Representatives from seven of Oregon’s nine federally recognized Native American tribes reflected on the past and expressed hope for the future during a May 26 dedication ceremony for the Oregon State Capitol Plaza, where the words of their ancestors are engraved into the new landscape.

Eleven giant, natural boulders are scattered throughout the revamped plaza and chiseled with inspiration from tribal leaders, elders and culture bearers. The installation is titled “Oregon Voices.”

“We are the landscape,” one boulder reads.

“We help each other. We will live well,” reads another.

Dr. Phillip Cash Cash (Cayuse, Nez Perce) selected the collection of words and worked on the project in collaboration with landscape architecture firm Mayer/Reed. A total of 50 texts were chosen; the other 39 will eventually be presented in a digital exhibition.

The dedication celebrated the completion of the plaza and works commissioned through Oregon’s Percent for Art in Public Places Program, managed by the Oregon Arts Commission. The program was established by the Oregon Legislature in 1975, setting aside 1 percent of state construction budgets for the commission and acquisition of art.

Artists for indigenous installations in the courtyards and concourse stairwells also attended the event.

“Land, Air, Sea” is a set of two cast bronze paddle groupings displayed in new courtyards on the main floor of the Capitol that will be open to the public. Artists Shirod Younker (Coquille/Miluk Coos/Umpqua) and Tony A. Johnson (Chinook) worked with master carver and fabricator Adam McIsaac on the pieces.

Etched glass by Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos) and Oliver Casillas decorate the two main stairwells on the main floor.

“Oregon’s tribes are a foundation of Oregon’s identity,” Oregon Arts Commissioner David Harrelson (Grand Ronde-Kalapuya) said. “This work helps this symbolic building of our state reflect the values and creativity of Oregon’s diverse first peoples.”

Some plaza features were relocated, while others remained in place.

Passersby have had a welcome unobscured view of the building for nearly a month while finishing touches were added to the plaza, which is the Capitol’s ceremonial front yard on Court Street.

The paved and landscaped area had been at least partially fenced off since January 2020 during the second and third phases of the Capitol��Accessibility, Maintenance and Safety construction project.

The new plaza was designed to better host and manage civic gatherings, public protests and official ceremonies. The space is larger following the removal of a vehicle lane that was previously in front of the Capitol steps.

The Oregon Veterans Medal of Honor Memorial was relocated to a more prominent place, with a semi-circle of granite pillars for recipients on each side of the plaza surrounding flagpoles.

Still anchoring the space are the two large rectangular marble sculptures, one featuring Lewis and Clark on horseback and led by Sacagawea, and the other a pioneer family with a covered wagon. They flank each side of the steps leading up to what was once the Capitol’s main entrance.

Capitol officials say the trio of revolving doors at the front, north side of the Capitol are now exit-only due to new security protocols. The central doors on the building’s State Street side have served as the main entrance during the CAMS project and will continue to do so.

Officials weighed the option of installing security screening equipment inside the revolving doors, but the equipment would have spilled into the rotunda and obscured views of people entering that space.

Visitors can still enter from Court Street through a door around the corner and to the right of the revolving doors when facing the Capitol. The left side is restricted to badge-only access. Security screening is conducted inside both.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Statesman Journal and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

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As green roofs proliferate atop new buildings in Portland, landscape architects are learning lessons about what works and what doesn’t.

In July 2020, the Portland City Council adopted the Central City 2035 plan. Among sweeping changes to the zoning code, new rules require eco-roofs atop buildings of 20,000 square feet or more in commercial zones within the Central City.

Eco-roofs aren’t exactly new, but their widespread adoption is. The city required its own large-scale buildings to have eco-roofs beginning in 2015.

The rooftop gardens are also called green roofs, but the city of Portland uses the term “ecoroofs.” They have many benefits, according to boosters, but also some costs.

Foremost among the benefits is stormwater management. Eco-roofs filter stormwater and keep it from reaching waterways, particularly the Willamette River.

Eco-roofs also reduce the urban heat island effect, in which a city’s built surfaces absorb heat and raise temperatures in the area.

Eco-roof-like features can be an aesthetically pleasing amenity for residents, as at the Mirabella building in the South Waterfront. There, they appear on terraces.

For developers and project owners pursuing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and similar certifications, eco-roofs are often awarded hefty point totals.

Increasingly, eco-roofs are also a steady stream of revenue for landscape architecture firms.

“We are seeing an uptick in it,” said Jeramie Shane, a Mayer/Reed principal who designs eco-roofs. Other landscape architecture firms including PLACE, which is responsible for designing the eco-roofs on the Block 216 tower, and Lango Hansen, which designed a prominent eco-roof for Hyatt Unbound, have benefited from the wider adoption of eco-roofs.

A study by Reed College researchers identified 384 eco-roofs in Portland as of 2019; they totaled nearly 1.4 million square feet.

As new buildings rise in coming years, central Portland from the air will increasingly look like a series of small green spaces. Densely packed districts with eco-roofs will encourage pollinators to flit from rooftop to rooftop.

Green roofs, Shane said, “create and maintain habitat districts. We see the connectivity of green roofs being really vital to provide habitat.”

Shane recalled that he recently visited Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute when a hummingbird appeared.

Among the issues landscape architects have discovered is that solar panels compete with greenery for rooftop space.

“(Photovoltaic) panels want to occupy the same space as the green roof does,” Shane said. “We’ve been testing planting green roofs under them, and in some cases they’ve been successful.”

Techniques such as planting shade-tolerant plants have helped. Landscape architects also tend to favor drought-resistant plants that can make it through Portland’s dry summers. “Right plant, right place” is a goal for successful eco-roofs at Mayer/Reed, Shane said. Often, on rooftops exposed to sun and wind, that means sedum and other succulents.

“Generally, the summer months tend to be gaps” in rainfall, Shane said. “That’s one challenge that we’re always trying to build some resiliency toward.”

Eco-roofs can be “intensive” – marked by deeper soil and greater plant variety, or “extensive” – tending to be wider but with shallower soil. Extensive eco-roofs seldom have irrigation, but intensive installations sometimes do.

“The intensive ones, we can get more creative, because we’ll use irrigation on them,” Shane said. “We can get rich, robust landscapes out of them.”

It can also be tough on buildings with smaller footprints to provide an eco-roof of a meaningful size, Shane said.

Eco-roofs do require ongoing maintenance that adds cost to any project. That makes it best for a building owner that is willing to put in greater costs up front, and in the long run, for a major building amenity.

“The developer has to acknowledge the benefits for a longer investment,” Shane said.

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PROJECT: Amaterra Winery

LOCATION: 7856 S.W. Mayway Drive, Portland

SIZE:��46,000 square feet

COST:��$26 million

START DATE: January 2019

ANTICIPATED END DATE: April 2021

OWNER: Amaterra

DEVELOPER: Touchmark

OWNER’S REPRESENTATIVE/CONSTRUCTION MANAGER: O’Brien & Company

CONTRACTOR:��Emerick Construction Company

LEAD ARCHITECT: Waterleaf Architecture

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: Mayer/Reed

INTERIORS AND FURNITURE: GBD Architects

ENGINEERS: Glumac (MEP), Humber Design Group (civil), TM Rippey Consulting Engineers

MAJOR SUBCONTRACTORS/OTHER ASSOCIATES: Whitaker/Ellis Builders, TT&L Sheet Metal, Team Electric, American Heating, Anning-Johnson, Heinz Mechanical Industries Inc.

NUMBER OF WORKERS EMPLOYED: 45

SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECT: Emerick Construction is working closely with Waterleaf Architecture and O’Brien & Company, the construction manager, on this three-story, 46,000-square-foot project – the first full-production winery in the Portland metropolitan area. Approximately 3,600 cubic yards of concrete was used for the foundation and structure of the two lower levels that will serve winery production. Approximately 35,000 square feet of 12-inch, precast/prestressed, hollow-core planks were placed for the Level 2 and 3 suspended slabs. The top level, which will house a restaurant and event space, is wood-framed with a multi-gabled roof structure that emulates the West Hills in which the building is located. The project started in spring 2019 with ground modification. The project was undertaken with an aggressive schedule coupled with a phased design process. A very tight site on a slope, with deep excavation in a microclimate subject to high winds, necessitated a lot of coordination and planning. Currently, site construction and the build-out of the restaurant and event space are under way, and completion is expected late this spring. Like many projects in 2020, this one challenged its team because of the atmosphere of the times. Team members adapted to the momentum adjustments associated with COVID-19. Also, a few weeks of forest fires required constant evaluation of the schedule and creative thinking to keep materials arriving and crews working. Once open, the facility will be home to a gravity-flow winery led by Willamette Valley winemaker Matt Vuylsteke. Its production will be predominantly pinot noir and chardonnay. The restaurant will serve as both a tasting room and dining space.

“Building Blocks” is a 91��Ƶ feature that spotlights noteworthy projects either under construction or approaching the start of construction. To submit a project for consideration, please visit: djcorprod.wpengine.com/building-blocks.

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In the future, perhaps the 2020s will be remembered as the decade Portland’s urban buildings increasingly went green.

Not just green as in low carbon, high performance and high efficiency. Green as in leaves, vines and branches.

Tree Farm is the unmissable example. The six-story office and retail building at the Morrison Bridge‘s east landing has dozens of strawberry trees in massive planters attached to the exterior on all four sides.

“From a traditional real estate pro-forma sense, it doesn’t make sense to put trees on the outside of the building,” said David Davies, who leads Alta Urban Projects and served as Tree Farm’s co-developer alongside Kevin Cavenaugh’s Guerrilla Development. “But we knew we wanted to do something unique to bring beauty to the Central Eastside, where it’s a built environment with warehouses.”

By bringing nature to the urban fabric, Davies said, the greenery sets the building apart.

“It stands out,” he said.

Final touches are being added to Tree Farm, with tenants expected to move in within days, Davies said.

Following in the development pipeline is the leafy proposed design for the Westwind Apartments, a publicly subsidized affordable housing project in Old Town Chinatown. The design, currently being evaluated by the Portland Design Commission and Bureau of Development Services, calls for plantings at each floor climbing the building’s corner.

The greenery is designed to integrate into each level, providing residents a view with an organic element.

“No matter what level they’re on, as they look out, in the foreground of their view of the context there’s a little garden space,” said Brian Cavanaugh, principal and co-founder of Architecture Building Culture, which is designing the project for Central City Concern in collaboration with Works Progress Architecture.

“It’s sort of an exploration of biophilia and trying to bring greenery into the experience of the residents,” he said.

It’s not an entirely novel idea to put trees and other plants on building exteriors. Downtown Portland’s PacWest Center, a 1980s concrete-and-steel tower, has sported an evergreen tree on its mid-building terrace for decades. More recently, Mirabella, a South Waterfront residential tower, arrived with extensive landscaping stepping up the building.

In Seattle, The Spheres, occupied by Amazon, delivered a prime example of a sort of office greenhouse. Internationally, newer buildings in major cities have gone vegetal, like Milan’s Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest), a two-tower residential development built in 2014 with hundreds of trees and other plants. A regional government in China is constructing an entire Forest City of buildings that incorporate trees.

Locally, the greening of urban buildings has been spurred by environmental consciousness, advances in landscape architecture and the city of Portland’s eco-roofs requirement. Since summer 2018, new buildings of 20,000 net square feet or larger within certain Central City zones are required to have eco-roofs.

The roofs are meant to process carbon and alleviate the urban heat island effect. The accumulation of new eco-roofs may significantly change the look and feel of downtown Portland in time. Whereas aerial shots of downtown Portland from the mid-20th century show vast expanses of surface parking lots, by the middle of the 21st century, the same views could look much greener.

“Green roofs are definitely here to stay,” said Carol Mayer-Reed, principal at landscape architect Mayer/Reed Inc.

Reed distinguished between green roofs, which are intensively planted and have deep soil depths, from eco-roofs, which can be small, shallow sections atop a building. Green roofs have come a long way from years ago, when it was difficult to find an insurance carrier to cover landscape architects working on them, Mayer-Reed said.

Mayer/Reed Inc. designed landscaped planters incorporated into the face of the parking garage at Portland International Airport. The greenery arose from conversations with the Port of Portland board, which wanted a natural look after obscuring a view of Mount Hood, Mayer-Reed said.

Port officials and landscape architects settled on a design for extensively landscaped planters. “The Port board were willing to look at a landscaped statement that expressed how lush and beautiful our Pacific Northwest is,” Mayer-Reed said. “That’s been in for years and it’s maintained really well.”

Natural elements, done well, can enhance a built design.

“It can be quite effective and it can be beautiful and it can express seasonality,” Mayer-Reed said.

Maintenance is the looming question for extensively landscaped projects, as some members of the Portland Design Commission have pointed out in recent hearings.

“It’s an attempt to distinguish architecture and gain attention, and I do think the maintenance that’s given to those will define how long they last,” Mayer-Reed said.

In the case of Tree Farm, the project team brought in strawberry trees – Arbutus unedo, a hardy evergreen – from Cistus Nursery on Sauvie Island.

“We needed something that would work on all four faces with different solar exposure,” said Westin Glass, development manager at Guerrilla Development.

The strawberry trees are not expected to grow much larger, keeping maintenance needs to a minimum.

“One thing we focused on was durability and low maintenance,” Davies said. “They’re not going to be enormous trees.”

Each planter has its own individually controlled irrigation as well as a fire sprinkler – something city officials requested when the project was evaluated while the Eagle Creek Fire raged.

The trees will likely be maintained by a winched cart system similar to those used by window washers, Glass said. It remains to be seen if Guerrilla Development’s in-house maintenance team will maintain the plants, or whether the ownership will hire an outside contractor.

The initial reception to the project has been strong, the developers said. Prospective office tenants have expressed interest, and the ground floor is filling up. Nicholas Restaurant will soon open a location in the building, and the building owners are in discussions with coffee-shop operators. A speakeasy-style bar is a possibility for another ground-floor space.

The trees and related systems added a “few hundred thousand dollars” to the approximately $10 million construction cost of Tree Farm, Davies said. The building is otherwise simple – an intentional strategy to keep costs down and allow for competitive lease rates. Yet the trees add interest to an otherwise typical commercial building.

“It tends to soften buildings and brings interest and nature into the landscape where, at Tree Farm, tenants will be able to look out and see nice, beautiful trees,” Davies said. “And they’ll have nice views of downtown and the river.”

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The start of a long-planned project to create public access to Willamette Falls has been delayed as stakeholders go back to the drawing board to explore routing visitors along the river instead of through the former Blue Heron paper mill site.

The Willamette Falls Legacy Project – a collaboration of stakeholders including Metro, the city of Oregon City, Clackamas County and the state of Oregon – announced Thursday it is working with the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, which purchased the mill site last year, to consider design alternatives for the riverwalk.

A yearslong design process led by acclaimed Norwegian firm Snohetta, and including Mayer/Reed and Canadian firm DIALOG, resulted in concept plans for a riverwalk passing through the shuttered mill site, with some of the former industrial buildings being transformed and incorporated into the design.

Now, according to the Willamette Falls Legacy Project, a ground-breaking event anticipated for this year has been put on hold pending exploration of design alternatives. Project partners began working this past summer to refine plans after cost estimates revealed that available funding would be insufficient to cover the scope of work.

Legacy Project staff began working last year with design and engineering firm Otak Inc. and contractor Lease Crutcher Lewis to rein in the project cost. Snohetta projected that its designs would cost $12.6 million to build, but estimates last year by Otak and Lease Crutcher Lewis pegged the price tag at between $17 million and $33 million. The project’s budget is $12.5 million.

The Grande Ronde purchased the site while potential costs were being researched and subsequently requested that the possibility of a riverside path be explored. The cost of such an amenity is still being evaluated, and the project partners will consider additional funding options if that cost is higher than proposed originally.

The riverwalk is the first phase of a larger project estimated to cost $150 million over 20 years.

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A Dallas-based developer’s plans for a five-building redevelopment of property in the South Waterfront District have a long way to go to gain approval, the Portland Design Commission indicated on Thursday.

The development would sit on four blocks near the Willamette River. Portland Bureau of Development Services staffers raised questions regarding access to the Willamette River, traffic impacts and the layout of a greenway through the area.

The project’s first review hearing before the Design Commission was Thursday. Commissioners were nonplussed by Alamo Manhattan‘s proposal, saying they were unsure how to even begin evaluating what one commissioner described as an incomplete land-use application for a massive redevelopment.

Alamo Manhattan proposes to build approximately 1,232 residential units, 20,000 square feet of retail space and 965 parking spots. The design would locate two high-rise buildings closest to the river, with three mid-rise buildings on the two western blocks, in contrast with city guidelines that call for building heights to step down to the river. The buildings closest to the river would rise to 244 feet, 9 inches, just below the 250-foot maximum height. The interior block buildings would be approximately 72 to 73 feet tall.

“This is very unusual that we’re reviewing five massive buildings and a greenway,” Commissioner Zari Santner said. “How come the bureau accepts an application that is so insufficiently complete?”

“The applicant can deem it complete,” BDS planner Staci Monroe replied. “There is nothing in the code that prohibits it.”

Monroe agreed that it was not typical to review several buildings and related infrastructure at once.

“It’s an insane amount of work to put this into one land-use case,” she said.

Santner suggested the developer’s plans were not close to meeting guidelines.

“There’s nothing that stops us from asking the applicant to keep coming back until we get to something that’s approvable,” she said.

Alamo Manhattan President Matt Segrest offered no indication that the developer would break up the land-use application into smaller parts.

“I recognize this is a huge chore here,” he said. “It is. There’s no way around that. We want to get this approved as soon as we can as well.”

The staff report did not recommend approval – a routine stance in the early stages of a land-use application. However, the staff report details at least 29 distinct guidelines not yet met by the proposal. Furthermore, the city’s environmental services and transportation bureaus, as well as the BDS site development section, stated they were not able to support the application.

The design team includes WDG Architecture, HLR Architects, landscape architect��Linda Tycher and Associates��and engineering firm��Otak.

The property is slightly north of The Old Spaghetti Factory, and bounded by Southwest Bond Avenue, Southwest Lane Street, Southwest Lowell Street and the river.

Two design advice hearings for the project took place in February and August. The project team is scheduled to return before the Design Commission on Feb. 6, 2020.

Also on Thursday:

OHSU expansion wins approval

The Portland Design Commission unanimously approved plans for Oregon Health & Science University’s 14-story hospital expansion on Marquam Hill.

Commissioners praised the proposal presented by the design team of NBBJ, based in Seattle, and Mayer/Reed, which handled the outdoor plaza.

“The response that we’re looking at today is significantly stronger than when this building (design) came into the room,” Design Commission Chairwoman Julie Livingston said at Thursday’s hearing.

The building will be located slightly west of the Elks Children’s Eye Clinic, which was also designed by NBBJ.

The plaza and outdoor spaces were a focus of the Design Commission’s attention throughout the review process. The designers responded to earlier criticism that the plaza’s pathways weren’t well integrated and lacked separation between pedestrians and cars. The final design expanded outdoor seating, added street trees and also created a landscape buffer between the sidewalk and street.

“Your collective feedback has greatly improved the hospital design as well as the public plaza,” said José Sama, a principal with NBBJ, which recently opened a Portland office.

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A proposal for Oregon Health & Science University‘s 14-story expansion appears to be close to earning the Portland Design Commission‘s approval, but first a number of concerns about outdoor spaces must be addressed.

Commissioners discussed the project for nearly three hours on Thursday. With a Bureau of Development Services staff report recommending denial pending improvements to address several unmet guidelines, commissioners opted to continue the hearing until Dec. 12. A vote will likely take place then.

The design team of NBBJ‘s Seattle office and Portland landscape architect Mayer/Reed unveiled new renderings of the massive hospital expansion atop Marquam Hill. The design consists of two towering glass-and-steel wings with a white spandrel glass frame over a podium clad with a warmer, reddish panel. The building on Southwest Campus Drive would have 526,297 square feet of interior space, with three levels of parking and three sky-bridges connecting to adjacent buildings.

The building would look over a garden cut through by an Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible path. The OHSU expansion project would be on the site of the former School of Dentistry building, which was demolished. Two design advice hearings took place previously.

Design commissioners’ comments focused on the garden and a pavilion that overlooks it.

“The problem with that overlook is it’s not connected to the inside,” Commissioner Zari Santner said. “It’s not connected to the outside.”

Commission Chairwoman Julie Livingston, picking up on written comments submitted by Commissioner Jessica Molinar, who was absent, said the garden lacks a gathering place.

“It’s all path, no place,” she said.

Carol Mayer-Reed, principal of Mayer/Reed, defended the design by saying the site is limited by a 10-foot grade change, neighboring buildings including the Elks Children’s Eye Clinic and substantial underground infrastructure that rules out tree plantings along the sidewalk.

“We want to do all of the same things you do; we just have a very constrained site,” she told commissioners.

NBBJ partner Jose Sama said the path has a destination: the building’s front door.

Design commissioners told Mayer-Reed and project landscape architect Tim Strand to try again.

“The space has got to be activated, and I’m sure you can get there,” Livingston said.

In some ways, the designers are wrestling with a decision made 100 years ago. OHSU moved to Marquam Hill in 1919 to land donated by a railroad that couldn’t make the site work for rail. Designers have since puzzled over how to move people from points below to the hill.

That question has become more acute as OHSU has become one of the state’s largest employers. Now, Metro and TriMet plan to build the Southwest Corridor light-rail project below the site. A connector from Barbur Boulevard is envisioned that would complement the aerial tram that was completed in the South Waterfront in 2006.

Overall, design commissioners praised the expansion building, although they challenged details such as the placement of white fins on the exterior. Commissioners indicated OHSU will have an approvable project if designers can fix access issues with the overlook and garden.

“In general, the building is a very handsome building,” Santner said. “It’s cohesive. We’re just asking you to do the impossible so we can really truly say you’re meeting design guidelines, because we have a responsibility to do so.”

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The Portland Design Commission on Thursday provided another set of opinions on the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry‘s , and mostly approved of – though while citing some concerns with massing and access throughout the property. The project received its first , when commissioners took issue with some of the same aspects.

The 18.5-acre site is being tackled by a team including ZGF Architects, landscape architect Mayer/Reed and on behalf of OMSI. Seven podium-style buildings are planned, with total heights of 250 feet, and podium heights of 50 feet.

The buildings would be shaped and arranged in unique ways to allow movement throughout the space. Two of the buildings would have above-grade parking, while two others would have below-grade parking. Detailed renderings of the buildings have not been released yet, but rather only diagrams depicting the general massing structure.

Several public plazas will serve as event venues, and officials plan to integrate the Innovation Quadrant, where institutions like the museum and local universities can meet with startups and established businesses to drive innovation within the city.

Commissioner Zari Santner found the plazas to be geared too much toward children and events, and not enough for local residents, especially those living and working in the Innovation Quadrant.

“There is going to be a community here,” she said. “What are their needs?”

Other commissioners said the proposed podium height would be too high. Commissioner Jessica Molinar suggested the site be broken up to let more light in, as she said it currently looks more like a wall blocking the east side. Molinar and Commissioner Chandra Robinson similarly critiqued the public spaces, saying they wouldn’t be good for rainy-day activity.

But Molinar did say is headed in a good direction. Since the project is still in the design advice phase, architects can make changes before pursuing a review hearing.

The OMSI master plan team members said Thursday they will discuss whether to pursue another design advice hearing or one for land use review.

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The Portland Design Commission on Thursday voted unanimously to approve plans for the Lincoln High School replacement project, which will transform a historic institution in the Central City. Commissioners showered praise on all aspects of the design, including its context, public realm elements, and quality and permanence.

Designed by Bora Architects and landscape architect Mayer/Reed, the replacement consists of a six-story, 102-foot-tall building providing 281,000 square feet of educational and support space, a new athletic track and field, and a teen/parent center.

During design advice sessions previously, commissioners asked for activation of the ground floor, and the design team responded. A walkway lined with stream-like pebbles will cut between the school building and the track on a north-south axis. On the side of the track and field, trees will be cut back to allow pedestrians to view any activities that might be taking place, further engaging the surrounding community with the school’s sports teams.

The new building itself will have red concrete panels meant to resemble the original building’s bricks, keeping a historic look for a very modern building. Large glass windows will enclose a staircase at the school’s northwest corner, at Southwest Salmon Street and 18th Avenue. This will give a transparent and active feel to the area, as people on the street step in unison with those climbing stairs inside the school.

“It’s masterfully done,” Commissioner Samuel Rodriguez said. “It really walks the line between what was and what is, and it’s a building of its time.”

The project will have an eco-roof, which is required by the city for buildings of this size. However, the surface area has been reduced from 60 percent to 28 percent. The design team compensated by providing more than 60,000 square feet of plantings at ground level to serve the same purpose. Commissioners said the green space is better used at ground level, and will add to the public realm, which is an important aspect of such a project.

The roof will instead feature maintenance machinery, which neighborhood residents previously stated would be a bit of an eyesore. Testimony from one resident led the Design Commission to delay a vote until the design team decided to go forward with a screen that will hide the rooftop mechanical units from public view.

With public attendees swayed in favor of the project, commissioners decided to vote whether to approve the land use application – and all six in attendance affirmed the design.

“Context and public realm are so well integrated in this proposal,” Commission Chairwoman Julie Livingston said. “It definitely is the best response for the kids.”

Ground will be broken on the project in February 2020, according to the design team.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story erroneously described both the building’s exterior and its roof.

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Designers for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry campus development are still wrestling with basic questions relating to transportation circulation and open spaces on the Southeast Portland site.

Plans for OMSI‘s 18.5-acre property went before the Portland Design Commission for advice during a meeting on Thursday. OMSI is seeking approval for the master plan under Central City 2035 plan rules.

Many of the questions facing OMSI’s proposed redevelopment concern how it relates to its surroundings, including a bicycle artery, the city’s Green Loop concept, the Willamette River to the west and Union Pacific railroad tracks to the east.

The Green Loop would go through OMSI’s site, but the precise alignment is undetermined.

OMSI proposes to reroute Water Avenue to the east, and use old Water Avenue as a “pedestrian-oriented main street” through the site. Also planned is a loop road throughout the campus to connect developable properties.

OMSI’s plans include a bridge over the Union Pacific railroad tracks to connect the campus to Southeast Portland neighborhoods. The bridge would be built by the city of Portland.

“We believe such a bridge can become an iconic, identifying development for the district,” said Allison Rouse, a project manager for ZGF Architects.

Old Water Avenue would have a two-way cycle track to accommodate bicyclists. Planners discussed how to slow bicyclists a bit in keeping with a family-friendly mixed-use street, but not so much that cyclists abandon the route for the Eastbank Esplanade.

Designers with ZGF and Mayer/Reed are working with Gerding Edlen, the master developer selected by OMSI in July 2018 after a competitive bidding process. An early master plan for the site was laid out by Snohetta, an international design firm.

The campus encompasses seven developable parcels ranging in size from 0.69 acres to 4.49 acres. Maximum building heights with bonuses reach 250 feet.

Commissioner Jessica Molinar expressed concern that the loop road could feel like an alleyway if it doesn’t have enough active uses.

“It really depends on what’s going to happen there, which is architecture,” she said.

Commissioner Zari Santner asked if old Water Avenue should be a woonerf – a Dutch-style shared street that places less emphasis on auto traffic.

“The focus is really for people,” she said.

OMSI’s designers said there are practical obstacles to such a design.

“We very much would like it to look like a woonerf, Zari, but we have had some conversation with (the Portland Bureau of Transportation) about the difficulties of that,” said Carol Mayer-Reed, a principal at Mayer/Reed Inc.

Santner also said the campus needs to better relate to the river.

“The whole district, the plan, is inward-looking,” she said. “It’s not really embracing the river.”

Both city and private planners have expressed some frustration regarding the vagueness of the Green Loop – a linear-park concept through the Central City. There are two options for the Green Loop’s alignment, and it must meet other segments of the loop north and south of OMSI’s campus.

“There’s two routes it could follow, and it’s really not up to OMSI to decide which it should follow,” said Ben Nielsen, a senior planner at the Bureau of Development Services. “It’s a continuing conversation at this point.”

Nielsen acknowledged the Green Loop could be better defined.

“It’s not as codified yet as it should be to be a real thing, but it’s in process,” he said.

The OMSI master plan is scheduled to return before the Design Commission in August for more advice.

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