A Measure of Civilization: Procuring the Renaissance in the Pearl District

Having given new life to a desolate industrial area, the Pearl District literally defines renaissance: taken from the Old French word “renaistre” to be born again. At the same time it is a work in progress, a neighborhood struggling to capitalize investments and create a civic identity.

Fortunately, Portland’s civic foundation is rooted in the American Renaissance, the early 20th century movement that ordered the industrial city on classical lines and around nature. The Olmsted Brothers 1903 Park Plan provided a template, which was more than an exercise in aesthetics. John Charles Olmsted designed a park system to develop, he wrote, “healthfulness, morality, intelligence, and business prosperity.” Intertwining nature and profit is inimical to American city planning, and the Pearl District is based on a neo-classical blueprint straight out of the American Renaissance.

Iconic 1909 Plan for Madison, Wisconsin

The 1992 River District Vision extended NW 10th and 11th Avenues to align Powells Bookstore, the focal point of the district’s southern boundary, with a civic terminus, a park on the Willamette River. Placing important institutions on linear routes that terminated at parks with commanding views is not only a cardinal principle of Renaissance urbanism, it is an exemplar of a turning point in western civilization.

1992 River District Vision

During the Italian Renaissance gardens and cities were designed with spaces devoted to contemplating scenic landscape vistas.  This experirence was foreign to medieval sensibilities, which were formed by imposing gothic cathedrals, such as Notre Dame, that guided the eye to the heavens and the contemplation of a godly realm. Employing the humanist logic of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, Italian Renaissance designers celebrated earthly nature and, in the early 20th century, American city planners did the same. Today the Pearl District is on the cusp of that history—for good or bad.

View from Gambaria Garden to Florence

Centennial Mills has long been envisioned as a community focal point for the Pearl District. Yet, the Portland Development Commission’s (PDC) current plan for the site eviscerates its Renaissance potential. A narrow path provides access to a 50-foot greenway bounding the riverfront, but there is no attendant public space—a direct negation of the Pearl District Development Plan to develop the riverfront “as an engaging public space” with “open space and other public uses.”

PDC Plan for Centennial Mills

The PDC’s defining “public space” is a horse shelter, which covers 30 percent of the property and houses 16 animals on land valued at $2.7 million. Waste is endemic to this investment. The horses produce 136 tons of manure per year (enough to fill a line of dump trucks stretching across the Broadway Brige), while their accomodations yields a negligible return for taxpayers. Providing a place of repose for humans, however, would ensure a priceless return.

Currently, the lack of pedestrian traffic on NW 10th and 11th Avenues north of Overton has developers resistant to building retail. Extending the park experience that begins at Jamison Square to the Willamette River would mitigate this problem. Pedestrian access is the key. Plans exist to bridge the railroad, and the structure, like Manhattan’s High Line, should offer a visceral experience.

High Line

Rendering of Pedestiran Overpass to Centennial Mills

The High Line documents the civic and financial gains that accrue when an industrial landscape is transformed into a green connection. It attracts four millions visitors a year, and half are tourists. Each increment of 5,000 additional tourists equates to a demand for 400 square feet of retail space. Tourists spend $48 on average when visiting a regimen of parks, such as Jamison Square, Fields Park, and Centennial Mills would provide.  Active parks also activate human relationships, the essential ingredient for creating more cohesive neighborhoods. Engaged residents help "reduce a city's cost for policing, fire protection and criminal justice," the Trust for Public Land reports.http://www.thehighline.org

Financing public space is a challenge. Both the High Line and the revival of Central Park were funded by private-public partnerships. Fortunately, Portland has a legacy on this front. After a scheme to develop Portland’s West Hills foundered in 1944, a City Club Committee of 50 was formed to establish the “Forest Park” the Olmsted Brothers identified in their 1903 park plan. The group recognized that, "No use to which this tract of land could be put would begin to be as sensible or as profitable to the city as that of making it a public park."

Can the same civic verve create a definitive public space on Willamette River?  Centennial Mills is a test of Renaissance resolve because providing for parks measures, John Charles Olmsted wrote, a city’s “degree of civilization.”

I indebted to Streetsense.com for their stellar research.  On the value of parks and tourism see: Trust for Public Lands, Measuring the Economic Value of a Park System

The Sidewalk Ballet: The Pearl District’s Priceless Attribute

The Pearl District is at the cusp of Portland’s urban renaissance.  It has the city’s highest walkscore, and the benefit of being able to stroll to a range of stores is priceless.  In the past year real estate values have increased 11 percent and, at $500 per square foot, real estate in the Pearl District is priced 18 percent higher than the downtown, the city’s second priciest venue.  Recently a townhome in the Depot Warehouse on 11th Avenue sold for $2.5 million, which marks a 833 percent increase in worth since the historic building was restored in 2000.

The Pearl’s transformation from an abandoned rail yard bordered by decrepit warehouses into the harbinger of the urban future is well documented.  A recent PBS feature named it one of “Ten Towns that Changed America.”  But it is important to remember, that the Pearl District’s success was not foreordained. 

In 1996 when the city council adopted the blueprint for the Pearl District, The River District Design Guidelines, office vacancy rates in mixed-use developments were twice as high as those in auto-oriented single use projects.  In fact, a decade before the American Institute of Architects had proposed building an office park on the land north of Johnson Avenue.  Until the Brewery Blocks were developed and streetcar network opened in the early 2000s, the Pearl District was viewed with skepticism.  Since then, its infusion of business and urbanism became the harbinger of a new trend.   Today the national office vacancy rate is 50 percent lower in mixed-use developments than auto-oriented single use projects. 

Since 2006, the Pearl District has attracted over a 100 office based firms, a healthy 5 percent increase per year.  Retail, however, has not been as lucrative.  The number of firms shrank by 1.7 percent per year, although 500 new jobs were added.  Retail has grown leaner in the post-recession economy, as retailers attempt to do more in smaller spaces.

With the rise of internet shopping, providing the proper mix retail in a mixed-use development is a subtle art. Trying to plan for retail, as one expert puts it, “is like determining the social life of an adolescent.” https://www.planning.org/events/nationalconferenceactivity/9002142/ The plan for Block 20, a 20-story 360,000 square foot building set to overlook Fields Park, epitomizes the angst in the retail market.  Only 2,000 square feet are devoted to retail, 25 percent of the ground floor, and none of it fronts the park.  The developer is hesitant to commit more space because the adjacent building, the Parker, has no retail, and a continuum of storefronts is a key to success.  At the same time, stated policy is to “target retail uses along specific corridors, such as NW 11 Avenue.”

Park Frontage of Block 20 Building

After its review of Block 20, the Pearl District Neighborhood Association (PDNA) Planning Committee encouraged the developer to provide additional retail space. The “sidewalk ballet," as Jane Jacobs called the vibrant pedestrian experience, is key to retail and neighborhood life.  This attribute defines the Pearl District, according to results from a survey of the Pearl District Business Association and the PDNA Planning Committee. Both groups also recognize that synergizing the use of public space and private property has procured, a respondent wrote, “the lively ground floor activity that creates a very desirable ‘urban village’ feel.” Civic enterprise has defined the Pearl District, and marshaling this force is essential to solving the current retail conundrum.

On the sidewalk ballet see: https://didacticdiscourse.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/quote-a-classic-the-sidewalk-ballet-by-jane-jacobs/

Why the Pearl District Works: Part III Community

The Pearl District is a product of Portland’s unique brand of civic stewardship.  According to Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, Portland is three times as civic-minded as other American cities (Putnam, Feldstein, Better Together: Restoring the American Community).  In 1973, Mayor Neil Goldschmidt institutionalized local grass roots democracy when he established the Office of Neighborhoods Association.  With formal backing, the city’s emergent neighborhood activism enlivened the planning process.  Granted the power to prioritize public improvement projects in the 1980s, the 75 neighborhood associations played a key role in the city adopting a series of path-breaking plans.  In 1993 a small group of stakeholders formed what became the Pearl District Neighborhood Association (PDNA), a committed cohort intent on turning a raw unfinished part of the city into a neighborhood.

Neilson Abeel chaired the group.  A native New Yorker knowledgeable of both real estate and historic renovation, Abeel purchased a 3-story 19,000 square foot building on the edge of the historic district in 1992.  He felt like a pioneer staking a claim.  There were few residents, buildings were in disrepair, and trains ran regularly to the Weinhard Brewery.  But investors were coming to the fore.  The next year, a 1905 warehouse was converted into the first condominiums, City Lofts.  This investment galvanized the creation of a Neighborhood Association to give voice to a common vision.

Between 1994 and 1998 the PDNA played an integral role in the 4 plans, 3 policy documents, and 2 assessment studies city agencies prepared for the Pearl District.  After the city council adopted the River District Special Design Guidelines in 1995, the PDNA formed the Planning and Transportation Committee.  It had a compliment of experts such as Tom Harvey, a Portland State University urban geography professor.  “A stalwart worker,” Abeel recounted, “he brought a high degree of professionalism as well as enthusiasm.” Design reviews resembled graduate studios.  Projects were critiqued and even eviscerated, but with the understanding that the goal was to create quality components that would synergize a well-integrated community.  The give and take was productive, especially in setting the groundwork for the Hoyt Street Properties Master Development Agreement.  Adopted in 1997, it established a series of contingent obligations between the city’s funding of public improvements and Homer Williams, the developer who owned 34 acres of abandoned rail property. 

Riverfront District Open Space Plan

The urbanism Williams produced marked a turning point, as the dense, pedestrian-oriented mixed-use neighborhood the River District Vision Plan anticipated came into being.  In 2000, Williams and Abeel were appointed to the steering committee charged with creating a vision and action plan for the fast-developing Pearl District.  John Carroll, the developer of three definitive projects (Chown Pella, the Elizabeth, and the Gregory), chaired the group.  The next year the city council adopted the Pearl District Development Plan, which extended the framework set forth in the Special Design Guidelines. Its goal was to integrate transit, parking, housing, and the arts to spark economic development and create a definitive sense of place.  Gateways and definitive edges would delienate the district, while historic preservation and a park system were the keys to making the dense urban neighborhood livable.  Perhaps most important, the plan identified the Pearl District as a distinct neighborhood committed to creating “a healthy, engaging, and intriguing community.”  Its next phase of development was crucial, and the PDNA was charged with ensuring the “careful collaboration of all of the stakeholders who call this district their home.”

In 2002, Patricia Gardner replaced Abeel as chair of the PDNA.  An architect, Gardner brought a steady hand and professional acumen to the design review process. In 2006 she led residents though a six-month process that secured a plan to redevelop Centennial Mills, the four-acre waterfront site the city purchased in 2000.  The goal was to turn the property and its historical buildings into a focal point of the neighborhood, it would be a special place that celebrated the past, embraced sustainability, complimented nearby parks, and provided connections to the waterfront.

The Centennial Mills Framework Plan was an exemplar work, and it marks the high point of collaboration between the PDNA and city agencies.  The project has since moved from potential icon to potential boondoggle, which has wilted the PDNA’s trust in the city.  Jordan Schnizter, the developer of the most recent Centennial Mills plan jettisoned by the Portland Development Agency, reinforced this point in January at a crowded public meeting. “The city has lost its way,” he concluded.

As the Pearl District approaches build out, the pioneering spirit of 20 years ago has given way to ordering and regulating an established neighborhood.  Conflict has intensified, as there are no simple solutions to homelessness, securing open space, historic preservation, and limiting the size and scale of new buildings.  In its attempt to find common ground, the PDNA draws on an exceptional set of documents.  They are more than a blueprint to guide development, they constitute a moral code to ensure that livability, equity, and profits co-exist.

Patricia Gardner recently stepped down from the chairmanship of the PDNA Planning & Transportation Committee.  The new co-chairs, Kate Washington and Reza Farhoodi, are young, sharp and well-versed in planning.  They are also the stewards of a moral maxim. The Pearl District is Portland’s laboratory, and its future development will determine if the city’s unique civic thread will fray or be tied into a new model of urban life.