The Burnside Blog

Posted By Mike Thelin on 01/30/2008

With the University of Oregon, Mercy Corps and Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects all moving into the neighborhood, and many blocks and buildings slated for redevelopment, Old Town is about to receive the shot in the arm that’s long overdue for Portland’s most iconic neighborhood. So with Portland’s enduring skid row poised to turn the corner, the neighbors are antsy about a full-block homeless access center proposed by City Commissioner Erik Sten at Old Town’s Block 25, which is sandwiched between NW Glisan and Flanders Street and Third and Fourth Avenue.

But Sten sees his final pet project (He’ll leave his post in April after an 11-year run) as an opportunity to not only create a place where the homeless population already concentrated in Old Town can get off the streets, and make the necessary connections to stay off them permanently, but also to make Old Town more viable to private development. The larger proposal also includes the annexation of Old Town into the River District, which Sten says could leverage $200 million into Old Town projects.

With all the controversy surrounding the project, we thought we’d give Sten a chance to explain it in his own words.

Mike Thelin: Tell me about this project.

Erik Sten: My hope is that it’s really a transformative building, both in terms of what happens in it and what it leads to which is ultimately connecting homeless people back to the greater community—that’s the whole point. My aspiration is that visually it really becomes a signature project in Old Town that people feel good about. I’m not particularly surprised by the controversy. I’ve been involved with creating homeless facilities for the city of Portland in some capacity for 17 years.

Isn’t Old Town already saturated with homeless access facilities?

What we’re talking about doing is taking two institutions that are long, storied parts of Old Town and making them function better. The Blanchet House and Transition Projects. Both of those institutions are on Glisan Street right now. They’ve been there forever. They’re going to stay there. Their physical homes are so rundown and inadequate in their use that they actually don’t serve the homeless clients well and are actually a detriment to the neighborhood.

The access center will replace them?

Our vision is that if you actually build a building that’s designed to give people a place to go during the day, and if you create a place to queue for food that’s both in a contained courtyard and indoors when it’s cold, then you don’t have the big mess on the street. That’s good for people waiting for food. They don’t have to sit on the sidewalk with cars driving by, and it’s good for the neighborhood because you don’t have that big visual mess that scares people.

How will temporarily getting the homeless off the street address the long-term and chronic homelessness?

We are about three years into a ten-year plan to end chronic homelessness. While I as an optimist don’t believe that in the next ten years we’ll ever get to a place where people are never homeless, I do think we can get to a place where people don’t stay homeless. In just about all cases—and I want to bring this back to the building because this is really what’s important—people who are long-term homeless almost with no exception have severed almost all of their human relationships. They no longer have functioning friend and family relationships that will get them off the street. But if one believes that there is something special about being human, I would say to some extent that once you’ve lived on the street for more than a year or more, which is how I describe chronically homeless, it’s probably wounded at best. And what we found is that an enormous part about solving the problem is literally just connecting people back up to society.

Isn’t the 8NW8 building a homeless structure?

It’s a half step above a homeless housing in that it’s permanent housing. Generally people who are moving there are addicts in the first stages of recovery who don’t have anywhere else to go. 8NW8 is what we’re envisioning on Block 25: something that’s well designed. No less prominent developer as Mark Edlen told me not long ago that he was pleasantly surprised to find that when he walks the North Park Blocks, it’s safer and better put together than when 8NW8 went in than it was before it was there.

Why’s that?

The recovering addicts don’t allow drug trafficking in that stretch of the park blocks. They keep it clean, and there’s always eyes on the street. That’s the same thing I expect for Block 25: You’re giving a population a chance to succeed. The fact that the shelters empty out at seven in the morning is materially linked to persistent drug trafficking in Old Town and not necessarily because it’s the down-and-out homeless people who are drug trafficking on the bus mall there, but they’re a cover that the police can’t pierce. We want the police to be able to say to somebody. “You’re going to go to the access center, and if you go they have coffee and showers and whatever you need. And if you don’t go, we think maybe you’re dealing drugs.” A current interpretation of the US Constitution that I actually agree with is that it’s actually illegal to ban camping on urban spaces if don’t have adequate shelter. It’s legal if you do. Likewise, how do you move somebody along if there’s no day center?

Why was Holst Architecture selected to design it?

The architecture matters. If you look at 8NW8, most people don’t think that’s a recovery center. They think it’s a condo building. We want it to look beautiful.

But Old Town is on the verge of major development. Is the access center the best use for one of the last full blocks in the central city?

It’s much more constrained developmentally than people are playing on the other side. The Blanchet House owns their little spot. It’s only a 16tt (of a block) but they own it and they’re not interested in moving. So you have to build around them and satisfy them. And I’m only half joking when I say they answer to God. The city also owes NW Natural 150 parking spots for the Chinese Garden, and that’s a real deal. They gave us the garden and we have to give them back the parking spots. One of my thoughts is that if we put the parking spots under the access center, that’s uneconomic space, which we’re then not wasting, and then we’re meeting our obligation to NW Natural. If you decide you’re going to build office or high-end housing, but there’s no parking because NW Natural gets it, nobody is going to build there. And the other end is that there’s really no other place to put the parking.

Couldn’t the access center actually derail private development on neighboring parcels?

For the first time Old Town is really ready to go economically. You’ve got David Gold who owns two blocks, the Goldsmith Blocks where the Grove Hotel is. You’ve got the Naitos who have teamed up with Brad Malsin and they’re ready to do some things. There’s Art DeMuro. I’d say to this crew, look, we’re moving Old Town into the River District. There is going to be a lot more money than there has been in the past—a lot more. But it’s still finite. So if you start saying you want to spend a ton of money to turn Block 25 into, pick it, retail or office, or whatever it is, that’s money that does not go into all the private projects.

How many stories?

My preference would be to go up and do a 200-unit 15-story building because I just don’t see wasting the air rights. Since this all started, the city and the housing authority have partnered to buy the Grove Hotel. The Grove is in the way of a lot of things and it’s a horrible place to live. So what we said to David Gold was essentially we’d be happy to sell you that land, but we have to replace the units first. We’re not going to buy the Grove, knock it down and have so many less places for people to live. My argument is to go tall on Block 25, put in 200 units, and count that as replacement toward the Grove. And then you have things consolidated in a nice place; it’s beautiful; and then the Grove is free to go.

Do you have the money to do this project?

Yes, if and once—but I think it will happen—the River District gets extended into Old Town.

How do River District residents feel about that?

Good. They’re supportive. It probably creates an arrangement of around $400 million dollars and half of which may flow into Old Town. So the River District also gets a bunch of projects that it wants done.

And that $200 million could help Malsin and the other developers?

That’s exactly my point. Some media played the point I’m about to make as a threat, which I didn’t’ mind because it made me sound tough, (laughs) but it’s not a threat. It’s clearly an opportunity. If there’s $200 million dollars coming to Old Town, the idea of trying to come up with a package that includes the private developers and the homeless rebuild is an opportunity for both sides to win.

What could derail it?

The neighbors are trying. I think it will get built. We’d like to be under construction this calendar year. Architects are working. PDC is still considering one other alternative, but Block 25 is a better canvas to paint on. And the opportunity to go tall is one that I’m very reluctant to lose. So the idea to go tall on 25 and accelerate the replacement of the Grove and allow David Gold to put in the Asian Grocery or whatever he wants to do.

Is that the Uwajimaya?

Yeah.

Is it likely?

I think so.