City Names Developers for Former UGM/Saffron Site, Shares more on Front Street Study

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.)

Brewhouse (l) and Whole Foods (r)
NW 12th & Couch, Portland

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. 

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.

Block 50 Announcement Suggests Learning from Fairview Discussion 20 Years Ago

With the City's press release about soliciting proposals on Block 50 downtown, the former site of the Union Gospel Mission, Saffron Supply, and the remnant first floor of the State Insurance Building, and with Fairview on the mind, it seemed interesting to look at how the Fairview concepts were first received about 20 years ago as the winning proposal took shape.

Block 50 (1892 Map of Salem, OHS)

Recent projects downtown — Boise Cascade to South Block apartments, a gravel lot to the Nishioka Building, the Marion Car Park to New Holman Hotel, and the Nordstrom to apartments construction in progress — are meaningfully different from the redevelopment on former State institutions outside of downtown like the north campus of the State Hospital and Fairview. Mentioning "Block 50," then, is merely a prompt! I do not mean here to make any comparison or draw any comparative inferences.

January 16th, 2002

An early editorial from 2002 called the project a "proving ground" and "testing ground" for "balancing the needs of the community, the environment and the economy."

A news piece from 2003 talked about the "village center."

Checking in on Two-way Court Street, new Historic Signs, and some Bike Parking

With the nice weather, less sunny on Sunday, but still nice, it was a good time to check in on the newly installed two-way section of Court Street downtown. There were several other new or newish items to note.

New median on Court at High

The brand new median on Court at High and the replacement median on Court at Commercial mainly function as a signal for cars. They are not very wide, especially the new one at High, and do not function very well as an actual pedestrian refuge island. There may be some traffic calming, but the benefits of the project for those traveling on foot or by rolling do not seem very significant in the end. If you are already confident biking downtown, the two-way segment might be helpful. But the project does nothing to entice new bike trips.

E. S. Lamport lettering in both directions

Not far away, between the refresh at the Starkey-McCully building and perhaps also the "streetscape" work, there appeared to be new sidewalk on Commercial between Chemeketa and Court. I think they salvaged the old lettering for the E. S. Lamport shop and reinstalled it in new concrete. I swear it used to be located in a slightly different place on the sidewalk, but I cannot find photos to confirm.

The final R and T of Lamport had already been whacked off in a previous instance of concrete cutting and replacement, and so this would represent at least a third context in the sidewalk setting.

E. S. Lamport sign (with yellow), 1887
(Salem Library Historic Photos)

And just another half-block north on Commercial, the exposed rock foundations for the State Insurance building were nice to see. They've been open for a few months now, but if you hadn't seen them already, they are an interesting curiosity.

Ghost Signs Revealed by the Demolition of the old Union Gospel Mission

You might have seen on a nostalgia FB page a very nice picture of ghost signs revealed by the demolition at the former Union Gospel Mission. (Seeing this, others photographed it also, and several images have seemed to circulate on social media.)

via FB

I could not find much of anything for the Superlub motor oil, which "makes old cars young and young cars gay." I really hope I can find some local advertising for that brand. That's a great slogan!

The soap ad yielded a pretty close match from 1925. It's not exactly the same in every detail, but the terms are nearly all the same. Since the ghost sign doesn't say "without a washing machine," it's probably from a little later when washing machines were more popular. But in the 1930s the ads are very different, so it can't be too much later.

January 27th, 1925

Here's an older shot of the block face before the facades were remodeled. In the upper right corner you can see a different sign, something "Colby," maybe cheese, on the side of a building above the cafe.