Randy Gragg

Demolition and preservation

04/14/02

RANDY GRAGG

 

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.

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