Right 2 Dream Too will move within 60 days to a location near the Moda Center, the Portland mayor’s office said Thursday.

The Portland Development Commission and the property owners have agreed to an extension to allow the homeless camp time to move from its current location at West Fourth Avenue and Burnside Street.

The eastside property, which is between the Moda Center and the Willamette River, is owned by the Portland Bureau of Transportation. The site is a triangular right-of-way and paved parking at the west end of North Holladay Street, where North Thunderbird Road and North Crosby Avenue come together.

R2DToo was forced to find a new location after the developers of the Grove Hotel renovation and expansion, on the parcel west of the homeless camp, filed a lawsuit to force the city to evict the camp. The 113-room hotel, being developed by Naito Development Corp., is due to open in November.

The Portland Development Commission has an option to purchase the parcel currently occupied by R2DToo; that agreement requires the property to be clear of the camp and other potential development obstacles by April 7. The 30-month deadline was already extended once, in October.

Mayor Ted Wheeler acknowledged in a statement that a permanent home for R2DToo has “eluded the city for years.”

R2DToo is expected to remain at the new location for up to two years. Wheeler said the city and R2DToo representatives will continue searching for a permanent site for the homeless camp.

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The Portland City Council on Wednesday approved a plan that envisions full redevelopment of the Centennial Mills site amid questions about public access to the Willamette River and preservation of the historic flour mill on the property.

Commissioner Nick Fish offered an amendment directing the Portland Development Commission and the Portland Housing Bureau to come back with recommendations to develop affordable housing on the property for renters at 60 percent of median family income or less. Commissioners passed Fish’s amendment, and the PDC’s proposal, unanimously.

The PDC’s plan likely means the Police Bureau’s Mounted Patrol Unit will not return to the property. PDC officials have said the presence of a police office and a horse paddock limit the site’s development potential.

PDC Executive Director Kimberly Branam said a private fundraising effort is under way to relocate the Mounted Patrol Unit to another location.

Plans for the riverfront property have languished since the city acquired the land in 2000 to be a park. In 2005, the City Council directed the PDC to explore redevelopment options for the property. Harsch Investment Properties was selected through a request for proposals, but the agency let a memorandum of understanding with the developer expire, essentially ending Harsch’s involvement.

Now, the PDC plans to issue a new request for proposals late this year or early in 2018. Ground would be broken in 2018 or 2019.

The PDC’s current plan calls for mixed-use development with 426 residential units and 17,000 square feet of commercial space in three separate buildings. The existing flour mill would be renovated into office space.

Commissioner Dan Saltzman said it may be time to consider developing the property without the flour mill because development scenarios that include the structure have not gone forward.

“There’s been too much designing on high with our hopes and aspirations and nothing’s penciled yet,” he said.

A group of Pearl District residents pushed for rededicating the parcel to open space as originally planned, with little or no development on the site. “It would be a shame if it becomes a privatized enclave on the river,” the Pearl District Neighborhood Association stated in a letter to the City Council.

Residents said preliminary renderings by GBD Architects showed too many buildings and not enough open space.

Commissioners said any development at Centennial Mills must connect to the Willamette River Greenway and ensure public access to the river.

“I do not want to foreclose opportunities to reinvigorate our waterways,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said. “We’ve turned our backs on the Willamette for too long.”

Another twist was revealed when Sarah Iannarone, speaking on behalf of Oregon Harbor of Hope, the nonprofit founded by developer Homer Williams to raise funds for a homeless shelter, floated the prospect of temporarily relocating Right 2 Dream Too to Centennial Mills.

“This is actually a very viable option for moving R2DToo in the short term,” Iannarone said.

She said Centennial Mills would be a “temporary site while we find a permanent location.” Iannarone did not identify a permanent location, or say how long R2DToo would need to stay at Centennial Mills.

PDC spokesman Shawn Uhlman said Centennial Mills has not been discussed as a site for the homeless camp.

“PDC hasn’t had any conversations with anyone representing R2DToo,” Uhlman said.

The agency has done no due diligence on the property to see if it would be suitable for a homeless camp, Uhlman said.

That would seem to make Centennial Mills an unlikely temporary site for R2DToo, which faces an April 7 eviction date to move from its current location at the Old Town Chinatown gate. Developers of the Grove Hotel under construction next door have sued to force the city to evict the homeless camp.

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A tower crane looms over the Grove Hotel at the gate to Portland’s Old Town Chinatown. Workers in highlighter-yellow visibility vests move on the upper floors among the window frames.

The sidewalk along Burnside Street is closed by permit for construction, but around the corner on Fourth Avenue, a man sleeps on the sidewalk outside the entrance to Right 2 Dream Too, a camp for those with nowhere else to go.

Time is running short for Right 2 Dream Too, which has called a quarter-block on the northeast corner of West Fourth Avenue and Burnside Street home since October 2011.

The backers of the Grove Hotel project – renovation of a 113-year-old, three-story building and construction of an adjacent nine-story addition – plan to open in November after filing a lawsuit to force the eviction of the camp. It operates as a nonprofit that helps homeless people get established and find jobs.

Staffers from Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office met again recently with Right 2 Dream Too representatives, but so far, no solution is at hand.

“Discussions have been good, but there’s not an obvious solution that’s presented itself,” said Michael Cox, a spokesman for Wheeler.

An attorney for the camp, Mark Kramer, did not return messages seeking comment.

The Portland Development Commission has an option to purchase the block occupied by Right 2 Dream Too; that agreement requires the property to be clear of the camp and other potential development obstacles by April 7. The 30-month deadline was already extended once, in October.

“We do have some time still,” said Shawn Uhlman, spokesman for the PDC. “The way that it’s currently written is PDC has the option to purchase this parcel. If those conditions aren’t met, then we’d need to have a conversation with the landowners to ensure those conditions are met.”

The project to create a 113-room hotel with ground-floor retail and restaurant space remains on track to open in November, said Bob Naito, head of Naito Development. Construction was delayed by rough winter weather.

“We had pours scheduled and the concrete trucks couldn’t roll,” he said.

Howard S. Wright is the general contractor. The design is by Surround Architecture and Studio Tack.

Grove Hostel Property LLC entered into a development agreement with the PDC in 2011, and the $650,000 purchase closed in February 2015. Uhlman said the price – seemingly a bargain for Portland’s urban core – reflected the property’s condition and the substantial amount of work needed to redevelop it.

The project is complex. To gain approval from the Historic Landmarks Commission, the developers agreed to renovate the existing 19,450-square-foot building rather than demolish it. A nine-story addition will face Fourth Avenue.

Construction began in March 2016. Filament Hospitality, based in San Francisco, will manage the hotel, Naito said.

Before the hotel opens, the developers want Right 2 Dream Too out. The developers on Feb. 7 sued Michael and Linda Wright and Daniel and Donna Cossette, who own the property that is home to Right 2 Dream Too.

The lawsuit says the homeless camp is incompatible with hotel operations next door. The lawsuit says the camp is in conflict with a safe pedestrian environment and the “social value” for the neighborhood.

The shelter reduced the hotel project’s fair-market value by $900,000, which caused the loss of the developers’ financing, the lawsuit charges. Grove Hotel Partners LLC and Grove Hostel Property LLC are seeking more than $1.6 million for their costs and lost business.

Moving the camp has proved difficult. A plan to relocate Right 2 Dream Too to a city-owned property at Southeast Third Avenue and Harrison Street was scuttled in August by the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals. The appeals board said a long-term tent camp would violate the parcel’s industrial (IG1) zoning.

Several property interests fought the camp’s proposed move east of the Willamette River. They include the Central Eastside Industrial Council, developer Killian Pacific, East Side Plating Inc. and Marquez Properties PDX, a limited liability company.

Right 2 Dream Too’s limbo leaves the PDC waiting. The agency’s option to purchase the 7,762-square-foot parcel is for $1.2 million.

The timing is politically sensitive. City leaders have been under enormous pressure to find a solution to Portland’s enduring homelessness problem. Efforts to establish a homeless shelter at Terminal 1 along the Willamette River foundered last winter. Four deaths of homeless people were attributed to hypothermia.

The PDC has not decided what to do with the quarter-block, Uhlman said.

“We haven’t set a course for that property yet,” he said. “It is a parcel where we really want to involve the community and have something that’s supported as far as what comes next.”

Still searching for shelter site

Developer Homer Williams is again working behind the scenes to find a Portland site for a large-scale homeless shelter after his proposal to establish one on the city-owned Terminal 1 lot fell through.

For Williams, it’s back to the drawing board. He’s not changing course on the type of shelter he’s looking for: a large building – most likely an industrial one.

“The only way that you’re going to be able to create space in the short term is going to be in taking existing buildings – primarily warehouses, that type of thing – and retrofitting them,” he said. “That’s what we’re in the process of working on. Hopefully we’ll have identified the first one and get a budget in place and start on down the road.”

Williams has established a nonprofit organization, Oregon Harbor of Hope, to find a site for a homeless shelter and arrange funding for it. He is focusing on government-owned sites.

“We’re going to look at both city and county and other publicly owned properties,” he said.

The city of Portland sold the Terminal 1 site in December to Lithia Motors for $12.5 million after concerns were raised about the property’s suitability as a potential homeless shelter.

Some stakeholders have questioned whether the city should address homelessness by relying on Williams, who as co-founder of Williams & Dame Development is known for building gleaming glass residential towers. He said he wants to get everyone involved.

The city is awaiting Williams’ next proposal, said Michael Cox, Mayor Ted Wheeler’s spokesman.

“This office has told Homer that he should go ahead and put together a plan for what his idea is in terms of timeline, budget and site suggestions, and we’ll review that plan when we get it,” Cox said.

Williams said tackling Portland’s enduring homelessness has been a time-consuming but interesting challenge.

“It’s been a good learning experience,” he said. “This is an area that a lot of people have a lot of strong feelings about. Right now, the most obvious problem is the chronic homelessness. It’s in every neighborhood. We’ve got to help mitigate that and get these people into a safe place with a roof over their heads.”

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A coalition of activist groups on Friday blasted the Environmental Protection Agency‘s plans to clean up the Portland Harbor Superfund site as woefully inadequate.

“We’re very disappointed in what came out of EPA,” said Jim Robison, chairman of the Portland Harbor Community Advisory Group. “It doesn’t get it done right.”

Advocates for the environment, the homeless, an American Indian tribe and other groups pleaded for a more thorough cleanup of the polluted Willamette River as the EPA held a public comment meeting inside the Portland Building.

“We need more than 8 percent of the river to be clean,” said Ibrahim Mubarak, co-founder of Right 2 Dream Too, a nonprofit.

Critics say the EPA is planning to dredge only 8 percent of the affected stretch of the river.

An EPA spokesman encouraged interested parties, including protesters, to lodge an official public comment.

“We welcome all perspectives on the cleanup; that’s what public comment is for,” agency spokesman Mark MacIntyre said.

The EPA announced Friday that it would extend the public comment period until Sept. 6, to allow for 90 days of public comment.

The EPA’s preferred cleanup plan would cost $750 million and require approximately seven years. A more extensive cleanup would cost $2 billion and take even longer.

The Portland Harbor Superfund site extends 10 miles from the Broadway Bridge in downtown Portland to the Columbia Slough. The EPA plans to dredge and cap the most polluted sections of sediment. About 1.4 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment would be removed. Otherwise, the federal plan relies on “natural recovery” for 1,900 additional acres, according to the EPA.

People who eat fish from the river are most at risk of contaminants, the agency said. Pollutive compounds found include DDT and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls).

Rose Longoria, regional Superfund cleanup projects coordinator for Yakama Nation Fisheries, advocated for a thorough remediation.

“Yakama Nation and all people deserve the right for clean, healthy fish that are safe to eat,” she said. “Allowing these toxins to remain in the river … is a violation of human rights and is a violation of treaty rights.”

Friday’s public meeting was the first of four scheduled around Portland. The next meeting will take place on Wednesday, from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., at the Portland Expo Center.

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Almost two years after purchasing the ex-Grove Hotel at East Burnside Street and Northwest Fourth Avenue, Naito Development is ready to start renovating the building.

Bob Naito and Eagle Point Hotel Partners in 2014 were chosen by the Portland Development Commission to develop the property after a previous development plan fizzled. Naito and his partners paid $630,000 for the 27,570-square-foot building.

Budgeted at about $30 million, the project to renovate the 109-year-old building will also include construction of a nine-story tower. Retail shops, restaurants and bars are planned for the ground floor.

Naito said building permits have been secured, and he signed a contract Friday afternoon with Howard S. Wright, a Balfour Beatty company, to oversee construction. Surround Architecture is in charge of the building design and New York-based Studio Tack will design the interior.

Work should begin in about a week, Naito said, and staging for the project will take place on the sidewalks of both East Burnside Street and Northwest Fourth Avenue.

Naito said earlier that he hopes the city is able to relocate the Right 2 Dream Too homeless camp, across the street from the hotel, by the time construction is complete in about 18 months.

Naito said he grew up in the neighborhood and remembers pulling hand trucks of boxes around when he worked at Import Plaza, his family’s business. His father, Bill Naito, was a business leader and philanthropist known for his work to preserve historic structures and revitalize downtown Portland.

“It’s great to be back in the old neighborhood and I think the Grove Hotel project is going to become a kind of icon in Old Town Chinatown,” Naito said. “And I think it’s going to be something that my dad, if he were around, would be proud of.”

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A hearing before Portland’s Historic Landmarks Commission on the proposed redevelopment of the Grove Hotel has been extended to Nov. 9, according to Mark Vanderzanden, creative director of Surround Architecture, the project’s designer.

The hearing was held over from Oct. 12 because of a letter from retired history professor Jacqueline Peterson Loomis. She wrote on behalf of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation, which she serves as a board member.

Loomis wrote that the foundation objects to the location of the hotel entrance on Northwest Fourth Avenue and the size of the proposed electric sign. But mostly the group objects to the height of a proposed tower addition to the long-vacant three-story building on West Burnside Street.

“The proposed nine-story, 100-plus-foot hotel tower is clearly incompatible with the surrounding one- to three-story buildings of the New Chinatown/Japantown Historic District,” Peterson-Loomis wrote. “… Approval of a building higher than 75 feet within one of Portland’s downtown national historic districts would be an unheard of and dangerous precedent.”

Vanderzanden said that at the Oct. 12 meeting, commissioners seemed ready to approve the redevelopment project, and about 30 people expressed support. He said Loomis was the only person who raised an objection.

The property is being redeveloped by Naito Development in partnership with Eagle Point Hotel Partners of New York City and San Francisco-based Filament Hospitality. The group purchased the property for $630,000 after being selected by the Portland Development Commission in May 2014.

The team is planning a $30 million project to refurbish the 108-year-old ex-hotel building and add a nine-story tower to hold a boutique hotel. Retail shops, restaurants and bars are planned for the ground floor.

City planner Grace Jeffreys said she recommended that the Historic Landmarks Commission approve the project, but commissioners weren’t completely sold on the plans.

“They still had some concerns about the treatment of the north elevation (and) the replacement storefront, and they were looking for more historic detailing on the transoms,” she said.

Jeffreys said that despite those concerns, commissioners indicated that “this could be a project they could support.” The site is directly across the street from the Right 2 Dream Too homeless camp, which the city is hoping to relocate to Southeast Portland.

“I know there’s been a lot of local support for this project, and the majority of opinions were that it will be a revitalizing development for the neighborhood,” Jeffreys said. “AIA (American Institute of Architects) Portland supports it, as do a majority of the testifiers and people who submitted written testimony.”

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The Central Eastside Industrial Council opposes the possibility of moving a homeless camp from a Northwest Portland property to one across the Willamette River.

The council recently sent to Mayor Charlie Hales a 10-page letter claiming that the city’s efforts to negotiate for the Right 2 Dream Too camp at Northwest Fourth Avenue and Burnside Street are not proper. The city has been negotiating to have the tent city moved to property owned by the Oregon Department of Transportation at the intersection of Southeast Third Avenue and Harrison Street in the Central Eastside Industrial District.

“The city’s current path contains none of these safeguards because the city skipped the required process,” the letter states. “Until the city follows the right process, the city is jeopardizing legitimate enforcement and degrading the trust of the rest of the community.” The letter is signed by council president Debbie Kitchin and president-elect Brad Malsin.

Most of the letter is devoted to citing various city codes regarding campsites and short-term housing. In conclusion, the letter states, “the council should direct BDS (Bureau of Development Services) to respond to this request in the same way it would respond to any other request of a previously prohibited use: amend the code to regulate homeless camps within the city.”

Commissioner Amanda Fritz said that the city wouldn’t be looking at the property if it wasn’t compliant with the city’s zoning code.

“We haven’t decided if we are going to move forward with the purchase,” she said.

Fritz said that if the city decides to buy the property, there will be an ordinance on the council’s agenda to do so – along with a zoning confirmation.

“Everything we’ve done is according to code,” she said.

City Council is waiting for an environmental review of the property before deciding its next step. Fritz said no timeline has been set for putting the issue on the City Council meeting agenda.

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Bob Naito is preparing to bring a completely new look to the Grove Hotel at the corner of Northwest Fourth Avenue and Burnside Street – and the neighborhood itself – in a couple of years.

At present, the former hotel, built in 1907, is derelict. Homeless people sleep in the doorways – overflow from the Right 2 Dream Too homeless camp across the street.

Naito said he is hopeful the city will find a new location for R2DToo in time for his company, Naito Development, to start construction around October on the property at 401-499 W. Burnside Street.

The city last year pledged money to help the homeless camp relocate. In April, City Commissioner Amanda Fritz announced that the city is working on a plan to buy from the Oregon Department of Transportation a half-acre plot to house the homeless camp. The land, about 9,000 square feet, is in the Central Eastside Industrial District near the new Tilikum Crossing.

Naito said he hasn’t closely followed developments between the city and R2DToo, but he’s keeping a positive attitude.

“We’re not going to open for 18 months, so I have to assume that relocation will be completed by then,” he said.

If the camp moves, the lot could be used as a staging area for construction, Naito said. He said his company asked the city for the right of first refusal for future purchase of the privately-owned R2DToo lot, but was refused by the Portland Development Commission. But Naito said he’ll be first in line if and when bidding on the lot begins.

“I would love to be able to stage there,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s closing both sidewalks and on-street parking (during construction), which is kind of a challenge.”

Negotiations to secure the land for the homeless camp are continuing, said Josh Alpert, Mayor Charlie Hales‘ director of strategic initiatives. He said a few more weeks of work remain on the second phase of an environmental review of the proposed site. In the meantime, the city is talking with potential neighbors of the site as well as meeting with R2DToo representatives. If all goes well, he said, a purchase agreement for the property could come before the City Council in about a month.

Alpert said he couldn’t speak for R2DToo, but noted that its representatives have been in constant communication with the city.

“They’ve seen the site many times, and I think there’s a good chance they’ll be agreeable,” he said.

Shawn Uhlman, spokesman for the PDC, which is headquartered in Old Town Chinatown, said the rejuvenated hotel will be a welcome addition to the neighborhood that is experiencing a revival.

“That location, by old Chinatown gate, is truly the gateway to our neighborhood,” he said. “Everything this project represents and how they’ve gone about it is really exciting.”

The Grove Hotel has languished since the PDC bought it in 2010 for $3.7 million. Previously, developers backed out of a bid to revitalize the building because they lost financing and failed to lure commercial tenants to the gritty neighborhood.

Following a competition held by the PDC in May 2014, Naito Development and two project partners – New York-based Eagle Point Hotel Partners and San Francisco-based Filament Hospitality – were chosen to redevelop the property. The group agreed to purchase the building for $630,000.

Naito and his company are planning to invest about $30 million in the project, which calls for refurbishing the existing building and adding a nine-story boutique hotel. No public money will be used to revitalize the property, he noted.

Plans now call for the new hotel being incorporated with the existing building. Retail shops, restaurants and bars will occupy the ground floor.

Naito said the Grove will be competitive with other high-end boutique hotels in the city.

“It will be pretty sophisticated for Portland,” he said. “It will feel like an international hotel, and we’re shooting for a 3.5-star rating.”

Staying at the Grove won’t be like staying at big-box hotels, he said.

“We’re geared toward people who prefer not to stay in those hotels but want a Portland experience,” he said. “The big chains are cranking out their own versions of boutique hotels, but I don’t know how authentic they can make them.”

Preserving authenticity is very important to Naito, and he’s currently waiting for final design approval from the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission.

“We got our design advice request and are now working on the application based on the landmarks commission comments,” he said. “There’s a myriad of details we need to get into the actual application, and we’re trying to get it in at the end of July or August.”

Naito said he’s not worried about attracting retail to the location and said Ingrid Summerfield of Filament Hospitality has years of experience in boutique hotels. She has opened other refurbished hotels that have turned neighborhoods around, and Naito believes the Grove will transform the entrance to Chinatown – the neighborhood where he grew up.

“The hotel will have a 24-hour café on the corner of Fourth and Burnside, with a specialty restaurant open in the evening adjacent to the café, all on the first floor,” he said. “On the ninth level, we’ll have an outdoor deck and bar and I hope in the summertime we can open up the doors and have spectacular views.”

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The Portland Development Commission‘s board on Wednesday approved, by a 4-0 vote, a $1.2 million purchase agreement for the property at Northwest Fourth Avenue and West Burnside Street that currently holds the Right 2 Dream Too camp.

The agreement includes a 30-month due diligence period for the PDC to evaluate the 7,762-square-foot parcel on the northeast corner of the intersection. The agency will make monthly option payments of $10,000 – a total of $300,000 – to the sellers, a group led by Michael Wright.

“This is the opposite of what PDC has traditionally done, which is to buy property knowing what it’s going to do,” PDC spokesman Shawn Uhlman said. “This will give PDC time to figure that out.”

The delayed closing also will give the group selling the property time to relocate the Right 2 Dream Too homeless camp, Uhlman said.

The property is part of PDC’s urban renewal plans near the Chinatown gate, which is an entryway to Old Town Chinatown, he said.

The option payments will be in addition to the purchase price and be made to compensate the seller for the delayed closing. The PDC will reserve $1.5 million in its budget to acquire the property and lock it up, Uhlman said.

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Change in Old Town Chinatown won’t happen overnight, and the Grove Hotel redevelopment team knows that.

“For the hotel to succeed and to really be that catalyst, there has to be more – especially, ground-floor retail – activity going on,” said Bob Naito, principal of Naito Development. “And I think we’ll stimulate it with the galleries and maker spaces, and all that stuff is going to come, but we’re going to have to incubate and nurse it along.”

A joint partnership of Naito Development, New York-based Eagle Point Hotel Partners and San Francisco-based Filament Hospitality last week was chosen by the Portland Development Commission as its preferred development team among five finalists vying to redevelop the Grove Hotel. Pending completion of a disposition and development agreement with the PDC, the Naito team will purchase the building for $630,000. The group is not requesting any public money to help pay for the proposed $6.9 million project.

The iconic, 117-year-old building at the gateway to Old Town Chinatown has languished since the PDC purchased it in 2010 for $3.7 million. Previously, developer David Gold and local businessman John Jay bid to revitalize the building, but lost financing and failed to lure commercial tenants to the gritty neighborhood.

Criminality still exists there, but the new development team isn’t deterred. Ingrid Summerfield, co-founder and principal of Filament Hospitality, cited a renovation she oversaw near San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood when she was president and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality.

“When we opened the (Commodore Hotel), we had prostitution, drugs – we had all kinds of issues right in front of our door,” she said. “Over the course of a year or two, the neighborhood very much changed and today you wouldn’t recognize it because it’s become revitalized.”

Add lights, restaurants and people, she said, and criminals become less comfortable.

To address homelessness, Summerfield said the key is creating opportunities for permanence. She is a board member of the Community Housing Partnership, a San Francisco nonprofit that buys derelict buildings and rehabilitates them into permanent affordable housing. She thinks there may be similar opportunities in Portland, but the Grove Hotel project will come first.

“I think the first real opportunity is the fact that you have a near-empty building that’s boarded up,” she said. “That in and of itself is an eyesore and kind of sets the stage to the entry of Chinatown. By revitalizing and renovating the property, it gets it a whole different sense of arrival. That I think is probably the most important component … You give that property a concept and an element of confidence and pride, and all of a sudden it has a much sunnier outlook.”

The Naito/Eagle Point/Filament proposal calls for a 52-room, 190-bed “design-oriented, lifestyle” boutique hotel. Each room will have at least one bed, a bathroom, a flat-screen TV and Wi-Fi, but be smaller and cost less than a typical downtown hotel room. The ground floor will feature retailers, bars, coffee shops and restaurants; Naito said he has received strong interest from local chefs, and the group may partner with Lake Tahoe-based Basecamp Hotel. Banks have expressed interest in providing financing.

The proposal came together somewhat serendipitously. Naito Development shares a building with Tarlow, Naito & Summers LLP Attorneys at Law. One of the law firm’s partner’s daughters – Bridget Summers – is an associate at Eagle Point. She stopped in to visit and inquire about development opportunities in Portland.

“That was Friday,” Naito said. “Monday morning, PDC released the RFP for the Grove Hotel. How is that for coincidence?”

Within 48 hours, the group formulated a concept based on the idea that a hotel should be a jumping-off point to the city. Naito credited his son Will Naito, a Naito Development project manager, and Summers for touting that model.

Stephen Chan, a principal at Eagle Point, is employing that model to varying degrees in projects across the country. He’s not worried about Old Town Chinatown’s gritty reputation. When he thinks of the Grove Hotel, he’s reminded of the Phoenix Hotel – a rock ‘n’ roll themed hangout in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood that Summerfield managed for Joie de Vivre.

“You go there today and (the area is) probably worse than Portland is, seriously, in terms of what’s there and around there,” he said. “And at the same time, the Phoenix has continued on for well over two decades now with its hip style. And (the area is) really part of the character of it, and it’s done phenomenally well.”

Meanwhile, Old Town Chinatown, Chan said, is on the rise. Indeed, a new five-year action plan for the neighborhood identifies approximately $57 million in urban renewal funds that could become available for revitalization, and businesses are already starting to mobilize.

Also, the Grove Hotel redevelopment team is buoyed by the pending relocation of the Right 2 Dream Too homeless camp across the street. In February, a group of Pearl District stakeholders committed $846,000 toward a new home for the camp. It hasn’t moved yet, but Naito said the team has about 20 months to figure it out before the Grove Hotel reopens.

Gold and Jay didn’t have that luxury, and Bob Naito said this new project would not have come together without the extensive legwork completed by them.

Also, Summerfield has personally opened approximately 25 hotels – many adaptive reuse projects – throughout the country. She has focused on creating “demand generators” – businesses that can meet neighborhoods’ needs.

“I’ve never seen it not work,” she said.

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