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Portland City Council has moved forward in the planning process for renovating Keller Auditorium, unanimously approving an Oct. 10 proposal to maintain the Keller while also building a new performing arts venue at Portland State University. Previously, those two proposals were in competition with each other.
“You all dug in and you worked together as fellow community members,” said Mayor Ted Wheeler at the Oct. 10 City Hall meeting, to the teams who worked on the proposal over the last two months. “You brought the best of what you have to offer to the table, and you’ve come back with a proposal that I think is compelling, visionary, and eminently doable, provided we keep pushing hard in the years ahead.”
The price tag on the two venues came to $857 million, though Chariti Montez, director of the Office of Arts & Culture, cautioned that “this information is conceptual and very preliminary.” Potential funding sources, which have not been nailed down, are local, state, federal and philanthropic.
All of this hinges on a market feasibility study that the City Council also authorized at the meeting. The analysis will look at optimal seating capacities, finances and construction timelines for both proposed venues. The city will also run a traffic study on the potential closure of Southwest Third Avenue, which runs between Keller Auditorium and Keller Fountain Park.
The plan to move forward with two venues is intended, in part, to avoid a pause in the schedule of traveling Broadway productions—and all of the associated revenue and union jobs they bring with them. Keller is the only “Broadway-capable” venue in Portland, on account of stage size, lighting, loading and unloading capabilities, technology and more. According to the plans, the PSU venue will be Broadway-capable and constructed before Keller is renovated, thus avoiding a theatrical shutdown.
Keller Auditorium has long been known to not be earthquake-safe—it was added to the city’s list of unreinforced masonry buildings in 2016. A renovation would get the theater up to modern safety standards plus update guest amenities, backstage facilities and mechanical and production systems.
“We applaud the decision to move ahead with a reimagined, renovated Keller Auditorium. Removing the cloud of uncertainty and committing to the future of this beloved, profitable venue, is the right decision for the future of Portland’s arts and culture economy and for the future of downtown,” said Bob Naito, co-chair of the Halprin Landscape Conservancy. Halprin is a nonprofit formed by several downtown developers, including John Russell, and got into a hot debate with PSU this summer over the future of downtown Portland’s major arts venue landscape.
While the city of Portland owns the Keller, the regional government Metro operates the venue.
After presentations by the Office of Arts & Culture, PSU, the Halprin Landscape Conservancy and public testimony, Commissioner Mingus Mapps expressed caution.
“What do we do if we conduct this market study and results come back and show that there’s not enough demand for two Broadway-capable theaters?” Mapps said. “I remember a moment, not too long ago in our city’s history, where I think the conventional wisdom said, ‘Portland needs more hotels,’ and we spent a couple of years and built a whole lot of hotel rooms and then the world changed.”