A new Civic hybrid

Back Story • Developers see seeds of change in condo-rental mix

By peter korn

The Portland Tribune, Sep 11, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (19 Reader comments)

Jim Clark / TRIBUNE PHOTO

The developers of the Civic condos and the attached Morrison apartments may talk about the complex as part of a social experiment that will bring change to West Burnside Street, but new Civic resident Ean Reves says he likes the neighborhood the way it is, even with a bit of grit.

Ean Reves doesn’t mind the prostitutes and late-night rowdies who occasionally move up and down West Burnside Street beneath his new condominium. Urban grit is what drew Reves to his eighth-floor corner unit in the Civic.

“The reason I bought here was because it was downtown but it wasn’t in the Pearl,” says the 33-year-old Reves, who works for Nautilus in Vancouver, Wash. “I like to be around a more diverse location, even if there are drug dealers or prostitutes.”

And Mark Edlen, one of Portland’s most visionary developers, thought he had his market all figured out.

Last year, when Edlen described his large-scale condominium project on West Burnside, he spoke grandly of plans for revitalizing a neighborhood that for decades had resisted improvement.

Bars and fast-food restaurants have dominated West Burnside for years, many catering to the residents of the $400-a-month, shared-bathroom hotel rooms that sit above shops on the street.

Nearly 400 new condo owners would change that, Edlen was certain. And not just any condo owners. Edlen and Thomas Cody, in charge of the project for Gerding/Edlen Development Co., decided to build housing that could attract buyers who were not necessarily wealthy, including some who have never owned a home before.

Fifteen of the Civic’s condos are priced at under $200,000, three out of 10 of the Civic’s residents are first-time home buyers, and Cody says that he believes many of the new residents earn about $50,000 a year.

“They’re young buyers, and I think they will hit the sidewalk, and I think they will own that neighborhood,” Edlen said last September. “Older people walk around the drug dealers. These youngsters will kick them out. I think it will be one of the more interesting social and anthropological experiences in the buildings I’ve created.”

Well, the first wave of residents has been living in the Civic for about two months now, and Reves is one of them. In many ways, he’s the property owner Edlen envisioned taking residence in the Civic – young, active (Reves runs and bikes), invested in his new neighborhood.

But if West Burnside and its surrounding area become too “sanitized and cleansed,” Reves says, he won’t want to stay in his $429,000 eighth-story corner condo. He likes his new neighborhood just the way it is.

Reves says he knows the area will change. But he knows what he doesn’t want to see. “I wouldn’t want it to change too much,” he says. “Can you develop this area and revitalize it but not turn it into the same cookie-cutter neighborhood that already exists, like the Pearl? That would be my wishful thinking.”

But the location of the Civic isn’t its greatest risk.

The Civic and the Morrison, an adjoining apartment building that’s part of the same project, represent an experiment in Portland housing – market-rate condos and subsidized housing for low-income renters built as one overall scheme.

And Cody and Edlen know that they can’t allow the Morrison apartments – which they built but the Housing Authority of Portland will operate – to deteriorate. That’s because any failure in the Morrison likely will drive down the value of their condos next door.

If Edlen’s vision of a mixed-income development in a mixed-income neighborhood comes true, he may change the way Portland developers and city officials look at transforming neighborhoods throughout the city.

The Civic and the Morrison share common space, ground-floor retail shops and one parking garage. In Portland, that’s a first.

And as an experiment, it intrigues Cody much more than the location of the Civic.

“You’re going to have populations colliding,” Cody says. “The home buyers, the home renters and the shoppers.”

The Civic also is breaking ground as the city’s largest development to encourage condo owners not to rely upon their cars. In fact, 24 of the condos have been put on the market with no parking rights – and they’ve sold. But the limited parking has also provided a way for Gerding/Edlen to save money.

The Morrison will have 140 units when completed, but its renters get only 25 of the shared parking lot’s 400 stalls.

Residents plan to get involved

Rudy Wong and Cassandra Eisele, who have lived for more than a month in the Civic, are just the type of condo owners Cody and Edlen had in mind when they designed the development.

Before moving to their two-bedroom unit with a view of downtown and two reserved parking spaces in the garage (at a price of $595,000), Wong, 35, lived in the Pearl District and Eisele, 30, in North Portland.

The location immediately attracted Eisele. “You give up being in any one neighborhood, but you’re perfectly triangulated between the Pearl, downtown and 23rd,” she says. “You get the benefit of all three neighborhoods.”

Eisele says she doesn’t yet feel comfortable walking their beagle, Rex, alone at night, and Wong says he’s noticed the streets around the Civic aren’t as clean as they are in the Pearl.

But the couple, soon to marry, doesn’t intend to sit back and simply watch their neighborhood. “We’re much more interested in getting involved with the community,” Wong says. “Because we want to make sure this area becomes what we would like it to be.”

Eisele says she likes the idea of the Civic and Morrison side by side. “I think there’s something nice about living in a community that’s mixed,” she says. “That’s the real world, and it makes life interesting.”

As a group, the new residents of the Civic are more notable for what they have in common than for diversity among their ranks. About 200 people have moved into 130 of the building’s 261 condos. Eventually there will be close to 400 residents.

More than 80 percent of the Civic’s new residents are between 20 and 40 years of age, with an average age of 33. The heavy majority, 64 percent, are male. Nearly three out of four of the residents are unmarried.

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