Well, I just finished listening to the audio from the October 6th hearing. I have a lot of respect for the Design Commission and the work that they do, but I think they were really wrong on one issue that they were pushing at the final hearing.
Commissioner Chair David Wark (and to a certain extent other members of the Commission) really wanted a vehicular street through the site on alignment with NE Pacific St, in order to better activate the square. While I preferred the original design, the revised Oregon Square scheme will still be a major piece of public space. Crucially, it will be a square of a type we don't already have in Portland: one where the square extends all the way to the edge of the surrounding buildings. This is something that isn't common in grid pattern cities, but that you see everywhere in Europe:
Marienplatz in Munich;
Plaza Mayor in Madrid;
Piazza San Marco in Venice; the
Piazza del Campo in Sienna;
Leicester Square in London; etc etc. Cleaving a road through the middle of the space (no matter how well designed it was) would just destroy it. If there were a major street connectivity issue I could maybe get it, but NE Pacific dead ends at the BPA building in one direction and at the Convention Center in the other direction. As it is, adding cars would achieve nothing more than cluttering up the space with cars and compromising the pedestrian experience.