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Committee votes $4 million in urban renewal funds for Portland Clinic plan
LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
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| The Portland Development Commission plans to sell Parcel 1 of the Gateway Transit Center, recently acquired from TriMet, to Gerding Edlen Development Company and Portland Clinic for a medical office building. Gerding-Edlen will also build a parking structure on Parcel 3. Parcel 1 is across Northeast Halsey Street from Fred Meyer. The Gateway Transit Center is between NE 99th Ave. and I-205 and runs from NE Halsey south to just past NE Irving St. |
The headquarters building will cost $24 million. The garage will cost $8 million, with half coming from tax increment funds from the Gateway Urban Renewal District.
In a second phase, Gerding Edlen and the Portland Clinic would build another floor of medical facilities on top of their headquarters, plus either four stories of office space or six stories of housing. They would also add three more levels to the parking structure. In a third phase, they would build two office buildings up to 10 stories high in the center of the transit center.
A dream project - if...
Phil Selinger argued that the project would fulfill many of the Opportunity Gateway goals. It would go a long way toward converting the current surface parking at the transit center into parking structures. It would bring a major new land use to the area that could “jump start” development in the rest of the district. The clinic, with offices now scattered in several locations, would bring 275 jobs to Gateway, $400,000 to its urban renewal funds in its first year alone and annual payments of $3 million in taxes of all kinds.
Virtually all board members agreed with this. The reservations had to do with the plan for phasing the work.
Developer Ted Gilbert, who abstained on the vote, said he tried to attract the Portland Clinic to his own property. “The client here is superb,” he said. “If we can keep ‘em, we want ‘em. The developer is first rate.”
However, he added, the transit center is considered the best development site in the district. Given this, and the amount of money PDC proposed to spend, he asked if the first phase development was “all we have in our signature site, would we be satisfied?” There are reasons to believe that the second phase might never be built. “We need an irrevocable commitment that within a reasonable length of time, the three story building is expanded,” Gilbert said.
Others made similar statements. Developer Dick Cooley said, “You could stand on that corner all your life and never see a better anchor tenant. But if the second phase is not built, we won’t have anything.”
Fred Sanchez, president of the Gateway Area Business Association, joined in the praise of the Portland Clinic, but not the reservations. “If this was presented to our business association it would be supported wholeheartedly,” he said. “Three stories is more than we have now. Unless there’s another use competing for this, let’s get moving. Let’s not lose this deal.” Beth Baltz of Portland Adventist Medical Center argued strongly for the parking structure to be placed nearer the site. “If you have bowel problems, you don’t want to have to walk across a football field to get to see your doctor,” she said.
Parking meters coming to Gateway?
In a related matter, PDC’s Sara King said her agency intends to develop a parking strategy for Gateway, and that one of its recommendations may be the introduction of parking meters. “We have a captive market here, and (motorists) are not paying their full share,” she said.
Woodland Park Neighborhood Association Chairwoman Alesia Reese, who missed the meeting, says she is neither surprised nor alarmed by the meter plan. She chided TriMet for not doing more to promote the building of parking structures.
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