PORTLAND’S MID-RISE BEAUTY
No monster buildings in Oregon city
I am ashamed to say I didn’t know anything about Portland’s Slabtown transformation before a recent visit. And I call myself an urban nerd.
We chose our Portland Airbnb (Benson Manor) on a recent trip to Oregon partly because it was close to the city’s two wellknown trendy urban villages — Pearl District and Nob Hill — and for its walkability to downtown. It was also right on a streetcar line, making it a great way to experience the city’s transit system. We thought it would be fun to live in a community like Hillhurst/sunnyside for our Portland adventure.
But once there, I quickly learned we were staying in Slabtown, an old warehouse industrial district north of Nob Hill’s trendy 21st and 23rd main streets.
Slabtown earned its name from the lumber mills that once dominated the industrial area and sold slabs of log edges, cut to square logs, as a cheap source of fuel to labourers. It was not hard to imagine the community’s past, as across the street from our apartment was a busy 1960s-looking Les Schwab tire store with six bays and a lumber yard, both relics of Slabtown’s industrial past.
Calgary’s equivalent might be
Manchester or even East Village before all the industrial buildings were torn down to create overflow parking for downtown.
It was very pleasant to walk along the streets with their mix of industrial chic, early 20th-century painted ladies homes and new mid-rises.
I loved the fact there are no monster buildings taking up an entire block or so high they dwarf you.
Slabtown has the wonderful welcoming feeling of a village. It didn’t feel contrived like master-planned communities sometimes do.
PEDESTRIAN FRIENDLY
What I loved about Slabtown was almost all of the new buildings were mid-rise, between five and 12 storeys high, with commercial spaces at the street. I especially enjoyed the New Seasons Market grocery store with no residential tower above it.
It reminded me of Calgary Co-op’s Midtown store, but with less surface parking and two mid-rise buildings rather than a dwarfing tower next to it.
The human scale of the buildings and mix of retail, restaurants, cafes and recreational activities at street level created an attractive pedestrian environment.
What was also interesting is that there was no real main street, but rather the shops, cafes, restaurants, fitness studios scattered throughout the community.
MID-RISE MADNESS
Exploring Portland further, I discovered the construction of new mid-rise buildings with commercial spaces along the street is happening everywhere. Although almost “cookie cutter” in size, each one was different in its facade materials and design.
There must be more than 100 new mid-rise buildings recently completed or under construction across the city. I found them along northwest 21st and 23rd avenues in Nob Hill, plus dozens more along N. Mississippi, N. Williams and Alberta avenues. There are also several mid-rise residential developments in the Lloyd District, Portland’s Entertainment District (two arenas, mega convention centre and large indoor shopping centre) just across the river from downtown. And also across the river but further south, there are dozens more in the Central Eastside and along Burnside Street and Hawthorne Boulevard.
Costar, a sort of Bloomberg wire service for the real estate industry, counted 11,000 new apartment-style residential homes under construction in Portland as of last September.
Yes, there are concerns of a glut of multi-family residential development in Portland, however, mostly in the luxury segment of the market.
CALGARY VS. PORTLAND
What I didn’t see in Portland was the “missing middle” housing you see in Calgary’s established communities outside of the city centre — row housing, corner conversions, side-bysides. Nor did I see the residential skyscrapers (30 or more floors) that dominate Calgary’s Beltline, East Village and Downtown West neighbourhoods.
What I saw was more similar to what is happening in Bridgeland, Inglewood, Kensington, Marda Loop, West District, Westman Village and University District — lots of mixed-use buildings, each five to 12 storeys tall.
I found it strange that I didn’t see lots of public-realm improvements (new parks or streetscape improvements) as a result of all this new residential development, except in the Pearl District and Slabtown.
LAST WORD
While I haven’t visited every city in North America, I think Portland must be a strong contender for the Mid-rise Capital of North America. Having visited Vancouver, Seattle, Nashville, Austin and Denver over the past few years — all cities you would think might compete with Portland given their robust economies and demographics — I haven’t seen the plethora of new mid-rise buildings I found in Portland.