pearl district blog...
January 4,2008
Honeyman lofts to add new homes
by shooter
The Metro, the Bindery, and the Cotter buildings – a Pearl District trio known collectively as the Honeyman Hardware Co. Buildings or the Honeyman Hardware Lofts – have been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1989.
And though the buildings are tied by location, their relationship is awfully standoffish.
“Those three buildings are remarkably different,” said Mark Simpson, principal at Bumgardner Architects, a Seattle firm that’s designing a new building for the block. “They don’t even try to speak to each other.”
The 1989 renovation of the buildings into residential apartments was one of the first loft efforts in Portland. And a new proposal by Security Properties would replace the Metro Building with a nine-story, mixed-used retail and residential building.
Seattle-based Security Properties Inc. bought the block, which is between Northwest Park and Ninth avenues and Northwest Glisan and Hoyt streets, in 2006. The three-building block includes 89 apartments and 28,240 square feet of ground floor retail.
Read the full story at The Daily Journal of Commerce...
Not only do they want to raze a historic place with TONS of character and beautiful existing lofts and shops, they want to build a soulless glass-and-steel structure in its place - more condos no one needs and will devalue the existing ones.
On this trajectory, the Pearl will ruin itself with the same overdevelopment that has plagued and damaged so many metro areas around the rest of the nation.
pearl district
Board Meetings
6pm, 2nd Thursday of each month
Pacific Northwest College of Art
1241 NW Johnson St.
Committee Meetings
Planning
1st & 3rd Tuesdays
Transportation Sub-Committee
Livability
3rd Thursday of every month
6pm, Umpqua Bank
Last Tuesday of every month
6pm, Umpqua Bank
As for more condos, the developer was pretty clear that they haven't decided if they are going to be condos or apartments. Market conditions will dictate their decision when they are closer to opening the building.
Also, the North Pearl Plan calls for development all the way out to the Fremont Bridge. So having the Honeyman possibly become condo isn't going to break the market. I believe market conditions will dictate the pace of that growth in the Pearl.
I think we have already seen a slowdown in new projects. The current construction projects were started before the market changed. The market didn't change because the Pearl was overbuilt, it changed because people realized that the subprime mortgage market was oversold and had no real assets.
People are moving to Portland and that is expected to continue for the next decade. I believe that the development of the Pearl will be supported by that growth. Why should we expand the suburbs and become another LA basin when we can redevelop the urban core with high-density housing. With more mixed use buildings which include office space, I think the North Pearl growth will add to the vibrant community we have in the Pearl.