PDX: PDC seeks to unload Union Station

[IHEARTPDX]

PDC seeks to unload station
Site may come with other parcels; public market’s a possibility

BY JENNIFER ANDERSON
The Portland Tribune, Aug 3, 2007

For sale: One 111-year-old beautiful train station in Portland, Oregon, with just $40 million in needed repairs. Selling price negotiable; buyer must keep train station intact but may take advantage of unique redevelopment opportunities on surrounding parcels. Contact the Portland Development Commission if interested.

The ad above is fake, but it essentially represents the thinking behind the city’s redevelopment agency, which has owned the historic train depot for 20 years and runs it through the city’s Office of Management & Finance.

Now, the PDC is looking to unload the station, either to transfer the building to the city for public control or sell it to a private developer who will retain the rail functions.

“PDC doesn’t want to remain owner of that facility,” said PDC senior development manager Lew Bowers. “While we might be part of the financing to renovate it, we’d want to know whether the city will own it or maybe put it out for (a request for proposal) or see what the private sector would do with it. Nobody’s talking about getting rid of the train station.”

According to the latest city reports, the 1896 station requires $10 million in immediate fixes, such as roof, gutter and downspout repairs, and another $30 million in deferred maintenance and seismic upgrades.

Bowers said his agency has redeveloped and sold off much of the land around the station over the past 10 years, and now wishes to sell it along with the few adjacent parcels of land that could be redeveloped.

They include the two vacant blocks at Northwest Fifth Avenue and Hoyt and Glisan streets, to the south; the U.S. Department of Homeland Security offices, 511 N.W. Broadway, whose representatives have indicated an intent to move; and potentially the nearby Greyhound Station, 550 N.W. Sixth Ave., which also could relocate.

All that acreage could “really be a unique area within downtown,” Bowers said. “It could be a large institutional use. There isn’t any site left in the downtown area with a historical context to it.”

Public market has booster
Unless city leaders want to take on the station’s baggage, so to speak, it could remain a white elephant for some time to come, falling into further disrepair.

“Whether or not the city takes it would definitely depend on the terms and conditions of the contract with PDC,” said Mary Volm, a city spokeswoman. “It’s a council decision. That’s the bottom line.”

One person who’s paying close attention to the fate of the station is Ron Paul, the former restaurateur who’s intent on siting a public market alongside Amtrak at Union Station.

The question of who will own the building doesn’t faze him. “The public market has anticipated needing to respond to a continuum of ownerships,” he said. “We understand that’s part of the puzzle that awaits us, and we fully anticipate calibrating our strategies.”

Recently, Paul received the results of the first feasibility study for the market at the station, and he’s buoyed by the possibilities.

“Yes, there is the opportunity for the public market to coexist with Amtrak in Union Station,” he said, summarizing the city-funded study by Mahlum Architects. “(It’s) not without its challenges. But it also has tremendous opportunities.”

One of the obvious challenges is physically locating it. The architectural firm came up with one possible scenario: for the market to occupy the cavernous waiting area and corridor along the south side of the main terminal, heading between the terminal and Wilf’s Restaurant & Bar. That would include a reconfiguration of the restaurant and station restrooms.

The public market also would occupy the baggage area, with some modifications made, as well as just outside the terminal to the northwest corner of the building, extending under the Broadway Bridge ramp.

In all, that would give about 30,000 to 33,000 square feet of space to the market, which would house about 30 permanent and 10 to 12 temporary vendors, Paul said.

Renewal area’s set to expire
A bigger, more complex hurdle to Paul’s vision is the financial picture. Most of the funding to restore the building would come from tax-increment financing, leveraged by the Downtown Waterfront Urban Renewal Area, in which the station sits.

In April, that urban renewal area expires, which means the city and the PDC no longer have the ability to issue debt but may continue to spend the funds leveraged.

Whether the station is part of any urban renewal area in the future hinges on the work of an advisory committee that is re-examining all of the boundaries in preparation for a larger central city plan.

By Dec. 1, the committee plans to make its recommended boundary changes to the City Council. At this point, Bowers said, it appears likely that the adjacent River District Urban Renewal Area (west of Northwest Broadway) will extend to include Old Town-Chinatown as well as the Union Station area, for at least two more years.

Discussions on the fate of the rest of the Downtown Waterfront Urban Renewal Area, which encompasses the retail core, aren’t as clear.

“The committee’s going to need to do something in the near future with that facility,” Bowers said of Union Station. “It’s not like we have the choice to do nothing.”

Once the lines are redrawn, and if the station sits in one of the urban renewal areas, it will be up to the City Council and the PDC to decide which projects benefit from the hundreds of millions of dollars raised, and how they’re prioritized.

“This is high on Dan’s list of priorities for the river district,” said Brendan Finn, chief of staff to Commissioner Dan Saltzman, an advocate for the public market project who’ll tour Union Station on Monday with Paul and a representative of the architectural firm that conducted the study.

Besides tax-increment funds, Finn said, the city also will look for federal funds and any surplus from the city’s general fund for the next budget cycle.

Once the overall renovations of the station are funded, it will take another chunk — between $6 million and $8 million — to do the plumbing and electrical work at the station to accommodate the public market tenants.

Paul is confident his foundation could privately raise the funds, especially given a relationship to a nationally known food icon. He hopes to name the public market after the late James Beard, who was born in Portland and went on to publish numerous cookbooks, host a TV show and open a culinary school.

After Beard died in 1985, a foundation was established in his name in New York, and Paul was the first Oregon chef invited to cook there, in the early 1990s, he said.

There will be two opportunities next month to learn more about the public market project. On Sept. 28, the public market will be the subject of a City Club lunch debate, with Paul scheduled to speak along with Scott Dolich, vice president of the Portland Farmers Market’s board of directors.

The same evening, Paul’s public market foundation, along with the James Beard Foundation, will host a Taste America event in collaboration with 22 other cities nationwide.

The Portland event will celebrate both the accomplishments of Beard and the market’s opportunity at Union Station. Preliminary sketches of the public market design will be on display. For details, see portlandpublicmarket.com.

[urbanlife]

I would love to see the building stay, but I would love to see a major impact in its surrounding with something like a public market. It would also be a perfect chance for the post office to move and really open up that area for redevelopment...just as long as the city gives that area one hell of a FAR ratio.

[westsider]

Union Station is one of my favorite old buildings in town. Amtrak does not give it the volume of traffic it deserves, but maybe with commuter rail in the future it could re-live it's glory days. I would love to see the station brought back to pristine shape, there are many incredible things like the ceiling that really deserve to be shown off.

[Drmyeyes]

I didn't pick it up reading the article, but was there a suggestion that Greyhound might consolidate its transportation service with Amtrac at Union Station? That seems to make sense to me. Maybe doing so would go a ways towards restoring some of the station's cache as a transportation hub.

I don't yet really see the idea of a public market having a complimentary relationship with rail travel. Ron Paul certainly does seem to be a guy with a certain enthusiasm and imaginative flair though. Maybe this idea could be spun so as to make Portland Union Station kind of a cuisine central. Just imagine buying a whole bunch of perishable goods and being able to stow them in a refrigerated compartment on the train, like you would your baggage in the baggage car.

For a long, long time, I've thought Union Station should have a good coffee shop, and not like over at the bus station. The area could use some affordable overnight accommodations too. A hostel would be nice, as if that would ever happen.

It takes really good ideas to get the money to do a project like this the justice it deserves.

[MarkDaMan]

Picture a market right here
Union Station - It's not without problems, but the train station could become home to 25 to 30 vendors
Thursday, August 09, 2007
ANDY DWORKIN
The Oregonian

In several years you may be able to go to Union Station to catch a salmon, Pike Place Market-style, along with your train.

A group hoping to start a public food market in Portland says the city-owned train station is its top pick for a site.

Some city officials are intrigued by the idea and are eager to find new uses for the aging station in addition to Amtrak train service. But the city is far from committing to filling station space with a market, which faces problems that include raising millions of dollars in private funds and dealing with Amtrak's space and security needs.

The space and security worries can be managed with careful planning, said Ron Paul, consulting director of The Historic Portland Public Market Foundation, which is working to give the city its own Pike Place-like market opening in 2012 or later.

"There are some challenges both in the amount of square footage that it (Union Station) will ultimately yield and in the organization of the market," he said.

A recently finished architectural study found a way to craft more than 31,000 square feet of market space by straddling Amtrak's operations in the main hall. Paul will present that $25,000 study, funded by a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant, to his board on Monday and has gone over details with City Commissioner Dan Saltzman and staff from the Office of Sustainable Development, which Saltzman oversees.

South of the central hall, the market would stretch into space now filled with bathrooms, offices, a train-passenger waiting room and maybe Wilf's Restaurant, which could move into a separate annex building just south of the station. North of the hall, the market would go into building space now used for baggage and move outside into space that would be covered and turned into an entry.

"It's not ideal in that normally you'd want your market spaces more consolidated," without the passenger-hall's interruption, said Joseph Readdy with Mahlum Architects, who led the feasibility study. "But it does function."

A market could fit 25 to 30 vendors in that station space, selling everything from fresh produce to meat, baked goods, even distilled spirits, Paul said. Some storage and planned food wholesale work might have to go across the tracks, he said.

The market has looked at several other spaces, including the nearby Greyhound station and a federal building at 511 N.W. Broadway St. But Paul said he was lured to the station by TriMet's decision to run two MAX light-rail lines by Union Station: the Yellow Line to North Portland and the under-construction Green Line from Clackamas County. Riders from those areas, which have too few places to buy fresh foods, could pick up food on their way home from working downtown, Paul said.

Union Station also serves almost a half-million Amtrak riders a year. Paul hopes to get about triple that number of shoppers in the market in a year.

Still, the Union Station plan has drawbacks. Stricter train security could be a headache for market-goers, though Paul said he's planning for some tighter security rules. Historic rules and the building design limit the flexibility of the space.

Union Station needs $30 million to $40 million worth of work, including seismic upgrades and repairing water damage, to prepare for new tenants. After that work was done, Paul's group would have to raise $6 million to $8 million in private funds to install the market.

The city, meanwhile, has made no commitment to putting a market in the station. The Portland Development Commission is trying to find new ways to use the building and pay for repairs, said Lew Bowers, a PDC senior project manager. There could be other uses for that building, perhaps combining Amtrak, Greyhound buses and other transport services in one spot, he said.

Bowers sees the station's use as part of a bigger question: What to do with a "Broadway Corridor" that includes the 511 Broadway Building, privately owned Greyhound building, several nearby city-owned blocks and acres owned by the U.S. Postal Service. That's 20-plus blocks held by three or four owners, "which is pretty unusual for downtown Portland," Bowers said. "We see an incredible opportunity for this area."

Figuring out a way to get more money out of the train station is part of that. Updating the station probably hinges on including the land in a planned extension of the River District Urban Renewal Area, which could channel bond money to the project. The PDC also would love to find a long-term owner for the station, Bowers said. That could be the city of Portland, he said, or it could be a private owner. Some public-private partnership is the most likely outcome for the station.

"We need to have the discussion on more detail around this whole corridor," and get community input and City Council approval before deciding how to deal with the station, Bowers said.

Andy Dworkin: 503-221-8564; andydworkin@news.oregonian.com
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/o...110.xml&coll=7

[IHEARTPDX]

I think the Greyhound station would be a better fit for a public food market. It seems to have more options for expanding the market space if need be.
I was in Montreal last summer and visited Marche Jean Talon, one of Montreal's 4 public markets. The structure that the market was housed in was not that great--it looked like an old bus station (hint), but the energy and the experience of the market was what left me impressed. Marche Jean Talon had a very mosaic quality to it's layout--it seemed to have an original core and as the market grew more sections were added in a way that made the market more like a "bazaar" rather than an overly structured/rigid layout. There wasn't a definite route you took through the market either, you always had an interesting detour that lead you to some unexpected treat such as vendors selling fresh mussells from Prince Edward Island or wild honey from the Gaspe peninsula.
The space in Union station, although fabulous is already sounding confined, expensive to renovate, and unable to grow in a way that a public market could. In time, A flower market, Northwest wine market, and small restaurants could easily be added to a Public market in the bus station, but adding that space to an active train station would be difficult.

[bvpcvm]

so is greyhound really planning on moving? these articles are the first i've heard of it...

[MarkDaMan]

^I've heard that off and on for a few years now. Nothing concrete from as far as I can tell.

I agree with IHEARTPDX, the Greyhound station makes much more sense to me and would be a helluva lot cheaper and potentially quicker than anything at Union Station. I wonder why they aren't considering the old INS building anymore?

[zilfondel]

Most of the train stations in Europe have extensive retail outlets, including clothing stores, grocery stores, pastry shops, etc in them. Although the stations are probably a good 10x larger than Union Station here in Portland (even for a smaller city), if they can integrate it well it would add some interesting diversity.

[PDX City-State]

Except: Ron Paul no longer has the food community behind him. He's been stuck visioning for ten years, nothing has happened, and in the meantime an entire thriving food culture has emerged in Portland, elevating it to one of the better food cities in the country. These worlds have evolved separately--or more accurately the farmers market, farm-to-table movement and restaurant scene has evolved considerably while the market hasn't evolved at all. Ron Paul is a good man--a deeply thoughtful, compassionate and honest leader who's probably the godfather of Portland food. But I sometimes wonder if the market has become more about Paul's legacy than the direction the city ought to go.

[Flaneur]

If it's true, as reported in the Oregonian, that a Union Station market would accommodate no more than 25-30 vendors and if it's true that there's no feasible way to expand, then I agree that the Greyhound building would represent a far better solution.

I looked at the link that IHEARTPDX provided to Montreal's 'Marche Jean Talon'. 'Marche Jean Talon' lists 113 vendors. Pike Place has 600, although many are not food businesses (http://www.theus50.com/washington/sponsor2.shtml).

It's no accident that the world's great public markets are located in marginal neighborhoods on the periphery of central business districts, where land costs are relatively modest and where there is ample room for expansion. The lower overhead makes it possible to include start-ups, one-person enterprises, and small, highly-specialized vendors.

A market with space for only 25-30 vendors would most likely end up charging extremely high rents and, as a result would be limited to a small number of high-end merchants. Naturally it would be desirable for the Portland Public Market to include vendors who sell the finest artisan products, but the great public markets of the world thrive in part because they cater to a range of tastes and pocketbooks and attract a broad cross-section of the public.

Does anyone have an informed estimate of the number of vendors that the Greyhound building could accommodate? Also, what possibilities does it present for expansion?

[IHEARTPDX]

Originally Posted by Flaneur

Does anyone have an informed estimate of the number of vendors that the Greyhound building could accommodate? Also, what possibilities does it present for expansion?

The size of the Greyhound bus station building is around 55,000 sq ft. There is a public market in Cleveland that has approximately 50,000 sq ft of market space and has 120 vendors (Each vendor probably has 150 to 300 sq feet per booth, then there's the sq footage for passageways, seating etc.)
So you would probably be able to fit 100-125 vendors into the Greyhound station building. This is not including the outdoor areas such as the parking lot to the north and the bus loading areas to the east, if you were to include those areas it would be equivalent to 2 square Portland city blocks (+/- 80,000 sq feet). There is also a parking lot for busses to the northeast of the station (maybe 25,000 sq ft?), and an empty 40,000 sq ft lot to the west.
If they were to utilize all of that space they would be able to fit around 250 +/- vendors more or less...and then they could expand into Union station!

[PeterSmith]

Lexington Market, in my hometown of Baltimore, has about 40,000 sq.ft. of space and houses just over 140 vendors, with spaces ranging between 180 sq.ft. and 400 sq.ft. It can get pretty cramped in there. Lexington Market is one of seven public markets in the city. The other six are around 30,000 to 35,000 sq.ft. but don't house nearly as many vendors.
Even if Portland seeks to have only one central market to serve the city, it sounds like the Greyhound station should provide more than enough space with plenty of expansion possibilities.

[zilfondel]

I don't think Granville Island has anywhere close to 80,000 sq ft in their main 'market' building, although there are a whole bunch of outbuildings for artisans, artists, and other activities.

You don't need to put everything under one roof - the 'market' could be a collection of buildings and streetfronts on ground level (or even multiple levels like Pike's).

[Drmyeyes]

If any of you saw that show on PBS this last week, something like "to the market, to the market, to buy a fat pig", they had a segment on the Cleveland Public Market. Magnificent building...always been a public market. Interior shots were marvelous. The market hall seems huge with the very high ceiling. High above, it has a mezzanine running around part of the building...I don't know, maybe two sides. The public can go up there and have snacks and watch what's going on down below.

If it were desired to build a new building using the materials and craftsmanship of the Cleveland Market Building, but in a modern design, would it be possible or cost manageable to do so? I ask the question thinking of the Saturday Market project, now in its preliminary design stage. I realize they're only thinking of a canopy for that situation, while the Cleveland Mkt bldg is something far more elaborate.

I like the idea of using the Greyhound building for a public building here in Portland a whole lot better than using Union Station for that purpose. It just seems to me that Union Station's role should be to continue serving transportation. I actually like the Greyhound building too. It's kind of modern. Needs better interior lighting and ventilation. The lighting always seems dull and drab in there, and it's somehow always stuffy.

[mcbaby]

where would greyhound move it's operations? union station? could union station accomodate both trains and buses therefore opening up the greyhound building for a market? there are also two unused blocks across the street which could become an option and max will soon be passing by the train and bus stations respectively, linking all our transportation options in town. also we should consider the proximity and convenience of the greyhound station to amtrack and max and not just covet the building just because its the ideal size. portland is a growing metropolis and our train and bus stations will become even more valuable for their own sake as time goes by.

[zilfondel]

Egads, the Greyhound station is such a POS. I am much more in favor of bulldozing it and putting in a parking lot.