Amid condos, a spot to contemplate

New Pearl District park evokes wetlands that were there before

By Anna Johns

The Portland Tribune, Jul 29, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Before condos ruled the skyline and parking meters dotted the landscape, Portland’s Pearl District was a soggy wetland. There were no shoppers or strollers, just blue herons, dragonflies and frogs; instead of a streetcar, water glided down streams into a shallow lake.

The Pearl’s wetlands legacy is re-created in a new space called Tanner Springs Park, which opens to the public one week from today. The park, which is one square block bordered by Northwest 10th and 11th avenues and Marshall and Northrup Streets, is named for a creek that was channeled underground at the turn of the century when industry and the railroad moved into what is now the Pearl.

“It’s unlike anything I know of,” said Henry Kunowski, program manager for Portland Parks & Recreation.

Tanner Springs Park is different from most Ñ if not all Ñ of Portland’s parks because it is not meant for recreational activity, parks officials said. There is no fountain, no dog park, no picnic area and no running track. Every square foot of the park is not to be explored Ñ at least not by humans.

Tanner Springs Park is a fragile ecological habitat that fits into a master plan for expansion of the Pearl. It is one in a string of four parks planned for the River District Urban Renewal area and funded through tax-increment financing. The first park was Jamison Square, with its beachlike layout and family-friendly fountain. Tanner Springs Park is two blocks away and stands in stark contrast to Jamison Square.

The other two parks will be larger and meant for recreation Ñ planning has not yet begun for the spaces. One, currently called “Neighborhood Park,” will be 2 acres of recreational fields north of Northwest Overton Street. The fourth park will be on the riverfront and will surround Centennial Mills.

Two years ago when the city started seeking designs for Tanner Springs Park, it gave designers two guidelines: Evoke the feel of a wetland, and make the park a destination for contemplation.

Landscape architect Herbert Dreiseitl of Dreiseitl/Waterscapes in †berlingen, Germany, sought input from the public before creating his winning design.

“We wanted to involve people in the process and find the spirit of the place,” Dreiseitl said.

Overwhelmingly, people participating in the workshops expressed a desire to honor the Pearl’s past as a wetlands habitat and as an industrial area.

“It’s like peeling back the skin of the city,” explained Dreiseitl, who teamed with Portland-based landscape architecture and design firm GreenWorks P.C.

The west end of the park, bordered by Northwest 11th Avenue, rises 2 feet above the ground and gradually slopes downward toward the east end of the park, which is about 5 feet below street level.

“I thought of it as a stadium where you can look down on the wetlands,” Dreiseitl explained. “You go lower and forget about the traffic.”

The highest point of the park is covered in short, green turf grass and mature Oregon oak, red alder and bigleaf maple trees from a salvage company in Hillsboro called Big Trees.

A Belgian brick walkway transitions to waist-high spike bent, American slough and tufted hair grasses, which are native plants found in many places along the Oregon Coast. A pebble trail breaks through the middle of the tall grass toward a small body of water.

“It’s like walking along a trail to the beach,” said Kunowski, brushing his hand across the seeds clustered at the top of the plants during a tour.

Beyond the tall grass are shorter, greener sedge and rush grasses. The plants are placed sparsely on the banks of a shallow, now-murky pond that is expected to eventually clear once the water is run through a natural filtration system several times.

Glass meets train tracks

In the pond is a dock Ñ or pontoon Ñ where visitors can walk and admire the art wall made of railroad rails that rises as high as 12 feet straight up out of the water.

“It is the old train tracks that have been in this region,” Dreiseitl said.

The Portland Terminal Railroad Co., which has been around since 1882, donated 360 lengths of old rail for the jagged sculpture.

“We took it raw as it was and didn’t try to obscure the fact that it’s old railroad,” Kunowski said. “In many cases you can see the date of fabrication and where it came from.”

The oldest rail is from 1898.

Placed randomly inside the rails are 99 long, blue pieces of fused glass made by Bullseye Glass in Portland. It was shipped to Dreiseitl in Germany, where he hand-painted each piece with a picture of an animal or insect that would have lived centuries ago in the old wetlands. Then it was fused in a German factory and shipped back to Portland.

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