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 We have a district worth imitating
Emissaries from elsewhere try and figure what makes tony neighborhood tick
By ETHAN DANIEL LINDSEY
Issue date: Fri, Jul 30, 2004
The Tribune
When Nashville, Tenn., began exploring ways to redevelop its urban core, there was only one place the city chose to look — Portland and more specifically, the Pearl District.
The Nashville Downtown Partnership, the nonprofit managing the area’s urban growth, even cherry-picked Tom Turner, former vice president of public space management for the Portland Business Alliance, to head its downtown revitalization.
Robert Ball, developer of the Marshall-Wells and the Avenue lofts, says Nashville isn’t the only city that wants what Portland has.
Ball says he’s talked with property owners and redevelopment agencies in Orlando, Fla., Los Angeles and Minneapolis, among others, and just recently gave a guided tour of the Pearl for partners of one of the West Coast’s larger real estate firms.
“The revitalized downtown is a trend that’s happening now in many other cities, and when people go out and look at who’s done it best, everyone always says it’s the Pearl District,” Ball says. “They have to ask themselves, ‘How the heck do we rehab these big buildings?’ and they come to Portland to see how we were able to grow.”
Even though it began by catering to a small segment of the population willing to live in what was once urban grunge, the neighborhood’s growth is no longer limited by demographics, industry or even geography: Everybody, from all walks of life, is trying to grab a piece of the Pearl.
Developing strategy
More than two decades after the Pearl’s renewal began in earnest, real estate moguls still point to a number of old warehouses that could be turned into lofts and abandoned industrial lots that could be razed, providing space for brand-new residential towers, mostly north of Lovejoy.
“There is just a lot of room for major infill; large blocks of building opportunities are just sitting there,” says Al Solheim, a developer whose early projects marked the first lofts in the Pearl District. “And we’re now starting to get serious looks north of Lovejoy, where whole new buildings are going to go up.”
Other possible sites being eyed for growth by developers are the closed Centennial Mills along the waterfront, which would likely be cleared and turned into new high-rises, and the U.S. post office on Northwest Broadway and Hoyt Street, which is often mentioned as a potential site for a baseball stadium or other public space.
Outside the box
Retailers now see the Pearl as the most selective of Portland’s neighborhoods. Evidence the new REI in the Edge Lofts building, and the Adidas Originals store in the Henry condominiums.
Independent art galleries, coffeehouses and hair salons remain — but pessimistic observers say the future business opportunities in the area belong to the large-scale, brand-name retail shops, possibly even controversial big-box stores.
“These new residents are turning the Pearl into Beaverton — or L.A., even — if you ask me,” says one salon owner, who didn’t want to be named out of fear of alienating her customers. “We’re all worried a Super Cuts is going to go in down the street — not to mention a Home Depot or Costco or something. God forbid it’s a Wal-Mart.”
There is widespread concern over the entrance of big-box stores — retail centers defined as large-scale sellers, such as Wal-Mart, Kmart, Target, Circuit City or Home Depot, that occupy more than 50,000 square feet and derive their profits from high sales volumes. The automobile focus and massive size of the stores worry Pearl residents who see the wealth and image of the neighborhood as a real draw for such businesses.
But Bruce Allen, a senior development manager for the Portland Development Commission, says Pearl residents should fear not. He says the REI and Whole Foods Market may remain the largest storefronts in the area because of basic geographic reasons.
“While those big stores are possible, it’s really challenging for big boxes to come into the Pearl District,” Allen says, referring to the street grid map of the neighborhood. “They would be there already if they could have. But the limitations of the block sizes means it’s very difficult to fit the store size they need or want.”
Solheim adds that he’d like to see the mix of retail “weighted in favor of the independents,” but acknowledges that “people want places like REI — these are huge destination retailers that benefit almost everybody.”
In that vein, Solheim is developing a mixed-used project between Northwest 12th and 14th avenues on the north side of Marshall Street that he hopes will feature a Safeway grocery store as its main tenant. The project would also include housing.
“These big chain stores create an envelope that supports the smaller, local, regional stores,” Solheim says. “They are necessary to keep other businesses and residents.”
Different folks
Despite the chain storefronts and the new business offices in the Brewery Blocks, the area remains primarily a residential neighborhood, with more than 5,250 residents, according to the PDC’s most recent figures.
And the growth of the district remains strong.
According to a June report from real estate investment brokerage company Marcus & Millichap, based in Encino, Calif., development in the Pearl District continues to boost rental and vacancy rates throughout the Portland metropolitan area.
Some of the neighborhood’s residents are teachers and food-service employees earning far less than $40,000 a year. But they’re determined to find ways to pay a mortgage on a $250,000 condominium or loft, or rent on apartments — that can cost more than $2,000 a month — near Jamison Square.
“I don’t find it to be any more difficult to live in the Pearl on a small budget than anywhere else,” says Isaac Botwinick, a 24-year-old unemployed social worker who lives in a newer building on the east side of the Pearl.
He simply finds ways to keep the Pearl affordable.
“I live one block outside of the fareless square so I can get cheap transportation to most anywhere I need to go,” he says. “Also, I get my entertainment the same way most people in their mid-20s do … and the cost of that is pretty much fixed all over town.”
Botwinick is on one side of a demographic battle in the neighborhood — the younger residents who need the affordable housing. On the other side are older, wealthier baby boomers who are beginning to see the Pearl District as a safe, centrally located alternative to living in the suburbs.
Developers and real estate agents say the majority of new homeowners in the area are empty nesters who have moved to the Pearl after selling their homes in the suburbs and thus can afford a high-priced one- or two-bedroom condominium.
“As their children leave, baby boomers tend to simplify their lives and want to move out of their big homes,” developer Homer Williams says.
Williams started the Hoyt Street Yards project, turning undeveloped rail yards into ultratrendy condos, but eventually left that and moved onto current projects in the South Waterfront area.
He estimates that empty nesters represent at least two-thirds of the real-estate market in the Pearl District — which accounts for the paucity of children and the prevalence of pets.
“They were always the target market for the Pearl,” he says.
Pearl plaudits
Another factor has received some acclaim for its role in the Pearl’s success — the Portland Streetcar. Allen of the PDC says the transit advantages of the region undoubtedly helped the growth.
U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Portland Democrat, has been a leader in the push for urban transportation alternatives and planning.
“I’ve heard from developers that if they’d known how successful the streetcar had been, they would have relied even less on the automobile,” Blumenauer says. “We’re now working with dozens of cities around the country that want to follow our lead and use our expertise to help them develop a (streetcar) line like ours.”
Similarly, the city councils in both Eugene and Salem have been discussing imposing policies similar to those in the Pearl, in possible efforts to renovate their blighted downtown areas.
But developer Ball says he advises other cities that the growth here wasn’t accidental. It was a concerted effort between the city’s developers and government agencies and planners, he says. In his mind, the Pearl could never have grown like it did without that synergy.
“I tell them that they can’t pull it off unless all these things are planned out ahead of time,” Ball says. “The Pearl happened because of the very, very good planning between the developers and the city of Portland.”
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
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