http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=129910327561602500
Urban renewal plan adds fuel to PSU’s future
Development proposal expands university’s ‘area of influence’
By Jim Redden, The Portland Tribune, Mar 3, 2011, Updated Mar 3, 2011 (missed this)
Portland State University’s drive to become a major player in this city’s economic future may gain fuel from Mayor Sam Adams’ proposal to create an urban renewal district drawn tightly around the university.
Since Wim Wiewel became president in 2008, PSU has displayed greater civic ambition, and its growing clout was apparent during Adams’ recent State of the City Speech before the City Club. During his Feb. 18 address, Adams unveiled his proposal for the new downtown urban renewal area. Preliminary versions of such a district had been much more expansive – calling for it to stretch from PSU through the Goose Hollow area to the underdeveloped Con-Way property in Northwest Portland. But Adams now wants to concentrate it only around PSU.
“Today, I’m proposing a new urban renewal area focused on expanding Portland State University as a leading engine of economic growth, prosperity, and opportunity,” Adams said.
Adams’ decision is not happenstance. PSU has worked hard in recent years to become a full partner in the city’s planning and economic development efforts. It has fully embraced Adams’ goal of transforming Portland into a “small-and-scrappy, globally competitive city.” Among other things, PSU is working with Adams to build the Oregon Sustainability Center along the eastern edge of the campus. PSU is also collaborating with Portland Development Commission to assist local industries identified in the economic development plan that Adams pushed through the City Council during his first year in office.
“This is part of the growing role of universities as ‘anchor institutions’ in a globally competitive knowledge economy,” Wiewel says of PSU’s changing role.“Cities with quality educational institutions and highly educated populations will do far better than those without.Having a mayor who gets that is great.”
PSU also has prepared a master plan for future growth that Adams incorporated into his proposed urban renewal area. It identifies locations for numerous potential commercial, housing and academic projects.
Lindsay Desrochers, PSU’s vice president for finance and administration, says urban-renewal assistance is essential to allow the university to cope with its growing enrollment, which is expected to increase from around 28,000 students today to approximately 36,000 by 2025. Classroom space is already so limited that all administrative offices are being relocated to the Market Center Building, just beyond the eastern edge of the campus at 1600 S.W. 16th Ave. Thousands more units of student housing are already under construction or on the drawing boards.
Focusing on PSU could help Adams win the support of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners and Portland Public Schools for the proposed urban renewal area. Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen and Portland Public Schools officials have questioned the need for a new downtown urban renewal district, in large part because it would divert property taxes from their budgets. But PSU has ongoing relationships with both the county and school district, and it is prepared to lobby them on the issue, Desrochers says.
“We know it’s a sacrifice to take dollars out of the tax base, but we are also asking them to make some investments here,” Desrochers says.
Innovative District
Adams is calling his proposed urban renewal area the Innovative District. It would cover about 130 acres on the southern edge of downtown, bordered by Southwest Jefferson and Columbia streets on the north, Park and 13th avenues on the west, Interstate 405 on the south and First Avenue on the east.
At first glance, the proposed urban renewal area would seem to run counter to Oregon state laws governing urban renewal. Renewal districts are intended to rehabilitate “blighted areas.” If anything, PSU and the surrounding properties are thriving. They include portions of two previous urban renewal areas – South Auditorium and South Park Blocks – that have seen extensive renovations over the years. Many of the properties lie along the Portland Streetcar line and recently extended Transit Mall, which includes the newest MAX light rail connections. PSU is already building a new $80 million student housing building near the center of the proposed renewal area.
The state law is not that simple. It defines blight to include conditions that can be found within the proposed urban renewal area, including a “growing or total lack of proper utilization of areas, resulting in a stagnant and unproductive condition of the land potentially useful and valuable for contributing to the public health, safety or welfare.” Despite the improvements, the area around PSU still includes many surface parking lots and rundown single-story buildings.
Urban renewal works by freezing the assessed value in a designated renewal area at the time it is created. Governments continue to collect property taxes on the frozen base, but taxes on future increased values are spent to redevelop the area.
The PDC, which administers the city’s urban renewal programs, estimates the proposed urban renewal district could generate $134 million for redevelopment projects during the first 20 years or so of its existence. That money would be diverted from the city, county and school district. But recent changes in Oregon law limit the loss to the school district.
Such issues are expected to be debated when Adams presents his proposed urban renewal area to the advisory committee he appointed to assess the need for a new downtown district. That committee includes Cogen, who says he is open-minded about the proposal but wants to learn more about its potential benefits and impacts on the county budget – which is facing a potential shortfall this year, especially if the 2011 Oregon Legislature cuts spending on the social programs the county administers. The committee is expected to meet again this spring.
“It’s a lot smaller, and that’s a good thing,” Cogen says. “It’s focused on PSU, and that’s a good thing. But I still don’t know much about it at this point.”
University on the march
Adams praised Wiewel when he announced his proposed urban renewal area at the City Club.
“To facilitate world-class research and commercialization, we need cutting-edge universities. Under the leadership of President Wim Wiewel, Portland State University has seen explosive growth as it charts its maturity from humble commuter college to academic world leader in sustainable practices,” Adams said.
In fact, PSU has been working to increase its role in the city for many years. Founded in 1946, it served as a mostly nonresidential, downtown-based college for many years, offering classes to working students. But that began to change seriously in the 1990s when university officials worked with former Mayor Vera Katz to create a formal University District as part of the city’s comprehensive land use plan. That helped lead to such ambitious projects as the Urban Plaza that is served by the Portland Streetcar, where the College of Urban and Public Affairs is located. More recently, PSU opened a new mixed-use housing tower and Campus Recreation Center along the Transit Mall extension.
Now PSU is looking to expand to the Willamette River. It will soon ask the council to extend the University District one block to the east and to designate an “area of influence” beyond that. It has already opened a Business Accelerator with a 2,600-square-foot bioscience lab at 2828 S.W. Corbett Ave. And it is partnering with Oregon Health & Science University and Oregon State University in the Life Sciences Collaborative Center that will be the first building in OHSU’s coming Schnitzer Campus in the South Waterfront area.
The number of pending projects helps explain why Adams was willing to concentrate the proposed urban renewal area around PSU. While there were many ideas about potential projects in other areas that eventually were excluded from the urban renewal district, none were as far along as those proposed by PSU.
“Right now we have 4,000 employees and an economic impact of $1.4 billion,” Wiewel says. “That will go up proportionally as we grow.We will contribute greatly to making Portland globally competitive, which helps create well-paying jobs in the region.”
