Building Churn: 388 Commercial, Fryman Building, State Street Ice Cream Factory

This is old news, but certainly relevant here. The Santiam Bikes building at 388 Commercial has been for sale for a while. Though it is not a high-style building, the Otto J. Wilson garage of 1911 is historically significant for Salem, and a new owner could place it easily on the National Register of Historic Places. The State Historic Preservation Office agrees that it could be eligible for listing under multiple criteria.

Otto J Wilson Garage (1911) for sale

I hope it will not be demolished and will find either a restoration or a renovation that retains key portions of its architecture and highlights its place in Salem business and transportation history. The sale notice says "27,888 sq ft on .32 acres opportunity to go vertical in the urban growth district" and it would be nice for "go vertical" to mean "stack on top of," not "replace." I could see the current building being a plinth for additional floors - a little like the way the Boise warehouse shell is a plinth for the apartments above.

Otto J. Wilson garage, May 1952.  Image courtesy of John Wilson

But it would be a sad loss for the whole thing to be demolished. The interior truss system may be more special, too, than we think, and there may be engineering reasons, too, to think it a little unusual. At any rate, it should not carelessly be lost.

The interior I think uses this Howe Truss system

By contrast, here's a demolition that was just approved on the 8th - and then, whoom, it all went down. It involved three houses on the corner of Cross and and 13th Streets SE, and looks to be a new single story storefront. Hopefully the parking will be on the side or in back, and it will maintain the mid-century character of a lot of the storefronts along 12th and 13th. But it could just be a generic strip mall.

Fryman Building site on Cross and 13th

The houses were very modest cottages. It's unfortunate that the storefronts couldn't have had second story apartments so there was basically no net loss of housing. There was, I think, a mixed use overlay for 12th and 13th Streets at one time, but it was not popular. I may circle back to this, as this district has languished. That it is bounded by a creek on the west and a railroad on the east, though, makes for a smaller "shed" of close-by residents on which to draw for commercial vitality. It has some challenges.

Three small cottages were demolished for it

And any day, I expect to hear news about the State Street refinement plan kick-off. Looking at the road and adjacent land-use and development together between 12th and 25th, this project could be the most exciting project in Salem. It is much better connected by the street grid on the north and south to close-by residents. State Street here has not been completely made over into a stroad, not like Lancaster, and it is possible to revert to mid-century patterns with 21st century refinements that will make walking, biking, driving, and living and businessing better for everyone. It's full of potential.

Here's the old ice cream factory, and we should take a moment to appreciate when light industry was not banished to car-dependent suburban office parks or industrial wastelands hemmed in by rail and highway, places to which you can't walk or bike or even bus, and instead was sited so workers and customers could easily reach it.

The old ice cream factory, also for sale

Hopefully it also will find a creative reuse that works with the residential neighborhood and will not simply be demolished.

Postscript

This is a little awkward to append here, but it is also relevant, as it is exactly about banishing light industry and the like to the edges of the city.

Did you know Salem has the largest state-certified industrial land on I-5 between Sacramento and Seattle? http://t.co/AsWy7beB7z

— Salem Planning (@Salem_Planning) July 17, 2015

This is a link to an Oregon Business story about the Mill Creek industrial park. But here are some of the problems:

“There are a lot of reasons why large distribution hubs for Winco, Walmart and Home Depot have located between Woodburn down through Lebanon.”

Arthur says he’s “doing investigations” for three parties, one in distribution, the other two in food processing. Assets include more than land.

“One reason food processors are interested is that we have an abundant quantity of water,” Arthur says. “Mill Creek can supply more than 1 million gallons per day, and that can expand.”

SEDCOR’s Freeman notes also that Mill Creek tenants can tap a workforce of more than a million people within a 45-minute radius.

“One of the most important things we run into with companies is workforce,” Freeman says.

Workforce access by 45 minutes is all car- and carbon-dependent, and that water supply? That's our tapwater, our drinking water, and if it "expands" it could be at the cost of residential drinking water as we face greater and greater drought. We are not thinking very strategically or in an integrated way about all this.

Oregon drought: Salem expects to avoid water restrictions. #SalemOR http://t.co/eAM9GFqIjE

— City of Salem (@cityofsalem) July 17, 2015

At the same time, the FedEx and Home Depot projects already there are fundamentally logistics enterprises, and the immediate proximity to I-5 is clearly a benefit. Big semi-trucks fit very awkwardly inside the city.