a map accompanied this article. I had no idea that Zidell owned half of the vacant strip between Riverplace and SoWa. From the Ross Island to roughly half way through that strip is Zidell, and then from the Zidell property to the Marquam Bridge is the new campus.
On the waterfront, on the edge of greatness
The nexus of OHSU's interactive campus, transit and business along
Sunday, April 08, 2007
RANDY GRAGG
The Oregonian
I t's hard to imagine a more tantalizing city-building prospect than the creation from scratch of the nation's first truly urban medical science university.
Portland has a shot, at the intersection of light rail, the streetcar and aerial tram, right on the Willamette River's shore. All that the city, TriMet, the Zidell family and, most of all, Oregon Health & Science University have to do is not muck it up.
Last week, OHSU unveiled initial concepts for a new campus on the 19 acres of South Waterfront land that the Schnitzer family donated in 2004. Bowing to longtime criticisms of its secretive planning and development on Marquam Hill, OHSU officials showed what are basically napkin sketches for about 2 million square feet of classrooms, teaching labs and offices.
Groundbreaking for the first building is at least two years off. Completion of the campus? Maybe 20 years. But seeing even cursory plans at such an early stage, free of budget limitations and politics, offers a chance to focus on the biggest opportunities -- and the biggest problems standing in the way.
OHSU has long envisioned moving core educational facilities to South Waterfront, starting in 1998 with the first mention of an aerial tram from Pill Hill to a Center for Women's Health. By the 2004 Marquam Hill Plan -- which set the stage for the tram -- OHSU envisioned itself in zones: more patient care and research on the hill, more outpatient and education on the waterfront. The Schnitzer bequest expanded the opportunities. Where former President Peter Kohler's mantra was putting OHSU in the top tiers of research, current President Joe Robertson and his faculty want to push the boundaries of medical education.
Some will argue it's just a fresh slogan to snag more public money. I'd argue it's an important long-term strategic turn, not just for OHSU but also for the city. An interactive campus
Medical science universities traditionally educate students in the silos of individual schools: medicine, dentistry, nursing, etc. OHSU wants to change that, designing a campus from the get-go to foster interaction. Plenty of individual new buildings reflect that ideal, from Stanford University's recently completed Clark Center to Texas A&M University's Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building, under construction. But few universities have 19 blank acres to try it from bottom up, particularly at the center of a city in a stunning waterfront location.
Conceptualized by Los Angeles architects Perkins + Will, OHSU's master plan shows what it might look like: eight city blocks with eight buildings, five of them seven- to eight-story "podium" buildings topped by narrower towers. The lower floors feature a mix of commercial retail, classrooms and the all-new breed of laboratories, where budding docs, dentists and nurses test their skills on electronic dummies and in virtual reality. A K-12 school or science academy might even be in the mix. Individual schools and student housing fill the towers.
But pull the lens back and even more powerful synergies come into focus.
TriMet has revived the long-delayed Portland/Milwaukie light rail extension. That puts OHSU's proposed campus on the proposed MAX line between the necessary new bridge to OMSI and, a short ride away, Portland State University. In short, what emerges is a concept that Portland Planning Director Gil Kelley outlined almost a decade ago: a "fertile crescent" of science education, research and public programming sweeping from the inner east side to Marquam Hill to downtown.
In a two or three decades, Portland could easily find itself pondering a second aerial tram between OHSU and PSU, turning the crescent into a full moon.
Sure, it all requires money, some from taxpayers and from plenty of knocks on the doors of Oregon's thinly stretched philanthropic community. But the Schnitzer family waterfront donation and the recent $40 million anonymous gift to OHSU's medical school are the kinds of bets on the future that raise the ante. Parking perplexity
As exciting as the notion is, it raises tough questions.
First up is parking. OHSU projects a need of 5,500 to 6,500 spaces. That's an extraordinary number to cram below, around and inside only 2 million square feet of buildings on eight city blocks. It's as many as 2,200 more spaces than serve the 5 million square feet OHSU operates on Marquam Hill.
OHSU's South Waterfront project director, Mark Williams, claims that even with so many parking spaces, more than half of the new campus's visitors will have to come by mass transit -- a percentage comparable to downtown.
The form the parking takes in these early sketches is scary. Due to soil contamination and a high water table, only one or two levels can be buried. So the plan also calls for every building to have two levels of parking above the street level -- with the classrooms, offices and labs on top.
For a taste of that stale architectural club sandwich, walk around the ODS Building at Southwest Second and Morrison, known among local architects and urban designers as the "Odious Building," in part for the lifeless walls concealing the parking above the retail.
Odious is only one block. Grotesque is the word for the five blocks in OHSU's current plans, some 200 by 310 feet. For such a constrained site, OHSU needs to look seriously at denser, mechanical systems for parking.
It also needs to have more confidence that the nearly $1 billion in tram-streetcar-MAX transit infrastructure surrounding the future campus will mean fewer drivers.
Another big issue is the location of the Milwaukie MAX bridge over the Willamette. Plans from the first attempt to build the line in 1998 -- when SoWa was barely a dream -- set the bridge's west shore landing roughly beneath Marquam Bridge. That's the far north end of the proposed campus, 1/3-mile from the tram landing.
The bridge needs to move to the far south end of the new campus for tighter connections to the tram. TriMet's construction chief, Neil McFarlane, says that will cost as much as $40 million in additional track. But the move is critical to making MAX more central to the neighborhood, the campus and the city's other transit investments. The Zidell factor
And that brings us to the last, potentially most far-reaching question: What will be the fate of the Zidell family's property?
To the south, Zidell's barge-building business stands between the new campus and the four blocks OHSU owns adjacent to the tram. To the east, a narrow stretch of empty Zidell land cuts OHSU off from the shore.
Family leader Jay Zidell has floated plans to cram a row of towers on his riverside strip by narrowing the city's required 100-foot riverbank setback to 50 feet. He's even filed a Measure 37 claim he hopes will force the deal.
But the federal government also has a say: This is the only stretch of the downtown waterfront where the city might achieve the restoration of fish habitat demanded under the endangered species listing for Willamette River salmon and steelhead. The city wants a greenway and offshore natural habitat area that will require every foot of the required setback and preferably more.
What better, picture-perfect front yard for a medical science university than a nature reserve and river study center -- one more slice to add to the fertile crescent.
Zidell has often spoken of transforming his family's history on the waterfront into an urban legacy. He once backed up the rhetoric with an important check: the first $50,000 for an international design competition for the tram. Despite the heartburn about the tram's final price, eventually we'll appreciate how Zidell's early support of ambitious design made the difference between greatness and mediocrity.
Zidell stands at that crossroads again. But the personal stakes are a million-fold higher: his land, his business, his employees and his family's future wealth. But let's not forget that $1 billion in transit infrastructure that's benefiting him, too. Wedged between the tram and future MAX with the streetcar line running by, public investment is rapidly making Zidell's land as valuable as any in the region.
So, who's the dealmaker here: the mayor, a city commissioner, a Metro president, a governor or a U.S. senator?
Stay tuned for who will recognize -- or won't -- that history is offering a one-time chance to show the world how science, education and beauty can be blended into a bold new form of urbanism.
Randy Gragg: 503-221-8575;
randygragg@news.oregonian.com
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