Portland Infill | Northwest Portland

[edgepdx]

Ok, I got to say, I think planned parenthood is a fine organization, but what does this have to do with skyscrapers? Remember UrbanPDX was banned due to his off topic political rants and the board seems much better since, so IMHO let's try and keep things on topic.

[65MAX]

That's a good point. Plus, this group isn't protesting the development itself, but the tenant that's going to be leasing the space. So forget them, let's hear more about the actual development. Any renderings?

[mcbaby]

yes, i'd like to see some renderings as well.

[MarkDaMan]

Portland struggles to make room for families
Daily Journal of Commerce
by Alison Ryan
03/20/2007


Empty nesters or singles might jump at the chance to rent a one-bedroom, one-bath loft in inner Portland – but a family wouldn't want, or be able, to ink such a lease. And that's a growing concern for neighborhoods and school districts.

Cost, developers say, plays the biggest part in keeping infill development that's attractive and affordable to families out of close-in Portland neighborhoods.

"The cost of the land is the cost of the land," said Gary Whitehill-Baziuk, a broker at Realty Trust and developer of inner eastside Portland properties. "The cost of a two-by-four is the cost of a two-by-four."

A 50-by-90 lot in the Hollywood district zoned for two units, he said, just sold for $285,000. Factors of building costs and reasonable profit put final cost at four times the value of the land – about $600,000 for each of the two units.

"And I can do that," he said. "I can put a product there that is quality infill, that looks like it belongs in the neighborhood, and it'll sell. But I can't put a family on there."

Neighborhoods where land is cheaper, such as outer Southeast Portland, have attracted more family-friendly infill projects. Lincoln Woods, developed by nonprofit group Human Solutions, brought 70 units of green, affordable family housing to an infill lot along Southeast Division Street. Most of Lincoln Woods' units include three-plus bedrooms; spaces are reserved for families making less than 50 percent of the area median income – $34,000 for a family of four.

"The issue of land use and infill is a very real question, with regards to questions of affordability," Dorene Warner, housing director at Human Solutions, said.

Families have jumped at the opportunities. But the influx of housing has meant a rush of students into school districts such as southeast Portland's David Douglas and a dearth of students in districts such as Portland Public Schools.

"Even though the number of units are up and the number of people are up throughout the city, there have been shifts as to where the kids are," Rich Rodgers, coordinator of a "Schools, Families, Housing" initiative introduced in June by City Commissioner Erik Sten, told a crowd of about 50 Saturday at a city-sponsored panel discussion on infill development.

Those shifts, Warner said, are a reality – but creating family-oriented communities at reasonable prices is the focus for Human Solutions.

"How crowded or un-crowded a particular school is is a factor," Warner said, "but it's not something I can look at as the main factor in my deciding to buy or not buy a piece of land."

Putting more families into areas that are under-populated by children is a focus for an upcoming design competition, part of the "Schools, Families, Housing" initiative, that will ask architects and designers to take a look at shared court, common green, and other layouts that offer play space. Human Solutions, Warner said, puts shared space into its site plan for each development as a place for kids to play.

"We find it gives a huge sense of community, because we site that space so, as often as possible, the kitchen or living room windows overlook that space," she said.

Some of what the initiative is trying to do is a start, said Debbie Bischoff, a Planning Bureau liaison to two Northeast Portland neighborhood coalitions. Developers in the area she works with – primarily close-in Northeast neighborhoods – are trying to be responsive, she said, but costs mean new development isn't usually aimed at families.

"We need to get at creative approaches, or ways to assist developers in putting in family-friendly housing," she said.

Incentives from lending institutions, or tax credits, Whitehill-Baziuk said, could make a difference from a development perspective. Creating more public facilities – or opening facilities for public use – may also make alternative space for yardless developments. And, said Jim Labbe, Portland Audubon Society's urban conservationist, creating community spaces in the public right-of-way – such those the City Repair Project makes in shared urban spaces – could create spots for recreation as well.

"You start to look at these areas," he said, "as a real opportunity."
http://www.djc-or.com/viewStory.cfm?...29092&userID=1

[zilfondel]

Can you say... FLATS?

Didn't think so - we'd rather have a super-expensive pretty building that only rich people can afford to something ugly and affordable. Oh well...

[CouvScott]

[bvpcvm]

http://www.portlandonline.com/shared....cfm?id=151125

Location: 103 N IVY ST

Proposal:

4 buildings ranging from 4-6 stories. Total of 333,000 square feet. Retail

at grade with housing and office above. Proposing 192 structured parking spaces.

[bvpcvm]

http://www.portlandonline.com/shared....cfm?id=151124

Location: 1605 NE CLACKAMAS ST

Proposal:

7-story, 23 unit independent living facility in association with Holladay Park Plaza. 21 space structured parking at the ground level.
it's currently a vacant lot

[bvpcvm]

also the building CouvScott posted a picture of a couple posts up:

http://www.portlandonline.com/shared....cfm?id=150701

[MarkDaMan]

Buckman sees walls to renewal come down
Thursday, March 22, 2007
By Kimberly A.C. Wilson
The Oregonian

Maureen Caviness leans back on her front step, watching a construction crane tear down a chunk of the old Washington High School gym's eastern wall. Softly falling rain dampens her face.

"Perfect," says the 40-year-old garden designer. "That school, that property, needs to be used. It's ridiculous for four city blocks to be empty and cordoned off."

Destruction is the latest step toward a communitywide goal to restore the stately, long-shuttered school and grounds into a playing field, community center and housing.

In recent years, other Portland schools have found new lives after closing: Kennedy School, now a popular hotel, theater and pub; Glenhaven Elementary, now a pet hospital, dog park and corporate headquarters; Kenton Elementary, now home to a parochial school; and Linnton School, reborn as high-style townhouses.

Buckman residents hope their turn at transformation is nigh, with Portland Public Schools' deal to sell two parcels of the property to a developer with a track record of giving historic buildings fresh purpose.

Brad Malsin, owner of Beam Development, would convert the 85-year-old school into a mixed-use project with market-rate and "work force" condos over street-level retail. Early plans call for about 160 one- to three-bedroom units -- 60 in the school building and 100 townhouses nearby.

Still to negotiate: the price. A 2006 appraisal valued the two 1.3-acre parcels, bordering Southeast 14th Avenue and Stark Street, at $9.25 million. Malsin wants to shave off about $2 million through historic tax credits, a lower price tag and a profit-sharing agreement with schools.

Much of his plans have the community's blessing.

"I am really happy that the Beam team has come forward with a plan that will preserve that historic building," says Buckman Community Association chair Susan Lindsay.

But she's troubled by the retail component. "There isn't any plan for traffic and parking."

And that's the rub.

The city bought a 4.5-acre chunk in the middle of the property three years ago, earmarked for a neighborhood center that still awaits funding. Malsin envisions building an underground parking lot beneath the central playing field. But no master plan connects his housing project, the community center and their joint traffic and parking demands.

Still, residents are clear about what they want.

"In order to change the neighborhood for the good and stabilize it, you've got to have families," says Jack Inglis, 47, owner of Floyd's Coffee Shop at Southeast Morrison and 15th.

Visitors to Buckman might imagine who lives in its walk-up apartment houses and 19th century Queen Anne cottages painted in sorbet colors. The answer: typically renters and singles. The neighborhood has among the city's lowest concentration of homeowners and families with children.

"A big project could change the fabric of the area because it's more people," says Nicolas Hall, 41, pouring coffee at the Three Friends Coffeehouse & Cafe.

Caviness agrees there's room for a new demographic. She's ready for new neighbors.

Her shingled cottage stares across Southeast 14th Avenue at the school and its grounds. She moved in two years ago and awakens occasionally to late-night arguments on the old track and the sight of discarded needles.

"I'm done with the freaked-out meth heads and the broken glass and the needles," she says. "This community deserves better."

The school's long-winding pedigree seems to call for it. A public school first opened on the site in 1876, a year that also saw the founding of the University of Oregon and the initial printing of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer."

The present four-story brick school was built in 1922 and closed for good in 1981.

Its most illustrious student, Linus Pauling, is the only person to win two unshared Nobel Prizes, one for chemistry in 1954 and the second in 1962 for his peace efforts.

Kimberly Wilson: 503-412-7017; kimberlywilson@news.oregonian.com

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/o...800.xml&coll=7

[asher519]

Bakery rises again
Developers target 'Bakery Blocks' for redevelopment
Portland Business Journal - March 23, 2007
by Wendy Culverwell, Business Journal staff writer

Northeast Portland reminds architect Ben Kaiser of his hometown of Cleveland.
View Larger A blighted Northeast Portland intersection will become the Bakery Blocks as two different developers bring ambitious plans to install new commercial and residential buildings.

The district, just north of Legacy Emanuel Hospital, is taking its name from the former Continental Bakery. The two-block property is largely closed and has been sold to a Seattle developer who apparently intends to demolish the old building and replace it with a mixed-use development.

Another developer, Northeast Portland architect Ben Kaiser, has his own plans for the Bakery Blocks neighborhood, which is roughly centered along North Fremont Street between North Williams and North Vancouver avenues.

A Kelly's Tire shop one occupied the lot across Fremont from the bakery. A long-closed gas station stands on the lot across Vancouver and is enjoying a second life as a popular neighborhood car wash. The intersection is one of Portland's busiest bicycle corridors.

Kaiser, through his architectural firm and his development business, has remade dozens of old apartments into new condos within a 15-block radius of the Bakery Blocks neighborhood. Now, he's graduating from condominium converter into full-fledged developer, and the Bakery Blocks neighborhood is his launch point.

The Kaiser Group Inc.'s first project is BackBridge Station, a $14 million commercial and residential condominium project that starts construction around mid-May. BackBridge Station will bring 41 units to the former tire shop site, which Kaiser bought a few years ago before the latest run-up in property prices.

Kaiser's architecture studio is a few blocks away, above a nursery business on North Mississippi Avenue.

The project is somewhat unusual -- buyers can use their units as residences or commercial space. The five buyers so far say they plan to use the property for business.

Kaiser also owns property across the corner, bordered by Fremont and Williams. There, he plans to extend the BackBridge brand with a 39-loft project called BackBridge Lofts. Because of zoning, it will be residential.

Kaiser said he chose to call his dual projects "BackBridge" to reflect the neighborhood, which serves as a bridge between the freeway and the popular Irvington community.

A native of Cleveland, Kaiser said he's long been attracted to Northeast Portland because it reminds him of home.

In the past, he's specialized in rehabilitating blighted apartments into low-cost condos priced at $125,000 or below. He enjoys watching the way a redevelopment sparks neighborhood pride.

When work crews show up to improve a blighted property, neighbors perk up. They start to mow lawns and perform other maintenance.

"No one wants to live in a bad neighborhood," he said. "It's amazing to see."

But as prices for multifamily property rose, apartments for condominium conversion were no longer financially feasible. He began to turn his attention to larger opportunities and bought the former tire store site in 2004.

BackBridge has been two years in development. At one point, Kaiser even hoped to pair it with a bakery renovation.

He hoped to buy the former Continental Bakery, which had been owned by Interstate Bakeries Corp. The Kansas City, Mo., maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, and the Portland baker was one of the casualties.

The property, which includes a bakery thrift shop, was sold in a telephone auction for an as-yet unrecorded price. Sierra Construction, based in the Seattle area, outbid the local buyers.

Kaiser doesn't regret losing to Sierra -- in fact, he welcomes the investment, figuring a significant investment out of Seattle validates his long-held belief that Northeast Portland is the Rose City's sleeper hit.

"It's the most interesting of the four quadrants," he said.

Sierra officials weren't available to discuss their plans, but they did meet with Portland Development Commission officials earlier this week.

Byron Estes, a PDC urban renewal manager who oversees Northeast Portland, said the new owners are trying to figure out what to build, but indicated it will be some sort of mixed-use development.

"That's exciting. That's a large site," he said, calling the Vancouver/Fremont district a "fulcrum of development interest."

Under area codes, the developer could build as much as 360,000 square feet of new construction where the bakery building and thrift shop now stand.

Scores of developers are increasingly interested in Northeast Portland. Among them is Jim Winkler, the prominent Portland developer with broad tastes.

Winkler bought property at North Mississippi and Fremont a few years ago, deciding to buy it the second he saw it. He's been studying it lately to see if the time has come to build.

"This is clearly a very hip area," he said.

There are obvious challenges, including the premium builders can get for projects in the Pearl District and the ever-increasing price of construction materials.

He expects to make a decision about the 45,000-square-foot, L-shaped property in a few months.

Winkler, who attended grade school at Irvington, gives Northeast Portland a thumbs up.

"We've just been waiting for the marketplace to mature a little," he said.

wculverwell@bizjournals.com | 503-219-3415

[MarkDaMan]

The amount of infill in NE-SE absolutely amazes me. The big names and height are downtown, but the real high density housing for everday Portlanders is being built in massive numbers on the east side of the Willylambette...this thread has grown to 10 pages quick!

[bvpcvm]

http://www.oregonlive.com/printer/pr...l=7&thispage=2

NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE FUTURE

The company's Northwest Portland property is the perfect blank palette for a 21st-century twist -
Sunday, March 25, 2007RANDY GRAGG
The Oregonian

Between the Pearl District and the Northwest District lies the perfect blank piece of land to create a new 21st-century model for the working-class neighborhood.
That's because at the center of the land sit 1,000 members of the 21st-century working class.
Let's name the neighborhood right now: Con-way.
Con-way?
That's the owner of the land, the employer of the workers and the company that can make it all happen.
Trucking enthusiasts and longtime Portlanders know Con-way is all that may soon be left of the dwindling Consolidated Freightways, the trucking company started by Portlander Leland James in 1929. The history of mergers and spinoffs is tangled, but the bottom line is that the truck-building Consolidated Freightways has mostly been off-shored to Mexico while the transportation and logistics company Con-way thrives.
Recently named one of Forbes magazine's most-admired companies, the $4-billion company is based in San Mateo, Calif. But the entire company's technological nerve center sits at Northwest Thurman and 21st Avenue, surrounded by 15 acres of mostly empty land mainly used for parking.
"We have this property," says J. Craig Boretz, Con-way's vice president of corporate development. "We don't need it for our business. It's become valuable. We'd like to redevelop it, but in a way that will be a good experience for our employees."
Con-way's goal is to attract the best employees, Boretz says.
"Let's face it, transportation isn't as sexy as Nike or Intel," he says. "So we want to be here, in the heart of Northwest, surrounded by amenities and good places to live."
Simple as that may sound, it's actually a tall order.
Con-way's land is zoned for mixed-use buildings -- retail with either commercial or housing on top -- the same as the Pearl District next door. But Con-way's land has lower height and bulk limits and fewer available bonuses to go above and beyond them.
One of the only bonuses the city offers, in fact, is to build smaller -- for buildings with 10,000 and 20,000-square-foot footprints. That's a lovely idea: an attempt to social engineer this land, a la Christopher Alexander-style "pattern language," with small-grain apartment buildings like those in the Northwest District. The only problem is, the economics don't work. Current construction prices make building small more expensive, plus whoever develops this land will have to pay for way more than just the buildings.
The Northwest District Plan, for instance, calls for a neighborhood park and a community center on the land. The only mass transportation to the site is one bus line. And then there's parking. Most of Con-way's employees drive. The company leases parts of its vast surface parking lots to such nearby employers as Good Samaritan Hospital. So, even with improved mass transit, Con-way needs parking for at least 1,000 cars. That's $25,000 for every parking stall -- $35,000 if it goes, as it should, underground -- so, $25 million to $35 million for starters.
Though Con-way's average wage is, Boretz estimates, "somewhere north of $50,000," that doesn't buy much in today's inner-city housing market. Land and construction prices have skyrocketed to the point where even middle-class urban housing has to be subsidized, cheaply built or tiny.
Boretz hired an initial design team: John Spencer (a private planning consultant), Gerding/Edlen Development and GBD Architects. They studied several housing types like townhouses and courtyard apartments. They pondered a potential streetcar extension linking Con-way to other transit-starved areas nearby like the north Pearl District and Montgomery Park. Under current zoning, only 1,500 to 2,000 units of housing are possible.
But the real opportunity -- if not the necessity -- is to look at this land for what it is: a blank slate.
What would this future neighborhood look like with no rules but two basic goals: 1) to produce as much energy as it consumes; and 2) offer housing options and amenities affordable to all of Con-way's workers, whether a vice president or a janitor, whether a young single or the head of a family of five?
There's no paved road to follow to success in these times. Maybe the buildings would be low, maybe tall. With the area already gridded with super-blocks, maybe we could build true Vancouver-style "point towers" -- thin skyscrapers that rise from five- or six-story buildings topped by roof gardens, some serving as family-supportive daycare playgrounds. Maybe they're very small units arranged in buildings with more common rooms and pocket parks for communal recreation. Maybe they're an entirely new kind of flex-space buildings where people buy raw space to live in, work in or rent as they need for growing and shrinking families and businesses.
Whatever. The key is to drive the process with aspirations rather than limits, to consider models beyond our own and maybe even develop some new ones.
Randy Gragg: 503-221-8575; randygragg@news.oregonian.com


©2007 The Oregonian

[PDX City-State]

This article says absolutely nothing. Typical Randy.

[asher519]

I don't think it's trying to, except that the owner of the land is interested in developing it. He's simply asking us to consider the possibilities.

[PDX City-State]

Old news. Why is everyone on this forum so fond of this guy? He doesn't write that well, he recycles nearly everything from other writers in town, and is generally considered to be a self-important ass by local architects. Only in Portland could a guy like this be employed.

[brandonpdx]

I enjoy reading his columns...anyway back to the topic:
I think the commissioners should consider opening it up for this piece of property. However, it is the Northwest neighborhood association where this property lies, so I'm sure if they start talking point towers the NIMBYs will be out in full force.

[tworivers]

I also generally enjoy reading his columns, although I do feel like I've noticed a change in style after his return from Harvard. He definitely seems to be much more friendly to the powers-that-be in the development world, and I agree that he can have an air of smug self-importance. I was also really disappointed by that free lecture that he gave last month. If his meanderings on the subject of "deep history" are any indication of the depth of his intellect... well, he has a lot of studying to do.

I am both concerned and intrigued by his suggestions recently that we alter some of our long-held planning models. The whole article was mostly a vehicle for this last line:

The key is to drive the process with aspirations rather than limits, to consider models beyond our own and maybe even develop some new ones.

Back to the topic, the NIMBY's are probably organizing already! But I highly doubt point towers are going to get built over there any time soon, particularly given the seeming weakness (fickleness, at least) of the market here. We can't even get a point tower built elsewhere in the city.

[dkealoha]

This may not be about development, but did anyone notice the fireworks tonight in NW Portland? It looked like they were coming from near the top of Burnside above Zupans.

[pdxman]

Point towers? I wish--not with the NW neighbors controlling that area...I could see some nice 5-6 story brownstone rowhousing with community gardens-kind of like something you'd see in london area or manhattan(not orenco style). Something dense...