The plan to redevelop the Lloyd Center Mall and the surrounding land will go forward, despite two appeals aimed at saving the mall and its ice rink. On Wednesday, Portland City Council cast an initial 10-0 vote to uphold the Lloyd Center Central City Master Plan for the area’s redevelopment. (Two councilors were absent, one having recused herself due to a conflict of interest.)
The Council’s decision followed two lengthy public testimony sessions in June, which drew hundreds of comments from people hoping to keep the mall open. Advocates for the shopping center highlighted its potential as a small business incubator and community gathering space. They also focused on the loss of the Lloyd Center’s ice rink—Portland’s only public, indoor ice skating venue.
A smaller, but still sizable group of people testified in favor of the redevelopment plan, which was unanimously approved by the Portland Design Commission earlier this year. The Lloyd Center Central City Master Plan lays out standards and a vision for the future of the site. The plan sets out expectations that the redeveloped Lloyd Center area will be a dense, mixed-use community, with new residential buildings, retail stores, and open green space.
The Lloyd Center is owned by firms Urban Renaissance Group and KKR Real Estate. Staff at those firms plan to close the mall permanently in August, and say they would do so even if Portland City Council overturned the master plan for the site. The real estate firms haven’t yet applied for a demolition permit, but given the Lloyd Center isn’t designated as a historic or protected landmark, the city has little to no legal leverage to intervene.
The property owners plan to demolish the mall in favor of a mixed-use site featuring housing, shopping, and entertainment.
Still, mall advocates thought the City Council could do something to help broker a plan that preserved at least some pieces of the building. They also felt the city’s planning process didn’t allow for adequate public engagement, which some councilors seemed to agree with.
“This redevelopment represents a generational opportunity to build much-needed housing and modern infrastructure right in the heart of the city. …I know that change is incredibly hard, especially when it touches places that hold our history, my history. But as your city councilor, I must look toward tomorrow.”
Councilor Loretta Smith, District 1
“It might sound pie in the sky, but we were hoping that through our outreach to City Council… they would have been able to act a little more boldly and try to affect an outcome that had more community input,” Matthew Henderson, who represented the Save Lloyd Campaign at the City Council hearing, told the Mercury after the meeting. Henderson is an artist and owner of Virtua Gallery, currently located in the Lloyd Center.
At the Wednesday meeting, councilors largely indicated they sympathized with the appellants, with several sharing their own positive memories at the Lloyd Center. But the councilors recognized they lacked the authority to prevent the mall’s closure or demolition. They said by rejecting the redevelopment plan, they would risk giving up the city’s influence on what happens at the future site. Most councilors also appeared to genuinely like the Lloyd Center Master Plan, and agree with its aims—despite their nostalgia for the mall in its heyday.
“This redevelopment represents a generational opportunity to build much-needed housing and modern infrastructure right in the heart of the city,” Councilor Loretta Smith said at the end of Wednesday’s discussion on the Lloyd Center. “I know that change is incredibly hard, especially when it touches places that hold our history, my history. But as your city councilor, I must look toward tomorrow.”
Although the City Council determined they couldn’t step in to save the Lloyd Center, that doesn’t mean they thought the appeals were a waste of time.
“We will not control the future of our city unless we assert what the future of our city could be. Even though you have heard from many colleagues that in a land use process we have narrow paths we can move forward on, bringing forward these appeals allows the space for conversation about what our city should and could be that won’t happen otherwise,” Pirtle-Guiney said to the appellants. “So, thank you for bringing this to us.”
The Lloyd Center Master Plan
The Lloyd Center Mall has been a fixture of Portland’s east side since it opened in the 1960s. Once a bustling shopping center, the mall’s anchor stores have all shuttered over the last decade or so, and smaller chains followed suit. But over the last few years, cheap rents allowed indie business owners and artists to lead a moderate Lloyd Center revitalization, and the mall’s iconic ice rink has remained a major attraction. Still, its owners have made it clear it’s not financially viable for them to keep the Lloyd Center open in its current form.
In 2023, Lloyd Center co-owner Urban Renaissance Group (URG) unveiled a major redevelopment plan for the property. In the years that followed, URG, along with ZGF Architects and other project stakeholders, worked with the city to finalize a master plan for the project, even though the city didn’t require one for the area’s redevelopment. The applicants opted to go through the process to help map out details of the large and complex site plan.
The plan covers about 27 acres of land, including most of the mall (except the former Nordstrom site, which is currently under redevelopment as a music venue), the surrounding parking garages, and the Regal Cinemas lot.
The master plan calls the Lloyd Center mall a formerly “aspirational place,” highlighting its early life as an open-air shopping venue that offered more engagement with the surrounding streets. Though the mall was always car-oriented—when it opened in 1960, it offered 8,000 parking spots—the plan says renovations in the 1980s and ‘90s made it even more “inward-facing and auto-oriented, seemingly walled off from its neighbors.” The mall interrupts Northeast Portland’s street grid, cutting off access between NE 9th Ave and NE 16th Ave. Parking structures surround the mall on four sides, taking up a sizable portion of its footprint.
The developers say they aim to replace the current Lloyd Center mall with a new neighborhood that’s connected to the surrounding street grid. The future site must devote 20 percent of its area to open spaces, including parks and plazas, per the Central City Master Plan’s requirements. The developers have said the redevelopment will allow for the creation of thousands of new housing units, as well as retail establishments, though specific construction plans haven’t been revealed.
The appeals
Following the Portland Design Commission’s unanimous approval of the Lloyd Center Central City Master Plan in March, two groups filed appeals with the Portland City Council. One appeal focused on the specific loss of the Lloyd Center’s ice rink, while the other took aim at the broader plan to demolish the entire mall to make way for new construction.
The first appeal, from a group called the “Save Lloyd Ice Coalition,” attempted to convince the City Council that the mall’s ice rink—the only public skating rink in Portland—must be saved. However, the appellants from this coalition also allowed for the possibility that the city could replace the ice rink in the future Lloyd Center development, or relocate it elsewhere.
“Losing Lloyd Center doesn’t just eliminate a rink; it removes one of the few places where diversity in figure skating has been intentionally fostered in our city… a vibrant, diverse skating community that has taken decades to build will disappear overnight.”
Lydia Finch, figure skating coach
Jennifer Gilmore-Robinson, who brought the Save Lloyd Ice Coalition’s appeal, told the Council the ice rink’s importance “goes beyond nostalgia.”
“The rink’s location in a shopping mall made skating accessible in a way that no area skating facility can match,” Gilmore-Robinson said. “When that accessibility disappears, families who rely on this rink will be pushed out of the sport, and even more Portlanders will never get the opportunity to step on the ice at all. Skating shouldn’t be an activity reserved for the wealthy or a sport in which only the privileged can succeed.”
Heartfelt testimony followed, coming from Portlanders of all ages and ice skating ability. Lydia Finch, a champion ice skater who identifies as Portland’s only Black figure skating coach, said the Lloyd Center rink has given her a space to work to “make the sport more welcoming and accessible for children who have never seen themselves represented on the ice.”
“I have watched young Black skaters walk into the rink, see someone who looks like them coaching, and believe that they belong in this sport too,” Finch said. “Losing Lloyd Center doesn’t just eliminate a rink; it removes one of the few places where diversity in figure skating has been intentionally fostered in our city… a vibrant, diverse skating community that has taken decades to build will disappear overnight.”
Gilmore-Robinson pointed out that until recently, the Lloyd Center owners from Urban Renaissance Group had conveyed the new development would include an ice rink. Though he disputed this assertion later in the hearing, it appears URG managing director Tom Kilbane told the media on multiple occasions that the ice rink would stay, including in a press release last September.
Ice rink advocates asked the City Council to help secure a new place to skate, either at the future Lloyd Center site or at a comparable location. While the Council ultimately determined that Oregon land use law and the city’s zoning code doesn’t allow them to mandate the Lloyd Center plan include an ice rink, councilors did weigh other options. Specifically, they seemed interested in exploring opportunities for public ice skating at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the city-owned facility used by the Winterhawks hockey team.
In a press release after the Wednesday City Council meeting, the Save Lloyd Ice Coalition said they’re disappointed by the Council’s tentative vote. But they said their efforts made it clear how important ice skating is to many Portlanders.
“The goal of our appeal was always to ensure that the thousands of Portland-area skaters, coaches, and community members who rely on the rink had a voice in the conversation, and we are proud to have accomplished that,” the press release stated.
The second appeal, from the “Save Lloyd Campaign,” had broader aims. In essence, those in favor of saving the Lloyd Center argued the mall is an emblem of Portland’s creative community, providing a vibrant, artistic third space. They urged the City Council to preserve at least some of the current space so its tenants could remain. Members of the Save Lloyd Campaign also said it was wasteful to demolish an existing structure instead of looking into ways to reuse the building.
“Preserving the Lloyd Center’s present iteration makes long-term fiscal, cultural, social, and infrastructural sense. All you need to do is continue to invest in this place to reap incredible benefits on literally all fronts,” Henderson, the artist and Save Lloyd representative said at a June City Council meeting. “We can support housing, we can support density, we can support reinvestment in the Lloyd District, but we do not have to accept that those goals require the complete destruction of one of Portland’s most useful, beloved, and proven public spaces.”
The official Save Lloyd Campaign presented an alternative plan that aimed to preserve the mall’s core while also accommodating new housing and other development opportunities. Others called on the Council to completely halt the mall’s demolition, rejecting all parts of the alternative plan for the space.
“Replacing this landmark with yet another block of vacant, high-priced apartment complexes would be a profound mistake for our city,” one person, Lee Savage-Rich, wrote in public testimony. “Portland does not need more generic, unused luxury apartment complexes that sit empty while draining the character from our neighborhoods. We need spaces that bring people together.”
The Lloyd Center’s owners said their plan for the site hinges on the mall’s complete demolition, which would allow them to reconnect the street grid currently disconnected by the shopping center. Moreover, the City Council had no options for preventing the building’s demolition, as that question wasn’t the subject of the appeals.
A February report from Portland Permitting & Development pointed out the mismatch between what many pro-Lloyd Center advocates are calling for and what the city has the capacity to do.
“Nearly all of the respondents sent letters that explain the value of current small and creative businesses that are currently renting space and the creative ways people are fostering community in the Lloyd Center Mall and requesting city staff and the Design Commission to put a stop to any future demolition of the Lloyd Center,” the planning department report stated. “However, the demolition of [this] structure… is not subject to a discretionary land use review process. Demolition permits for the Lloyd Center mall and its associated structures can be applied for by the development team at any time, regardless of the outcome of this voluntary Central City Master Plan Review.”
The case against the Lloyd Center
While the City Council hearings on the Lloyd Center were dominated by people asking for the mall or ice rink to be preserved, many Portlanders are ready for the city to ditch the old mall and evolve.
ZGF Architects’ Nolan Lienhart, who worked on the master plan, said he sees the Lloyd Center as a mid-century artifact.
“This is not Waterfront Park, this is Harbor Drive. It’s a relic of an era where cities were trying to privatize, they were trying to suburbanize,” Lienhart said. “It turns its back on the surrounding neighborhoods, it turns its back on Holladay Park. Our job was to flip that.”
Others pointed to the immense potential for the Lloyd District, which is conveniently located along public transit lines and bike corridors, to attract new residents to a part of Portland where it’s possible to get around without a car.
Kristin Leiber is executive director of the Lloyd EcoDistrict, an organization focused on improving sustainability in the neighborhood surrounding the mall.” Lieber said she loves the mall, where the EcoDistrict’s office is currently located. But, she said, “borrowed time is not a plan.”
“We ask what will help Lloyd become a healthier, better neighborhood for future generations, and right now we see the harm this aging, car-heavy, largely underused building is causing us. We see how hard it is to make the neighborhood feel alive when the biggest building in the middle of it is not fully working,” Leiber said. “We support making this a better place for the people already here and welcoming thousands of new residents into our neighborhood. It should be the green, transit-forward, walkable, livable neighborhood that we’ve worked toward.”
Fischer Jemison, who created a website called “Don’t Save Lloyd” to support alternative messaging about the mall’s preservation, told the Mercury he was excited to see the master plan move forward.
“I’m excited about the possibilities that come with new parks, streets, and homes, and I’m frankly not that nostalgic about a mall that’s been dead for a decade at this point,” Jemison said. “I think it’s worth emphasizing that this is the right long term move for the Lloyd District. The housing market is cyclical, and it might take time for the redevelopment to finish. But demand for malls is not cyclical, and it would have been silly to throw away a big investment like this to try to save an industry that’s in terminal decline.”
City Council’s response
At the July 8 meeting, City Council members grappled with the fact that even if they wanted to intervene in the Lloyd Center plan, their options for doing so were extremely limited. Still, the councilors were mostly conciliatory. Councilors Elana Pirtle-Guiney and Sameer Kanal, whose district includes the Lloyd Center, made the clearest attempt to broker some kind of compromise.
The Central City 2035 plan, which dictates all Central City master plans, contains a piece of approval criteria requiring proposals to encourage community building through public space. Though the Lloyd Center master plan includes significant open park space, Pirtle-Guiney said she thought there was something missing.
“In a city where it rains half the year, [open space] is an interesting way of meeting the community building requirement,” Pirtle-Guiney said.
It may be feasible for the Council to require more of the Lloyd Center developers when it comes to community building. Councilors may bring such a policy forward before cementing their votes on the Lloyd Center appeals later this month.
Pirtle-Guiney and Kanal also emphasized their belief that the city and developers did not allow for enough public engagement throughout the planning process.
“We call things engagement that are not engagement, and we call things notification when they are happening so late that neighbors do not actually have an opportunity to provide meaningful input,” Pirtle-Guiney said. “That is something that I hope [this Council] can address broadly… if we are going to say we are a city that takes our people’s concerns seriously, a city that wants Portlanders to have a say in our city’s future, we need to actually create that opportunity, and we don’t.”
Several councilors offered a broader diagnosis about what the loss of the Lloyd Center means for Portland. For the last few years, the mall’s imminent closure has dropped commercial rents, allowing people unique opportunities to rent studios and retail stores. Councilor Mitch Green pointed out the ironic economic reality that the Lloyd Center’s financial insolvency led to the mall’s recent reinvigoration. He said he hoped Portland could create the same kinds of opportunities under different conditions.
“The Portland I grew up in had a bunch of really cheap rent, whether that was residential or commercial stock, and that enabled artists to do really cool things, and then created cultural production,” Green said. “We have an opportunity to use the levers we think are appropriate to help unlock the glut of commercial vacancy space in the city. The Lloyd Center is not that… [but] that doesn’t mean we give up on the dream of building that for Portland.”
Kanal said he understood why people are skeptical about the developers’ plans for the area, and why the appellants asked the City Council to step in.
“I think we’re being asked to ensure that capitalism and capitalists provide a social benefit, and that’s not realistic the way the law currently is,” he said. “We can have nice things, including an ice rink, and Portland deserves them. But it’s not going to be because large developers choose to build them altruistically, nor should it be. It’s our responsibility to either build requirements, knowing what limitations that that might create, or better yet, provide a public service as the government.”
The City Council will take a final vote on the Lloyd Center appeals on July 29.
