating the Pittock Mansion

Pittock Mansion (photo by Brian Libby)

BY FRED LEESON

As Portland notes the 50th anniversary of the Columbus Day Storm this month, it’s worth noting that the record high winds on October 12, 1962, indirectly led to public purchase of perhaps the city’s best-known and best-loved residences: the Pittock Mansion. 

Unlike the high winds that damaged the Pittock and thousands of other buildings that day, public acquisition took nearly two more years. But storm damage that led to talk about demolition of the mansion also led to public determination and fund-raising efforts to save it under municipal ownership in 1964. The numbers seem unreal today — a purchase price of $225,000, with $75,000 of that total raised in a public fund drive.

Today, the mansion managers expect to spend more than four times that amount to repair damage caused by the much slower attrition of water infiltration on the mansions exterior terraces. Plans call for removing and replacing damaged balusters, removing the tile floors, adding a new waterproof membrane, replacing the tile floors and then reinstalling new or repaired stone balusters. 

“Anything we don’t have to replace we will reuse,” architect Peter Meijer told the Portland Landmarks Commission this month. He said stone from a quarry in Tenino, Washington, the source of the original baluster material, is no longer available. Meijer said a comparable match has been found at a quarry in Nova Scotia. Some of the balusters to be replaced are made of concrete, a substitute used in earlier repairs.

Meijer said the work is schedule to occur over 12 to 16 weeks next summer. The funding is being developed through a partnership between the Parks Bureau and the non-profit Pittock Mansion Society, which took over management of the building in 2007 as part of a Parks Bureau budget-cutting plan. A successful restoration project should prove that the partnership is an acceptable means of preserving the much-loved mansion, which attracts some 80,000 visitors per year. 

In some ways, the building’s history is as quirky as its view is wonderful from high in Portland’s northwest hills. It was designed and built between 1909 and 1914 for Henry and Georgiana Pittock, early pioneers who accumulated extensive wealth from numerous business dealings, including Pittock’s conversion of the Weekly Oregonian, which he bought in 1860, into a daily newspaper.

The architect of the 22-room mansion was Edward T. Foulkes, a Monmouth native whose impressive career was spent mostly in the San Francisco Bay area and Fresno, Calif. Pittock wanted his mansion to showcase Pacific Northwest materials and craftsmanship, and Foulkes delivered. The architect was still in the early stages of his career at the time, after studying at Stanford, MIT and the famed Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris. He also spent two years travelling much of the world in 1903-04.

The mansion project also showed the power of influential businessmen of the era. Portland historian Kimbark E. MacColl wrote about how Pittock and the City Water Board of the era reached a private agreement to extend a city water line to the mansion even though it was located a half mile beyond city boundaries. The quiet deal was cancelled, however, when a City Council member went public with it.

The Pittocks were elderly — 80 and 68, respectively — when they moved into their new home in 1914. Both were deceased within five years. By the time of the Columbus Day storm, a grandson had been trying to sell the building, without success.

An unexpected act of nature and the desire of Portlanders to share ostentatious opulence — albeit on a part-time basis — saved a monument and a fascinating look at life of the rich and famous of an earlier era.

 

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Stadium Fred Meyer joins fraternity of well-designed central city grocers

Proposed Stadium Fred Meyer store (image courtesy Group Mackenzie)

BY FRED LEESON

Often it seems that the buildings that sustain us with food and the necessities of life are among the most ugly we encounter.  Think Wal-Mart, Costco, or even the revamped Safeway on Hawthorne Boulevard that reopened to dismal reviews earlier this year.

Perhaps the same will NOT be said about a remodeled Stadium Fred Meyer, which is currently on the drawing boards at the Group Mackenzie architecture and planning firm. With a not-so-gentle prod from the Portland Design Commission, the evolving Fred Meyer plan shows respect for pedestrians, its prominent West Burnside frontage and gives a subtle nod to Burnside history.

But let’s backtrack for a moment. Fred Meyer plans to tear down the long vacant Hollywood Video store and fill the parking lot that also faced on West Burnside.  Group Mackenzie came to the Design Commission last year for two advisory meetings. In the first, the firm presented  a “suburban-esque” design with corner-defining mini-towers topped with hipped roofs. The design reviewers voiced the kind of criticism that would have improved the Hawthorne Safeway project, had it been located in a design zone designated by the city. One commissioner called the hipped roofs “party hats.”

“We had a more suburban approach and everyone hated it,” said Terry Krause, one of the Group Mackenzie architects.

To its credit, Group Mackenzie returned with a design that much better reflects its high-density urban location.  The firm also met six times with the aggressive Northwest District Association land-use committee, which ranks high among Portland’s neighborhood watchdog groups.  “We are well-pleased with the evolution of this project,” the committee chair, John Bradley, testified last week – words seldom heard by other Northwest Portland developers.

The revised plan adopts a brick-faced arcade along the sloping Burnside frontage, ranging from two levels at NW 20th Place to four levels at NW 20th Ave.  The main entrance to Fred Meyer will be at 20th Place, while the 20th Avenue corner will include two tenant-retail spaces to activate the eastern edge.

The arcade will provide a covered pedestrian space 10 feet wide, in addition to the 15-foot sidewalk.  Krause  said the Burnside frontage will include Fred Meyer’s floral shop and a seating area in addition to the two retail spaces near 20th Avenue.  

Krause and Ryan Schera, a Group Mackenzie land-use planner, said the arcade theme evokes older arcade-like buildings along East Burnside.  “We think it will be a wonderful addition to the neighborhood,” Krause said.   In what could be taken as a dramatic understatement, Schera said the design  “would be a fairly significant departure from other Fred Meyer stores.” 

There are a few modest quibbles to be resolved before the commission approves the final plan, likely to occur next month. One involves bike parking, and how to keep bikes from from cluttering up the front of the building. The current plan calls for bike parking in the ground-floor covered parking lot, but there are concerns that some cyclists will chose to lock on to street signs or any other secure post on the street, instead.

The proposed Fred Meyer blade signs also exceed the city’s sign regulations for square footage.  Chris Caruso, the city planner assigned to the project, recommended approval anyway, saying, “We felt the signs were in keeping with the general size of the building.”  Design commissioners seemed less sure.  But they also laughed when Bradley of the neighborhood association noted the neighborhood “would lose the hideous free-standing internally illuminated sign” that sits there today. 

The design commission is likely to approve the plan when Fred Meyer returns on October 18.  Commissioner Ben Kaiser called the plan a “drastic improvement” over the first version. “It has come a long ways from what we first saw,” added Chair Gwen Millius.

 

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Balancing preservation and prerogative in Irvington

Bagwell residence, Irvington (photo by Fred Leeson)

BY FRED LEESON

Chances are good that David Bagwell didn’t anticipate the path awaiting him as he started working with a designer on plans for a two-story addition to the rear of his 1926 Dutch Colonial home in Irvington. In the end, he found himself involved in what may be a precedent-setting case for additions to residences in some other neighborhoods, as well.

Because his house sits in the nearly two-year old Irvington National Historic District, Bagwell’s plans required a historic design review by the Portland’s Bureau of Development Services.

“We worked with the city,” which approved his plan, “and we think the city is correct,” Bagwell testified before the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission this week. But the Irvington Community Association filed an appeal, contending that the city staff crafted an approval criteria that doesn’t exist in the city code.

In its written decision, the city ruled that Bagwell’s plan was acceptable because it was mostly not visible from the front of the house. Since the house itself was not a designated landmark – only a contributing element to the neighborhood historic district – the city concluded that the impact on the district, rather than the house, was the determining factor.

The city staff reached its conclusion because it believed the district was created under federal rules “based solely on an evaluation of its historical character conducted from the public right-of-way,” according to the city ruling.

Members of Irvington’s land use and historic preservation committees begged to differ. Jim Heuer, one of the preservationists who helped create the district, said photographs from the public rights-of-way were only part of the nomination material, along with “complete aesthetic statements that included more than the front.” He also noted that part of the historic district “experience” would be views of the rear of the house by people who lived nearby.

“We have to allow a certain amount of alterations,” he noted. “This is not a museum district.” But he thought the proposed 600-square foot addition was too large and too incompatible with the rest of the 1840-square foot residence. Rather than use the “drive-by” criteria, Dean Gisvold, chair of the neighborhood land-use committee, said the city should be evaluating additions to historic properties using a “hierarchy of compatibility” standard included in the city zoning code for municipally-designated landmarks and historic districts.

Under that guideline, additions are to be evaluated for compatibility with the “original resource,” then with adjacent properties and with the rest of the district. “If the interpretation of criteria is wrong, then the decision based on it is also faulty,” Gisvold testified.

After considerable discussion, the landmarks commission reached a consensus that a contributing element of a national historic district should be considered the original resource, not the entire district. This approach gives the city more discretion in judging the merits of a rear addition even it is invisible from the sidewalk. Tim Heron, director of the BDS planning staff, said the ambiguity in the city code could be remedied in a future revision.

And what of Bagwell’s planned addition? To the untrained ear, the debate over the “resource” to be considered must have seemed dense and perplexing. “It just seems to me that we have a matter of opinions” about the design of his addition, he said.

The landmarks commission seemed comfortable with the scale and massing of the proposal, but offered some suggestions about more historically-compatible window locations. Bagwell and designer Don Rouzie said they would work with the city staff and present a revised plan next month.

In the end, the homeowner is likely to win approval. And, until some future code revision clarifies the standing of individual contributing buildings in national historic districts, the city planning staff wins a better understanding of how to manage similar applications in the future.

Fred Leeson is board president of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation and its Architectural Heritage Center in Portland.

 

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Courtyard for (not by) Marriott: Design Commission applauds updated hotel design

Marriott Residence Inn planned for 9th & Marshall (rendering courtesy SERA Architects)

BY FRED LEESON

Two developers who played big roles in Portland’s high-flying condo boom of the early 2000s are returning to one of their primary neighborhoods with a different development plan: a residential hotel for the Pearl District.

Homer Williams and Dike Dame are working on a six-story Marriott Residence Inn to be erected on a vacant, trapezoidal block bounded by N.W. Marshall and Northrup Streets between N.W. 9th Avenue and Station Way.  The roughly U-shaped building with 224 units would include a public/private courtyard opening off Marshall Street.

The hotel designers, SERA Architects of Portland, earned unanimous approval from the Portland Design Commission on June 7 after substantially reworking vehicular access to the building and switching locations of some internal components.  “Marriott, we were pleased to discover, was pleased with the changes,” said Kurt Schultz, a SERA principal.  So were commission members, who expressed pleasure that many of their concerns were addressed successfully.

The most compelling change involved vehicular access.  The original plan called for vehicles to enter the courtyard off Marshall Street and drop off passengers deep in the courtyard.  Never mind that the building’s primary façade on Ninth Avenue included a dominating six-story perforated yellow metal screen that virtually screamed “main entry. ”   David Wark, an architect who is perhaps the most out-spoken member of the current design commission, criticized that version of the hotel as having “an urban skin and a suburban core.”

The revised plan eliminates vehicles from the courtyard, allowing the design team to craft a more inviting landscape for both public and private use.  Landscaping and a water feature will separate a private meeting/drinking/eating space for hotel guests in the courtyard from the public domain that will face on Marshall.  Designers also moved more hotel units on the Station Way side to look into the attractive courtyard, and shifted a pool and exercise facilities to open view on the ground-floor Station Way frontage.

Thus, the six-story perforated metal screen indeed becomes the main entry for both pedestrians and vehicles.  Marriott agreed to provide more valet staff so that cars can be moved quickly from the loading zone on Ninth near Northrup.  Because the hotel is intended for guests who routinely stay for five or six days, the loading zone is expected to be less busy than a hotel geared for shorter stays.  Hotel parking will be at the nearby Station Place Garage.

Kurt Lango, a principal in Lango Hansen Landscape Architects, said the courtyard surface will be composed of two colors of pavers.  A curving arc of evergreen trees on the eastern side will provide a buffer and some privacy for hotel-room decks overlooking the courtyard.  There will be wooden benches in the public realm and fire pits and outdoor seating for hotel, restaurant and bar patrons.  And how to maintain the separation of patrons and non-patrons?   “We’ll have to police the space aggressively,” said Trevor Rowe, a Williams & Dame representative.

Dominant elements of the facades on the outside of the U-shaped buildings will be white bricks and ribbon windows, aside from the striking tower of perforated metal.  Andrew Janksy, a design commission member, called the building “clean and simple and visually interesting.”

Wark, who had criticized the earlier version, said the change in the courtyard plan “allowed the project to coalesce.”  As for the revamped courtyard, he added, “There is nothing like it in the Pearl or in the city.  It could be one of our best outdoor spaces.”

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SERA channels historic Elmer Feig designs for two Alphabet District apartments

Aerial view of apartments near NW 19th & Johnson (rendering courtesy SERA Architects)

BY FRED LEESON

No other residential neighborhood in Portland has the same ambience as Northwest Portland below 23rd Avenue, with its dense assortment of cheek-by-jowl 1920s apartment buildings. Though dozens were built in the same decade, interesting and sometimes amusing architectural tricks kept them from having a cookie-cutter feel.

For that we can thank one of the city’s busiest architectural designers of that roaring era, who is now largely forgotten. But the name of Elmer Feig surfaced again recently as SERA Architects completed designs for two new apartment buildings that will sit cater-corner in the Alphabet Historic District at the intersection of NW 19th Avenue and Johnson Street.

The design team headed by SERA’s Kurt Schultz examined several of Feig’s 25 Northwest Portland apartment structures built mostly from 1925 to 1931. If that sounds like a lot of buildings, it is it less than a third of the 81 attributed to Feig throughout the city in roughly that same time span.

"Building B" pllanned for near NW 19th & Johnson (rendering courtesy SERA Architects)

Feig’s formula was simple enough: often three stories with daylight basements, finished in stucco or brick, recessed entry courtyards, double-loaded hallways, flat roofs and parapets. But then the fun begins. Schultz described some Feig buildings as having “jazzy Spanish” details, but that’s just for starters. Descriptors for others include Art Deco, Spanish Colonial, Mediterranean, Moorish, Tudor and even Egyptian.

For someone who apparently was never registered as an architect, Elmer Feig was a busy man with a crowded palette. The Great Depression cut his career short, however, and little of his work has surfaced with a date past 1931. His final listing in a city directory was 1937. He died in 1968 at age 71.

The SERA team looked to Feig’s work for some of its design cues in an attempt to satisfy the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission that its plans were an appropriate fit for the historic district. As the city planning report noted, “Inserting new development into historic district contexts is a process that must weigh many variables against one another. Perhaps the most difficult balance to strike is between economic viability, which tends to dictate maximizing size, and a mixed historic development pattern.”

The developers of the two new market-rate buildings, Mill Creek Residential Trust, compromised on that point. The original plans called for six-story buildings and the final versions came in at five. Yet that was too much for one landmarks commissioner, Harris Matarazzo. He described the designs as handsome, but believed they were still too large given their proximity to three nearby smaller buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. He cast the lone opposing vote in a 4 to 1 final tally.

"Building A" near NW 19th & Johnson (rendering courtesy SERA Architects)

Both SERA buildings will have similar rusticated first floors, but that is the only similarity. The larger “Building A” with 86 apartments, will have a stucco finish, parapets and circular decorative medallions, a playful touch of which Feig no doubt would have approved. Across the street, the smaller “Building B” with 48 units will have the second, third and fourth floors wrapped in brick with a fifth floor sheathed in stucco panels. Building B includes a flat projecting cornice, unlike its companion.

In Northwest Portland, where an aggressive neighborhood association watches land-use matters with hawk-like vigilance, the concern was more for the fate of four century-old elm trees on Johnson Street than the architecture. The neighbors felt the trees deserved as much protection by the Landmarks Commission as the built environment, since the national historic district description includes the significance of the trees. The city planning staff concluded that the commission’s jurisdiction did not include the public right-of-way on which the trees sit.

Schultz said the development team would try to protect and preserve the trees, but there is no guarantee as to the outcome. The protective steps will include hand demolition of a single-story building on the site of Building A, a reduction in underground parking to leave more room for the tree roots, and careful scheduling of construction equipment to minimize damage. Yet it may take five to seven years to determine whether the trees survive, Schultz said.

While Schultz likely will not match Feig’s output in total Northwest Portland apartment buildings, the SERA team has a accumulated a good feel for the neighborhood’s architecture and has been diligent in meeting with neighborhood representatives. They also met several times five years ago when SERA was designing a larger apartment complex that today sits comfortably at the eastern edge of Couch Park on N.W. 19th Avenue between Glisan and Hoyt Streets.

 

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Bowl in a glass box: Landmarks Commission and PDC renew Coliseum renovation discussion

Memorial Coliseum (photo by Brian Libby)

BY FRED LEESON

Here’s question that might be novel in the history of architecture. Can a single building have two exteriors?

The issue arose when the Portland Landmarks Commission on May 14 considered proposed renovations to the “exterior” of Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Under Portland’s zoning code, the commission cannot rule on changes to an interior space unless the interior space itself has been designated as a landmark.

That distinction was troubling to two landmarks commissioners, who said the building’s unique “bowl-within-a-glass box” design makes the concrete seating bowl an essential element to the building’s external appearance.

“In my mind we really have two significant exteriors, the bowl and the glass,” said Harris Matarazzo, a Portland lawyer who sits on the commission. Matarazzo said he didn’t think it was appropriate for the commission to approve changes to the building’s appearance when the city has not yet revealed all the changes is hopes to make inside the building. He added that to his way of thinking, the Coliseum’s “interior” was located inside the seating bowl.

Kevin Brake, a project manager for the Portland Development Commission that is managing the Coliseum upgrades, said there would be “no modifications to the bowl itself.” Inside the Coliseum, he said the bowl would be fitted with new seats, plumbing would be replaced, restrooms upgraded, new audio-visual equipment and a new scoreboard. Outside the bowl, he said there would be changes to concession stands, lighting and differing paint colors.

When Matarazzo asked whether the building would look any different to an observer from the outside, Brake replied, “It will be generally similar in form and presentation.”

Paul Solimano, another landmarks commissioner, agreed with Matarazzo about the important of the bowl’s appearance looking at the Coliseum from the outside. Based on the detailed building history that led to placement of the Coliseum on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009, Solimano said, “I’m not convinced the interior is not covered” by the commission’s jurisdiction.

But David Skilton, a city preservation planner, said the National Register listing has no bearing on the city’s own rules for regulating landmarks. Under the city code, Skilton said the commission’s only jurisdiction is over a building’s exterior, unless an interior space specifically has been given local landmark status.

The “exterior” changes include a new, better-insulated roof that will not be visible from ground level, and renovations to the swooping entry canopy that will better reflect the original design. The PDC had originally asked that the so-called Pine Court, an outdoor plaza that was added several years after the Coliseum was finished, be removed to make way for a new design. However, that element of the application was dropped. The PDC is expected to return later with detailed plans for the Pine Court and for the Fountain Court that was the original monument for veterans killed in wars.

Matarazzo cast the lone vote against the exterior changes, saying it was inappropriate to approve them without knowing the full scope of proposed improvements. “I can’t put aside what I think our mandate is for the purpose of expedience,” he said.

The commission asked, and Brake agreed, to hold an advisory session at some future date when all proposed changes will be presented and discussed. But given the city’s interpretation of the landmarks commission’s jurisdiction, recommendations from the landmarks panel about any changes inside the Coliseum’s glass walls would be advisory rather than binding.

 

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Sheldon on Old Town: endangered species or sweet spot?

Old Town at First & Couch (photo by Brian Libby)

BY FRED LEESON

Perhaps no one in Portland knows the Old Town/Chinatown district better than George  “Bing” Sheldon,  the  “S” in SERA Architects, one of the city’s most prominent partnerships.  Sheldon has housed his office north of Burnside in the historic district since 1968.

With almost 45 years under his belt, Sheldon makes his feelings clear these days:  He doesn’t like what he sees.

“To me it’s obvious the system has failed completely,” he told the AIA’s Historic Resources Committee recently, referring to the stagnation in Old Town.  While surprising growth has occurred in the Pearl District and other parts of the central city, little has come to Old Town.  “At this point, I have given up total confidence in the public sector,” he said.  Though designing new projects in historic districts is never easy, Sheldon noted that advances have occurred in Northwest Portland’s Alphabet District and in the 13th Avenue historic district, while Old Town moulders.

As a consequence, Sheldon has asked the Historic Preservation League of Oregon to include Old Town on its list of the state’s 10 most endangered places.  The preservation organization’s annual list will be issued later this month.

Street musician in Old Town (photo by surreal perception, via Flickr)

Sheldon also  has asked the HPLO, a state-wide preservation advocacy group, to convene property owners, developers, social service agencies and ethnic groups that have a stake in Old Town to see if agreements can be reached that will bring new energy to the historic district.

“Cities that don’t change, die,” Sheldon said.  “That’s what I believe.”  Sheldon said little has occurred in Old Town since completion of the Lan Su Chinese Garden almost 12 years ago, and it was built largely with public rather than private funding.  He also noted that land-transfer agreements that led to the garden were hammered out by the late William S. “Bill” Naito, a creative entrepreneur who stimulated a popular revival in Old Town back in the 1970s.

“Once Bill died, I think civic leadership disappeared,” Sheldon said.  “If he were alive today, he’d be front and center in this discussion.  He was full of great ideas and had the determination and courage to do them.”

An attempt by Mayor Sam Adams to reach a consensus with developers and historic preservation advocates over possibilities for several “opportunity sites” in Old Town died last year in a stalemate.  City zoning rules in much of Old Town allow buildings as tall as 200 feet, which preservationists contend would overwhelm and eventually strangle the historic feel of Portland’s oldest neighborhood.

Sheldon did not indicate his leanings for solutions, but he did say the city should not be afraid to demolish buildings that have outlived their usefulness.  His own firm was involved in a prolonged battle over the demolition of the Dirty Duck Tavern, to make way for a new Blanchet House now under construction.

As a result of that deal, the Portland Development Commission now holds the old Blanchet House on the same block.  “I predict they (PDC) will just sit on it,” Sheldon said.  “We’ll have another empty building waiting to fall down.”  He added,  “I’m not in favor of demolition, but I’m not in favor of something that doesn’t work.”

It will be interesting to see if the HPLO accepts Sheldon’s request to serve as a mediator.  A recent year-long HPLO study of historic districts around the state suggested that infill projects should be respectful of the scale and massing of adjacent historic structures, a tune that doesn’t resonate with developers. 

HPLO Executive Director Peggy Moretti listened to Sheldon’s plea.  She said the organization supports “compatible” infill.  “A lot of good pieces of solutions exist, and they need to be brought together,” she said.

Paul Falsetto, an architect who worked on the HPLO infill study, said all parties need to find a “sweet spot” for infill that does not overwhelm.  “This is where we need to play,” he said of that seemingly hard-to-find balance.

As an architect, Sheldon’s firm has worked on many new buildings as well as historic renovations.  As a former Portland Planning Commission president, he’s no rube when it comes to public process and public/private partnerships.  “We have a history of working things out,” he said.  “I don’t know why this area has avoided solutions.”

Preservationists skirmish with city on Coliseum restoration details

Memorial Coliseum (photo by Julius Schulman, courtesy Taschen)

BY FRED LEESON

The battle to save Memorial Coliseum from demolition was won three years ago. Now the battle – skirmish, is more like it – is over how the landmark building will be renovated for further use as an event arena.

Two architects who worked mightily to place the Coliseum on the National Register of Historic Places, Peter Meijer and Kristen Minor, objected strongly this week when the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission took a first look at several comparatively minor changes proposed for the Coliseum’s exterior.

Meijer and Minor contended that the commission also should be reviewing changes that will occur inside the International Style monument, even though city regulations limit the commission’s purview to exterior changes on designated landmarks.

“We don’t see any rational reason why the whole project doesn’t come before you,” Meijer said. He said the basic building design – an oval concrete seating bowl inside a four-sided glass box – was intended to expose the interior to public view from the outside. He said the inherent design makes no distinction between the building’s its interior and exterior.

Which begs the question: What’s the plan for the interior? So far, no formal plans have been filed with the city development office. Kevin Brake, a senior project manager for the Portland Development Commission that is overseeing the renovation, said the interior changes “primarily” concern color and lighting. He said there were no changes planned for the interior bowl, although some representatives from veterans’ groups said the number of seats inside the bowl apparently will be reduced.

Tim Heron, a senior city manager who is the chief staff to the landmarks commission, said the city zoning code does not allow for review of interior changes unless the space is designated as an interior landmark. He said the only two interior landmarks designated by the city are two restaurants, Huber’s and Jake’s Famous Crawfish.

For procedural reasons, the landmarks commission cannot rule on the proposed exterior changes until May 14 at the earliest. It was clear from the opening discussion on April 9, however, that the commission sees no problem with a new roof that will add four inches of solid insulation or with some minor changes to stairway railings. The thicker roof will not be visible above a low parapet.

The commission, in accord with a staff recommendation, headed off a proposed change to the curvilinear, swooping entry pavilion that significantly differed from the building’s original 1960 design. The PDC had asked to line the underside of pavilion roof with narrow cedar slats over a black background to disguise deterioration in the ceiling. The original plaster ceiling was covered in approximately 1993 with beaded-plywood that was painted white.

Based on the commission’s discussion, Robert Mawson, a consultant working with the PDC, agreed to drop the cedar slats and install a new ceiling of a white, “plaster-like” material, instead. He said the cedar slats had been proposed as a less-costly solution. Mawson said the renovation plan includes removing paint from the glu-lam beams that support the swooping roof so the beams will appear as they originally did when the building opened early in 1961.

Another skirmish in the renovation involves the so-called “Pine Court,” a lower-level plaza on the southeast side of the building. Originally vacant when the Coliseum opened, a brick plaza and concrete planter were added later, possibly in 1967. The plaza may have been designed by the Skidmore Owings Merrill firm that designed the Coliseum, although it seems to relate to a different design aesthetic.

The PDC has asked the landmarks commission to remove the Pine Court plaza while it works with veterans organizations to design a more fitting memorial in the same location. The plaza includes a low memorial wall with names of soldiers killed in the Korean War. The commission, however, expressed reluctance to demolish the Pine Court before a new design is proposed. Brake said the PDC is working with a committee of veterans, but if past history is any hint, those talks are likely to be lengthy and boisterous. The delay should provide more time to investigate the history and design of the Pine Court, in the event that strong sentiment emerges to save it.

 

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Disneyland versus differentiation: Semes on designing for historic districts

White Stag Block, Old Town (photo by Brian Libby)

BY FRED LEESON

Perhaps the most difficult challenge facing any architect is deciding on appropriate scale, mass and materials when contemplating a new building in a historic district.

A prime example is Portland’s own Skidmore-Old Town Historic District, where a committee of developers, property owners and preservationists convened by Mayor Sam Adams fought to a standstill last year over prospects for several “opportunity sites” (read: parking lots) in Old Town.

Property owners hoped to take advantage of building heights under the current zoning that would have let them build as high as 10 stories, or so. Historians and preservationists said the zoning rules were inappropriate for a historic district where most contributing historic buildings were four stories or fewer. The battle never got so far as the touchy subjects of materials or specific building designs.

Meanwhile, the Portland Development Commission and the Architectural Heritage Center have been storing historic cast-iron building remnants for decades, waiting for some consensus on how they should be re-used in downtown’s historic fabric.

An architect and academic who thinks he has the answers is Steven W. Semes, an associate professor at the University of Notre Dame who will speak in Portland on March 11 in talk and panel discussion hosted by the Historic Preservation League of Oregon. Semes is the author of “The Future of the Past: A Conservation Ethic for Architecture, Urbanism, and Historic Preservation,” a book that is stirring passions of preservationists and making some architects rethink how they should go about designing infill projects in historic districts.

Steven Semes

The contemporary conventional wisdom is that new buildings in historic districts should speak to their own time and place, and that new buildings shouldn’t look “old,” lest they confuse visitors about what is truly historic. Such confusion is sometimes called the “Disneyland effect.” Guidelines from the federal Department of the Interior, which administers the National Trust for Historic Preservation, state that new buildings should differentiate themselves from old.

Semes is chief advocate for a different approach. He believes that such “differentiation” should be subtle, and that new building should reflect the context of their surroundings. In short, he urges architects to use historic building forms while sending gentle signals that would tell a viewer when such buildings were erected.

Here are a couple paragraphs from Semes own internet blog, at traditional-building.com, that make his case:

Preservation authorities should promote “appropriateness.” I have proposed that the appropriate is the fitting and the exemplary. A new building or an addition is fitting when it intends to fit, rather than subvert, the character of the place and responds to local climate, materials, topography and building traditions. It is exemplary when it “sets a good example” for others to follow so that, over time, the character of the place will be preserved rather than diminished.

“Differentiating” new work from historic fabric is valid. But it should be subtle. This approach dates back to such 19th-century models as the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum, where restorers recomposed the surviving fragments of the Roman marble arch and completed the missing parts in similarly colored, but distinguishable, travertine. But the useful distinction between new and old materials must not prevent our seeing the monument as a whole. Similarly, managing a historic district, like curating an art collection, cannot succeed if you are only permitted to add to it things that do not belong there.

The HPLO, a state-wide preservation advocacy group, spent a whole year recently studying historic districts around Oregon, and drafted guidelines that it believes should be followed when reviewing infill projects in historic districts. In short, the HPLO came to much the same conclusion as Semes. It believes that new buildings should be similar in height and mass, and that “the district is the resource” in looking for design cues.

Semes will speak at 3 p.m. on March 11 at the UO/White Stag Building, 70 NW Couch St. A panel of architects developers and historians also will participate. Ticket prices are $20 for the general public, and $15 for members of the HPLO and the Architectural Heritage Center, Congress for New Urbanism-Cascadia and the International Network of Traditional Building Architects and Urbanish- USA. Admission for students is $8.