At City Council for Monday is Big Block 50 news, the former UGM/Saffron site. As Urban Renewal Agency, the City has selected developers and looks to approve a Memorandum of Understanding to kick things off.
There are two of them, one based in Portland, the other with a trio of offices in Boise, Bend, and Eugene.
Edlin & Co. is the successor firm to Gerding Edlin, which did a lot of the Pearl District in Portland, starting with the Brewery Blocks, the redevelopment of the old Weinhard Brewery and nearby area. This included a grocery store, Whole Foods, in an Art Deco-y building one block west of Powell's. They've done a lot of LEED certified buildings, and recent work includes an apartment block to Passive House standards. They've also done affordable housing projects. (And they've done lots of towers too, both in the Pearl and the South Waterfront, but it's the midrise examples that seem most relevant here.)
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| Brewhouse (l) and Whole Foods (r) NW 12th & Couch, Portland |
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| The Kiln, 19 apartments to Passive House standards |
The other firm, deChase Miksis is working on redeveloping the former EWEB Steam Plant on the Eugene riverfront, and successfully redeveloped a mid-century furniture warehouse on Willamette Street, where Claim 52 has a pub now.
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| Claim 52 on a summer evening |
Both firms have shown a genuine interest in reuse of older buildings, and even though the City scraped the site and reuse is not in play here, this interest is a very good sign that they will develop sensitively and appropriately.
The choice for the two firms on the surface certainly looks appropriate, with a very good chance to be more than that — to be terrific. This is exciting stuff.
It's maybe a little disappointing, though, the City has not shared more publicly about the selection process and what led the conversations with and preliminary concepts from these firms to rise above the others. Why them particularly?
All they say is that after a first round of electronic submissions from seven developer teams
Edlen & Co. and deChase Miksis, along with two other development teams, were invited to participate in an in-person interview opportunity and were asked to share more details on their project vision and answer six additional questions. The evaluation committee for the in-person interviews included two councilors, executive director of Salem Housing Authority and City staff. The results of the second evaluation committee scoring concluded that the project concept/vision, and development experience provided by Edlen & Co. best aligned with the redevelopment goals for the site.
That's all plausible, and there's no specific reason here not to believe it, but it would be great to know more, to have positive reasons to believe. Even if initially it seemed necessary to share less, now it's the time to share more.
The signature on the MOU as published in the agenda item packet is only for Edlin & Co., and they are a bigger, more senior firm, so that suggests they will be the lead. Still, the project seems a bit small for what they usually do, and deChase Miksis' portfolio seems like a better match in scale, and perhaps they will be in charge of more project management. It will be interesting to see how the relationship works out.
- Previously, notes on the Block 50 site
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| 5-over-1 construction along Front Street (The Cannery project concepts) |
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| Enormous food cart pod, with train on Front Street (The Cannery project concepts) |
In other development news, the City is applying for a RAISE grant to fund "a transportation corridor plan for Front Street NE north of downtown."
You'll recall the proposal to redevelop the former Truitt Bros. cannery site, The Cannery. It showed lots of people walking and biking, the train, and lots of cars.
As it currently exists, Front Street here is not at all up to the task.
Last summer the City proposed to spend $150,000 on a study.
Now the City is applying for more than ten times that to fund a much more ambitious study.
The total budget is expected to be between $2.5 and $5.0 million. City staff are currently refining the cost estimate based on other similar projects....[T]he City is eligible to receive 100% funding for this project with no match requirement.
The study will be more than merely conceptual and will have significant engineering and design work products.
Preliminary engineering to reach 30 percent design of the selected alternative will be carried out. Based on the preliminary engineering, the proposed project components will be organized into groups that can be implemented in a five-to-ten-year period. Using the environmental data and analysis from Task #1, documentation required to address the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) will be prepared for the projects identified for the first 10-year period. The products of Task #4 will be the Preferred Transportation Improvement Scenario report and environmental documentation to address NEPA requirements for the Preferred Transportation Improvement Scenario.
Invoking NEPA study must mean moving the rails? McGilchrist Street, which did receive a RAISE grant in a previous round, isn't requiring NEPA work, so there must be something pretty substantial envisioned here.
But the Staff Report doesn't mention rail.
Based on public input and the data and analysis carried out in Task #1, forecasts of transportation demand will be developed for the main transportation modes - pedestrian, bicycle, transit, vehicles, and trucks.
Finally, The Cannery project proposal did not seem to have anything about addressing poverty in it. Nevertheless, the City is appealing to mitigating poverty:
[T]he City will be eligible to receive 100% grant funding because the project is in an area classified by the federal government as being of persistent poverty.
Is there really going to be anything in this to help poor people? Or is the UGM one block over going to be enough.
The City should address more specifically how projects here will in fact mitigate poverty and not merely benefit market-rate development.
- Previously, notes on the former cannery area
There are several other items of lesser interest on Council agenda, and notes on them will be in a second post in a day or two.
Addendum, February 26th
Here's a better picture of the 1908 brewhouse and its relation to the Art Deco shell used by Whole Foods.
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| Weinhard Brewery of 1908 in Brewery Blocks (Hoffman Construction) |
4 comments:
NEPA is evoked when a project is on federally managed land or when federal dollars are used. The Front Street study grant if awarded to Salem would be federal funds. The railroad going through Front Street is also federally managed. It isn’t a matter of how risky a project is, but whether or not there’s a federal nexus.
It must be more complicated than that! McGilchrist received federal dollars and did not undergo a NEPA process.
Separately, as a kind of footnote to the Block 50 discussion, in the Staff Report is reference to Section 400 of the Riverfront-Downtown Urban Renewal Plan, which has as one of its formal objectives "To maintain the central core area as the dominant center for regional retail and office development."
With all the talk now about changing downtowns, talk nationwide, this objective has to be obsolete or nearly so. Additionally, the City has already blown up this objective by boosting the new retail and office development near the new Costco.
It seems very doubtful that Edlin & Co. is going to come in with proposal for a ton of office space. The focus has to be on housing, with some ground-floor storefronts. (One of the formal objectives in the Plan is also for more housing, so that will be satisfied.)
But we probably need to update the Urban Renewal Plan on expectations for retail and office space.
Added a better picture of the 1908 brewhouse.
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