Been by the corner of SE 20th and Morrison recently? What was once the Cemetery Gates cafe is now an empty lot covered in construction equipment.

The new development across the street from Lone Fir Cemetery leveled two buildings constructed in 1907 and 1891 to build a two high-density residential buildings home to 71 apartments total. I was surprised to find out that the previous buildings were so old—I never had any love for the one on the corner, which had been covered with an ugly wood facade (and pretty cool mural) some time much more recently.

As a sign of the times, the 71 apartments will have only 15 parking spots! According to the Buckman neighborhood association, the developer will be "aggressively marking this property to tenants without cars, and will also be offering some perks to its residents such as TriMet passes."

Maybe they heard that free parking is for socialists? Anyway, hooray for dense building that doesn't waste space and money on surface parking lots.

Here are a couple images of the planned apartments, via the neighborhood association:

This isn't happening:

Instead, we're stuck with this:

The DJC reports that the deal for a downtown Uwajimaya has fallen through, after years of work between the Portland Development Commission and developer (and years of getting our hopes up).

The PDC had been trying to swing the $80 million mixed-use project since 2003, working with Sockeye Development to plan to turn a surface parking lot at NW 4th and Couch into a building with housing the famed Uwajimaya Asian grocery and 140 apartments. The deal ran into trouble in 2009 and the PDC tried a "creative financing" scheme to save it, which actually looked good for a while. Last year, the grocer and the developer signed a letter of intent to make the building a reality, but now it has all fallen apart.

Uwajimaya pins the project's collapse on the economic downturn and its slow performance in other stores. The PDC was slated to give the project $8.4 million in urban renewal dollars from the Downtown Waterfront Urban Renewal Area.

Sigh. I can't think of any upside to this, besides that the $8.4 million can now go elsewhere... except that this is the perfect project to receive that kind of urban renewal money. Think of the lost potential! The major grocery store and apartments on that block would have brought down crime, as it creates more eyes on the street. It would have been a good step for Portland's official Chinatown to actually have new Asian development. It would have made what's now a surface parking lot into a major destination. And it would have put aisles of cheap, strange foods at the fingertips of those of us who work downtown. Augh! The future memories of eating dried squid straight from the bag while watching Old Town club-goers walk by are slipping away.

Thanks to Graham for the heads up!

I'm surprised by how many vacant lots there are on NE Alberta. For a street that's at the center of demographic change in Portland, that's gone in just over a decade from being a drug hotspot to written up in the New York Times as a "hub of the creative class" that's a great place to buy a boutique felt hat, in my mind I've given it entirely over to condos and brunch places. Especially since that laundromat closed.

But, no! In reality, the street is still full of vacant lots in between the flashy new development—my eyes just slide over them.

One of the vacant lots will be gone for good soon, though: A two story mixed-use building is going up at NE 20th and Alberta, on the grassy lot that has been vacant for at least a decade. Plans in 2006 to turn it into a 59-unit, six-story condo building fell through, but the the new plan comes from the development team behind Alberta Central, the mixed-use building where Barista is just down the block, and will also renovate the ACME building on NE 21st.

The new development, dubbed Alberta 20:20, will have nine first-floor retail spaces between the two buildings with office space above. Like Alberta Central, it will have some courtyard space, rather than being flush to the curb for the entire block. "There's lower Alberta, and there's upper Alberta. This is going to fill a void in there," says architect John Cooley. Here's a rough rendering, with the ACME building in front:

One quantitative sign of change: Since 1997, the lot's value has grown from $13,400 to $331,660. For the past couple years, the lot has been site of a mini neighborhood battle between neighborhood residents, who routinely use the lot as picnic-smoking-tea drinking space during Last Thursday, and the owners, who erected a fence around it.

UPDATE: Did you know Walmart has launched a Portland specific website with slick ads from local business Franz Bakery talking about how much Walmart supports local business? I did not, until reader dudeluna pointed it out to me. They're definitely laying the groundwork to try and change public opinion of Walmart in Portland. Check it out:

Here's a hot news tip-off from the blog of Portland real estate company Urban Design Works: Walmart is "actively working and negotiating" on 17 Portland-area locations for new "neighborhood market" stores. This may be coming to a suburb near you.

As Urban Design Works notes, "neighborhood market" is an oxymoron here, since the company is based in Arkansas and is also the world's largest retailer. Walmart hasn't made public any of these locations, no doubt getting their (Chinese made, highly affordable) ducks in a row before the inevitable backlash. Mayor Sam Adams has campaigned against Walmarts in Sellwood and Hayden Island. According to The O, Walmart has commissioned an economic study of the feasibility of these locations, which would add to their current four stores in the area.

So here's the list of potential future Walmart sites:

• Raleigh Hills: Ex-Zupan's at Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy & Apple Way
• Lake Grove: Ex-Whole Foods at Boones Ferry Rd & Jean Rd.
• West Linn: Ex-Lamb's Thriftway at Hwy 43 & Hidden Valley
• Gresham: Ex-QFC at 182nd & Powell
• Gresham: Ex-Food 4 Less at Powell & Burnside
• Beaverton: Ex-Haggen's at SW Murray & 147th
• Vancouver: Ex-Fred Meyer at 4th Plain & Grand
• Vancouver: Ex-Winco at Hwy 500 & Thurston Way
• Oregon City: Molalla Ave. & S. Beavercreek (land parcel)
• Salmon Creek: 134th & I-5 (land parcel)
• Tigard: SW Greenburg Rd. & Hwy 217
• Oak Grove: Ex-G.I. Joe's at SE McLoughlin & Concord

The blog also notes:

Also rumored are negotiations for several close-in urban locations in north and southeast Portland...SE Belmont and North Williams...imagine those neighborhood meetings!

Thanks to humanclock for the heads up!

The Pacific Northwest College of Art has big plans for an old building downtown. The 511 Building on NW Broadway was a federal building (everything from a post office to the home for the Department of Homeland Security) since 1916. But in 2008, the feds transferred the property worth over $27 million to the art school.

Yesterday, the Portland Development Commission unanimously agreed to give PNCA $740,000 in urban renewal funds to help with their planned expansion. That's just a drop in the bucket, really: The cost of turning the historic building into a theater, new classrooms, and art resource center will run the school $26 million.

While PNCA will officially remain headquartered just a few blocks away on NW Johnson, the school says 50 of its 71 teachers will move to the 511 building.

The building itself is awesome. Portland Architecture toured it a few years ago, snapping photos of the building's great vintage details. I'll be glad to see new life in it.

• PNCA
• 511 Building: Soon to be full of kids smoking cloves.

• CamKnows

Michael Graves' post-modern box was finished in 1982, which means it would need a waiver from the most basic rule of the national historic register: Under national guidelines, a building has to be at least 50 years old to qualify as "historic" (Memorial Coliseum, for example, just barely qualifies). That mere 50 years is a reflection of how short our history is here in America, but 29 years seems like quite a stretch to me.

At that rate, I'm verging on historic myself.

There's some serious benefits to being listed on the register, including tax breaks for rehabbing the buildings. It's also worth considering listing on the register so that some future generation (um, mine) doesn't tear the thing down. I can see why they'd want to rush it in this case—it's an important architectural work that's often reviled. By the time it's 50 years old, people might be calling to screw it's architectural significance and burn it down for, I don't know, a baseball stadium. But it's also a joke to call a 29-year-old building historic. We should wait.

Six months ago, SE 43rd and Division was home to the Artistery, a DIY all-ages space that hosted shows, radical lectures, and punk potlucks in its falling-apart house and venue. Then, in January, the space was sold to a huge developer, DR Horton, for $649,000 and the Aristery was razed. RIP.

So what's the big developer's plan? Tiny, tiny homes. The third-of-an-acre lot will become 29 "micro-homes" with studio units ranging from 364 to 687 square feet costing $120,000 to $180,000.

Their pitch sounds like it's right out of a Portland Plan wet dream: "Homes sized just right for Portland. And just right for you. Where it’s easy and convenient to live car-free. Where you can get to know your neighbors in friendly, relaxed outdoor spaces." It's interesting to see a mega-developer (DR Horton has built over 18,000 homes in the US, including plenty of cookie-cutter suburban McMansions) recognize that there's a market in small, green homes. It would be great to see companies like theirs shift away from building sprawl and instead invest in building dense urban developments. Of course, there are local architects building smart, dense projects in Portland, too, but getting giant developers to recognize the value of building small could create a lot more options.

Another schematic is below the cut.

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It looks like the Hollywood Theater will be getting a new neighbor soon—one that has historical preservationists worried.

Myhre Architects are planning a to turn that vacant lot on the west side of the Hollywood Theater into a five-story, mixed-use building with 51 market-rate apartments and ground floor retail. The lot is right between three grocery stores, a public library, and numerous dive bars (Pal's Shanty!), so a housing development there is likely gold. Two cool things about the project: There will be no on-site parking, with residents encouraged to use the MAX that's just a few blocks away, and the plans slate a chunk of the site for a public plaza. Transit and pedestrian-friendly dense housing going up in an abandoned eastside lot? For new market-rate development, it doesn't really get better than that.

But some neighborhood residents and historic preservationists are worried about the new apartments' impact on the 88-year-old historic theater.

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Until last year, NE Couch was a quiet back street. But after the city turned Burnside and Couch into a couplet, suddenly Couch is an major thoroughfare. It's only a matter of time before big developments start popping up and the newest is a five-story mixed use development slated for NE Sixth and Couch.

A Lake Oswego development group purchased half the block between NE 5th and 6th Avenues in 2006 for $1.47 million and hired architects Vallester Corl to design the Couch Apartments. Portland Architecture reports the details on the building: It'll have 70 apartments, mostly studios and one-bedrooms, above 11 ground-floor retails spots. That's a ton of retail for Couch, whose retail currently amounts to mostly a vacuum store and laundromat.

The Couch Apartments will also have more parking for bikes than cars, offering 23 car spots and storage space for 70 bicycles. That's a great sign and makes sense, seeing as the building is right on the bus line and a few blocks from the soon-to-be streetcar. Besides that, I'm not psyched about the design. Here's what it looks like, it's all metal and pine on the facade and looks like a condo:

• Vallester Corl

I posted last week about a just-released study that shows the Portland Development Commission (PDC) did not use as many women and minority contractors as it should have.

The studies of city and PDC practices looked at 9,000 contracts on construction projects worth $2.4 billion altogether. That got me interested in who exactly is getting our money and what are the largest projects that the city and PDC are hiring contractors for?

PR staffers at those two public agencies swiftly compiled the top 10 biggest projects looked at in the studies. Not all the PDC projects actually got cash from the urban renewal agency, but they're projects that the PDC oversaw because they're in urban renewal areas.

Nothing really jumps out from the numbers as particularly scary or exciting, I just think it's good to have on the record who the contractors are for our city's most expensive projects. Here's the PDFs of all the contractors on city projects and PDC projects.

LARGEST CITY CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS 2004-2009:
1. East Side Big Pipe - $388 million
2. Portland Streetcar - $95.9 million
3. Aerial Tram - $36.9 million
4. Portsmouth Force Main Segment One- $28 million
5. Mt. Tabor and Washington Park Security and Maintenance - $23.3 million
6. Sandy River Conduit Relocation Project - $20.7 million
7. Portsmouth Force Main Segment Two - $19 million
8. East Columbia to Lombard Connector - $17.3 million
9. Fire Station 1 Seismic Upgrade - $10.2 million
10. Downtown Water Mains Improvement - $9.6 million

McMenamins invited me this past weekend to explore the interior of their new Crystal Hotel, the swank project built on the site of what used to be an infamous gay bathhouse. The hotel is slated to open in June.

After years of construction and hauling away decades worth of trash and oddities, the triangular building on SW 12th and Stark looks nothing like it used to. The basement (formerly home to a wall of glory holes) is now the site of a heated pool and tiny bar that connects to Ringler's Annex. The storied Army Jeep is in storage (but will hopefully be back). The lobby that used to dispense towels and free condoms is now dominated by a classy triangular kitchen, which will dish up applewood-fired pizza to patrons who sit around its bar. Floor-to-ceiling windows, which were covered with plywood for decades, have been replaced with new 190-pound windows that will open all the way, allowing the first-floor restaurant to let in the breeze (such as it is) from Stark and Burnside in the summer.

The only part of the building that hasn't been gutted is the bedrooms—three floors of 17 rooms have been repainted, refloored, and rewired. Each room is also themed after a band that has played at the Crystal Ballroom. Lyrics from Flogging Molly, Sonic Youth, Blondie, and the Avett Brothers, for example, run across the walls of second-floor rooms, each of with is replete with a giant, painted bed headboard inspired by their songs. The best rooms in the house are definitely Sleater Kinney and Modest Mouse, which scored corner digs with big bay windows looking out over downtown.

Here's a photo slideshow of the hotel (spot former gay bar owner Flossie!). Guess which bands inspired the featured headboards and then check out the answers below the cut.

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The Foursquare Gospel Church has big plans for its humble parking lot on the corner of SE 12th and Ankeny: They've applied for a permit to turn the lot into a a six-story, 132 unit senior housing development.

The "Foursquare Senior Living" building would put the 132 units above 7,200 square feet of ground floor retail space and a two-level parking garage. It would be six stories on the side facing Burnside, but step down to four stories on the Ankeny side. Still, in order to build the development, the church will have to get a special variance from the city, since the 65-foot building exceeds the neighborhood's height limit by 20 feet.

The building looks like a boring modern condo cookie-cutter, but I think the project sounds good. Dense housing for seniors right on transit lines and close to the central city? Yes! Turning an ugly parking lot into retail and housing? Hallelujah!

Here's a (not so great) rendering of the building from their application:

Local history and architecture blog Portland Preservation pointed out today that one of Portland's funniest looking buildings is scheduled for the wrecking ball. The Galaxy lounge and restaurant on East Burnside and Ninth Ave will soon become a bland brick-faced restaurant Trio, according to permit paperwork (pdf) filed by the building owners.

• Google

It turns out the ol' Galaxy is actually the first Denny's in Portland and Portland Preservation asks whether the building's unique architecture makes it worth saving:

Unless there are irreversible structural issues, why demolish a building only to replace it with something that will serve the same essential purpose and will do nothing to add housing density or other social benefits to the community?... After a little research, it appears that this location was indeed Portland’s first Denny’s Restaurant, opening in June 1963. It was used to promote franchise possibilities for the Denny’s chain, and was modeled after the prototype Denny’s Restaurants founded in Southern California a decade earlier. The “check mark” design is one of those trademark patterns from the era of “Googie” architecture — something that we don’t have a lot of (remaining and intact) here in Portland.

Trio will be a restaurant, karaoke lounge, and bar with "dance music, you know, like disco disco," says building owner Foo-Hong Foong, who adds that the new one-story building will be split into three big rooms and have a menu featuring three foods served on one plate (because, see, it's a trio!). Asked why it was necessary to tear down the current building, Foong said that the place was old. "We need a new face, a new face will draw more people in," he says.

Check out the opening day ad for Portland's first Denny's below the cut.

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• Mark Searcy

Commission Leonard had this to say: "Mayor Adams would have been on solid ground if he'd come today and said that given that given that this agreement has been existence for nearly two decades, it's time to look at another entity to assign the development rights to."

But after the fingerwagging, Leonard went ahead and voted for the extension. By May 24th, the Blazers and Portland Development Commission are supposed to come up with a plan for initial improvements to the Rose Quarter, including a financial plan and a community benefits agreement.

A longer timeline clock is ticking on this area, too: $20 million in urban renewal funds for Convention Center Urban Renewal Area (which includes the Rose Quarter) expires in 2013.

Seattle's liberal new mayor is talking big about bumping up the price of parking in the central city and the response is outrage on the right. In response, Eric Hess de Place over at NW enviro think tank Sightline has a funny write-up about how right-wingers should support paid-for parking because free parking is essentially socialist:

Under current law and practice, on-street parking is pretty much a textbook case of socialism. It works like this: the government raises revenue, builds streets, and then mandates portions of the public property be set aside exclusively for storing private vehicles. In most cases, the government gives away the storage for free. But in a few cases, such as downtown, the government meters the spaces, albeit far below market rates. The result is completely predictable: we get Soviet bread lines.

No, drivers in Seattle aren't huddling in long gray lines in the winter chill. But they're doing the automotive equivalent: circling the block again, hunting for government-subsidized bargains, and creating all kinds of congestion problems.

The Daily Journal of Commerce reports that the PREM group is planning to use the Custom House for meeting rooms and also as an "incubation space for nonprofits." That could be exciting—there's a couple large buildings in town that offer flexible, relatively cheap, subdivided space for little nonprofits.

The Custom House has been somewhat of a burden on the federal government, which has been trying to sell the behemoth for about six years. Last year, the Department of Education gave the Custom House to a local private school for free. But the school eventually backed out of the deal that would have required $8-10 million in repair work to bring the Custom House up to earthquake and disability standards.

• DJC

The Church of Scientology payed $6.4 million to buy the Sherlock Building downtown, with plans to make the historic building their new Portland headquarters.

As Aaron Spencer at the DJC reports, that's hilarious. Right across the street from the church whose founder declared homosexuality to be a "sexual perversion" is all male strip club Silverado (whose website, FYI, makes me nostalgic for 1998).

On the other side of the new Scientology building? Basic Rights Oregon, the advocacy group that fights for LGBT rights in the state. That's going to cause some spikes in the Scientologists' stress tests for sure.

So Scientologists, nude male strippers, the inevitable anti-Scientology protesters and the inevitable pro-gay Basic Rights Oregon protesters. This is going to be the most interesting corner in Portland.

After over a year of contentious public hearings, meticulous timelines and stakeholder meetings, Mayor Sam Adams put the Memorial Coliseum process on hold at the end of May. At the time, the mayor's office asked the three finalists to redevelop the Coliseum (the Trail Blazers, Doug Obletz and a Veterans' Arts group) to put aside their differences and namecalling work together (just like in an after school special).

Well a month later, reports Natalie Weinstein in the DJC, the groups that are supposed to be working together have no idea what's going on. Mayor Adams sent the groups a letter last month saying the Memorial Coliseum plan should look at the entire Rose Quarter, not just repurposing the historic building. From the DJC article:

In the letter Adams also said that members of the Portland Development Commission’s board have “recommended a path” for the teams to follow for the next step in the coliseum redevelopment process. But according to J. Isaac, senior vice president of business affairs for the Portland Trail Blazers, that path has not been disclosed to his project team... Matthew Miller, director of operations for the Veterans Memorial Arts and Athletics Center team, said members of the Portland Development Commission told him he would receive a letter explaining the next steps following suspension of the RFP process. His team wants the coliseum to feature a multi-use community arts center.

“I never received that letter,” Miller said. “I haven’t heard anything. At this point, I’m waiting.”

This isn't 100 percent completely confirmed, but reliable sources have told me that the Portland Storage sign that rises before commuters every time they cross the Morrison Bridge has been sold to Clear Channel. According to two people who rent space in the building, the sign will be painted over and Clear Channel will use it as a giant billboard.

I suppose that it is already a giant billboard right now, but it's a pleasing billboard. It's simple. It references the industrial uses of SE Portland. It's just plain better looking than a Burger King or Pruis ad.

• David Reamer

Construction on an affordable housing complex in South Waterfront will begin in November 2010, after 10 years of urban renewal money building the district, affordable housing projects falling through and promises of a mixed-income, diverse neighborhood seeming more and more like fantasy.

As I wrote about last month in the piece "We Built This City", South Waterfront's urban renewal dollars have built hundreds of units of luxury condo housing, but zero affordable housing units. When it was planned, the district was supposed to have 788 units of subsidized housing available to people who make under Portland's median family income.

Earlier this year, the city gave up on building 400 units at Block 33, pulling out its plans at a financial loss and reorienting to focus on building units at Block 49 instead. Now, Portland Housing Bureau has announced, Block 49 is finally underway.

The $49.8 million building will include 208 units of housing affordable for Portlanders making less than 60 percent of Portland's median family income (about $619 for a studio to $776 for a two bedroom) and 42 studios reserved for veterans, who will pay no more than a third of their income to in rent. Its construction will be financed through a mix of tax increment financing dollars and $7.57 million in bonds.

I hope it actually gets off the ground. It's especially important to target vets for these kinds of projects, though 42 studios is such a drop in the bucket when you look at homeless veteran rates. Anyway, More details on the project here.

• Mark Searcy

The new TrailBlazers-Doug Obletz-Veterans Memorial Arts axis has been given an "indefinite amount of time" to pull together a compromise proposal that incorporates elements from all of their plans. Nathalie Weinstein at the DJC has the scoop from the PDC's Kevin Brake: "I intend to have a point where we won’t let the project stay stalled,” Brake said. “We want to allow the teams time without pressure to have these discussions. But realistically we need to set out an end date." The Convention Center Urban Renewal Area (and its pile of money) expire in 2013, so the Coliseum re-do needs to have its plans well under way before then.

This feels like one of those sweetly ironic made-for-TV movie twists. The developers who attacked each others' Memorial Coliseum ideas as self-interested profit-mongers (on the one hand) and a financially unrealistic pie in the sky (on the other) are now having to work together and share like friends. I wonder what they'll come up with. Maybe a roller coaster dinosaur experience which teaches us an important lesson about the crappiness of compromise? But for now, I'm surprised that the Blazer's well-coordinated plan and deep pockets didn't out muscle like the other contenders, like some predicted.

All the points spelled out in the minority report (here as a pdf) lead to one main conclusion: despite looking at hundreds of ideas and hosting dozens of hours of public meetings, the process to choose a new use for the Coliseum is weighted in favor of the Blazers.

Details below the cut.

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