City still waits on plans for Centennial Mill site
Daily Journal of Commerce
by Kennedy Smith
02/22/2007
It was more than a year ago that Portland's City Council voted unanimously to halt any demolition plans for the Centennial Mill site and start anew. At the time, the fate of the 100-year-old former grain mill along the Willamette River between the Fremont and Broadway bridges was in limbo. Some said tear it down. Some wanted to relocate the Portland Saturday Market to the site. Some wanted to turn it into a maritime museum.
Seventeen months later, the Portland Development Commission is ready to put Centennial Mill – within the PDC's River District urban renewal area – back in the spotlight, this time nationally.
Steven Shain, a project manager at the PDC in charge of the River District urban renewal area, said Tuesday that the agency has new plans for the site that include issuing a request for qualifications across the country to turn the dilapidated site into a landmark.
In January, the PDC board of commissioners approved a new plan for Centennial Mill that calls for redevelopment guided by five main principles: providing open space, capturing the site's history, defining a community focal point, strengthening connections to the rest of the city and embracing sustainability.
The PDC plans to issue a request for qualifications March 15 to "thousands" of candidates across the country, Shain said.
"We may get 50 to 75 responses after sending those," he said.
The PDC will then form an internal selection team to narrow the candidates down to seven teams "hopefully by spring," Shain said. "We'll be grilling them on how they will start solving the problems and economic realities of a redevelopment project like this."
From there, the PDC will involve stakeholders and possibly put together a citizen advisory group to narrow the candidates to three teams. Once the three are chosen, PDC will give each a $40,000 stipend to come up with a development proposal.
Shain said an estimated cost for redevelopment has not yet been determined.
Precedent set
In its search for the right developer, PDC will reach beyond local developers and begin a nationwide recruitment campaign for companies that have done this sort of work before, Shain said. "We've looked at developments that have set precedent," he said.
Project managers with the PDC have studied several sites around the country as examples of how Centennial Mill could be redeveloped, namely the $3.63 million Gas Works Park in Seattle, a 19-acre public park at the site of the former Seattle Gas Light Co. along the north shore of Lake Union; the $31.4 million Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, located on the site of the former Sprague Electric Works factory; and the $65 million Ferry Building in San Francisco, an 1898-built ferry terminal that was converted into an upscale marketplace in 2004.
"We want somebody that has the capacity and has done a project like this in the past," Shain said.
Unanswered questions
Tiffany Sweitzer of Hoyt Street Properties – which is building the Encore, a 16-story condominium tower adjacent to Centennial Mill along with another tower on what's known as Block 17 – said that, regardless of what happens, the site "needs to be something amazing, something outside the box."
"The city should seek somebody out who can bring a new idea to that property," Sweitzer said. "We've had local developers looking at it, but it would be great if it could become a destination, like a farmers market."
Sweitzer said she's been frustrated by the slow pace of redevelopment plans for Centennial Mill because her company owns so much property around the site.
"In terms of how we engage with the site, whatever is going to be there is something significant," she said. "We're thinking in terms of questions like: Will there be a boardwalk across Naito? How much retail do we need in our developments if Centennial Mill were to become a retail destination? These questions are still unanswered."
The Portland Development Commission plans to issue a formal request for proposals in December. The agency, Shain said, may decide to pull certain aspects from each of the three final candidates to create an overall vision, but, he said, it's too early to tell whether that would be the case.
But as with any historic renovation project, there are tradeoffs, Shain said. Currently the Portland Police's Mounted Patrol Unit occupies part of the site, and Shain said there may be more productive ways to utilize that space.
"We need to find a better way to integrate the (patrol unit) or relocate them and find a way to pay for it," he said.
Open space versus new development is another concern, along with wharf retention and riverbank restoration.
Retaining history
One of the site's primary stakeholders is the Oregon Maritime Museum. The museum would like to set aside part of the site for exhibits of the museum's sternwheeler "Portland," its barge "Russell" and the Columbia River gill net boat "Mom's Boat."
Museum Vice President Bob Layfield said that, by March 1, the museum would embark on a public campaign to retain a portion of the site. "We'd like to own part of it or get a good lease on maybe 20,000 square feet of the structure, and we're willing to spend money to do so," he said.
Centennial Mill began operation in 1910 as a large merchant flour mill. The PDC purchased the site from Archer Daniels Midland Co. in 2000 for $7.7 million. The River District urban renewal area was enacted in 1982; it's set to expire in 2020.
The urban renewal area itself is fairly healthy financially, Shain said. There is $103 million left in its budget; however, the PDC estimates those funds will be spent by 2010, a full decade before the urban renewal area expires, so redeveloping Centennial Mill in a timely manner would be essential to bring in more money, he said.
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