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Everyone remembers the Burger King. When Dean Gisvold, the board chair of Central City Concern mentions it, a chuckle emanates from the room. He’s only the first of four speakers to invoke the infamous burger hut. Several speakers later, Multnomah County Commissioners Chair Jeff Cogen is not nearly so reserved. 鈥淲ho could look at a Burger King?鈥� exhorts Cogen, waving his arms, 鈥渁nd think that this could happen?鈥� The room explodes into cheers and applause. Everyone remembers the Burger King. It’s long gone now. A scant thirteen months later, a radically different building stands in its place.

The event in question was a reception for the opening of the Old Town Recovery Center (formerly called the Broadway Recovery Center), an expansion of the already existing Old Town Clinic. The Recovery Center employs a staff of 72 and i

s projected to have more than 4,000 visits per month. It is unique in that it puts both internal medicine and mental health facilities under the same roof. The interior is crisp, clean and light. The blond wood clicks underfoot, and a small b

amboo garden sits in the center of the first floor. 鈥淲e didn’t want anything that looked like a clinic,鈥� said Rachel Solotaroff, medical director for the Central City Concern. The place hardly looks like a hospital. Even the thick-glassed armed locking doors are nice to look at.

But enough of the human angle, let’s get to the good stuff. Let’s talk about the building! The Recovery Center (brought to us by and ) is innovative in a number of ways. First, it’s going for a gold-level LEED rating. According to Sean Hubert, the CCC’s director of housing, efficiency measures include Mitsubishi heat recovery ventilation, certified wood, a low amount of volatile organic compounds occupancy sensitive lighting and the ability to harvest as much as 50,000 gallons of rainwater to flush toilets.

鈥淭here’s no reason we should have potable water in our toilets,鈥� said Jill

Sherman, vice president at Gerding Elden Development, the project manager.

The building is also ready for the , wherein developers attempt to reduce fossil fuels by 60 percent of the national average. So the Recovery Center is only the latest of Portland’s various eco-friendly built structures. (Honestly this is all kind of

par for the course in Portland. I’d be sort of surprised if a major project went to go up and the developers said 鈥淣ah, we’re not into sustainability.鈥�)

Secondly, it’s built to actually get taller. While it’s only three stories now, the Recovery Center has been built so that additional floors can be added onto the top. According to Hubert, while the CCC was meeting with the Old Town and Pearl neighborhood associations, the parties involved wanted a certain amount of density, but the funding wasn’t all there yet. Instead of either building a larger, more expensive structure, they made one that could be added onto later. The necessary bits for a taller building are there – the piles go down over seventy feet, and three elevator shafts are already in place. 鈥淚t’s been designed to be a much larger structure,鈥� said Sherman. 鈥淭he market is starting to get maybe better.鈥�

Third, the building was designed, permitted and built very quickly. In less than two years, in fact. Construction started a scant thirteen months ago, the facility has been usable since Dec. 5.

And, lastly, the Burger King. The old Burger King that stood on the corner of Northwest Broadway and East Burnside Street was something of an eyesore, and was known as one of , a vector for drug use, prostitution and crime. It’s gone now, though, replaced with a structure that will hopefully alleviate precisely the problems that were once aggravated on that very spot.