Blogtown, PDX

Friday, May 18, 2007

Portland Meet Portland’s Newest Downtown Tower

Posted by Amy J. Ruiz on Fri, May 18 at 10:07 AM

I got an image from the city of the tower I tried to describe yesterday—the 418-feet-tall one slated for the site of the Virginia Cafe downtown. This is the earliest design, and will likely change a bit—yesterday’s meeting at the Design Commission resulted in tons of notes for the architects, including things like making sure the ‘glazing’ on the building didn’t create a dark and hulking tower. But at least one design commission member said nice things about the “sculptural” quality of the building, which will be one of downtown’s tallest.

scaled.parkave.jpg

(Also, at yesterday’s meeting I learned that the building will contain seven full story condos, each around 10,000 square feet, and two multi-story penthouses. Start saving your pennies!)

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Comments

The digital birds are a nice touch.

Posted by ezra | May 18, 2007 11:02 AM

pretty

Posted by Ralph | May 18, 2007 11:28 AM

I know US Bank Tower and Wells Fargo Tower are the other two tallest buildings. How will this compare to them?

Posted by dieselboi | May 18, 2007 11:31 AM

I like it. But what's going in front of it in that picture? That block between the old Guild Theater and the Fox Tower has been torn up for months, a giant hole in the ground--you can't tell me that space is just going to be filled in with lovely trees like that picture shows. Does anybody know what's going there?

Also, no tears will be shed on my behalf for the Virginia Cafe. Their beer was too expensive and their service was for shit.

Posted by Erik Henriksen | May 18, 2007 11:47 AM

Erik—that block is going to be an underground parking garage, capped by a full block park. The garage entrance will be in the Fox Tower building, too, not on the park block. The same developer owns that block and this new tower block, so he got to build a larger tower because he gave up the park space, and got to transfer his development rights over a block.

Dieselboi—I'm hearing this will be the fourth or fifth tallest building in the state, which I believe also means the fourth or fifth tallest in PDX.

Here, in order of tallest to shortest. It's hard to tell where this new tower will fall—the current design is 420 feet and 31 stories, but they can go to 460 feet, and the design commission suggested they revisit the very top of the building.

#1—Wells Fargo Tower, 546 feet, 41 floors

#2—US Bancorp Tower, 536 feet, 43 floors

#3—KOIN Tower, 509 feet, 35 floors

#4—Fox Tower, 436 feet, 27 floors

#5—PacWest Center, 418 feet, 30 floors

Posted by Amy J. Ruiz | May 18, 2007 12:16 PM

10,000 square foot condos!
Are you kidding me?
Please tell me that isn't a common feature they build into high rises.
I know this paints me for the small city yokel that I am, but seriously, 10,000 square feet? Who the hell could need or afford that?

Posted by rico | May 18, 2007 3:09 PM

rico,
It's a McMansion... on stilts.

Posted by Dave Lister | May 18, 2007 3:39 PM

The best part isn't the condos, it's the fact that it's essentially going to freak the other builders out downtown when the condo market is totally saturated.

What can you do when Moyer's outdone ya?

I pray for a race to the skies because that'll give the gentrification focused rather than creeping down the awesome parts of town

Posted by Alex-jon | May 18, 2007 6:13 PM

sprawlensity

Posted by brooks | May 19, 2007 8:30 AM

lame! everyone knows i'm way cuter.

Posted by BIG PINK | May 19, 2007 2:11 PM

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