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APR 2013 / vol 103 no 4

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE

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ZGF Architects makes new sense of Portland’s Transit mall, on the street and off. By Daniel Jost, ASLA / Photography by BRUCE FORSTER

CHANGING LANES LanDscape architecture magazine APR 2013

LanDscape architecture magazine APR 2013

left

Low-floor railcars mean no raised platforms are needed to reach the light rail. Inset

The mall project renovated streets, fixtures, and storefronts.

Portland’s transit kept expanding, often with ZGF’s help. TriMet, the local transit authority, built a new light-rail line perpendicular to the mall in the early 1980s. The bus mall grew northward in 1994 to downtown’s Amtrak and Greyhound stations. Portland became known as one of America’s most transit-friendly cities. But maintenance lagged badly on the original mall for 15 years as TriMet considered new light rail along 5th and 6th Avenues. Then several years ago, some money came through for light rail as part of a Green Line project that extends from Portland State University out to Clackamas Town Center, about 10 miles to the south. TriMet set up an unusual management structure for the mall’s revitalization in which the urban designers and engineers worked as equals under the project managers at Shiels Obletz Johnsen of Portland. The project ran from 2005 to 2009. ZGF oversaw urban planning and design efforts for all 57 blocks of the mall and had Greg Baldwin, Ron Stewart, and McCarter lead the team.

“M LanDscape architecture magazine APR 2013

ore transit malls have failed than succeeded,” Brian McCarter, FASLA, says as our bus rolls toward downtown Portland, Oregon. “Des Moines had one, and it’s dead. State Street in Chicago was a spectacular failure.”

They also had environmental goals. As more people drove their own cars, downtowns were thickening with traffic and smog. Planners thought transit malls would speed buses through cities and get people riding transit again.

Minneapolis opened the first transit mall—a street built mainly for public transit and pedestrians—in 1968. During the next two decades, many cities followed suit. Like pedestrian malls before them, transit malls were meant to revive downtowns.

But a decade after Chicago’s State Street transit mall opened in 1979, McCarter, now a principal at Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects (ZGF) in Portland, and other planners said to tear it out. “When you remove all auto traffic, it removes a

lot of potential exposure to the businesses there,” McCarter says. He saw monstrous sidewalks dwarfing people and making the street feel empty. Portland’s transit mall worked better than most. The Portland Mall, completed in 1977, ran for 11 blocks on both 5th and 6th Avenues, one-way streets that lie 200 feet apart. The American Institute of Architects honored its exquisitely detailed design by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Lawrence Halprin & Associates. Ten years

Cars were never completely excluded from the Portland Transit Mall. But in the mall’s original configuration, the car lane on the left-hand side ended every few blocks at a small “plaza” space, forcing drivers off the mall. These plazas spread 30 feet wide and had fountains, benches, after the mall opened, a study showed that every artworks, and two rows of trees. And you might dollar spent on the mall had leveraged $30 to $50 have enjoyed sitting in them if you liked breathing of investment around it. fumes from 180 noisy diesel buses that passed at peak hours in the 1980s. But aspects of the design—like its restriction of cars—were controversial, says Christopher Kopka The plazas are now gone, and there is now a of the Downtown Development Group, a major continuous car lane. This may seem like a major property owner along the mall. “It did great at change to the SOM/Halprin design, but that team moving buses,” Kopka says, but it didn’t boost in fact thought of it first. Officials at the Urban retail. “The transit mall became pretty quiet after Mass Transportation Administration, which paid hours and felt sort of uncomfortable to be in.” for 80 percent of the original project, scuttled the


left

Light rail replaced many of the buses on 5th and 6th Avenues.

storefront improvements LIGHT RAIL STATION

STOREFRONT IMPROVEMENTS

PARKS AND OPEN SPACE

OPEN THE BLINDS PROGRAM

car lane idea because “it would not like to see mass transit funds used to pay for improvements for autos,” The Oregonian reported.

OPEN AIR USES (CAFÉS, ETC.)

LIGHT RAIL STATIONS

STREETCAR ALIGNMENT

KEY REDEVELOPMENT PROJECTS CURRENTLY UNDER WAY/PLANNED

PEDESTRIAN CORRIDORS

Morrison Street

Oak Street

Stark Street

Wash. st.

Alder Street

Yamhill Street

Taylor Street

Salmon Street

Main Street

Madison Street

Jefferson Street

Columbia Street

Clay St.

Market Street

Mill Street

Montgomery Street

Harrison Street

UNION STATION

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erett

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SW Park Avenue

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KEY OPPORTUNITY SITES– NOT CURRENTLY PLANNED

MALL CORRIDORS

G lisan

OPEN SPACE (OTHER)

Hall Street

Mixing in cars and bikes made the transit mall’s design a lot harder, McCarter says. It would have been easier with transit in two straight lines, with buses to unload on the right and trains on the left at the

KEY REDEVELOPMENT PROJECTS IN PLANNING

OPEN SPACE (ON MALL)

College Street

Courtesy ZGF, plans

This time around, about 40 percent of the $224 million that the project needed would have to come from state and local sources, which meant the business community had to sign on. As recently as 1996, locals had voted down funding for expanding light rail onto the mall, notes Bob Hastings, an agency architect for TriMet. The

plan LRT ALIGNMENT

business community supported a continuous traffic lane and found an unlikely ally in Portland’s bicycle community. Bicyclists aren’t allowed to ride in the bus lanes and sidewalks on the mall, so, like people in cars, they were unable to use it as a through route.

Traffic engineers at DKS, TriMet, and Portland’s Bureau of Transportation created mock-ups. They decided that below a certain volume of buses and plaza blocks. A central island where trains could trains, the scheme would be all right. drop off pedestrians would have had pedestrians cross in front of traffic to get from the station to The streets’ new design varies as you move along the sidewalk—a safety problem. It also would have the mall. On the original, central section, where meant much narrower sidewalks. The designers 5th and 6th Avenues spread 80 feet, there are decided to have buses and light rail weave between three lanes of traffic—two 12-foot-wide lanes two lanes so each could unload on the right. for weaving bus and light rail and a continuous 12-foot-wide lane for cars and bikes. The sideThis weaving pattern had never been tried in a walks are 26 feet wide on the transit side and place with so many trains and buses. An early peer 18 feet on the other, so there’s room for people, review of this plan raised concerns about crashes. shelters, trees, and small cafés along the way.

PIONEER SQUARE

SW 6th Avenue

SW 6th Avenue

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SW 5th Avenue

SW 5th Avenue CITY HALL

SW Broadway

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US BANK PLAZA

MACY’S

PSU URBAN CENTER

5 th NW

SAKS

PIONEER PLACE SW Broadway

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SW 4th Avenue


SW 4th Avenue


left

ZGF designed airy glass and stainless steel shelters. Inset

The 1970s shelters were more obtrusive.

The new shelters almost disappear during the day.

This early diagram led to the elegant glass and stainless steel shelters you see today. The shelters almost disappear into their surroundings during the day. ZGF designed seven different shelter types, similar in style, that suit the varying street widths and passenger demands. The shelters’ columns double as comfortable backrests, and their roofs are narrow in elevation so they don’t obscure signage. At night, the shelters glow. “The one thing that everyone liked about the old shelters was the curved shape that lets people get out of the wind,” says Ron Stewart, ZGF’s project manager. The new shelters have curving glass screens that stand under either end of the structure without attaching to it. As we walk the mall, we see that a glass wind guard has been tagged with spray paint. Stewart shows how easy it is to remove using his finger and a handkerchief. On another panel, someone had scratched initials. This looks much more permanent. But McCarter motions me closer and whispers: “There’s a film on there, and you can replace the film when people scratch it.” Like screen protectors on smartphones.


One of the main things that sets Portland’s transit mall apart from some other new light-rail lines is that its loading areas are not raised significantly off the street level, which can create a barrier in the landscape. Credit for this goes to Portland’s lowfloor light-rail car design. Other cities, like Denver, adapted their light-rail systems for the Americans with Disabilities Act by installing raised platforms at every transit stop with ramps leading up to them. Portland has at least one low-floor car on every twocar MAX train that moves through the city. These

cars require a curb that is 10 inches high—slightly higher than your typical curb—but much less disruptive in the landscape than a platform.

Courtesy ZGF, inset

The mall’s northern blocks are 60 feet wide, with one transit lane and one auto/bike lane. The sidewalks are narrower—20 feet wide on the transit side. The southern blocks, near Portland State University, added to the mall during this project, vary from one to the next. There’s a separate bike lane on a steep part of 5th Avenue to let cars pass bicyclists. There’s an extra car lane near a highway entrance, and here and there are narrow parking lanes and rain gardens.

Then there is the thoughtful street hardware. Not everybody liked the mall’s original bus shelters— big glass and Plexiglas huts with bronze-clad steel supports. They looked like little houses along the street. Their sombrero-like roofs obscured the storefronts. Homeless people lived in them; people sold drugs in them.

A few minutes later, McCarter points to a utility pole. “See that pole over there?” he asks. “Normally, that would be three poles. One for traffic signals, one for train signals, and one for electrification.” ZGF worked with the various project engineers “The businesses said, ‘Can you make the shel- to make a single, universal pole to unclutter the ters go away?’” McCarter recalls. “We said no. streetscape. There has to be rain protection.” So the designers worked on making the shelters more open. ZGF and the landscape architects at Mayer/Reed “There was this beautiful drawing ZGF did preserved many of the mall’s original trees— [showing] the least amount of stuff you need mainly London plane trees and Emerald Queen for a transit system,” says Tad Savinar, an art- Norway maples. But the littleleaf lindens (Tilia ist who consulted on the project. The drawing cordata) from the 1970s were not loved, says included a transparent rectangular structure Carol Mayer-Reed, FASLA, of Mayer/Reed. “They that offered rain protection, seating, ticketing, were too dense and dark, and the annual aphid and signage. attack left a dark, sticky residue on the sidewalks,”


Far left

ZGF redesigned the crosswalks with a herringbone pattern to stand up better to vehicle loads. left

Cars can now drive the entire mall. inset

Custom traffic lights and fixtures. opposite bottom

A block plan shows where buses unload in the right lane. Light rail weaves to unload every few blocks on the right.

Courtesy ZGF, plan

Mayer-Reed says. The lindens, mostly on the plaza blocks, came out, and various species replaced them. The original brick sidewalks were regrouted or replaced with matching brick.


A lot of people liked the mall’s 1970s brick crosswalks, but they hadn’t held up well. ZGF had to persuade the city’s engineer over two years that new brick crosswalks could be designed better, with a test intersection and a mocked-up repair of the underlying concrete. A British engineer,

John Knapton, helped ZGF design the brick crosswalks on a bed of pure silica sand on a slab of reinforced concrete a foot thick. The bricks lie in a herringbone pattern—rather than a running bond—for strength and better load distribution. With street improvements came storefront improvements. ZGF hired Savinar to map the experience of walking along the mall. He recorded the deteriorating awnings, the burned-out lights, the blank walls, the ill-placed garbage cans.

TriMet’s project manager, Shiels Obletz Johnsen, then hired Savinar to implement a program called the Block by Block Development Project. With unusual autonomy, he worked with the property owners to improve the mall’s surroundings, make it livelier, and get more eyes on the street. Savinar would hire an architect to make a simple conceptual sketch of a storefront, and then he’d take that to the building owner, explaining the grants that were available from a storefront improvement program of the Portland Development Commission. “This used to be painted plywood,” Savinar says as he points to one building along the mall. “It’s 80 percent transparent now.” Shortly after the mall opened, the Meier & Frank department store (now a Macy’s) had closed its entrance onto 5th Avenue, which sucked the energy from an entire block. Savinar winged a deal for someone to open up a sandwich cart in the small cove where the entrance had been, which


Six people work full-time to keep the transit mall clean.

left

The new transit shelters glow at night.

the store’s owners agreed to rent. He persuaded the university to paint a mural on a blank wall (and helped find the artist). In all, Savinar finished 42 projects. The Block by Block program leveraged $9.4 million in private investment from the development commission’s $1.4 million investment, Savinar says.

kind of a hassle. You can drive along its entire length, but you can turn only left, never right (though some people ignore the signs). I talked to a number of people waiting in the shelters for the bus or light rail, and most of them seemed pleased with the improvements. Michael Levine, a former college professor who lives in Beaverton, praised the mall—especially the new shelters. “This is a big improvement,” he says. “It’s safer, brighter.”

Maintenance was a big part of the old mall’s undoing. A loose brick would be fixed with asphalt, and shelters would sit damaged for more than a year. “For a project that looked so nice in 1978, to see it in 1990 was discouraging,” Hastings says.

Levine owns a car, but he mainly uses it for grocery shopping. He says it was Portland’s transit infrastructure that drew him to the city years ago: “It is light years ahead of other places in the United States, and that’s why I picked this place.”

During the redesign, various people downtown formed a public benefit corporation, Portland Mall Management, with two part-time directors, Doug Obletz and Vic Rhodes, to oversee the mall and its maintenance. This costs about $1.7 million a year and is paid for by the city, TriMet, Portland State University, and the business improvement district. Six people work full-time to pick up trash and clean the bus shelters. Ten security officers keep watch on the mall daily from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Once a week, workers pressure wash all the shelters. Once a month, they pressure wash all the brick sidewalks “so you don’t have all that gum like they do on San Francisco’s Market Street,” Rhodes says. The management prunes one-third of the mall’s trees each year so their canopies do not become too dense and touches up all the poles with paint. (“You know what dogs do to poles,” Rhodes says.) Crosswalks get a monthly inspection. If any bricks begin to loosen, new sand is swept into the joints and a stabilizer called Sandlock is applied so that the sidewalks don’t buckle. “The crosswalks are not maintenance free,” Rhodes says. “They’re also not the huge monumental headache a lot of engineering types thought they would be.”

Project Credits

The best insurance for the mall’s future may be money that the city and TriMet are putting into a sinking fund to pay for long-term maintenance. “When it comes time to do something very cyclical and expensive, the money is there and you’re not fighting a budget war,” Rhodes says.

will be. But where there are storefronts, they seem to be thriving. Many people told me that the mall is quieter and the air is fresher now that many of the buses serving downtown have been replaced by light rail, and some business owners are taking advantage of the mall’s improved environment to set up sidewalk cafés. The new Hotel For all the investment, the mall is hardly the live- Modera, which opened while the mall was under liest section for shopping in Portland. Thanks to construction, has a wonderful private outdoor some podium-style office buildings placed here area overlooking it. during the 1960s and 1970s, it probably never

Any signs of an economic lift are still vague. The mall reopened in 2009, in the depths of the recession. “Anyone who told you sales went up in 2009 is probably lying,” says Kopka. “But [our] downtown has held up better than most.” In the past two years, he has seen tenants looking at properties on the mall who would never have considered it in the past—because the streets can now have cars, he says. “I can’t tell you how pivotal it is,” Kopka says. “We now have people driving the mall at night. That visibility is so important.”

Despite the concerns about weaving buses and light rail together, there has been no rise in accidents on the mall. Between 2001 and 2006, there were an average of 68 bus collisions on the mall each year, according to a Freedom of Information Act request filed with TriMet. In the first three years since the mall reopened, between 2010 and 2012, the mall averaged 27 bus collisions and 13 light-rail collisions per year. (The mall was open only part of the year from 2007 to 2009 because of construction.) Driving along the mall is still

Posted with permission from April 2013 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine, American Society of Landscaped Architects. Copyright 2013. All rights reserved. For more information on the use of this content, contact Wright’s Media at 877-652-5295.

Clients TriMet, Portland, Oregon; Portland Bureau of Transportation, Portland, Oregon. Overall Project Management Shiels Obletz Johnsen, Portland, Oregon. Urban Design/Landscape Architecture/Architecture Zimmer Gunsul Frasca architects LLP, Portland, Oregon. Transit Signage Design and Landscape Design Mayer/Reed, Portland, Oregon. Civil/Track Engineering URS Corporation, Portland, Oregon. Systems Engineering LTK Engineering services, Portland, Oregon. Structural Engineering KPFF Consulting Engineers, Portland, Oregon. Storefront Improvements Portland Development Commission: Block by Block Development Program, Portland, Oregon; Tad Savinar, Portland, Oregon. Art Program TriMet public art program, Portland, Oregon. Intersection Flexible Pavement Design John Knapton consulting Engineers, Whitley Bay, England, United Kingdom. Traffic Engineering and Signalization DKS Associates, Portland, Oregon. Platform Electrical Engineering Reyes Engineering, Happy Valley, Oregon. Specifications Oh Planning+Design, Architecture, Portland, Oregon. Architects for South Terminus (track turnaround area) Henneberry Eddy Architects, Portland, Oregon. Landscape Architects for South Terminus (track turnaround area) Lango Hansen Landscape Architects, Portland, Oregon. General Contractor Stacy and Witbeck/Kiewit Pacific—A Joint Venture, Portland, Oregon. Furnishings Landscape Forms/Studio 431, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Transit Shelter Fabrication LNI Custom Manufacturing, Hawthorne, California.

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ZGF Offices [email protected] Portland 1223 SW Washington Street Suite 200 Portland, Oregon 97205 Phone: 503.224.3860

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New York 419 Park Avenue South 20th Floor New York, New York 10016 Phone: 212.624.4754