It's not really about duplicating existing neighborhoods. It's more about adding another neighborhood to the city. Building a destination entertainment venue makes it a little harder to do that, because the scale will probably be all wrong, and the roster of chain retailers and restaurants it will hold will cater to conventioneers and suburbanites coming into the city to watch Blazer games and shop at Lloyd. It would be nice to think that the Live! district would generate enough foot traffic to encourage other developments to spring up around it, but local retailers would probably be less likely to open shop in this area because they would rather be in a part of the city that was more 'Portland.' So what might happen if Live! is successful? I'd say within a few years you might see a power center opening with an urban Target, Staples, and Home Depot. Granted, those places are useful, but they may not be the best uses for prime inner-city land that could turn into a real neighborhood if the proper vision was set in place. Just my $.02. I could be wrong.

Me like-y. I think incorporating some of PDX's creative side in the Live! project will broaden the appeal of the area to help with attendance/success, as well as help ensure a less bland/"corporate" (that word again) look to the enterprise. And help make Cordish step up to the Portland plate, instead of just putting a carbon copy of the KC-style Power & Light here.

That is a fantastic idea.

I agree, that is an excellent idea. There's already stadium seating that could easily be re-used in theaters or auditoriums. One thing Portland lacks is a venue that seats more than 3,000, but less than 12,000. There should be a market for a middle range (around 6,000-8,000 seats) performance space. Take half of the bowl for that and the other half for something else. Also, regardless of the status of LAIKA's new campus, they could still have a presence there.

As a public building, I believe that this is an even greater reason to preserve the building than to tear it down or repurpose it.

Most of the greatest historical architecture are public buildings. Castles, train stations, museums, the original Roman Coliseum...

Plastic architecture, typically Post-Modern, that is typified by heavy usage of value-engineered "architectural details" like cornices and EIFS. See Bridgeport Village.

Formulaic architecture housing formulaic retail. Now, if they actually use a local architectural firm, then we'd likely get something at least a step above that in terms of quality, which is why I'm on the fence, yet hopeful.

One word: Boring.

Why would I want to go to one place if its the same as everywhere else? Unless it has something unique, us spoiled urbanites will sniff our noses at it being uninteresting and thus not worth our time. I suppose its kind of like style. Whats hip, whats new...


/devil's advocate

Now I haven't spent much time lately thinking about the RQ, ever since finding out that the MC isn't going to be razed. Been kind of busy with real life, unfortunately. I do agree with the idea that the Rose Quarter should be unique. Like, in-your-face totally off the wall unique kind of place. Someone needs to sit down and do some brain storming...

Let's see, what do we have here?

Blazers
bland office buiding
some parking garages
Rose Quarter transit center
MAX up Interstate
Jazz roots
African American community (long gone)
close to downtown and Steel Bridge
THE RIVER!
Memorial Coliseum

plus its close to downtown, MLK, and Lloyd District

What should it be? The entertainment district? Sports area?

I don't know how successful an entertainment district will be, since we already have one downtown N/S of Burnside.. and those kinds of things usually build off of themselves, like a snowball (bear with me here). There isn't a whole lot to draw people into this district, unless you're going to plop in an entire district, like the Blazers could with Cordish. Then the question is one of target demographics and markets, how underserved they are in the metro area, etc.

I don't have access to that data and I doubt many on this site do.

Another thought, organically-developed mixed-use river entertainment areas have been previously planned/built in Portland, such as Riverplace, which occurred in stages with market-rate housing. It is well-connected to downtown, however. If the RQ was decently connected to the Esplanade, then perhaps it could build off of the energy of the river as a sort of destination. Or maybe a connection between the Steel Bridge ped crossing and NoPo (Van/Williams/MLK gateway). There is also the Centennial Mills project which used an actual public design competition to determine the best design and use for the site... so an appropriate developer was chosen by how appropriate their product was for Portland.

Nothing builds a destination like access. And if the only access is by freeway for suburbanites that can't find Portland except for a google maps directions printout, it's going to be very corporate. If it is designed to not trap people near the Rose Garden after a basketball game, but to connect to the neighborhoods of Portland (and the Lloyd District is a bit barren right now...) then it will have good bones to grow as part of the city.

I think Cordish did actually integrate the P/L district well into the city, but they had actual city blocks to work with. Not so in the RQ...


I think having some cultural attractions besides sports would help round out the district and draw people year-round. Like a jazz museum, with some jazzy and sports-themed restaurants or bars (McMenamins Blazers pub? I dunno). Rehab the MC and booking more events could help a LOT, as well, particularly if they brought more big concerts like The Killers, which will bring a lot of local Portlanders out of the woodwork.

If they dropped a better-than average 24-hour fitness facility (not necessarily THAT one) could also help draw people into it. Some office space, a small hotel, outdoor beer garden(s), cafes, bike rental shop, bookstore, and some boutique shops could make it a draw.

But I think a ped bridge over the RR tracks to a nice riverside development with residential would make a world of difference. Not necessary, perhaps, but could elevate the entire district (if done properly) into a world-class district.



Final thoughts: at the review for the Centennial Mills design competition, someone said that the overly ambitious G/E plan made sense for a future, bigger Portland in its scope. Highly sustainable, lots of activity, and so on. A little telling that we're set to basically get both #1 and #3 projects, I think. I'm a little skeptical if Portland can actually support all of these "entertainment districts" - I kind of think there isn't a high enough core central city population to keep all the wheels of commerce greased. Would hate to see some of downtown's energy sapped, although I don't think downtown would be the one to suffer...

Cordish already said they were going to use a local architect firm I'm fairly certain.

As for the MC though, you guys know that as a public building, the city is basically going to have to rebuild the ENTIRE structure, or condemn it due to earthquake codes, right? If it's "saved" it's going to be the same building in name only... because the entire thing is supported by four columns they'll have to go down all the way to the columns themselves to rebuild. There is no easy refit for the MC.

If it gets onto the historical register, I'm certain it'll end up condemned for several years.

So you're a structural engineer and have reviewed some engineering reports on this structure?

Yeah, I wasn't necessarily saying it would have plastic architecture, just offering one definition. If they're using local, that's great!

As far as Earthquake, there are lots of buildings that don't meet earthquake codes. For instance, most schools in the state fail. They won't be condemned. It can still be enhanced through some sort of engineering solutions, I'm sure.

As far as the LAIKA idea (kind of slow here), I think it is an interesting idea... we could build sort of an advertising district then? Big shiny lights, sports and media/technology display? Kind of like a Times for Portland? Or, err... a P/L district?


Perhaps the corporate should be celebrated!

Originally Posted by JordanL
Can someone explain "corporate"? It seems to be a catchall phrase for "things I don't like doing".


Maybe "generic", as in generic design, might be more appropriate than "corporate" in some instances here.

Your right there are hundreds of buildings in Portland that are not up to earthquake codes. However, when a building is remodeled it's the law to bring it into compliance with modern building codes.

I'm not a structural engineering, but I am a civil engineer and from all the journals I've reviewed about retrofit projects generally the rehab costs increase exponentially with more elaborate structures.

Just look at the rehab that Hoffman Construction did on the Meier and Frank Building downtown. If I recall correctly, the final pricetag was nearly $11M over the original cost estimate, becasue they kept finding little issues that had to be resolved.

Zilfondel, I really liked a lot of your ideas, so it kind of got me thinking: how do we improve the RQ and integrate it better into the surrounding fabric? Especially, how do we improve access and make space for all the things you mentioned. I took a look at the area on Google Earth and sketched up a few ideas. They are quick and simplistic, but maybe they will generate some discussion.


KEY:
Red - new street network, including arrows showing possible directions of traffic
Blue - new blocks for development (housing, retail, offices, etc.)
Yellow - new Memorial Coliseum plaza surrounded by retail (Live! development? Powell's East? Museum?)
Green - park space, maybe including housing and a pedestrian bridge along the river, as Zilfondel suggested?

http://www.pbase.com/mattgarner/imag...1/original.jpg

Existing Conditions:

http://www.pbase.com/mattgarner/imag...2/original.jpg

^ not bad. You can also realign the train tracks to run closer to Interstate than the river, freeing up additional riverside space for a park or riverside path w/development.

That's it, attack my credibility instead of my points. :rolleyes:

@holladay: I would like to see all that blue space south of Weidler combined into a master plan. Those streets are mostly unnecessary in the area... we could build one large area, whether it's "corporate" or not.

EDIT:

zil: An advertising district/P&L area would be interesting, but I don't see the architects that threw an absolute fit over the MC sitting on their ass while neon signs and big screen TVs go up on buildign fascades.

I'd like to see the original street grid reasserted as much as possible in this area. One of the great thing about Portland is the standard 200x200 block. It keeps things compact, makes it easy to navigate, and gives the city regular order. A 'superblock' of entertainment, housing, and retail sounds a bit out-of-scale to me. But several separate blocks that can each be developed on their own, incrementally, would lend itself better to the creation of a real community. Megablocks were tried back in the days of Modernism and urban renewal, and they didn't fulfill their promises. Nowadays, megablocks are common in Asia, and I admit they function well there because the cities all have high densities, but what we need here is something a little more in-tune with our low-density, comfortable urbanism.

Now, I'm not saying that my diagram is the right one (after all, I only spent 20 minutes on it) because I know there are many strategies that could work in this area, but I don't think the superblock is the way to go. A huge 'destination' pedestrian zone of entertainment and sports bars sounds a lot like CityWalk at Universal Studios, if you ask me. It would be virtually impossible to do it without making it corporate, and I'd consider that a real lost opportunity.

Bravo. I also don't understand the anti "corporate" thing that so many younger folks cling to nowadays.

It seems like "corporate" is a code word for hipsters who want to prove they are, well, hip.

The funny thing is that if you were to populate a new retail/dining development around the Rose Quarter with only "local" businesses who might escape the silly "corporate" tagline, they would still be additional locations in a chain of locations. And they would be run by succesful businesspeople earning profits and expanding their business model. And most of them, if not all, would have incorporated their thriving businesses to help them pay taxes and navigate the business world. So they would be by their very definition.... wait for it.... corporate! :yuck:

Powell's bookstore? That would be their seventh location. NikeTown store? That would be their thirteenth NikeTown location, not to mention the hundreds of other Nike and NikeWomen stores located in dozens of countries around the world. (Plus the pesky issue of the child slave labor they are accused of using in their shoe sweatshops in Indonesia, Vietnam and China. Then the products are shipped across the oceans in diesel belching superfreighters. But at least they are "local") Stumptown Coffee? That would be their eighth location spread across two states. Papa Haydn? Their fourth restaurant. McMenamins? Oh, please.

It seems as though there is a unified desire to bring retail and dining life to an otherwise desolate neighborhood around the Rose Quarter. But the hipster's guiding principle is that any business that would go in there can't be part of a chain and can't be owned by succesful businesspeople who might have incorporated their profit-seeking organization. That doesn't leave you with many retailers with sufficient capital to choose from, unless you were to recreate Saturday Market with lots of homemade craft booths and Elephant Ear stands on game nights. :haha:

A succesful nightlife district around the Rose Quarter should be populated with succesful businesses. If they populate such a district with unsuccesful businesses, that's not going to do much to bring people in, right?

Well said. We WANT successful businesses there, regardless of where they are headquartered. And if the architecture is (god forbid) Disneyesque, it's not the end of the world.

My objection to this comes from the fact that this area will only be tied to sports facilities. Like the P&W district in KC, the place will be a slick corporate ghost town most of the time. There are no jobs there, no apartments, just a couple of arenas. You will have a mostly empty sterile environment. I just don't see Portlanders, hip or otherwise, flocking to the Rose Quarter to hit Applebees. Nor do I see Stumptown opening a location there. I see lots of defenders in this forum of this little bit of "anywhere USA" just to fill a hole. But if you fill a hole with crap, then in 10 years we will be like "what were we thinking?" as bulldozers raze the crapitecture and we try again with something more viable.

You work in the entertainment industry. And you live in notoriously suburban Orange County. No surprise that you see no problem with chains and mega-developments that have no sense of place... It even seems that you basically advocate the continued expansion of your own personal way of life. Just because you used to live in Portland, you feel you know all about the city. You consistently remark that many Portlanders cling to their values and beliefs simply because of a desire to be 'hip,' but what do you really know about it? Maybe they do actually care about issues that you see as irrelevant, and perhaps the reason they live in Portland is because they want to be surrounded by like-minded people. If you spend time in Portland neighborhoods, and open your eyes a little, you might see that Portland is not the same city it used to be. I'm frankly tired of all the labels you assign to Portland residents. Contrary to your opinion, we are not all group-think hipsters. If you can't appreciate the validity of Portland's efforts to become a different kind of city then your viewpoint is obviously extremely narrow.

Oh come on, that is downright stupid. I suspect that you don't really believe that, but are just trying to get a rise out of anyone who doesn't agree with you. Weak.