The mixed use development at 930 SW 3rd Ave, which originally proposed to incorporate the Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple
Restore Oregon noted that two downtown buildings have been removed from the City’s Historic Resources Inventory. The buildings are on the site of a proposed mixed use development at 930 SW 3rd Ave, which will include a 20-story hotel and 10-story office building. As part of the development the Hotel Albion (which includes the Lotus Café and Cardroom) will be demolished. The Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple Building will be incorporated into the development will also be demolished.
In a 5-0 vote, the Portland City Council adopted the Broadway Corridor Framework Plan, which will form the vision for how the 14 acre Post Office site in the Pearl will be developed. The acquisition of the site, worth between $135 and $177 million according to developer Mark Edlen, will cost the City up to $80 million.
Construction will begin by the end of the year on the 299 room Porter Hotel at SW 2nd and Jefferson. The 16 story building will be included in Hilton’s “Curio” collection of hotels.
The Society Hotel opened this week in Old Town / Chinatown. The Portland Mercury published photos of the low cost hotel meets hostel, and described the “gorgeous rooftop deck” as the project’s “crowning jewel”.
Shortly after acquiring trucking company Conway, XPO Logisitics laid off 101 Portland based workers. Though headquartered in Ann Arbor until its acquisition, Conway was a large landowner in Northwest Portland. What effect, if any, the acquisition will have on the redevelopment of the Conway Masterplan area is currently unclear.
Kaiser is planning a 700 space parking garage at 500 NE Multnomah in the Lloyd District. According to BikePortland the structure “aims in part to free up space on Kaiser’s other parking lots, which could then be developed or sold in order to continue the surge of big developments [in] the Lloyd District”.
The Portland Chapter of the AIA held its annual design awards last weekend. Portland Architecture wrote about the winning projects, which included Lever Architecture’s Treehouse and Allied Works’ PNCA 511 Building.
In a post titled ‘The City of Fabric Buildings‘ Places over Time noted how curious it is that “Portland has developed such an international reputation as a city without the assistance of any real place-specific visual aides”.
Design work is about to start on the Multnomah County Health Dept HQ, which will be located on a site near Union Station. The new building will be “nine stories and run between $85 million to $95 million” according to a report in The Oregonian.
Portland Monthly reported that health food “haven” Prasad opened a second location at the Portland Rock Gym, which recently completed a major expansion.
NOTE: This post has been revised to reflect that the Temple building will be demolished, as shown on drawings published on the City Auditor’s website Monday.
This seems like a superb opportunity for adaptive reuse. A combination of taller buildings with adjacent historic buildings would make for a much more engaging and dynamic project, rather than demolishing the Card Room building and engulfing the Temple building. The city has some useful items in their toolbelt – what about a FAR (floor area transfer)? By transferring the allowed height from these two historic buildings, the new buildings could go taller. This technique was recently used for a new Pearl District building (https://www.nextportland.com/2015/11/04/the-diane-2/#more-5252), and this seems like an ideal use case for using it again.
Imagine these historic buildings getting lovely rooftop decks, which could be accessible from the respective buildings as well as from the adjacent new buildings. There would be so many creative possibilities, and we have so few truly historic buildings to preserve.