PDC seeks to unload station

Site may come with other parcels; public market’s a possibility

By Jennifer Anderson

The Portland Tribune, Aug 3, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (6 Reader comments)

For sale: One 111-year-old beautiful train station in Portland, Oregon, with just $40 million in needed repairs. Selling price negotiable; buyer must keep train station intact but may take advantage of unique redevelopment opportunities on surrounding parcels. Contact the Portland Development Commission if interested.

• • •

The ad above is fake, but it essentially represents the thinking behind the city’s redevelopment agency, which has owned the historic train depot for 20 years and runs it through the city’s Office of Management & Finance.

Now, the PDC is looking to unload the station, either to transfer the building to the city for public control or sell it to a private developer who will retain the rail functions.

“PDC doesn’t want to remain owner of that facility,” said PDC senior development manager Lew Bowers. “While we might be part of the financing to renovate it, we’d want to know whether the city will own it or maybe put it out for (a request for proposal) or see what the private sector would do with it. Nobody’s talking about getting rid of the train station.”

According to the latest city reports, the 1896 station requires $10 million in immediate fixes, such as roof, gutter and downspout repairs, and another $30 million in deferred maintenance and seismic upgrades.

Bowers said his agency has redeveloped and sold off much of the land around the station over the past 10 years, and now wishes to sell it along with the few adjacent parcels of land that could be redeveloped.

They include the two vacant blocks at Northwest Fifth Avenue and Hoyt and Glisan streets, to the south; the U.S. Department of Homeland Security offices, 511 N.W. Broadway, whose representatives have indicated an intent to move; and potentially the nearby Greyhound Station, 550 N.W. Sixth Ave., which also could relocate.

All that acreage could “really be a unique area within downtown,” Bowers said. “It could be a large institutional use. There isn’t any site left in the downtown area with a historical context to it.”

Public market has booster

Unless city leaders want to take on the station’s baggage, so to speak, it could remain a white elephant for some time to come, falling into further disrepair.

“Whether or not the city takes it would definitely depend on the terms and conditions of the contract with PDC,” said Mary Volm, a city spokeswoman. “It’s a council decision. That’s the bottom line.”

One person who’s paying close attention to the fate of the station is Ron Paul, the former restaurateur who’s intent on siting a public market alongside Amtrak at Union Station.

The question of who will own the building doesn’t faze him. “The public market has anticipated needing to respond to a continuum of ownerships,” he said. “We understand that’s part of the puzzle that awaits us, and we fully anticipate calibrating our strategies.”

Recently, Paul received the results of the first feasibility study for the market at the station, and he’s buoyed by the possibilities.

“Yes, there is the opportunity for the public market to coexist with Amtrak in Union Station,” he said, summarizing the city-funded study by Mahlum Architects. “(It’s) not without its challenges. But it also has tremendous opportunities.”

One of the obvious challenges is physically locating it. The architectural firm came up with one possible scenario: for the market to occupy the cavernous waiting area and corridor along the south side of the main terminal, heading between the terminal and Wilf’s Restaurant & Bar. That would include a reconfiguration of the restaurant and station restrooms.

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