The Halprin Landscape Conservancy is spearheading a $4.4 million effort to revitalize a series of historic fountains and parks designed by renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. The hope is that the project will help preserve a piece of Portland’s history amid continuing growth.

“I want to look at it as a mission to make a more pleasant and fruitful use of the parks,” Halprin Landscape Conservancy Executive Director Karen Whitman said.

The historic nature of the Portland Open Space Sequence stems from its dedication. Tensions ran high in June 1970 when Halprin visited to dedicate Forecourt Fountain, now known as Ira Keller Fountain. Just a month earlier, Ohio national guardsmen had killed four Vietnam War protesters at Kent State University.

The killings sparked mass protests across the country, including violent confrontations between Portland State University students and police mere blocks away from the new fountain.

Officials “decided to go ahead with (the dedication),” Whitman said. “The way it was uniting Portland was in contrast with all the rest of the nation. It speaks more about Portland’s ability to unite.”

Police surrounded the area as crowds of students appeared during the dedication.

“You saw a lot of police and you saw the people grim-faced,” Whitman said.

Halprin defused the situation with a message of unity, and then waded into the fountain in his suit and tie, and invited the crowd to join him. That tradition has endured as present-day visitors sometimes play in the fountain.

“(Halprin) was showing a chance for Portland to come together,” Whitman said. “He said he we are in this together. (Wading into the fountain) was sort of a cathartic moment. It was just a spontaneous moment that seemed to release a lot of the pressure that was being felt.”

Keller Fountain was the last of the Open Space Sequence’s parks and fountains designed by Halprin, who died in 2009 at 93. The others are Pettygrove Park, Lovejoy Fountain and Source Fountain; all are located between Southwest Lincoln and Clay streets, and Second and Third avenues. They’re connected through a series of pedestrian walkways that blend into the environment so well that people often don’t realize where the parks end.

“They were a whole new way to think of urban renewal,” said Susan Lucke, executive assistant at the Halprin Landscape Conservancy. “At the time, parks were green spaces with benches.”

Halprin is considered one of the nation’s landscape architect pioneers. Before designing Portland’s Open Space Sequence, he had already tackled projects including San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square and Embarcadero-Justin Herman Plaza and Seattle’s Century 21 Exposition (World’s Fair) site.

In Portland, the Open Space Sequence featured landscaping techniques used as part of an urban renewal project for the first time. The area was among 54 blocks that were condemned and redeveloped shortly after World War II.

The idea behind the design was to emphasize movement. The pathways were intended to lure people out of their cars and onto their feet to explore the city’s urban core. The fountains supplied rushing water.

Up to that point, downtown was considered a place to work or shop, and not a place to wander or play. Halprin’s design changed that thinking. The interwoven design of the sequence was so cutting edge at the time that architects from around the world came to see it.

“These parks really started the ideas behind the design of Pioneer Square,” Lucke said.

That history and beauty isn’t easy or cheap to maintain. The parks are more than 50 years old, and the fountains have significant moving mechanisms that require constant maintenance. Those chores fall largely on Portland Parks & Recreation, which gets money from a general fund that is often stretched thin.

With many of the parks and fountains tucked into neighborhoods not on major thoroughfares, they aren’t high on the priority list for funding.

“It’s kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ situation,” Whitman said.

Plus, upkeep was not top of mind when the Open Space Sequence was created.

“They were built without any plan for long-term maintenance,” said Randy Gragg, president of the Halprin Landscape Conversancy’s board. “Parks are funded almost totally from the general fund. It has its ups and downs. There are a lot of parks to take care of in Portland.”

Portland Parks & Recreation has a backlog of deferred maintenance. The conservancy is trying to help by raising more than $2.15 million of the restoration’s $4.4 million cost via a local improvement district (LID). Based on that success, the city is chipping in $1.5 million. The city also spent $200,000 to jump-start the plan-drawing and construction process.

LIDs are usually used to fund new parks or projects. The city in the past has used LIDs to pay for the Portland Aerial Tram and the streetcar. This is the first time such a mechanism has been used in Portland to pay for park restoration, according to Gragg.

“This could be a model for other urban parks in Portland and elsewhere,” he said.

The LID is a voluntary tax that property owners agree to pay. The tax is assessed on the combined average of the real market and assessed market values from current Multnomah County tax rolls. That number is then run through a formula to arrive at a tax amount.

The area was broken into three zones. Owners of properties facing the parks pay 100 percent of the assessed tax amount, owners of properties within one block of the parks pay 50 percent and owners of properties within three blocks pay 33 percent.

“We had about 70 percent of those in zones that were willing,” Whitman said.

The ability to pay the tax over time, up to 20 years, was a major aspect that made it more palatable to property owners, she added.

“They won’t pay dime one until the restoration is complete,” she said.

The group is still trying to raise money for annual operating costs expected to approach $200,000 and walkway improvement costs totaling $350,000.

With the major funding set, the conservancy is now in the “nuts-and-bolts” phase. Conservancy officials expect planning to take most of 2017.

“We are hoping to get in the ground in 2018,” Gragg said. “We have to wait for the right season to do the work.”

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