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In a
way, the Governor Hotel symbolizes what some want the West
End to become, and what others fear. Previous
to its current upscale state, the hotel used to house low-income
tenants.
Greg Goodman says downtown's long-neglected West End is
due for a makeover.
Within
walking distance of the downtown core, the West End holds
all the ingredients of a vital, bustling neighborhood. But
after a quarter-century, it hasn't changed much. A large
chunk of its territory is owned by churches or public entities
like the Art Museum, while another sizable area is paved
with profitable surface parking lots, discouraging development.
Greg
Goodman sits on the board of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation,
which is dedicated to historical preservation, and of the
nonprofit that operates Pioneer Square. He formerly sat
on the symphony board.
Considered the godfather of Portland planning, Ernie Bonner
is no fan of the West End plan. He says a business group's
proposal would turn a key chunk of downtown into a dead
zone.
Goodman
supported light rail even though transit hurts his business,
he notes, and he helped bring some Harvard grad students
to look at ways to develop the east side--where his family
does not own land.
Goodman
has joined with Commissioner Erik Sten and former Metro
Councilor Patricia McCaig to put on the November 2000 ballot
a regional business income tax to reduce class size and
expand early childhood education programs.
Lili Mandel (above), a downtown activist, has been dogging
the plan from the start.
Ernie
Bonner drew the West End's lines in 1977, but did not name
it until 1996. He believes the park blocks should be enhanced
as part of any West End revival.
Ralph Austin is building a 40-unit affordable condo project
at the corner of Southwest 12th Avenue and Jefferson Street.
He says the math would work even without a public subsidy.
"We're the trailblazers,"
he says.
Former
Mayor Neil Goldschmidt declined to comment for this story.
In 1978,
the city had 5,183 units of affordable housing downtown,
but lost 25 percent over a decade. In 1988 it vowed to restore
the earlier mark, but remains 1,400 units short.
The
APP plan does call for the preservation of affordable housing.
But housing advocate Ralph Austin says its proponents have
passed on suggestions that West End developers pay a fee
to support it.
Several
major West End developments on the drawing board will create
at least 600 new housing units. Those include an expansion
of Safeway into a mixed-use project, the renovation of the
Blitz-Weinhardt brewery, and a Galleria modernization project.
In March,
PSU grad students taught by city planner Michael Harrison
completed a West End study that quotes PDC staff saying
"only about six blocks" should be rezoned.
Every
commissioner has benefited from Goodman family support:
Since 1996, Jim Francesconi received $2,250; Charlie Hales,
$1,605; Vera Katz, $250; Dan Saltzman, $2,525; and Erik
Sten, $1,000.
Besides
Goodman and Powell, the APP board includes Oregonian publisher
Fred Stickel, real-estate investment executive Julie Leuvrey,
who is Saltzman's sister, and KPTV President Martin Brantley,
who also chairs the Portland Development Commission.
The
West End Vision Plan promises 3,000 new housing units and
7,000 new jobs. But the City Planning Bureau estimates that
it would take away room for 5,000 new dwellings.
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Book
Smarts: Michael Powell's part in the West End plan.
Most Portlanders know about the booming Pearl District. They're
aware of the bohemian trendiness of Hawthorne. And they've
no doubt held onto their wallets while passing through the
swank Northwest.
But the West End?
More than two decades ago, the 62 downtown blocks that
stretch from Portland State to Powell's City of Books and
from Park Avenue to I-405 were assigned a pivotal role in
this city's future. But few Portlanders know the West End
even exists.
They're about to.
They're about to because a high-powered business group
is calling for a dramatic change in the city's approach
to this neighborhood, a change it claims is crucial to downtown's
continued success. And they're about to because others say
this group's arguments seem to conceal another agenda.
"It's like they're asking me to believe a dog is a duck,"
says planning consultant Peter Finley Fry. "But the 'duck'
is a dog."
At the crux of the debate is the fact that more than a
quarter-century ago, the West End was given an important
mission.
It failed.
Mayor Neil Goldschmidt's 1972 Downtown Plan set the path
for today's Portland. It called for a strong and vibrant
downtown, with people living and working there, keeping
it bustling well into the night.
The West End's role in that vision was fundamental. Whereas
the downtown core along Southwest 5th and 6th Avenues would
be stocked with high-rise office towers, the plan called
for the West End to be stocked with people.
To that end, Goldschmidt and his planning director, Ernie
Bonner, designated 52 of the West End's 62 blocks as a residential
zone. This meant that in every building built from then
on, at least 60 percent had to be housing, with commercial
space filling the rest. Some of these apartments and condos
were to house affluent people who would patronize downtown
businesses.
That has not come to pass.
Only a fraction of the neighborhood's potential has been
achieved. What's there now is a hodgepodge of low-lying
buildings, mostly two to six stories tall, dominated by
churches and low-income apartments secreted in anachronistic
hotels like the St. Francis on 10th Avenue. The vast majority
of housing is subsidized for low-income Portlanders.
There are three distinct neighborhoods in the West End:
the arty college-oriented area to the south, the gritty
Burnside area to the north and the Galleria retail area
in between. Spread among them are cultural amenities: the
Portland Art Museum, Central Library and a culinary institute
(as well as WW's offices). A colony of niche businesses
such as Reading Frenzy, Retread Threads and Ozone Records
has set up shop near Burnside Street, giving the area its
own funky character.
Stroll around at night and you'll see the district's personality
change from block to block. There's the ornate Governor
Hotel with two black-uniformed bellhops on the sidewalk
along 10th Avenue. Four blocks over on Stark Street is a
triangle of nightspots with names like Scandal and the Roxy.
On 13th Avenue is Operation Nightwatch, a nonprofit group
that helps the homeless. On a recent evening, a group of
men and women stood watching as a 30ish man entertained
a shaggy white dog by having it sprint up and down the block,
chasing his laser pointer's red beam as it zipped along
the sidewalk.
Despite its points of vibrancy, this is a neighborhood
that has not lived up to expectations. As it's currently
zoned, the area could house 12,000 people. Instead, it's
got one-fourth that figure. The area has clearly not met
the goal, set more than two decades ago, of 2,500 additional
housing units.
"That is wasted land," says former city commissioner Gretchen
Kafoury. "It's a highly underdeveloped part of the downtown."
On a recent sunny morning, Greg Goodman walked inside what
he cites as Exhibit A: the Galleria.
"What's the feel that you get right here?" he asked. Inside
the gloomy interior, it might as well be a tomb. To the
right, a former clothing store lies vacant. Ahead, a lonely
fountain gurgles and an escalator churns downward from the
second floor, carrying no shoppers at all. There is no one
in sight. Said Goodman, "It's after 11 o'clock, and we're
the only ones in the lobby of the Galleria. It's sad."
Goodman is the scion of the family parking empire that
was built by his father, Doug, a blunt-talking man who never
graduated college but built a virtual monopoly while carving
out a reputation for hardball, tightwad business tactics.
The Goodman empire is extensive. The family owns, leases
or operates parking all over town--an estimated 70 to 80
percent of the 36,000 spaces in downtown commercial lots,
including numerous parking garages. Its real-estate arm,
Downtown Development, owns the building that houses Niketown,
as well as the Kress Building, which contains Brookstone
and Nordstrom Rack, among others. The family patriarch,
Doug, lives in a $1.6 million home once owned by the Corbetts,
one of Portland's founding families.
In the last few years, Greg has gradually taken the reins
of the family business. Balding but still youthful, the
42-year-old represents the more genteel face of the Goodmans.
He is disarmingly personable, drinks wheatgrass, and is
an avid reader of biographies. Greg owns an antique 1956
Mercedes Gullwing.
But what Greg has these days, more than anything, is a
case of Pearl envy.
A stone's throw across Burnside Street, while the West
End sleeps, the Pearl District rides the cutting edge of
trendiness, with galleries, high-rent lofts and lots of
disposable income. Goodman and his biggest ally, Michael
Powell, owner of Powell's City of Books, want to bring that
sort of activity to the West End.
Three years ago, Goodman, Powell and Anne Naito-Campbell,
then the manager of the Galleria, met to chart a West End
awakening. They hitched their hopes to the Central City
Streetcar. Starting in early 2001, the trolley will connect
the gentrified Northwest corridor along 21st and 23rd avenues
with the West End along 10th and 11th avenues, lugging shoppers
and commuters from place to place.
The West End's problem, says Naito-Campbell, is that it
"has been dumped on all these years" by social services.
"I think certain agencies have lasted in the West End simply
because there was no organization to pay attention to what
[was happening] to their neighbors." She declined to elaborate.
The trio got the Association
for Portland Progress interested in the West End. APP
is a business group focused on downtown redevelopment that
is dominated by landowners and developers and highly influential
at City Hall. Goodman sits on APP's board.
On July 8 of this year, APP released what it called the
West End Vision Plan. Contained within its pleasingly illustrated
35 pages is what would arguably be the most sweeping zoning
change of an existing neighborhood in the city's history.
The APP plan makes an argument that does not immediately
make sense: It promises to bring housing to the West End
by removing the requirement to build housing.
Specifically, the plan calls for the entire area to be
rezoned commercial. That means any kind of development short
of a factory could go up.
"New housing will be catalyzed," the plan argues, "by the
development of neighborhood retail and other commercial
opportunities in the district."
APP's plan would also lift density limits. That means buildings
could be built bigger and taller. Thirty-story office towers
the size of the new federal courthouse or the KOIN Tower
on Southwest 3rd Avenue, now found only in the downtown
core, could sprout.
The plan would also ease city parking restrictions. Under
Goldschmidt's vision, downtown parking caps encouraged people
to use public transit or live near their workplaces. But
under the West End Vision Plan, more parking structures
could be built. Where surface lots exist now, parking garages
could rise, either stand-alone or topped by hotels, office
towers or condos.
Finally, the plan calls for the city to subsidize everything
from a revamped Galleria and middle-income housing to new
landscaping, wider sidewalks and beautification projects.
As the plan's authors put it, "Increased residential density
in the West End and continued public subsidy will help provide
rental and homeownership opportunities for a variety of
income levels."
How would it all work?
Goodman says the flexibility on building rules would lure
investors and cause development. High-end condos and penthouses
would follow. Land values and rents would increase, but
city subsidies would ensure that some middle-income housing
goes up, too.
As proof, he points to other commercial areas. Under existing
zoning, "you can't do here what's happened in the Pearl
District," he says. "How many condos have been built in
the Pearl District? Three or four hundred? There's been
zero here."
With their report, Goodman and his allies had hoped to
kickstart a discussion. Instead, they knocked over a beehive
of suspicion.
"What the West End Plan is really about is bringing a new
prosperity to a relatively small number of business owners,"
says low-income advocate Susan Emmons. "This is about gentrification."
At a City Council meeting in October, neighborhood activist
Lili Mandel said, "I don't wish to live in a parking district
and"--she coughed into the microphone--"choke to death on
automobile fumes. If you accept [this plan], no one will
want to live, work or play in the parking district."
Critics include the man considered the godfather of Portland
planning, Bonner, who says, "It's almost like [the plan
is] set up to be a smokescreen. They can't possibly have
the vision they have and propose the actions that they're
proposing."
Goodman has his own influential allies.
Homer Williams, one of the major developers in the Pearl
District and an APP board member, agrees that a mix of buildings
is a good idea. "Every block doesn't have to be mixed-use,"
he says. "That gets very hard to do."
Even the plan's worst critics have to admit the West End
has not lived up to its promise. But they say Goodman is
exaggerating the illness and offering the wrong prescription.
The result of a zoning change, they say, would not be housing,
but office towers. Why? Because office development is more
profitable than housing.
Bonner says the rezone would create an office district
just like the one near City Hall. "It's totally quiet, dead--scary,
actually," he says. "Nothing happens after 6 o'clock near
the bottom of an office building."
David Knowles, who recently stepped down as the city's
planning director, says the problem is not zoning, but economics.
As for the West End plan, he says, "I personally think it's
not warranted--it's not in the city's best interest to do
that."
Even Alix Nathan, part-owner of the Mark Spencer hotel--who
chipped in $1,000 to help pay for the APP plan--is worried.
He says the rezone creates "a totally different ball game.
It changes the landscape dramatically. If you've got more
high-rise buildings...it does change the livability. Tall
buildings make it cramped, less light."
Besides, says Sam Galbreath, the lack of middle-income
housing in the West End is not the fault of zoning, but
of the Portland
Development Commission. Galbreath, the former PDC housing
director, points to a city document that shows that in 1985
the City Council directed the PDC to put up 1,600 middle-income
units in the West End. Due to lack of funds, only 300 went
up--and none since 1989, according to PDC's Connie Lively.
Goodman says people's fears are misplaced--they need to
trust the market. "The market is for mixed-use," he said--including
housing.
Housing advocates worry that higher land values and the
inevitable higher rents will increase the temptation to
turn poor people out of housing. There are three low-income
residential hotels in the West End whose private owners
can turn out their impoverished tenants at any time in favor
of higher rents. And replacement housing is scarce.
"You can't create high land values, displace the housing
there, and then ask the city for incentives to replace it,"
says Ralph Austin, a local developer who builds affordable
housing."That's double-dipping."
It remains unclear what the proper prescription is for
the West End. But it's hard not to see that Goodman would
benefit if the plan were adopted.
Over time, rezoning could "easily triple the value of property"
in the West End, says Barton DeLacy, a commercial real-estate
appraiser who's worked in the downtown area since 1980.
Currently, a square city block in the West End sells for
about $4 million to $5 million.
Goodman's own office lies on Southwest Morrison Street
near Broadway, a block from the West End. He owns only three
and a quarter square blocks in the district, though he operates
many other lots on property owned by others. Half the blocks
he owns would be affected by the rezone, and would therefore
increase in value. Also, the APP plan calls for the city
to renovate the Galleria. Goodman says that would help him
put up a tall mixed-use building on an adjacent 10th Avenue
block he owns with the Schnitzer family. The APP plan also
calls for relaxed parking regulations, which would let him
add to his existing spaces, housing them in garages when
building on his current lots. Lastly, new employees and
residents that come to the area as a result of the APP plan
will need parking, and that will work to his advantage.
Goodman says even his friends suspect there's a profit
motive behind his involvement with the APP plan.
But the parking rule change was not even his idea, and
any increased value would represent only a fraction of his
family's worth, says Goodman, adding that given the extent
of his family operation downtown, he can't do anything without
someone questioning his motives. "I guess the choice is
not to do anything philanthropic downtown--and what is my
passion? My passion is downtown."
He says preserving affordable housing is a priority of
the plan.
It remains to be seen what the city commissioners choose
to do when the advisory committee reports to the council
next summer. But they will be inclined to do something.
Metro,
the regional growth agency, requires them to find room in
Portland for one-fifth of the new people and jobs that enter
the region. One month ago a City
Club report recommended the city funnel new populations
into places equipped to handle it, like downtown.
At an Oct. 13 council meeting, Commissioner Charlie Hales
said that he could not challenge the contention "that a
strategy tried for more than two decades has not been effective."
Katz has been more noncommittal, but welcomed the potential
for this to mesh with her idea to cap I-405, saying, "All
those dots are beginning to connect." Saltzman has not formed
an opinion on the plan, says chief of staff Maria Rojo de
Steffey.
Key to the vote will be housing advocates' best friend
on the council, Erik Sten. He says the important thing is
that there be sufficient funds to preserve existing affordable
housing, adding, "There's a lot of middle ground. We don't
have to rezone everything."
Jim Francesconi believes the city needs to set its own
priorities for spending and stick to them. Opening its coffers
to whatever group gets organized enough to ask for public
funds, he says, "is no way to do the city's business."
--Olivia Barker and Kate Lopresti contributed to this
article.
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