Two pillars of urban planning tumble

Sunday, December 26, 2004

In 2004, what fell down was more important than the architecture that went up

Gragg: Too many wonks, too few visionaries

Voted into being just five months apart 32 years ago, the 1972 Downtown Plan and Oregon Senate Bill 100 gave Oregon two of the most far-reaching visions in the history of American urban planning.

At least until the nearsightedness of 2004.

Much as they rose together, they fell in November. The Downtown Plan's brilliant framework of tightly focused partnerships between business and government cracked with November's pitiful deal to revitalize the transit mall. Senate Bill 100's design for a mutually beneficial urban/rural divide was shattered by Measure 37.

In the local world of architecture and planning for 2004, nothing measures in profundity to those two events.

For those who don't know their Portland catechism, the '72 plan laid the groundwork for downtown's comeback with such catalytic projects as Tom McCall Waterfront Park, the transit mall, light rail and Pioneer Courthouse Square. It kept the city's star shining brightly as the region's center for everything from shopping to new urban housing.

Senate Bill 100 shaped the statewide land-use planning system that has bounded cities and preserved farms, forests and wilderness. One need only savor the sprawl of the Seattle area's Sammamish and Kent valleys to see what might have replaced many of the Willamette Valley's farms, nurseries and vineyards had the bill not been written.

Both plan and bill were merely pieces of paper. What brought them to fruition was leadership. What broke them was the lack of it.

As city and TriMet officials finalized details to bring light rail to the transit mall -- and with it urban design improvements to begin a new chapter of downtown revitalization -- the Portland Business Alliance, allegedly the voice of the private sector, opted to sit mutely on the sidelines. The self-appointed downtown chief, parking magnate Greg Goodman, took the lead, negotiating a deal he couldn't or wouldn't deliver.

The result? Light rail is still coming, but courtesy of Goodman's flip-flopping, with $11 million less to spend. That's the $5 million he pressured the city to cut from a 20-year local improvement district plus the $6 million lost in matching federal dollars. Now instead of light rail bringing a downtown revitalization of new paving, shelters, kiosks, art and events, it will bring two pairs of tracks.

With Measure 37, it's far too early to measure the full impact. But the message sent was clear by its passage even in Multnomah County: The historical protectors of Oregon's land-use system, Portland's urban voters, no longer see a vision.

The reason? A confusion of public process for public leadership. In short, there are too many policy wonks, too few visionaries and a critical dearth of talented salesmen.

Meanwhile, the region's economic outlook will only be further muddied by the legal mess Measure 37 will unleash. Property owners may want compensation or waivers. But developers -- and, most of all, lenders -- prefer certainty about what they can build and where, when the roads will come and sewers will be connected. In short, they like planning and regulation -- most of which will be stuck on hold while the lawyers sort out the measure.

It may take years for the predicted McMansions and strip malls to begin rising on precious farms and beachfronts (though the billboards and trailer parks might move in pretty fast). But the black eye Measure 37 gives to the state's reputation as an environmentally enlightened place will swell fast -- at precisely the moment when Oregon might have looked prettiest to the new generation of pro-environment businesses and consumers.

Highs and lows

In light of such tectonic shifts, individual buildings and planning projects seem puny and inconsequential. But 2004 hatched a few worthy of note.

Gerding/Edlen Development's Brewery Blocks could have been more architecturally compelling. But nearly finished, it stands as the most important project of the new century in other ways. As Gerding/Edlen preserved important pieces of the city's heritage with the renovations of the Blitz-Weinhard Brewhouse and Oregon Armory, the quick leasing of the development's offices and retail defied both the recession and the business community's relentless carping about Portland's business unfriendliness. With the quick sellout of the oh-so-green condominiums in The Henry, Gerding/Edlen proved there is a robust market for environmental sensitivity.

In a subtle-yet-inspired Northwest tribute to Henri Labrouste's 1868 engineering wonder, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, Thomas Hacker Architects made the Hillsdale Branch the crown jewel in the Multnomah County Library's $34 million expansion campaign.

The Portland Community College system brought five new buildings on line, most dramatically transforming its Cascade campus into a bold, new urban extension of North Killingsworth's commercial district. But the pick of the litter architecturally is at the Sylvania campus: the Technology Classroom Center designed by Opsis Architecture. The sleek Euro-styling is just the right move on a campus dominated by '70s concrete Brutalism. But the main attraction is the indoor garden. What a place: glass, grass, trees plus a Lee Kelly fountain -- and no rain.

It raises a simple question: Why don't we build more of these?

SERA Architects proved the lowest of low-income housing can offer opportunities for inspired design. Their recently completed 8NW8 Building offers something all too rare in right-angle-brained Portland: curves -- to both the roofline and the storefront.

But overall, 2004's two most inspired architectural leaps arrived courtesy of Portland's smaller, younger firms. The Lower Burnside club/restaurant Doug Fir, designed by Jeff Kovel, is the most exuberant, self-confident work of commercial architecture this region has seen since Pietro Belluschi's Waddle's (R.I.P. 2004). The Belmont Lofts, by Holst Architecture, is a more globally conscious paean to Northwest Modernism -- not to mention, the city's first condo project laudable foremost for its design.

Too bad such clarity was never found in the year's biggest missed opportunity: the South Waterfront Greenway master plan. What might have encouraged an unprecedented meeting of the urban and the natural devolved into a glorified, designed-by-committee planting scheme that will be implemented mostly by regulation. With too little vision to ever become much of a park -- much less a great work of landscape architecture -- the greenway nevertheless may make a pretty good metaphor for Oregon, circa 2004.

Looking ahead

In the coming year, pivotal decisions will be made on the two most important works of architecture the state has seen in decades: the I-5 Bridge between Portland and Vancouver and a casino for the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs almost certain to be built at Cascade Locks.

Flub the bridge and miss the opportunity of a century. Flub the casino and deface a global landmark, the Columbia River Gorge.

Just beginning the long path to replacement with a study funded in the current federal transportation bill, the bridge is a gateway to two states, two cities and the gorge experienced by more than 100,000 motorists every day. But with all the attendant bureaucracies and the 10- to 15-year timeline, building something awful will be easy as melting snow.

Three things are needed: for starters, advocates for great design on both sides of the river; and an architectural landmark as a top priority in the soon-to-be-written environmental impact statement. But most of all, we need an idea. If ever there was a project for an architectural competition, it is this bridge.

With the casino, Gov. Ted Kulongoski is likely to announce that it's a go in early '05. Rather than wasting everybody's time and money fighting it, Columbia Gorge advocates would do better to help make it work -- beautifully. The Confederated Tribes have a great track record of building well. But they're blazing a trail in deep mud here. Nobody -- repeat: nobody -- has built a casino worthy of this location.

As a condition of his approval of the casino, the governor would do well to require design oversight by a blue-ribbon panel of the state's most trusted and aesthetically sharp stewards from the design, engineering, environmental sciences, engineering and financing professions. The tribes say it will be more eco-resort than casino. Great. Let's make it the Multnomah Hotel, the Timberline, the Oregon Caves Chateau and the Salishan of the 21st century.

New year bells

In the central city, look for discussions to start on the fate of 14 prime Pearl District/Old Town acres as the quiet discussions about moving the U.S. Post Office headquarters to the airport become more public. More housing? A corporate headquarters? A baseball stadium? The Burnside/Couch couplet idea will gain momentum courtesy of our growing form of quasi-government: a nonprofit organization like those created to build the streetcar and aerial tram. Speaking of the aerial tram: Look for more bad news as skyrocketing steel prices and a plunging dollar promise to bust the $28.5 million price tag while changing the intermediate tower from steel to concrete. The Portland Development Commission's first big call of the new year will be the Burnside Bridgehead: big box store or small-business incubator?

Memorial Coliseum is at the crossroads: Board it up? Big box it? Take the leap to an amateur sports facility? Hint: The best possible outcome lies in looking, not just at the building, but the entire district. Sure, studies have been done before, but never with a big idea like the sports center at the core and a different, hopefully more enlightened management team calling the shots at the Rose Quarter.

And who will design Park Block 5, the block west of the Fox Tower that Tom Moyer donated to the city, and what will it be? With only $2 million in hand to build it, Portland Parks and PDC officials already are conceding they will break Mayor Vera Katz and Commissioner Jim Francesconi's promise of a design competition.

How profoundly sad.

Sure, that's barely enough money to plant grass, but it's more than enough to think ahead. Why not hold a competition for a two-step design -- interim and long term? (Think about that indoor garden.)

Money follows vision.