O Say Can You See

[July 8th, 2009]

The University of Oregon’s battle to change Portland’s skyline enters the second round Monday, July 13—and it may yet end with the school’s brand in neon over the Burnside Bridge.

Under a compromise agreement that ended round one in April, the university agreed to drop its efforts to put the school’s name on the “Made in Oregon” sign above its Portland campus on the west bank of the Willamette River in exchange for something else the university wanted: a free five-year lease on the parking lot underneath the Burnside Bridge (see “Charade in Oregon,” WW, June 3, 2009).

The design of the Made in Oregon sign, which would in future years read only “Oregon,” goes before the city’s Landmarks Commission on Monday.

But in addition to reviewing the university’s revised proposal for the Made in Oregon sign, the commission will look at the university’s planned changes to the 100-year-old water tower next to the sign.

Those changes include painting over existing images on the tower that say “Old Town” on the east side and Made in Oregon on the west side and installing two 6 1/2-foot neon yellow “O’s” in their place.

So far, the proposed changes to the water tower have not generated the same volume of heated response as the initial application to change the Made in Oregon sign. Last spring, more than 28,000 people joined the Facebook group calling for the preservation of Portland’s Made in Oregon sign. And hundreds wrote letters and emails to city officials protesting the University of Oregon’s changes to the sign.

Some Portlanders who opposed letting the university put its name on the sign have called the plan to put the school’s athletic logo on the water tower “garish,” according to a staff report from the Bureau of Development Services, which oversees the approval process.

But Commissioner Randy Leonard, who last spring opposed the university’s plans to put the school’s name on the Made in Oregon sign, says the idea to put athletic logos on the water tower is anything but tacky.

Leonard, a Portland State University graduate, says he’s OK with that part of the University of Oregon’s plan because the “O” is “neutral.”

Kurt Huffman, co-owner of the restaurant Ping on Northwest 4th Avenue and a member of the business association in Old Town, isn’t so much concerned as puzzled by the university’s attempts at branding.

“It’s not exactly a commodity they’re selling,” says Huffman, who went to Reed College. “I can only imagine the most demented people in the world deciding to send their child to the University of Oregon because of a sign on a water tower.”

But that’s not why the university wants the visibility, says Jan Oliver, the U of O’s special assistant for Portland advancement projects. A conspicuous presence promotes affinity to a school, so the thinking goes.

“It sounds odd,” Oliver says. “That said, there is not a public institution in higher education that does not have a brand.”