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For 30 years, Tim Eddy has had a bird’s-eye view of Dacelle XV Plaza.
“I’ve seen it all,” he said.
His firm, Hennebery Eddy Architects, has offices on the second floor of the Pittock neighborhood on the west side of the square. Over the years, he’s seen the good (people enjoying lunch in the summer sun), the bad (drug exhales comparable to smokestacks) and the ugly (Portland Department of Transportation contractors cutting down mature trees to transform the plaza).
Last Thursday, he watched as an excavator with a mechanical claw shredded the plaza’s concrete slabs like a Tyrannosaurus rex tearing apart its prey. The slab covers an ill-designed car park on the site – an element that is disappearing under the latest plans to restore Darcelle Square, formerly known as O’Bryant Square and (informally) , because of drugs) Needle Park and Paranoid Park.
It’s no exaggeration to say that before the backhoes arrived, the Plaza was one of Portland’s most run-down properties. No seedy part of Stumptown has such high-end neighbors.
The Benson Hotel is just around the corner. The new 30-story Park Avenue West tower is two blocks to the south. Near the southwest corner stands the $600 million Block 216 building, which has top-notch office space, a Ritz-Carlton Residence apartment listed for $2.8 million (originally priced at $3.1 million), and a Ritz-Carlton hotel with rooms priced at $420 a night. .
In July, Brian Owendoff, who represents Walt Bowen, the brash developer of Block 216, wrote a letter telling City Commissioner Dan Ryan what he wanted to see at Darcelle XV Plaza. Ryan is the commissioner in charge of the Portland Parks and Recreation Department and has the final say on the matter.
Owendorf said he wrote the letter as “a Portland resident actively involved in more than $1.5 billion worth of commercial real estate development in downtown Portland,” but revealed that he is a “representative of all aspects” of the 216th Street District. , including development. What Owendorf wants: a fence around the square and a dog park. What he doesn’t want: a food truck.
All of Owendorf’s wishes were granted when Portland Parks and Recreation unveiled its plans last month, despite a review of about 400 people by the Parks Department, the Portland Park Foundation and Portland State University. A survey shows there is huge public interest in food trucks, and there are no fences.
The plan, developed in partnership with the Downtown Portland Center for Cleanliness and Safety, also features, among other things: a stage, a canvas sunshade and a chandelier (in honor of Portland drag queen Darcy XV, She died in March 2023 at the age of 92)). Total project budget: $7.2 million.
Many people had questions about the plan, including Eddie. He thought Ryan should scrap the Clean and Safe program and do something simpler: a mostly flat space covered in decomposed granite (a type of gravel popular in Parisian parks) and surrounded by trees. Providing electricity for events (lots and lots of events!), good lighting, and installing Portland Toilets (one of the city’s high-tech outdoor toilets).
That’s it. He believes that instead of spending money on buildings like stages where drug addicts can hide behind, the city should spend the money on programming: theatre, music, markets, etc. And keep it flat so police can see across the park from any given spot and drive patrol cars into it if absolutely necessary. This iteration of the Darcelle XV Plaza is supposed to be temporary, lasting a maximum of 10 years to see how it goes. Eddie says that fact alone proves a kind of blank slate that could be anything.
“How many European squares have you been to that have absolutely no built-in functionality?” Eddie asked. “Isn’t there such a thing as a stage? These spaces are open and blank. They are very flexible and can present a thousand different things.”
Eddie is no weirdo. He is an architect who has worked for nearly eight years on the Portland Design Commission, a civic body that advises on large-scale projects in the city. The council weighed in on the project earlier this month, and most members had questions about the fence. They believed it would make the park uninhabitable. Eddie didn’t think that would work in this day and age of bolt cutters, saws, and die-hard drug addicts.
Darcelle XV Plaza was the result of months of research and thousands of dollars in design. The Portland Parks Foundation, a private group of donors, spent much of the last year working with the Parks Department and Portland State University to figure out what to do with the funds. After a “reimagining,” the Park Service solicited interest in restoring the site. Two groups responded: Green Loop, a nonprofit that advocates for tree-lined, bike-friendly corridors around the city, and Downtown Portland Clean and Safe, a group responsible for downtown Portland 213 neighborhood trash collection and safety nonprofit).
The main difference is: Green Loopers recommends food trucks, a proven way of “activating” urban spaces, while Clean & Safe excludes them in favor of events, another strategy. Green Loopers does not recommend fences. Clean and safe done.
According to a Jan. 31 letter from Randy Gragg, the former head of the park foundation, the group evaluating the proposal rated the Friends of the Green Loop program higher than the Clean and Safe program.
But the Parks Department chose Clean & Safe’s plan. Critics say money talks.
Owendorf, who represents Bowen, made his concerns clear in an email to city officials after writing to Ryan in July. He said that Place d’Arcelle XV was surrounded by barbed wire and was in chaos, which was bad for business.
“The biggest question I get from potential buyers and office tenants is, ‘When will O’Bryant Plaza reopen and what redesign will occur?'” Owendorf wrote on Aug. 31. “How do I answer that question, is this hurting our ability to sell and lease?”
Clean & Safe’s proposal would provide up to $400,000 a year in physical services, including security, and like Bowen and Ritz, it would not require a food truck. Bowen’s reasoning: They would compete with Flock, a small food truck spot at the bottom of Block 216 that was designed to replace the ultra-popular food truck spot that once operated at Southwest 10th Avenue and Alder Street and was later replaced by Bowen’s tower.
In a July letter to Commissioner Ryan, Owendoff bluntly stated that Bowen did not want to compete with Flock (which reportedly received a $3 million loan from Prosper Portland, the city’s economic development agency). oregonian). “A market filled with too many food vendors does no one any good,” he wrote.
Clean & Safe operations director Steve Wytcherley said his organization excluded the food truck from the proposal because it does not operate pods. “We came up with a proposal that best suited our mission,” Wycherley said WW.
The mission further confused the situation. Downtown Clean & Safe, a nonprofit closely affiliated with the Portland Metro Chamber of Commerce, charges an annual fee to each property owner in the 213 neighborhoods it serves. The money is collected by the city to cover the costs of cleaning, security, referring people to mental health services and “crow eradication”.
This model, called enhanced service areas, has long been the subject of controversy (Clean Bill, WW, February 17, 2021). But now Ryan is poised to put a private nonprofit funded by city taxes in charge of a public square — a new level of intertwining public and private interests.
Initially, the Parks Department, Clean and Safety and Friends of the Green Loop planned to work together. They circulated a memorandum of understanding. But it was never signed. Green Loop executive director Keith Jones, contacted for comment, said: “After submitting our comments on the MOU, everything fell silent and we were worried something had gone wrong.”
Clean & Safe’s Wytcherley declined to comment on the memo.
The Parks Department says Clean & Safe’s plan is better.
“There are many positives to both proposals,” Portland Parks and Recreation spokesman Mark Ross said in an email. “However, Clean & Safe’s recommendations include a higher number of space activations, more High quality services and greater overall public value.”
Architect Eddie wants Dan Ryan to reconsider elements of the cleaning and safety program. Thirty years of observing the square left him with strong opinions.
“Portland Park and their commissioner should take a step back and reconsider,” Eddy said. “Do less, spend less. This space has been fenced off for the past six years to no avail. It doesn’t keep people out. It doesn’t stop illegal activity. In fact, sometimes it’s worse. . Less is more here.”
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