Posted Mar 18, 2024, 9:50 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Portland
Posts: 7,405
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Quote:
Keller Auditorium’s future: Three options, one choice
The 3,000-seat Keller needs replacing. What's the best choice: a new building at PSU, a new hall at a revamped Lloyd Center, or a full-scale renovation where it is now?
Welcome to the University Place Hotel, built in 1969 as a Ramada Inn and now vying to become a cultural savior of sorts for downtown Portland as the potential site of a replacement for Keller Auditorium.
The hotel, purchased by Portland State University in 2004, is located beside an Interstate 405 exit ramp, on Southwest Lincoln Street at downtown Portland’s southern edge. This has never been mistaken for a downtown hot spot, yet University Place can offer room not only for a 3,000-seat auditorium but also for a 150-room boutique hotel, conference space, restaurant and bar, and a flexible outdoor plaza. There’s even a MAX stop right outside.
Visiting the site on an overcast recent day, Leroy E. Bynum, Jr., dean of Portland State University’s College of the Arts, was ready to imagine a sunnier future being built here. “What’s got me really excited is we could do a lot,” Dr. Bynum said. “We can dream big.”
PSU’s University Place Hotel site is one of three finalists that the Portland City Council will consider this spring in determining Keller Auditorium’s fate. Another finalist is the struggling Lloyd Center mall, which means that renovating the circa-1917 Keller (which last happened in 1968) has a one-in-three chance.
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...continues at Oregon Artswatch.
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