Portland State University (PSU) Development News

[maccoinnich]

Via Portland Maps, Early Assistance requested by GBD Architects for the PSU New Housing Building:

The PSU New Housing Building (PSU NHB) will be a new, purpose-built residence hall designed for first-year students. Located along the South Park Blocks in the heart of campus, the project will strengthen connections to the surrounding academic and cultural environment while bringing renewed energy and vibrancy to PSU¿s central district. 124,000 SF, 6-story, 4 over 2 wood frame over concrete podium.

[sopdx]

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

Via Portland Maps, Early Assistance requested by GBD Architects for the PSU New Housing Building:

I know there has been controversy regarding PSU's plan to tear down two existing housing units. I'm assuming that this will be built on one of the sites as there is an existing structure on Portland Maps.

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

Via Portland Maps, Early Assistance requested by GBD Architects for the PSU New Housing Building:

Dammit, that's the Blackstone building. I love that old Egyptian themed building with such a beautiful brickwork facade. It is gonna be sad seeing it torn down.

[maccoinnich]

Via Portland Maps, Design Advice Requested for PSU New Housing Building:

The PSU New Housing Building (PSU NHB) will be a new, purpose-built residence hall designed for first-year students. Located along the South Park Blocks in the heart of campus, the project will strengthen connections to the surrounding academic and cultural environment while bringing renewed energy and vibrancy to PSU¿s central district. Construction - wood frame over concrete podium. Option 1 = 4:2, 126,750 SF. Option 2 = 3:2, 105,000 SF

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

Via Portland Maps, Design Advice Requested for PSU New Housing Building:

So basically replacing the Blackstone building with a similar sized building.

[maccoinnich]

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

Via Portland Maps, Design Advice Requested for PSU New Housing Building:

Design Advice Notice

[urbanlife]

Losing those two old brick residential buildings is a bit of a gut punch but getting a new dorm building for first year students on the park blocks will be an amazing location for new students.

[Rob Nob]

I see a similar size vacant lot but for some conex containers immediately to the West. Why not build there and keep these brick buildings?

[babs]

Originally Posted by Rob Nob

I see a similar size vacant lot but for some conex containers immediately to the West. Why not build there and keep these brick buildings?

I think it likely has more to do with the sesmic upgrade costs and remodeling expenses. I also suspect the school knows that a new and shiny dorm draws more students in than even a remodeled old dorm. PSU attendance is way down since the pandemic so my guess is that this is part of the plan to reverse that.

[RED_PDXer]

Preservationists worry Portland State University’s plan to build for the future could erase the past

Portland State University trustees have approved a plan to build new student housing and demolish two historic buildings. Historians, students and other local groups are trying to change their minds.

... continues at OPB

[maccoinnich]

Notice of a Land Use Proposal for the PSU New Housing Building

[OakAngeles]

Originally Posted by maccoinnich

Notice of a Land Use Proposal for the PSU New Housing Building

So, has PSU started building in the previous spots where they tore down existing housing yet? There were a few sites that were empty before I moved last summer so Im genuinely asking. If not, it seems like they are just going to have a hole in the middle of their campus from the freeway to the park blocks

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by OakAngeles

So, has PSU started building in the previous spots where they tore down existing housing yet? There were a few sites that were empty before I moved last summer so Im genuinely asking. If not, it seems like they are just going to have a hole in the middle of their campus from the freeway to the park blocks

This building will replace the Blackstone and Montgomery Student Housing buildings. The student housing building that was torn down at Market and Park, I think the plan is to eventually redevelop the whole block with a classrooms and housing building, but with the drop in admissions, I don't see them adding any new classrooms any time soon.

[OakAngeles]

Originally Posted by urbanlife

This building will replace the Blackstone and Montgomery Student Housing buildings. The student housing building that was torn down at Market and Park, I think the plan is to eventually redevelop the whole block with a classrooms and housing building, but with the drop in admissions, I don't see them adding any new classrooms any time soon.

Thanks, Urban. Mostly I'm just worried that their track record lately leans toward demolition way more than construction. I used to walk through that part of campus everyday to get to work and it was a beautiful stretch before they started tearing things out. If they go through the demo of Montgomery/Blackstone Halls and there is any delay or cancellation of the replacement building, that is going to be a giant empty scar in their campus that would be visible from the park blocks. Between that and the empty lots along Market, that part of campus is starting to feel very disconnected and empty right now

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by OakAngeles

Thanks, Urban. Mostly I'm just worried that their track record lately leans toward demolition way more than construction. I used to walk through that part of campus everyday to get to work and it was a beautiful stretch before they started tearing things out. If they go through the demo of Montgomery/Blackstone Halls and there is any delay or cancellation of the replacement building, that is going to be a giant empty scar in their campus that would be visible from the park blocks. Between that and the empty lots along Market, that part of campus is starting to feel very disconnected and empty right now

I definitely agree with that concern, it would be sad to lose more old brick buildings for empty lots on the Park Blocks.

[maccoinnich]

Decision Notice for the PSU New Housing Building. Full Case File (with drawings and renderings) is here.

[OakAngeles]

Was at PSU for a grad ceremony over the weekend and it looks like demo is underway for the Blackstone Building.

If the photo isn't visible lmk, I'm trying out a new hosting service

[maccoinnich]

A Metal-Clad Mass-Timber Building by Lever Architecture Unites Portland State University’s Art and Design School



Portland, Oregon, has many nicknames: Stumptown, Rip City, and the City of Roses, a famous floral association popularized by the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. Yet another common moniker, Bridge City, references Portland’s bevy of Willamette River–crossing spans. Twelve major bridges—from vertical-lift to tied-arch, cable-stayed to suspension—stretch across the waterway, which bisects the city and splits it into eastern and western halves.

This academic year, an entirely different sort of bridge opened at the downtown campus of Portland State University (PSU). This bridge is a metaphorical one, more of a connector operating on several levels. The four-story, nearly 107,000-square-foot Jordan Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design unites three major departments, once dispersed across campus in different buildings, under a single roof for the first time. Thomas Robinson, founding principal of Lever Architecture, likens PSU’s newest addition to a work of cultural infrastructure that serves as the southern terminus of the city’s leafy South Park Blocks.

Stretching northward through the PSU campus to the heart of downtown, this 12-block-long linear public green space is lined with some of Portland’s most prominent cultural institutions. Porous and inviting at street level, the new building, which rises from what was once a parking lot turned skate park, establishes a connection with the South Park Blocks, neighboring campus and commercial buildings, and the city itself. Wrapped in custom-formed, forest canopy–evoking green metal panels and utilizing cross-laminated timber (CLT) floor panels and a glulam column-and-beam system, the smartly proportioned, sensitively scaled structure also bolsters the bond between the city and the region’s robust mass-timber industry. More than half of the Douglas fir glulam used in the construction of the Schnitzer School was sourced by Portland-based fabricator and installer Timberlab from tribally owned forests—all Sustainable Forestry Initiative certified—and mills across the Pacific Northwest. (Timberlab’s Lever-designed CLT-manufacturing facility, the most advanced in North America, opens later this year.)

...continues at Architectural Record.