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Portland State University's expansion goal is to add 7.1 million square feet of space to the University District, an effort that would dramatically expand it to within a few hundred feet of the Willamette River.
To put things in perspective, 7.1 million square feet is more than the combined size of the campuses of the University of Oregon and the University of Portland. "Big Pink," a local nickname for the city’s signature skyscraper, has roughly 1 million square feet of office space, meaning University District expansion will add the equivalent of seven "Big Pinks." The University appears serious and ambitious.
The plan, recently posted on the university’s website, has the blessing of Portland business and City leaders, including Portland Mayor Sam Adams. Challenges impact the plan's velocity.
At his State of the City speech two weeks ago, Adams announced plans creating an urban renewal area to accommodate Portland State's expansion. The degree of ratification will initiate Portland State's implementation velocity.
The idea may face some lukewarm opposition as urban renewal dollars are being earmarked for renewal of an urban area that is not completely blighted in all aspects. The University District neighborhood has seen some corporate offices, including the headquarters of The Regence Group, the state’s biggest health insurer, move into the neighborhood.
University leaders admit that paying for the expansion represents a well-informed responsibility. PSU recently hired SUNY's ($10 billion annual budget) Monica Rimai to oversee the expansion's financing. Retiring VP Lindsay DesRoschers will also be on hand for consulting.
The stakes are huge for Portland. The outcome will largely determine the educational success of the city and the strength of its economy, which has been hiccuping since the economic collapse three years ago.
Portland State employs about 4,000 people. University officials estimate its total economic impact on the local economy to be $1.4 billion.
“As we grow, those numbers will go up proportionally, so that’s a huge impact on the region’s economy,” wrote Portland State President Wim Wiewell. “Furthermore, this means more research, more inventions that lead to new products and companies, more trained and skilled residents who will make Portland attractive for knowledge-industries.”
Wiewel does not see the plan as "ambitious," a thought echoed by his peer university presidents. Rather, Wiewel said it’s a way to keep up with the university’s enrollment growth and help the state meet its goal of 40 percent of Oregonians earning bachelor’s degrees.
In the past decade, Portland State’s student population has grown faster than any of the state’s public universities. It should exceed 30,000 students this year, more than 50 percent higher than a decade ago. In the past 10 years, Oregon State University and the University of Oregon have grown 42 percent and 31 percent, respectively.
Plan ahead
The 121-page plan, formally known as the University District Framework Plan, is Portland State’s growth plan for the next 20 to 25 years. It’s based on only moderate projections in student growth to 36,100 by 2034.
The plan envisions a university district not walled-off as at many campuses. Instead, it proposes a university that stretches from its current campus east to Naito Parkway and Harbor Drive.
Classroom space, dormitory rooms and administrative offices would be sprinkled in along with existing businesses and new businesses to create a vibrant urban area with abundant ground-floor retailers. New parking garages would be built only on the periphery of campus, keeping car traffic to a minimum within the interior campus.
Of the 7.1 million square feet the university plans to add, roughly 40 percent will be earmarked for private development, such as new businesses, leaving the remaining 4.2 million square feet for the University.
The plan has a distinctive “green” flavor and predicts it could bring the university’s sustainability efforts international attention.
The plan also continues the university’s shift from a commuter campus to a residential one. The university is building a new residence hall that will add 980 beds to campus, bringing its total to 3,200. It would like to more than double that in the next 20 years to as many as 8,000 beds. PSU plans to eventually house 25 percent of students on campus, up from around 7 percent.
A handful of projects from the plan document include:
• Two additional residential towers at the south end of campus. In total, the university wants to add more than 2 million square feet of housing, any off-campus development being on transit lines. The nearby Goose Hollow neighborhood is a natural area for development.
• Demolish the University Place hotel, 310 S.W. Lincoln St., and replace it with a much larger residential building with a significant parking structure underneath it.
• Demolish the two interior-campus parking garages on Southwest Broadway and replace them with classroom space.
• Significantly expand the existing student union building, or add a second one.
• Extensive renovations to Cramer Hall, Smith Memorial Union and Neuberger Hall to allow more daylight in the buildings. Renovations could include additional floors and the creation of building atria.
When it all comes together, “Portland will ultimately have the great urban university this city needs,” said Mark Gregory, associate vice president and a key leader in the effort.
Business leaders support the plan
“Everybody recognizes that Portland State can be stronger than it is,” said Sandra McDonough, CEO of the Portland Business Alliance, the city’s chamber of commerce. “PSU does a great job in many respects, but we think they can grow and be greater.”
Oregon State University President Ed Ray and University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere have yet to see the actual plan, but are familiar with its precepts.
Lariviere called it “conservative” because of the entire university system’s expected growth over the next 20 years. He also reiterated that there’s no rivalry between Portland State and the University of Oregon for crown jewel honors within the higher education system.
“Over time, Portland State University and Portland have become ... a much bigger part of our (university) system,” said George Pernsteiner, Chancellor of the Oregon University System. “(That’s) not to suggest that (other universities) are not playing major roles. They are. Even though everybody’s grown, PSU’s grown faster.”
The real estate angle
The 77-acre area in which Portland State plans to grow includes roughly 2.5 million square feet of existing office space, according to research prepared for the Business Journal by Grubb & Ellis Research. That means the University District expansion will produce a substantial number of in-fill projects to develop vacant land and property.
Portland State already owns several parcels within the area, including the University Place Hotel & Conference Center, and it will need to purchase significantly more.
“There are some buildings we can buy,” said Lindsay Desrochers, the outgoing university’s vice president for finance and administration. “Some we’ll have to build from the ground up.”
Commercial real estate brokers said businesses will welcome the university’s increased footprint.
“We’ve used (Portland State’s presence) as a bit of a marketing piece for buildings in that area because it brings such a robust pool of prospective employees, interns and resources,” said Doug Deurwaarder, associate director at Cushman & Wakefield and the leasing agent for the Harrison Square office building at the corner First and Naito. “If you’re an employer down in this area and you can build a rapport with PSU, you can leverage that.”
Show me the money
The biggest dampening on the plan's velocity is the state’s current financial condition, Wiewel said. State lawmakers are still working to patch a $3.5 billion budget shortfall.
“If this does not improve, we will not grow [as quickly as we would like], and the region and state will fall further and further behind,” he said. “Ironically, that will only makes things worse, because we know that less education leads to more social welfare, health, and criminal justice costs, and lower tax revenues.”
The university will thus use various financing models to accelerate expansion, including bond financing and working with private investors.
The university’s new 16-story College Station dorm building, which is slated to open next summer, is one example of such financing. The 978-room dorm is built on land owned by Portland State University at the south end of campus. Texas-based American Campus Communities put up the cash to build the dorm and will operate it.
“We need to do more of those kinds of partnerships,” Desrochers said.
The politics of it alll
Portland State will need to overcome potential political hurdles. The easy ones include adjusting height and density limitations. The more sophisticated one involves the City establishing PSU's area of expansion as a new urban renewal area.
In a nutshell, urban renewal works like this: The city draws a line on a map around an area that it wants to improve. Then it funnels property tax dollars inside the area into capital projects for the area.
The creation of urban renewal areas typically run into two criticisms.
First, some may say the program would benefit an area that is not entirely blighted. As mentioned previously, the new urban renewal area around Portland State includes the corporate headquarters of The Regence Group as well as the KOIN Tower.
Money steered to capital projects within the urban renewal area goes to benefit Oregon higher education and the economy instead of defaulting to counties or K-12 schools.
An initial analysis of the new urban renewal area predicts Multnomah County would be able to contribute $58.8 million for the urban renewal expansion project.
A spokesman for County Chair Jeff Cogen said he remains open to creating a new urban renewal area, but he expects a robust discussion with the mayor and City Council before giving it his approval.
The proposal needs the blessing of both the Portland Development Commission and City Council, which could discuss it within two months.
Mayor Adams didn’t respond to a request for an interview, but did say through a spokesman that he wholeheartedly supports Portland State’s vision.
Expansion won’t stop if the new urban renewal area weren't part of the plan, but PSU officials said it’s an important part of the plan.
“It’s the difference between an outside developer coming in or not,” Gregory said.
Read the plan: http://www.fap.pdx.edu/planning/public_cppc_1/PSU_FrameworkPlan_June.pdf
Fast facts
Portland state’s new master plan calls for adding up to 7.1 million square feet of office, classroom and residential space to the University District over the next 20-25 years. Here’s the existing square footage at several Oregon colleges and universities:
University of Oregon: 5.5 million
Portland State University: 4.5 million
University of Portland: 1.5 million
Reed College: 960,446
To put things in perspective, 7.1 million square feet is more than the combined size of the campuses of the University of Oregon and the University of Portland. "Big Pink," a local nickname for the city’s signature skyscraper, has roughly 1 million square feet of office space, meaning University District expansion will add the equivalent of seven "Big Pinks." The University appears serious and ambitious.
The plan, recently posted on the university’s website, has the blessing of Portland business and City leaders, including Portland Mayor Sam Adams. Challenges impact the plan's velocity.
At his State of the City speech two weeks ago, Adams announced plans creating an urban renewal area to accommodate Portland State's expansion. The degree of ratification will initiate Portland State's implementation velocity.
The idea may face some lukewarm opposition as urban renewal dollars are being earmarked for renewal of an urban area that is not completely blighted in all aspects. The University District neighborhood has seen some corporate offices, including the headquarters of The Regence Group, the state’s biggest health insurer, move into the neighborhood.
University leaders admit that paying for the expansion represents a well-informed responsibility. PSU recently hired SUNY's ($10 billion annual budget) Monica Rimai to oversee the expansion's financing. Retiring VP Lindsay DesRoschers will also be on hand for consulting.
The stakes are huge for Portland. The outcome will largely determine the educational success of the city and the strength of its economy, which has been hiccuping since the economic collapse three years ago.
Portland State employs about 4,000 people. University officials estimate its total economic impact on the local economy to be $1.4 billion.
“As we grow, those numbers will go up proportionally, so that’s a huge impact on the region’s economy,” wrote Portland State President Wim Wiewell. “Furthermore, this means more research, more inventions that lead to new products and companies, more trained and skilled residents who will make Portland attractive for knowledge-industries.”
Wiewel does not see the plan as "ambitious," a thought echoed by his peer university presidents. Rather, Wiewel said it’s a way to keep up with the university’s enrollment growth and help the state meet its goal of 40 percent of Oregonians earning bachelor’s degrees.
In the past decade, Portland State’s student population has grown faster than any of the state’s public universities. It should exceed 30,000 students this year, more than 50 percent higher than a decade ago. In the past 10 years, Oregon State University and the University of Oregon have grown 42 percent and 31 percent, respectively.
Plan ahead
The 121-page plan, formally known as the University District Framework Plan, is Portland State’s growth plan for the next 20 to 25 years. It’s based on only moderate projections in student growth to 36,100 by 2034.
The plan envisions a university district not walled-off as at many campuses. Instead, it proposes a university that stretches from its current campus east to Naito Parkway and Harbor Drive.
Classroom space, dormitory rooms and administrative offices would be sprinkled in along with existing businesses and new businesses to create a vibrant urban area with abundant ground-floor retailers. New parking garages would be built only on the periphery of campus, keeping car traffic to a minimum within the interior campus.
Of the 7.1 million square feet the university plans to add, roughly 40 percent will be earmarked for private development, such as new businesses, leaving the remaining 4.2 million square feet for the University.
The plan has a distinctive “green” flavor and predicts it could bring the university’s sustainability efforts international attention.
The plan also continues the university’s shift from a commuter campus to a residential one. The university is building a new residence hall that will add 980 beds to campus, bringing its total to 3,200. It would like to more than double that in the next 20 years to as many as 8,000 beds. PSU plans to eventually house 25 percent of students on campus, up from around 7 percent.
A handful of projects from the plan document include:
• Two additional residential towers at the south end of campus. In total, the university wants to add more than 2 million square feet of housing, any off-campus development being on transit lines. The nearby Goose Hollow neighborhood is a natural area for development.
• Demolish the University Place hotel, 310 S.W. Lincoln St., and replace it with a much larger residential building with a significant parking structure underneath it.
• Demolish the two interior-campus parking garages on Southwest Broadway and replace them with classroom space.
• Significantly expand the existing student union building, or add a second one.
• Extensive renovations to Cramer Hall, Smith Memorial Union and Neuberger Hall to allow more daylight in the buildings. Renovations could include additional floors and the creation of building atria.
When it all comes together, “Portland will ultimately have the great urban university this city needs,” said Mark Gregory, associate vice president and a key leader in the effort.
Business leaders support the plan
“Everybody recognizes that Portland State can be stronger than it is,” said Sandra McDonough, CEO of the Portland Business Alliance, the city’s chamber of commerce. “PSU does a great job in many respects, but we think they can grow and be greater.”
Oregon State University President Ed Ray and University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere have yet to see the actual plan, but are familiar with its precepts.
Lariviere called it “conservative” because of the entire university system’s expected growth over the next 20 years. He also reiterated that there’s no rivalry between Portland State and the University of Oregon for crown jewel honors within the higher education system.
“Over time, Portland State University and Portland have become ... a much bigger part of our (university) system,” said George Pernsteiner, Chancellor of the Oregon University System. “(That’s) not to suggest that (other universities) are not playing major roles. They are. Even though everybody’s grown, PSU’s grown faster.”
The real estate angle
The 77-acre area in which Portland State plans to grow includes roughly 2.5 million square feet of existing office space, according to research prepared for the Business Journal by Grubb & Ellis Research. That means the University District expansion will produce a substantial number of in-fill projects to develop vacant land and property.
Portland State already owns several parcels within the area, including the University Place Hotel & Conference Center, and it will need to purchase significantly more.
“There are some buildings we can buy,” said Lindsay Desrochers, the outgoing university’s vice president for finance and administration. “Some we’ll have to build from the ground up.”
Commercial real estate brokers said businesses will welcome the university’s increased footprint.
“We’ve used (Portland State’s presence) as a bit of a marketing piece for buildings in that area because it brings such a robust pool of prospective employees, interns and resources,” said Doug Deurwaarder, associate director at Cushman & Wakefield and the leasing agent for the Harrison Square office building at the corner First and Naito. “If you’re an employer down in this area and you can build a rapport with PSU, you can leverage that.”
Show me the money
The biggest dampening on the plan's velocity is the state’s current financial condition, Wiewel said. State lawmakers are still working to patch a $3.5 billion budget shortfall.
“If this does not improve, we will not grow [as quickly as we would like], and the region and state will fall further and further behind,” he said. “Ironically, that will only makes things worse, because we know that less education leads to more social welfare, health, and criminal justice costs, and lower tax revenues.”
The university will thus use various financing models to accelerate expansion, including bond financing and working with private investors.
The university’s new 16-story College Station dorm building, which is slated to open next summer, is one example of such financing. The 978-room dorm is built on land owned by Portland State University at the south end of campus. Texas-based American Campus Communities put up the cash to build the dorm and will operate it.
“We need to do more of those kinds of partnerships,” Desrochers said.
The politics of it alll
Portland State will need to overcome potential political hurdles. The easy ones include adjusting height and density limitations. The more sophisticated one involves the City establishing PSU's area of expansion as a new urban renewal area.
In a nutshell, urban renewal works like this: The city draws a line on a map around an area that it wants to improve. Then it funnels property tax dollars inside the area into capital projects for the area.
The creation of urban renewal areas typically run into two criticisms.
First, some may say the program would benefit an area that is not entirely blighted. As mentioned previously, the new urban renewal area around Portland State includes the corporate headquarters of The Regence Group as well as the KOIN Tower.
Money steered to capital projects within the urban renewal area goes to benefit Oregon higher education and the economy instead of defaulting to counties or K-12 schools.
An initial analysis of the new urban renewal area predicts Multnomah County would be able to contribute $58.8 million for the urban renewal expansion project.
A spokesman for County Chair Jeff Cogen said he remains open to creating a new urban renewal area, but he expects a robust discussion with the mayor and City Council before giving it his approval.
The proposal needs the blessing of both the Portland Development Commission and City Council, which could discuss it within two months.
Mayor Adams didn’t respond to a request for an interview, but did say through a spokesman that he wholeheartedly supports Portland State’s vision.
Expansion won’t stop if the new urban renewal area weren't part of the plan, but PSU officials said it’s an important part of the plan.
“It’s the difference between an outside developer coming in or not,” Gregory said.
Read the plan: http://www.fap.pdx.edu/planning/public_cppc_1/PSU_FrameworkPlan_June.pdf
Fast facts
Portland state’s new master plan calls for adding up to 7.1 million square feet of office, classroom and residential space to the University District over the next 20-25 years. Here’s the existing square footage at several Oregon colleges and universities:
University of Oregon: 5.5 million
Portland State University: 4.5 million
University of Portland: 1.5 million
Reed College: 960,446
