Students wow Rockwood with ideas

Gresham residents, leaders amazed by UO proposal

By Mara Stine

The Gresham Outlook, Dec 29, 2009, Updated Dec 30, 2009 (6 Reader comments)

Graphic courtesy of the City of Gresham

University of Oregon students designed this plan for redeveloping a wedge of property in the heart of the West Gresham-Rockwood Urban Renewal District. Residents and city leaders say the plan is a drastic improvement over those envisioned by professionals.

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About half a year ago, Gresham urban renewal leaders parted ways with a promising developer whose vision for Rockwood didn’t agree with theirs.

Now, some of those same leaders are wide-eyed in amazement and awe at what a group of college students have proposed for the same area.

The students from University of Oregon professor Nico Larco’s class unveiled six development plans for the urban renewal district’s Catalyst Project, also called the Cultural Marketplace, during a meeting Wednesday, Dec. 9.

Approximately 75 people attended the meeting, during which the students’ work was unveiled as part of a pilot program called the Sustainable Cities Initiative. The program teams University of Oregon graduate students with Gresham to help shape a more sustainable future for the city.

A total of 250 students from the university’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts are taking part in the yearlong collaboration. One of fall term’s 11 classes centered on the Rockwood neighborhood and called for students to propose six development schemes for a 6.5-acre parcel at the heart of the urban renewal district.

Larco – an assistant professor of architecture who co-directs the initiative with professors Robert Young and Marc Schlossberg – estimates the 18 students in his design studio spent a combined 5,400 hours creating the six scenarios.

Judging from the community’s reaction at the meeting, all that hard work paid off.

“It went extremely well,” Larco said. “I was thrilled. We wanted to push the conversation forward and provide a range of scenarios and options for people to consider.”

Mission accomplished, said Richard Strathern, a Gresham redevelopment commissioner, city councilor and liaison to the redevelopment commission’s advisory board.

“I was just impressed how they came back with so much,” he said. “You just saw so many possibilities, your brain was spinning.

“From a citizen engagement point of view, it’s the best thing I’ve seen in the three years I’ve been on the City Council.”

Rockwood urban renewal

Gresham residents in 2003 created the city’s first urban renewal district in the city’s western neighborhood in hopes of improving the low-income, high-crime area. After a grocery store closed in the district, urban renewal commissioners bought the property on the northeast corner of Southeast 185th and Stark Street in 2006 and demolished the store.

The plan: Build a multi-phase mixed-use development including for-sale condos and townhouses, commercial and retail space, plus an area for the community to gather.

After six developers bid on the project, the commission selected Williams & Dame Development, a prestigious Portland firm credited with the renaissance of Portland’s Pearl District and the city’s tony South Waterfront area.

But when the economy nosedived, Williams & Dame proposed anchoring the development with a YWCA. In May, urban renewal commissioners severed ties with the firm and all but went back to the drawing board, promising more community involvement.

Strathern called the UO students’ ideas fresh, innovative and better than anything he’d seen from the six developers who made pitches for the project.

“There was nothing so stimulating as this,” he said, adding that he heard a few others at the meeting say the same thing. “It was way beyond anything that’s been presented before. They’ve done much more with that 6-and-a-half acres than I’ve seen.”

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