Quote:
Originally Posted by CorbinWarrick
Is that where the information center is now?
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Yeah. It used to be a restaurant called McCall's (and probably a few other names through the years). I remember a time back in 1999 when the food was great. They had a large patio in back, facing the river. It was a wonderful spot for dinner and drinks on a summer evening.
But that's the thing. The place was hopping during summer, but who's going to go there during the rest of the year? Nobody. On paper, or on a computer screen, it probably looks like an amazing location. Go there tomorrow afternoon and walk around. You'll realize why it didn't work.
This thread is about the Centennial Mills site, which faces even greater challenges than the McCall's location.
It's completely cut off from everything, and everything it's cut off from is already separated from it by Fields Park. Fields Park is great, but look how big it is. Look how far away the edge of the nearest buildings in The Pearl are. Even if they build a sky bridge connecting the site to Fields Park, it's still such a distance that they'd get very little foot traffic. I expect any retail built at this site to struggle. Turning it into an entertainment district would be a huge failure.
There's a difference between what you see on your computer screen in your bedroom in Longview, Gresham, or Woodburn, and what you'd see if you actually spent time walking through the site - not driving past it. Walking through it and around it.
This goes back to understanding the difference between picture postcard pretty and actually living there.
On a closing note: One of my fondest memories of McCall's was sitting on the patio one evening, as the Hawthorne Bridge restoration project was wrapping up back in 1999. The bridge kept slowly going up and down, up and down. I assume they were testing. I don't know why, but it was oddly satisfying to watch.