City Council, January 13th - The Corner Lot at State and Commercial! - Updated

The most interesting item on City Council agenda for Monday is a public sign of movement on the gravel lot on the corner of State and Commercial downtown!

Movement on Empty Lot at State and Commercial!

Not interesting, but possibly very relevant is the annual financial report for the Urban Renewal Agency.  Here's the brief cover note to Council, and the full report.  (Because the city scans a paper copy of the staff reports, the OCR yields some gibberish when you copy and paste, so the url for the financial report itself leads to a 404 error and you have to sortof interpolate the correct characters for the url.)

Conference Center's Operating Loss for 2013
From Urban Renewal Agency Annual Financial Report

Somebody with a good accounting background really ought to review these things!  What does it mean, for example, that the Conference Center carries an operating loss?  Does this matter?  (Maybe there's a reasonable argument for it operating at a loss.) Last year it happened too.

Conference Center Operating Loss from 2012

What else do we get for our Urban Renewal Areas?  Some people think the whole tax-increment financing thing is a boondoggle, others like it a great deal.  The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.  But a SWAG here suggested that the property values in the Pringle Creek Urban Renewal Area did not exceed the value of 1970s-era property left alone and simply adjusted for inflation. It's not clear that the new construction after more than a generation was more valuable than doing nothing, especially since the new construction was low-density campus sprawl, more parking lot and park than building. It's my hunch that we use urban renewal too much, but that we would not want to go without it altogether - that we need to use it more wisely and with better assessment metrics.  Someone with real finance chops should be looking into the report.

McMahan's site on State and Commercial

Back to State and Commercial, State Street Square LLC is asking the City to sell the smaller parcel, 129 Commercial Street so they can add it to the larger 260 State Street parcel. According to the staff report:

the Developer has proposed to develop the former McMahan's site and the Property as part of a mixed use development, which include at least two of the following uses; office, retail, residential, hotel or restaurant. The Developer's proposal is consistent with the "Core Area Redevelopment" project of the Plan, Section 1105, which calls for establishing downtown Salem as a vibrant mixed-use area.

There's good stuff percolating here, much better than the old bank and drive-through concept. Some of the principals involved are very interested in sustainability, and there is reason to think a genuinely good project will emerge. (And hopefully, too, more public information will come out soon, since it is hard to embrace staff recommendation without more details.)

The loss-of-use agreement will pay the Queen $50,000/year

Since final financing on the Minto Bridge is on the very near horizon, but the decision and payment dates don't line up conveniently with the original contract with the Willamette Queen, Council will need to approve an amendment to the loss-of-use agreement with the Willamette Queen. It will pay the Queen $50,000/year for five years for the loss of use of the slough during high water episodes.  (It is important to remember that a quarter of a million is a lot less than the multi-million difference between a low and high bridge; given the Queen's leverage in the antiquated 19th century legal framework governing navigable rivers and bridges, this was a reasonable expense and decision.)

Out south, there's an interesting bit dedicating two right-of-ways for park/path connections off of Battlecreek.  Here's the google, and here are the dedications. The path apparently already exists, built by a developer. So this appears to be a transfer of something already constructed. It's in a part of town with long blocks, that's not super connected, and the paths will be useful.  I'm not sure it's worth a closer look.

Update, Wednesday the 15th

Public details are out!

via Nathan Good Architects

From the paper:

Nathan Good, the project’s architect, said the building planned for 260 State St. would match the character of the neighborhood’s historic district. The structure would include a rooftop garden, and perhaps a rooftop restaurant, with a sweeping view of downtown.

“It’s like a flower box in the city,” Good said of the building’s design that includes an abundance of “rain gardens” to absorb stormwater....

State Street Square’s mixed-used building would include an underground parking garage with 20 spaces.

There's a lot to like here. Lots of windows along the sidewalk, the arched Beaux-artsy entries, a little like the train station - and then the horizontality of the terraces, a little ziggurat or layer-cake like. The arches also nod to those in the cast iron facade of Ladd & Bush across the street. The parking entry looks like it's off Commercial, not State.  I do wonder if the strength of the upper, terraces will get dialed back a bit in the final design.

Putnam Center at Willamette

Something I never noticed until recently was that the Putnam Center has the same basic form as the Public Library at the Civic Center.  But the columns are much more slender, the railings metal rather than concrete, and maybe most importantly, the brick camouflages the brutalism.  It's got a delicacy the Civic Center totally lacks.  It's not really all that remarkable, but the way it doesn't call attention to itself better serves the campus ensemble.

I wonder if the upper half of the design for 260 State will similarly become a little more delicate.  But even if it doesn't, this would be a great addition to downtown. Without being Disneyland faux-historical, it totally fits into the streetcar era fabric of neighboring buildings.

The Hallie Ford Center for Healthy Children & Families, Oregon State University, Corvallis (2011) was recently cited as

An outstanding example of compatible infill development, this major new building harmonizes beautifully with its neighbors. It makes a distinct statement that’s of its time, yet is complementary in scale, massing, proportion, and materials, enhancing the story of the historic district.

The building proposed here plays much the same game, and is so much nicer than the Meridian's design.