Demolition and preservation 04/14/02 The Portland City Council will vote on the issue of demolition of
buildings on the National Historic Register at a meeting beginning at 6
p.m. Wednesday. The two camps of historic preservationists are rolling
up their sleeves for battle.
Current city codes leave the decision to demolish any historic
building, even one on the National Register, entirely up to the owner.
Developers and owners of historic properties think that's just fine
because all buildings not in public ownership need to be able to perform
in the marketplace. Other advocates of historic preservation counter
that some properties, even in private hands, are important enough that
their fate should be decided by public vote. Both sides agree that the
city and state need to provide more financial incentives for
preservation and redevelopment of historic properties.
But as the final days for written testimony wind down, Robert Mawson
of the Association for Portland Progress stoked the fires with an
emotional e-mail plea to potential supporters to send letters against
the change to the City Council. "The mayor is pushing aggressively for demolition denial,"
Mawson wrote. "Because the debate is rather esoteric and because
many of the so-called historic preservation groups are advocating for
denial, many of the commissioners are caught thinking that denial
equates to good historic preservation." In an interview, Mawson admitted his e-mail description of
demolition-denial advocates (who include the State Historic Preservation
Office and the American Institute of Architects) was "a little
snitty." The possibility for denial already exists in the form of
condemnation proceedings the city could use to preserve a threatened
property, he said. The association and property owners, he added, have
yet to see any city work on the kinds of incentives he regards as
"good historic preservation." According to City Planner Cielo Lutino, the bureau is recommending
that the City Council only extend the waiting period for demolition to a
maximum of 300 days from the current 120. No timetable yet exists for
creating a new package of incentives, but Lutino said she fully expects
to receive a council directive on Wednesday to begin work. Meanwhile,
the bureau has already begun work, holding one public meeting, which,
she noted, Mawson attended. PSU building boom Despite Oregon's woes over
funding education programs, previous legislative allocations, student
fees and contributions have blossomed in a construction boom at the
state's largest university, according to Brian Chase, facilities chief
at Portland State University. No less than $95 million worth of new,
expanded or renovated facilities have either been completed recently,
are under way or will soon start. PSU's Office of Facilities and its Department of Architecture will
hold an open-house "pin-up" of all the designs, from 6 to 8:30
p.m. Thursday in Room 212, Shattuck Hall, Southwest Broadway and Hall
Street. Since the adoption of the University District Plan more than a decade
ago, PSU has been operating without any real master plan. Instead, it
works like a developer, buying property and developing it as need and
opportunity arise, with every project subject to regular city design
review. The result so far has been a wonderfully complex collage of buildings
growing up around the more quintessentially "campus-like" (and
generally awful) buildings of the 1950s and '60s. The crowning
achievement was the Urban Center, completed two years ago. But more
buildings are on the way, among them Fletcher Farr Ayotte Architects'
smartly neo-Modern expansion of Parking Structure No. 3, Mithun
Partnership's hyper-green New Birmingham Student Housing, and ZGF
Partnership's Northwest Center for Engineering, Science and Technology. In the competent but generally unexciting group of projects, the most
notable architecturally is Stastny-Brun Architects' Native American
Student and Community Center, which broke ground two weeks ago. Although
it is not a church, it promises to be the first architecture in downtown
to be shaped primarily by spiritual concerns since Pietro Belluschi's
Zion Lutheran Church. Mayor Vera Katz's new design initiative spawned its first
architectural competition -- and winner -- earlier this month: a
towering "Digital Data Advancement Center" for a site at the
east end of the Burnside Bridge. Well, almost. In fact, there was a competition, which such a building won. But the
contest was for ideas -- not an actual building -- and was held by the
American Institute of Architects' Intern Development Program. The land, known as the "Baloney Joe's site" for its former
use as a homeless shelter, is on the mayor's list of city-owned sites
designated for design competitions. The mayor herself sat on the jury
for the annual intern competition, organized by architect/activist
Fredrick Zal. She was joined by such top local architects and academics
as Thomas Hacker and Mark Engberg and PSU professor Sarah Lynn Garrett,
along with renowned designer Peter Pran of the Seattle-based firm NBBJ. The entries will be on view at Portland City Hall for a week,
beginning April 22. The winners, including the jurors' top pick -- the
Digital Data Advancement Center by Richard Grace, Edward Running, Ian
Gelbrich and Gabriela Quinones -- will be presented to the City Council
on Wednesday, April 24. Randy Gragg writes on architecture and urban
design. He can be reached at 503-221-8575 or randygragg@news.oregonian.com. Original Posting: http://www.oregonlive.com/living/oregonian/randy_gragg/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/entertainment/10186989391656737.xml |