OHSU's waterfront vision: 2 million square foot campus
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
DYLAN RIVERA
The Oregonian
Oregon Health & Science University, which opened its first South Waterfront high-rise beachhead just last fall, is now headed toward its biggest transformation ever.
The university's preliminary vision for its 20 acres on the South Waterfront, made public this week, proposes a true college campus from scratch that would eventually rival the Marquam Hill campus. The new Schnitzer Campus, on land donated by the Portland family in 2004, would become the center of gravity for a new educational mission uniting student doctors, nurses, dentists and others in interdisciplinary classrooms.
Five university schools would eventually relocate to the waterfront campus, while the hospital, clinics and some research would remain on Marquam Hill.
For the first time, OHSU is openly contemplating housing -- condos, apartments or student housing -- in floors above medical education centers. Making room for biotechnology industries, for years an anchor of OHSU's planning, has faded.
The scope of the plan is audacious, not just for its sheer size -- another 2 million square feet of university space is planned, about 40 percent the size of the Marquam Hill campus. Its likely massive price tag remains an unknown, though a recent $40 million donation certainly helps.
The university's intent is to create the medical campus of the future, with room to grow for decades, OHSU President Joe Robertson said Monday.
"This campus is something that will develop over the next three decades, not over the next three years," Robertson said. "We do not have a specific plan at this point. It would be presumptuous for us to have a plan at this point."
University officials stress that their plans are only a preliminary vision, but they have real hopes of putting students there within five years under a timeline being offered for the first time. A $40 million anonymous gift already in the bank will be used to break ground on their first building.
Looking ahead
Deans and professors from across the university have spent months discussing how they want medical education to work a generation from now. Portland city planners have helped them put their ideas into lines on a map that represent potential buildings, roads and parks.
In recent weeks, university officials have shown neighborhood activists and some city officials their preliminary vision, which outlines in broad terms the locations of streets and sites of buildings on the 20-acre parcel. Haggling over street locations, building designs and uses of specific planned buildings will likely follow.
The university plans 250-foot-tall buildings along Southwest Moody Avenue, with shorter buildings closer to the river. It calls for a combination light-rail and streetcar bridge to land south of the property, closer to the recently opened aerial tram landing, but different from the city's plan for a bridge to the north.
The intensely urban plan contrasts sharply with the ideas advanced over the years by the Schnitzer family, which raised the possibility of suburban-scale biotech development with a 25-foot setback from the river.
Yet OHSU's plan already presents some potential shortcomings, and issues city planners and others are likely to pick apart.
It has become more oriented to medical education than goals of thousands of private-sector biotech jobs university officials trumpeted several years ago in making a public pitch for OHSU's expansion. Because of costly underground contamination, some of its potential 6,000 parking spaces may be built in upper floors of buildings, likely to disappoint planners who push for housing and offices that overlook sidewalks.
A 100-foot riverfront greenway would comply with city code but fall short of some environmental aspirations.
"We view this as the beginning of a conversation, not the end of a conversation," said Mark Williams, OHSU South Waterfront project director. "We're very eager to involve our neighbors, city bureaus, elected officials and others in having a discussion about what this ought to look like."
With federal research dollars leveling off, and the state-financed Oregon Opportunity fund already spent, OHSU's research spending will grow at a slower pace, Robertson said.
"The Schnitzer campus was given by the Schnitzer family predominantly to enhance the educational mission," Robertson said. "It will facilitate the research mission."
It takes longer to get biotech ideas from patent to marketable product than for the standard high-tech products, Robertson said. That wasn't known as recently as five years ago, said Robertson, who became OHSU president last year.
In contrast with prior insistence that biotech companies would fit into the high-rise plans for South Waterfront, Robertson and Steve Stadum, executive vice president for OHSU, conceded that rising construction costs and high density make the waterfront a challenging sell for private-sector biotech. They said shorter building sites closer to the river would offer some lower-cost opportunities for commercial development.
Positive reactions
Only two city commissioners, neighboring landowners and the South Portland Neighborhood Association have been briefed in person so far on the vision. OHSU has met with staff of most city commissioners and the mayor.
So far, the reviews seem positive, even from neighbors and politicians who have clashed over South Waterfront in the past.
City Commissioner Sam Adams said the university's idea for a 24-hour district with high density development contrasts sharply with what the Schnitzers had proposed.
"The last conversations were for a much less robust development than OHSU has put on the table with this proposal," Adams said. "So in that sense, it feels like this proposal is ahead of what the previous owners had envisioned doing."
Commissioner Randy Leonard said he likes the transit orientation of the vision.
"If we are creating a community down there where a car becomes more of a liability than an asset, people can buy more of a house and have amenities that they couldn't otherwise afford," he said.
The Zidell family, which still runs a barge building business adjacent to the waterfront condo towers and has sued the city over its high-rise plans, likes the vision presentation, said Bob Durgan, a consultant for the family. The Zidells still want more information on the district's transportation needs and costs, he said, but it's open to selling or swapping land to help OHSU's campus.
"We're open to all alternatives," Durgan said. "We're going to work with them on anything that's symbiotic and mutually beneficial."
So far, the vision appears to have won over even the South Portland Neighborhood Association, which includes many residents who fought for years against OHSU's aerial tram.
Residents have come to terms with the high-rise scale of the waterfront section of their area, neighborhood Chairman Ken Love said.
"Overall, it's going to be a great thing for Portland," he said. "Getting away from all the condos and just getting something positive going with OHSU there."
Dylan Rivera: 503-221-8532;
dylanrivera@news.oregonian.com
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