Portland’s Forest Park has many entry points, but no main entrance. Portland Parks & Recreation wants to change that and create a distinctive entrance with amenities – if it can ultimately cover the $15 million price tag.

Parks & Recreation officials recently issued a request for proposals for the entryway, according to planning and design manager Lauren McGuire.

“This will be an architecturally-led project with a really strong landscape architecture firm partner, and there’s also a cost consultant element to it,” she said.

The parks department is working on three campaigns in the park, including habitat restoration and invasive species removal in addition to repair of signage, trails, bridges and culverts.

But the $15 million would go only toward a new entrance, which would include parking for 20 motor vehicles and bikes, restrooms, a walkway that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act, maintenance facilities and eventually an overlook and possibly even an amphitheater.

The build-out would be a long-term effort, under the direction of project manager Britta Herwig. Public outreach will begin after a design team is picked, McGuire said. The deadline to respond to the RFP is April 1. Interested parties can contact Herwig at 503-823-5476 or britta.herwig@portlandoregon.gov.

The new entry will be located south of U.S. Route 30 where it converges with St. Helens Road and Kittredge Street, McGuire said.

“We are ultimately looking for a designer to design an iconic architectural gateway to improve access and circulation, and provide a major entry into the park which, right now, we don’t have,” she said.

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Plans first made 20 years ago to build an official entrance to Portland’s Forest Park are closer to becoming a reality with the recent award of $1.5 million in state lottery bond funding for the project design.

The city of Portland will use the funds, along with $800,000 in system development charges revenue, to complete the site planning, engineering and design for the project, said Astrid Dragoy, Portland Parks & Recreation natural areas manager. Requests for proposals seeking a design team will likely be issued within the next six months after a new city staffer has been hired to oversee the project, she said.

Plans for the new Forest Park entrance, first proposed in a 1995 city plan for the 5,200-acre park, call for a nature center, trail and viewing platform that are accessible to people with disabilities and a parking lot that can accommodate school buses for students on field trips. The project would be constructed on a city-owned former industrial brownfield site adjacent to Forest Park near the intersection of Highway 30 and Northwest Kittridge Avenue.

The project will create a main entry point that’s currently missing from Forest Park – the largest forested urban park in the U.S. – and ease access to its nature trails, Dragoy said.

“While we have a lot of entrances to Forest Park, they tend to be kind of small and a lot of entrances are in neighborhoods,” she said. “The park will now have an iconic entrance.”

Park officials hope to wrap up design and break ground on the new visitor center, parking lot and trail within the next two years, but must first secure funding to move into construction, Dragoy said. Once the design phase is complete, the city will have an estimate for the project construction cost, she added.

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