[MENTIONED / Portland Business Journal] 12 DEVELOPMENTS THAT WILL TRANSFORM PORTLAND IN 2023
Real estate projects are popping up all around the metro.
Dec 14, 2022, 2:33pm PST
If all the real estate projects that were proposed are built in and around Portland, the metro is in for big changes.
Amid all the shuffling of businesses from here to there — and trust us, there was a lot of that going on — new plans for a broad variety of buildings came down the line, while others we'd written about earlier of this list made significant progress.
Portland State University wants a new building for art and design students. The South Waterfront's Alamo Manhattan Blocks, with commercial and residential components, are well underway.
While plans are no guarantee of action (considering how few cranes have been up lately), developers, designers and construction workers have their work cut out for them in 2023 and the years to follow with the sheer volume of ideas floating around.
Here are 12 attention-grabbing developments slated for 2023 and beyond.
The Judy Kafoury Center for Youth Arts
This reimagining of 1000 S.W. Broadway will come as a new home for the Northwest Children's Theater, whose lease at the Northwest Neighborhood Cultural Center was set to expire in October. The theater had been scheduled to move in January 2023, and its website now lists a grand opening in early 2023. Movie theaters inside the building were to become performance and education spaces, including a theater seating 240 people, a black-box theater seating 120, and a cinema with 190 seats. Other rooms were slated to have camps, classes, rehearsals and community meetings. It will be called the Judy Kafoury Center for Youth Arts, or the Judy.
University of Oregon Ballmer Institute for Children's Behavioral Health
The University of Oregon bought the former Concordia University campus for $60.5 million back in June, with plans to turn it into a children's mental health institute. The big reveal when UO announced the new project was that one of the world's wealthiest families, the Ballmers, would put major funding into the institute. (We had a piece explaining the run-up to that reveal.) That said, it won't be all work at the new UO placement in Portland. For instance, recent records filed with the city of Portland show the UO plans to make ample use of the athletic fields, seven days a week. Of course, they plan to swap out the old university logos.
Centennial Mills
After holding the former flour mill for more than 20 years, trying and failing to get it redeveloped, Prosper Portland, the city's economic development agency, is this close to making it someone else's. Prosper is hammering out an agreement with a company to buy the site on Northwest Naito Parkway. Records obtained by the Business Journal show plans to turn it into three residential and retail buildings along the river.
Milwaukie City Hall
City officials in Milwaukie tapped Henry Point Development to transform its City Hall into a mixed-use development. The project at 10722 S.E. Main St. kicks off next year (unclear when it'll be done), with city services moving to a nearby building that Advantis Credit Union used to be in. Expect a restaurant, bakery, offices and brewery in the redeveloped government building.
Alpenrose moving out, homes moving in?
Alpenrose dairy will move out of its longtime Southwest Portland property to a Clackamas site of Larsen's Creamery, which it is buying. That chess move opens the way for developers to build homes on the Portland site, something that's been tossed around for more than a year. Builders might get nearly 200 residential lots out of the roughly 51-acre property if plans move ahead.
Portland State University art and design building
Portland State University is undertaking the big task of giving art and design students currently spread across multiple buildings a space of their own. The approximately 100,000-square-foot building will be four or five stories on the corner of Southwest Jackson Street and Southwest Broadway, with offices, classrooms, studios and galleries. Design work is slated for next year, with groundbreaking likely in 2024. That puts the project at substantial completion in the back half of 2025.
Block 216
Walter Bowen's high-rising magnum opus is almost open. In fact, if you look at the roughly $600 million, 35-story tower from the outside, it actually looks pretty much done right now. The Ritz-Carlton tower is officially scheduled to open in the springtime. It will offer offices, hotel rooms and, of course, places to live. "The Residences are available for occupancy July 2023 and the sales team is taking reservations now," the Portland Ritz-Carlton Residences website says, also noting homes in the building start at $1.5 million.
Press Block’s second phase
Construction started earlier this year on the mixed-use part of Press Blocks in Goose Hollow near Providence Park. It's part two of the redevelopment of the former Oregonian printing and distribution site. The first part was Canvas, an office building that is all done. The second phase will rise 24 stories, with three stories of commercial space and 341 apartments.
Vancouver Innovation Center
Big things are in the works up in Vancouver where Hewlett-Packard used to operate. Owners of the campus recently told city officials they would like to overhaul the master plan for the massive site, including prohibiting single-family detached homes and boosting open space. There are plans for a mix of residential and commercial buildings, including a roughly 200,000-square-foot light industrial building, on the campus.
Smart homes in Woodstock neighborhood
Smart-home builder Homma Group Inc., having opened its first Portland development this year in North Tabor, is eyeing Woodstock for its next development. In fact, it's already bought the land to make it happen. At North Tabor's Homma Haus, renters are able to use an app to control lighting and experience a suite of other features like key-free door locks and smart thermostats. If past is prologue, the next development will have similar features.
Shake Shack by Powell’s in downtown Portland
It's hard to imagine this one is super far away since at least one job posting already went up. The fast food chain already has a Beaverton location, making this Shake Shack's second Oregon spot when it opens on Burnside. While a spokesperson didn't respond when we reached out back in September, it'd be surprising if this didn't open at least sometime in 2023.
RiverPlace Block 1
The new skyscraper at 150 S. Montgomery St. will start construction in Q2 2023, with work lasting 28 to 30 months. The 30-floor tower will ascend 325 feet, with about as many housing units. A smaller "sidecar" development should also open around the same time as the tower, and they will be connected by a parking garage.
This just gives a flavor of what Portland has in store in the coming years. But if you have a real estate project you're working on, send a note to jbach@bizjournals.com, and let's chat.