Projects will alter city core

Transit mall remake is catalyst for 50 new redevelopment ventures

By Jim Redden

The Portland Tribune, Nov 2, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (21 Reader comments)

L.E. BASKOW / TRIBUNE PHOTO

More than $1.5 billion is expected to be invested in redeveloping downtown Portland over the next few years. A new hotel and restaurant, set to open in 2009, is under construction in the old T&N Building at 300 S.W. Sixth Ave.

Portland’s next mayor will have a lot of ribbons to cut.

The reopening of Macy’s at Meier & Frank Square is just the first of dozens of redevelopment projects scheduled to be completed in and around downtown over the next few years.

According to one projection, between 2007 and 2009 public agencies and private developers will invest more than $1.5 billion into the central city.

Sandra McDonough, president and chief executive officer of the Portland Business Alliance, says the projects reflect the city’s efforts to improve the downtown core, including the $224.9 million transit-mall renovation project.

“Portland has worked hard to revitalize its downtown, and those efforts are beginning to pay off,” McDonough said.

The growth projection was prepared by Shiels Obletz Johnsen, a local consulting firm that is helping the city and TriMet coordinate construction of the bus mall project.

Co-founder Doug Obletz also is serving as the interim director of Portland Mall Management Inc., a nonprofit organization charged by the city with maximizing the public benefit of the project when it is finished.

“The public investment in the mall and a few other projects is resulting in a huge investment from the private sector,” Obletz said. “It’s a big vote of confidence in the central city.”

50 projects close to mall

When it is completed in 2009, the project will add a new MAX light-rail line on Fifth and Sixth avenues between Union Station and Portland State University.

The projection prepared by Obletz’s firm lists 50 separate projects on or near the mall or the downtown streetcar, including the restoration of historic buildings and the construction of new residential and office towers.

Although some of the projects were finished this summer, most are set to be completed in 2008 and 2009.

A handful of the projects on the list are public, including the construction of two new parks and the renovation of two existing ones. The vast majority, however, are privately owned and financed.

Obletz cites the renovation of the T.N. Building at 300 S.W. Sixth Ave. as a good example of how downtown is transforming. The 1970s office building always has struggled to find tenants. But it now is being renovated into a hotel with a ground-floor restaurant.

Sage Hotel Corp. is doing the work, the same company that is renovating the floors above the downtown Macy’s into a luxury hotel.

“When that project is finished, it will not only revitalize a building that never caught on, but it will bring new life to the nearby blocks,” Obletz said.

Because it focuses on the blocks along and near the transit mall, the consulting firm’s list does not include every recent, current or future project in the downtown area.

For example, it does not include the residential tower rising in the South Waterfront area south of the Ross Island Bridge.

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