This is great that theyre pressing the developer to relocate the Georgian Room, why not make it the dining room for the hotel restaurant?...
Meier & Frank planning slows
Preservation
Friday, October 07, 2005
DYLAN RIVERA
A $137 million project to transform Portland's Meier & Frank building into a hotel and remodeled store won't begin until late January, at the earliest, as state and federal officials scrutinize plans for preserving the landmark's Georgian Room restaurant.
The building's owner, Federated Department Stores Inc., and the hotel developer, Sage Hospitality Resources LLC, previously had said they would start "substantial work" on the renovation this fall. They plan a new and improved store on the first five floors, with a luxury hotel filling the upper 10 floors.
But the two companies are at odds with the State Historic Preservation Office and the National Park Service's Technical Preservation Services Branch over which elements of the building will be maintained. The Georgian Room's fate has become the most substantial element of disagreement.
Ken Geist, executive vice president for Sage Hospitality, said the delays mean the hotel won't open until the first half of 2008, rather than in late 2007 as originally forecast. The updated store is scheduled to open by fall 2007, although it no longer will be known as Meier & Frank. Federated bought Meier & Frank's owner, May Department Stores Co., this year and said it would rename the store Macy's.
The store has begun preparing unoccupied floors for the renovations, said Milinda Martin, a Los Angeles-based spokeswoman for Meier & Frank. But, she emphasized, the work would not be visible to holiday shoppers.
Major renovations, including seismic upgrades,
likely would require installing a tower crane beside the building and having construction workers bustling around the property.
Renovation and preservation of the downtown landmark and retail anchor have been a top city priority for years, as May let it fall into disrepair and allowed speculation to persist that the store would pull out entirely. But getting a hotel partner to invest in the building -- which ultimately required loans backed by the Portland Development Commission, a 15-year state historic property tax freeze and other incentives -- persuaded the store to stay and renovate.
The renovation plans call for hotel rooms in the area occupied by the 10th-floor Georgian Room, a space of sea-foam green walls where ladies have lunched since at least the 1930s.
The restaurant reflects an era when department stores provided full-service restaurants to coax patrons into spending their day in the building, said James Hamerick, deputy state historic preservation officer.
"You get a lot of really good stories about the Georgian Room from patrons," Hamerick said. "It's probably the only high-style piece of the Meier & Frank building left on the interior, and it is clearly a significant space."
Hamerick has asked the National Parks Service to make preservation of the room a condition of federal historic preservation tax credits. The developers are counting on the $15.5 million or so in credits to produce about $14 million in equity to help finance the redevelopment.
John Tess, president of Portland's Heritage Consulting Group, which is handling preservation issues for the store and the hotel developer, had suggested elements of the room perhaps could be preserved by moving moldings or other pieces of the room's architecture to public places on the sixth or eighth floors.
Neither state nor federal officials seem likely to agree with that proposal, though.
"Please be advised that parceling out pieces of this significant space to different areas of the building destroys its integrity and does not meet the Standards," Gary Sachau of the National Park Service wrote in an Aug. 22 memo to the developers and state officials.
Tess said Thursday the developers plan to comply with calls for preservation, but they haven't decided how.
The companies have until Oct. 22 to reply with their plans for the Georgian Room and a handful of other historic preservation issues. The National Park Service then will make a ruling, which can be appealed.
State preservation officials can only advise on the federal program.
Sage Hospitality's Geist said the company plans to have a full-service restaurant in the hotel, although he declined to discuss details of the Georgian Room preservation.
He did say Sage is reconsidering whether its hotel will be a franchise of the Renaissance Hotels & Resorts brand, which had been in the plans for more than a year. Renaissance is known for unique properties, and Sage operates several historic Renaissance hotels in other markets. A decision on a hotel brand and a lender should be made in the next week or so, Geist said.
Sage plans to close on the purchase of its part of the building in December, Geist said.
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/o...l=7&thispage=1