The Burnside Blog

Posted By Tim DuRoche on 04/14/2009

“Welcome to the American dream: a billionaire using public funds, to construct a private playground for the rich and powerful.” —Montgomery Burns

Memorial Days
Tonight (Tuesday, April 14) Mayor Sam Adams is hosting a public open house on proposed site options for the Rose Quarter from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Leftbank Building, 240 N. Broadway. Adams wants the public to review and weigh in on the plans before the City Council considers the future of Memorial Coliseum on Wednesday, April 15 at 9:30 a.m. at City Hall.

Sounds friendly and Portland-esque enough—a modicum of public process, a level of transparency—right? WRONG. Tonight and tomorrow morning’s Council meeting are the ONLY public opportunities citizens will have to weigh in on the proposed demolition of Memorial Coliseum.

Again Wednesday’s hearing will be at 9:30 a.m. at City Hall.Item #427 on the agenda:
427 -Authorize Sole Source Acquisition and Predevelopment Agreement and authorize Sole Source Acquisition of an Operating Agreement, both with Peregrine Sports, LLC for Major League Soccer and Triple-A Baseball stadiums, pursuant to ORS 279b.075 and City Code Title 5, Section 5.33.120 (Ordinance)

The city has received stern admonishments from the architecture, preservation, sports, community and now the National Trust for Historic Preservation, asking for “a careful evaluation of alternatives before demolition is considered,” and shining a bright spotlight on demolition as an un- “sustainable” solution that would be a dramatic step backward in Portland’s goal of becoming the world’s most sustainable city.

This would seem like a presto-change-o attempt to bring down judgment on the Skidmore, Owings, Merrill-designed Coliseum—a shining example of Miesian-inspired International Style—before the National Trust can bestow National Register status on the building (which is barely legal for historic-register status at 50-years old). The Coliseum is on the City of Portland’s Historic Resource Inventory as a “Rank 1” structure, one of the most important historic properties in the City, distinguished by outstanding qualities of architecture, historical values, and integrity.

I’m not sure what the position is from the Veterans community, but it’s important to note that Memorial Coliseum was dedicated in 1961 to the “advancement of cultural opportunities for the community and to the memory of our veterans of all wars who made the supreme sacrifice.” The building included a room inside which was to be a “quiet shrine to the gallant servicemen who did not return from the wars.”

Whether it’s saved from the wrecking ball or not, it’s important to look at alternatives. Because, as the blight-craving developers in August Wilson’s Radio Golf are reminded, “big boats turn slow but they turn nonetheless”—judgment will come and things will change.

As the always thoughtful Michael McCullough points out:
“without a contextual approach we will inevitably see these new facilities as objects rather than as pieces of a fabric that could become a neighborhood.. . The mistake we made last time was to create episodic venues (Rose Garden and Convention Center) without balancing these facilities within a 24 hour neighborhhood that should surround these large facilities to humanize them. . . The Coliseum may have outlived its utility as a sports venue, but it can only be eclipsed by a well designed new segment of our city that can exploit its extraordinary position overlooking the river and the western half of downtown.”

Doug Obletz (and Rick Potestio, in the comments on Obletz’ site) offered up engaging alternatives to the neighborhood that are both innovative in design and reuse and community-focused in outcome.

When former chief urban designer Arun Jain said last week, “We really have to be much more strategic about what our design approach should be. . .[how] we capitalize on our uniqueness and stay flexible without giving up core values”—he wasn’t talking about eating our young, throwing down with brazen economic development and accepting short-sighted design panaceas for Portland’s problems.

An Ordinance is an Ordinance is a Rose
As if that weren’t enough turmoil for historically significant modernist buildings, tomorrow’s Council meeting will also be your only chance to weigh in on the sneaky tactics that City Council is taking to “obviate a number of City regulations (the Sign Code, Design Review, Historic Design Review) in order to place a large neon rose sign on the venerable [John Yeon designed] Visitors Center in Waterfront Park.”

As former PDC-er-with-a-conscience Jeff Joslin noted, “if a sculptural treatment is desired, there’s a public art program in place that would ensure that such an identifier would be done in an additive, and legally defensible, manner.. . Never in the history of the City’s design and historical regulation has such an ordinance been crafted to sidestep public participation in such a matter, let alone on such a sensitive and significant structure [as the John Yeon-designed structure].”

Good gawd, what city are we in? I went to a fantastic city-sponsored gathering on regional arts and culture funding/advocacy strategies last night that made me proud to be a Portlander—an evening rich in dialogue, collective energy and shared values around treasured local assets. And today this?

Are we so desperate in this climate that we’ll swap the things we value most (public process, design, historic/sustainable stewardship, good taste and some good old Yankee common sense) for smeared public trust, a blinking neon rose, and a sports/entertainment district teeming with surface parking lots and a glutted I-5 backed up to the over-built Columbia River Crossing?

Let the games begin.