Little Dubai

WHEN HE RAN FOR MAYOR, Sam Adams pushed the Portland
Plan—a strategic long-term urban planning document—as “the
single most important opportunity that any council has had for 25
years” to shape the future development of Portland. The plan would form
a physical, economic, social, and cultural blueprint for Portland’s
next 30 years, he said.

However, instead of focusing on the long-term, citywide planning
prescribed by the Portland Plan, Adams has pushed a series of ambitious
developments on aggressive timelines since taking office. The swift
approach has some planners and architects nervous. George Bush Sr.’s
staff famously nicknamed Portland “Little Beirut” in the early 1990s,
but some say “Little Dubai” might be more appropriate these days, in
reference to the wildly overdeveloped Middle Eastern nation.

In the last six weeks, Adams has thrown his energy into a $247.5
million convention center hotel in the Lloyd District, a $40 million
Major League Soccer stadium at PGE Park, and on April 7 he announced
the demolition of Memorial Coliseum to make room for a new Minor League
Baseball stadium and entertainment district in the Rose Quarter.

“I think it’s fine to make plans for the entertainment of our
citizenry. But I hope this doesn’t cause the city to lose focus on the
most important work of the planning bureau, which is the Portland
Plan,” says Gil Kelley, who came up with the Portland Plan and, until
Adams took office, was the city’s top planning director. Adams merged
the city’s planning bureau with the bureau of sustainability in
January, shuffling Kelley and another top urban planner, Arun Jain, out
of their jobs.

“We do not lack plans, we lack action, stuff coming up out of the
ground,” said Adams of the Rose Quarter last week. Its proposed
redevelopment is emblematic of Adams’ recent bold, fast-paced approach.
Adams’ office, city planners, and representatives of the Cordish
Company, the multinational developer the Trail Blazers chose to
revitalize the Rose Quarter, met for an intense 48-hour work session
last week, hoping to hash out a multi-million dollar redevelopment plan
for council to vote on April 22. But there are questions: For a start,
economists doubt the development will make money.

“It’s just a rehash of the entertainment vision they first had when
they built the Rose Garden, and that didn’t work. But we’re trying it
again,” says economist Bill Conerly of Conerly Consulting, echoing
several other economists consulted by the Mercury. Then there’s
the question of whether the development is right for Portland.

“In Portland, we should be looking at our success,” says Portland
Spaces contributor Mike Thelin. “It tells us that you can’t build a
community unless there’s a neighborhood there to begin with. Otherwise
you create these dead zones.”

At last Tuesday’s press conference, planners said the Rose Quarter
would resemble Cordish’s redevelopment of downtown Kansas City,
Missouri, now dubbed the “Power and Light District.” Adams’ chief of
staff, Tom Miller, and senior planner at the Portland Development
Commission, Lew Bowers, flew to Kansas City last year to tour the Power
and Light District’s cluster of bars, restaurants, and music venues.
“What I liked was that it seemed to be a real urban entertainment
district,” says Bowers.

Headlines from Kansas City newspapers reveal the redevelopment has
not gone smoothly. After receiving nearly $300 million in public money,
the district is not meeting its revenue forecasts—in part because
Cordish missed construction deadlines. The president of Cordish has
sent Kansas City’s mayor abrasive all-caps emails demanding the Power
and Light District receive top priority.

Adams says local businesses will be part of the “Portland flavor” of
the Rose Quarter, but Cordish stuffed the Power and Light District with
retail run by its own affiliate. The Kansas City Business
Journal reported that Cordish invested $50 million in a group
called Entertainment Concepts Investors, LLC, which owns three
restaurants, two theaters, and a large music venue in the district.

Louisville, Kentucky, has had similar problems with its recent
Fourth Street Live! project. The Louisville Metro Council publicly
berated Cordish for using $950,000 in city money to bring its own
sports bar to town.

“In our city they do whatever they want, over some pretty strong
protest, and we just keep giving them money,” says Kelly Downard, a
Louisville metro councilor who says Cordish wooed the Louisville mayor
to secure a $1 lease on city land valued at $17 million.

In Kansas City, Cordish maneuvered to get a special “festival liquor
license” that allows Power and Light patrons to drink outside. The
city’s older, homegrown night-out district, Westport, has been denied a
similar permit for four years.

“They actively target and crush other local businesses,” says a
Kansas City business owner who asked to remain anonymous. “That’s what
they do, that’s their business model.”

Cordish has said that for Rose Quarter to succeed, it will need a
similar liquor license, setting up a bar-hopping zone across the river
from Old Town.

Mayor Adams’ fast-paced style is also raising ire among
preservationists, who are fighting to save Memorial Coliseum. On
Monday, April 13, Portland’s chapter of the American Institute of
Architects wrote in a statement that “an inadequate public process has
failed to discuss” better locations for the baseball stadium. Architect
Peter Meijer is spearheading an effort to list the Coliseum on the
National Register of Historic Places—forcing the city to prove
that the building is “no longer economically viable” before demolition.
“But the Coliseum is viable, it pays for itself,” says Meijer.

“It’s the sustainability argument that arouses my strongest
feelings,” says Val Ballestrem of Portland’s Architectural Heritage
Center. “For a city that prides itself on sustainability, on doing all
these green buildings… sustainability, sustainability, we hear it
every day… why is it so easy for us to just knock something down and
start again?”

“It depends on how you knock it down,” says Mayor Adams. “In the old
days it would have just been jackhammered. But every part of the
Coliseum will be re-purposed and re-used.”

Adams insists he isn’t taking Portland planning in a new direction,
but that the Rose Quarter has suffered from an excess of public process
over the years.

“We don’t have a strategic plan for the whole city,” he admits. “But
this particular part of town needs action. This is a rare exception for
Portland.”

In response to economists’ concerns about the viability of the
district, Adams says: “There’s the concern and the theories, and then
there’s the actual experiences,” adding that many Beavers fans come
from outside Portland without their cars to visit PGE Park.

“The city will have total say on what the district will look like,”
says Adams, when asked about other cities’ experiences with Cordish.
“Cordish has done good enough work up to this date to be a good partner
for us—but it’s going to be on Portland terms.”

“We are committed to developing a world class project that
reflects Portland’s unique and creative culture,” says Kim
Damion, Cordish Director of Marketing, via email.