Why the Pearl District Works: Part II Continuity

The Pearl District is grounded in history.  In 1982 a five-step process was established to meet Goal 5 of the statewide planning act, which required Oregon cities to identify and protect historic places.  The next year the Portland Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) assessed the building stock in the Northwest Triangle District.  Entitled, “The Last Place in Downtown,” the AIA report is a founding document of the Pearl District.

The area was unplanned and devoid of civic identity. It had no school or neighborhood association, but there was a bounty of historic warehouses being leased or sold. A small artistic community had gained a foothold, and the transitioning district was ideally situated for incubator business. It could become “a definitive and distinctive district,” the AIA reported, provided city officials acted to preserve 90 buildings found worthy of preservation.  The architects proposed creating a historic preservation district that encompassed the quadrant between Lovejoy and Burnside, and between I-405 and 9th and 10 Avenues. The remainder of the Northwest Triangle was envisioned to be an office park.

In 1983 office parks were part of the lexicon of suburban development, but the idea fell away once investing in urbanism gained relevance. The historic preservation district concept, however, gained traction. In 1987, the city council established the NW 13th Avenue Historic District.  Al Soldheim, the major property owner, played a crucial role in protecting the six blocks that had 20 multi-storied, architect-designed warehouses, the largest collection of such buildings in the city. The district’s mix of loading docks, roof top water towers, metal awnings, and remnants of old Belgian block street pavers also lent a unique character to the pedestrian friendly environs.

In 1988, the seven-story Blumauer-Frank Drug Company Building (the district’s tallest) was converted into apartments.  The first significant investment in residential living in the Pearl District, the retrofitted reinforced concrete structure constructed in 1925 offered a new prototype.  Tax abatements and tax credits for preserving historic buildings made the project viable, and other developers followed suit.  In 1996, two 1910 brick warehouses were converted into the historic district's first condominiums, the Chown Pella. Open loft spaces with exposed brick and heavy timbers were created to provide what developer John Carroll called, “industrial strength living in the Pearl.” The water tower adorning the building became a visual landmark and syntax in the architectural vocabulary that influenced future projects after the city adopted the River District Special Design Guidelines in 1996. 

Painting of Chown Pella featured in Center of Architecture Exhibit

Historic preservation keyed the Pearl District’s development. Eleven buildings outside of the 13th Avenue District were listed on the National Historic Register. In 1997, the first of the two buildings that comprised the 1908 North Depot Warehouse was turned into town homes.  After the second building was converted in 2000, the historic block on NW 11th Avenue marked a new measure of urban living in Portland. Loading docks set above the sidewalk were the defining features of the two-story buildings. Converted into porches with small gardens and planted terraces, residents enjoyed their pleasant ambiance. This synergistic intersection of history, private property, and public space helped activate the derelict block, which now has the most valuable real estate (per square foot) in the Pearl District.

The development of the Brewery Blocks in 2001 turned the Pearl District into a destination. The preservation of the Weinhard Brewhouse and the Armory Building set the foundation for a historically grounded transition between the central city and the NW 13th Avenue Historic District. In addition to providing housing for 1000 residents, the project spurred significant investment in retail and commercial development. The five-block area also introduced the benefits of sustainability by salvaging and recycling 94 percent of construction material, reducing energy demand by 40 percent in residential units and 25 percent in office space, and constructing eight LEED certified buildings, including the first Gold certified condominium tower in the nation.

The Pearl District is now home to over 7,000 residents. The NW 13th Avenue Historic District remains the centerpiece, and it still lures developers. A seven-story office building is set to arise on its last vacant parcel. The property owner’s desire to “create a building that looks as if it has always been there” drew inspiration from the Chown Pella and the Confectionary Lofts, another early 20th century brick warehouse conversion. An architect’s rendering depicts a building with a proportionate height and mass and material that fits seamlessly with its surroundings. Special emphasis was placed on the 13th Avenue frontage. An extensive metal canopy and detailing on the doors and windows will ensure the ground floor respects the human scale of a street heavily trafficked by pedestrians and enlivened by the remnants of history. 

The Pearl District lies at the epicenter of Portland’s building boom. Development pressures have raised concerns that it is losing its character.  Only a third of the 90 historic structures the AIA identified in 1983 are protected.  The Pearl District Neighborhood Association supports densification, but it worries that 35 buildings of historical significance lack any protection. The fear is that “the Pearl District will become a place without any grounding in history and without the story its own creation.  It will be a place without soul.”

The Neighborhood Association’s Planning Committee has charged a task force to create a tool to protect historic structures. A refined code to deliver transfer of development rights must be procured, but this reform could be at odds with the regulations proposed in the new Central City Comprehensive Plan.  At the same time, neighborhood associations are legally sanctioned to assist city agencies in planning efforts. 

Resolving the tension between preservation and development is essential. It will require tempering rights and responsibilities, but this is the expectation of a free people residing in a republic. This cornerstone of civilization was laid over 2,000 years ago when Pericles claimed, “ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters.”

David August's keen eye and knowledge of the Pearl District was instrumental to this piece.  I strongly recommend one of his architectural tours.  Afterwards, you will see the neighborhood with a more discerning eye. 

Why the Pearl Distict Works Part I: Connectivity

In the late 1990s, critics wondered if the Pearl District was a folly.  This week, a PBS documentary recognized Portland’s “Urban Paradise” as one of “10 Towns that Changed America.” The Pearl District is the culmination of an experiment initiated 43 years ago with the passage of Senate Bill 100, which, in the iconic words of Governor Tom McCall, sought to reign in the “gasping wastrels of the land” and “the ravenous rampage of suburbia.” It required Oregon cities to establish Urban Growth Boundaries, and meet 19 goals to develop a more efficient and sustainable land use pattern. The path-breaking legislation turned Portland into the nation's planning laboratory, and the Pearl District is a tested prototype of a new urban future.

Read Estate Advertisment for the Pearl District

The 1992 River District Vision set the foundation for the Pearl District.  The City Council unanimously endorsed the plan drawn by businesses interests and citizen groups to build a dense urban neighborhood on a street grid that extended across the contaminated railroad yards north of the Lovejoy Viaduct. Bill Naito, an incomparable civic leader, claimed the project marked “the next chapter of this great city.”  At the time, building urban neighborhoods on a historic grid pattern was a radical idea.  For a generation, auto-dependent “master planned” projects favored cul-de-sacs and dead end streets that insulated neighborhoods in a series of pods. In fact, River Place, downtown’s Portland’s first significant infill project, had the markings of the “dead worm” disconnected subdivision.  Outside of the promenade that celebrated the riverfront and provided a vital pedestrian linkage on its eastern edge, the rest of the mixed-use project was severed from its surroundings.  There was no grid, and the River District plan could have followed suit.

1992 River District Vision

The River District Vision faced a major obstacle, the Lovejoy Viaduct. It severed the site and deflated real estate values. In 1999, while most cities were widening highways and building toll roads, Portland officials spent $13 million to tear down the Lovejoy Viaduct and remove the 10th Avenue ramp. “The reconstruction of Lovejoy is a critical piece of the emergence of the River District as a vibrant residential neighborhood in Northwest Portland,” City Commissioner, and now Mayor, Charlie Hales declared. The improved link to the Broadway Bridge and the construction of new streets established a grid that tied the emerging Pearl District to the surrounding neighborhoods. Infrastructure was also provided for the Central City Streetcar, which started service in 2001. The  first urban streetcar system constructed in over half a century, the Pearl District was defining a future built on past.  In the 1920s one of every three trips were taken by foot, transit or auto, a metric that gained new meaning in a neighborhood designed to make pedestrians a priority. 

In 1996, the River District Right-of-Way Standards provided the means to transform the industrial warehouse district with unpaved streets and a score of loading docks into a “Pedestrian District,” where walking the mode of choice.  The straight forward standards called for what was once common place: a regimen of street trees planted next to 12-foot wide sidewalks located on both sides of streets (the exception being the 13th Avenue historic district).  On street parallel parking was provided to slow traffic and provide a buffer for pedestrians.  In addition, two 50-foot wide landscaped walking  routes were constructed between 12th and 9th Avenues.  Besides offering safe passage, these linear parks became havens of repose. Private developers followed in kind, and provided similar verdant connections to their buildings. Over time, improvements for bicyclists were incorporated into a full fledged “multi-modal transportation system.”

Pedestrian Haven in the Pearl District

Portland's new Comprehensive City Plan has prioritized “high-quality connectivity proposed to and within the area by modes of transportation other than the automobile.” In plain English this means two-thirds of trips in the Pearl District will not be by automobile, and a majority will be by foot.  The Pearl District is the most walkable neighborhood in Portland, an intentionally interconnected community and a recognized agent of change in a nation where nearly 90 percent of trips are made by car.

On connectedness in the Pearl District see https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/306704

Finding Moral Clarity in the Pursuit of Happiness

Besides economic security, happiness is contingent on being physically active, having access to nature, and interacting with others besides our immediate family.  With the arrival of spring, I was eager to pursue happiness and embarked on a twenty-minute walk (one mile) to Washington Park, a historic park designed in the Arcadian tradition Frederick Law Olmsted instituted at Central Park.  Ninteenth century urban parks or “sanitary institutions,” as Olmsted called them, were scripted versions of Walden Pond where citizens could escape the city’s crass materialism and renew their humanity.  I set out to, as Olmsted put it, “re-create” myself.

Fortunately, the pedestrian network running between the Pearl District and Washington Park is stellar. Other than the deafening roar at the I-405 underpass, I enjoyed an idlyllic walk along tree-lined streets through the city’s most densely developed neighborhoods.  I smiled when I saw 1906 engraved in the sidewalk on NW 24th Avenue.  It was a reminder that Portland is built on the past, and on a spring day with aged trees offering a kaleidoscope of blooming efflorescence how could one not be happy?

Studies show that crime drops and property values rise in urban neighborhoods having a regimen of street trees.  They enhance the pedestrian experience, and more walking brews stewardship. https://depts.washington.edu/hhwb/Thm_Crime.html  Blending nature and human impluse to cultivate civic pride defined city planning before World War II.  “Trees in the city have great value for health in improving the quality of the air, for comfort in furnishing welcome shade from the burning heat of the sun, and for beauty in the glory that they often impart when well grown to an otherwise commonplace street,” John Nolen wrote in Remodeling Roanoke (1907), one of the nation’s first comprehensive city plans.  Street trees and sidewalks were essential components of the transportation system that Nolen, a devoted Olmsted disciple, designed to move machines and pedestrians in tandem.

By the late 1950s, city planners were focused on moving automobiles not pedestrians.  Road widening evicerated the finely grained networks of sidewalks and street trees.  Walking and bicycling rates dropped, and since the 1980s obesity rates have sky rocketed.  Portland has spent 30 years  rectifying the myopic vision of a generation of traffic engineers, and its investment in walkable urbanism has fostered one of the most lucrative real estate markets in the nation.  The bottom line is clear: in the American city a comfortable twenty-minute saunter that inveighs happiness is priceless.

My stroll became more strenuous after sighting a knoll studded with towering conifers.  Washington Park occupies the steep hillsides that bound the central city, and after crossing traffic laden Burnside Avenue, I felt I was entering a temple as I gazed up a steep flight of stairs.  After 200 odd steps I followed a path that led to what the good pantheist Olmsted considered sacred ground, a glen with a stand of trees filtering the sun’s rays into in an artistic mix of shadow and light. 

For Olmsted, picturesque settings like this fomented “re-creation.”  He believed watching the interplay of light and shadow led to reflection as one discerned the patterns nature transmits.  He also thought the meeting of forest and open space bred a sense of comfort, a fact scientists now tell us is rooted in our genetic coding.  Our species became “human” when they moved from forested jungles to savannahs and developed the ability to walk upright and see into the far distance.  In fact, our  deep-seated preference for pastoral landscapes at the edge of wooded areas is traced to this key point in our evolution (Tony Hiss, Experience of Place, 36-39).

Glen (on left) in Washington Park

The glen in Washington Park was occupied so I set off to find another place of repose.  A bench graced with an overhanging tree limb in full flower called to me.  I settled in and let the scenery galvanize my thoughts.  I greeted a score of people with a nod or a few words.  Imbibing in wonder of a spring day, we enjoyed a common bond.  It was a good place to be, a place that lends moral clarity to our often frazzled existence.  Being immersed in nature not only helps still the mind, it instills an appreciation for humanity’s better nature.  A century ago, citizens taxed themselves to create a green haven where future generations could purse happiness and escape the cacophonic consumerism that prices our lives and subverts the soul.   Parks can “educate people to better things,” John Charles Olmsted wrote in his 1903 Report to the Portland Barks Board.  Aptly re-created, I left Washington Park thankful of the education I received.