The Burnside BlogRSS

Reincarnation for the Customs House?

29 Comments

Posted By Randy Gragg on 09/22/2008

The US Custom House

Pity the poor U.S. Customs House, the august, 1901 jewel box on the North Park Blocks designed by James Taylor Knox. The DJC noted on its blog this morning that the General Services Administration has decided to put it up for sale. An analysis showed that removing the structure, now empty four years, from the GSA’s inventory would be more beneficial to taxpayers than keeping it.

Back in 2005, the GSA put out a request for proposals, selecting a subsidiary of the Wyndam Hotel Group over a proposal by local developer Art DeMuro to put the University of Oregon’s Portland architecture program plus the Pearl District’s Zimmerman Community Center in the building. No doubt Wyndam could offer more money, but several people who saw the hotelier’s plans at the time couldn’t figure what they had to do with the building: There were more rooms proposed than the Customs House had windows.

Things ended happily for U of O who moved into the considerably less imperial but mostly functional setting of DeMuro’s White Stag Building redevelopment. But the Wyndam eventually opted out of Customs House (maybe the GSA sent them a full set of the building’s plans!)

So what next for old Customs House? With Pacific Northwest College of Art already aiming at another federally owned structure to the north, the 511 Building, we’re running out of schools to occupy old government buildings.

Anybody with a cool $10 million for seismic upgrade out there?

Anybody got ideas at all?

29 Comments

By Eves on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 12:47PM PDT

Mausoleum.

By Rob on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 03:13PM PDT

Split between PSU’s art department, industrial design MFA and a PPS arts magnet high school. Or a K-12 PPS Chinese immersion magnet school. Add a Helen Gordon Center II, using the park blocks playground. Sir Norman Foster Smithsonian-style courtyard canopy. Capital upgrades by the legislature.

By Randy Gragg on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 05:59PM PDT

Eves, a brilliant idea for sneaking below the change of occupancy that would trigger a required earthquake proofing: from the corps (of engineers) to the corpse!

Rob, a nice thought, as long as Sen. Gordon Smith isn’t sent back to Salem! More seriously, I wonder if an education institution kept the occupancy beneath a certain threshold whether earthquake proofing could be avoided. Probably not for any high-school related use, but maybe for a private college. Seems a good fit for the College of Naturopathic Medicine.

Bottom line is that it will take a major government subsidy to bring to current standards. Guess we’ll see how preserving Federalist Architecture plays in Portland.

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I’d say give it time. How Old Town shapes up in the next few years will probably determine how NW Broadway will look. It’s likely that the next round of development in Portland will include more national and international players with deeper pockets.

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I like the idea of a extension of the Central library. The Old-Town Library perhaps?

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