The team proposing a core-and-shell renovation of the historic Multnomah County Courthouse still has hurdles to cross before it can gain the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission‘s approval.

Historic landmarks commissioners and city staff discussed the project at a three-hour hearing on Monday. They related concerns with transportation impacts and loading on Southwest Salmon Street, removal of some historic materials from the building and changes to lighting, and the placement and size of doors and windows.

GBD Architects is charged with designing a conversion of the full-block brick masonry building completed in 1914 into a modern office space for Portland-based NBP Capital. The 300,000-square-foot courthouse, at 1021 S.W. Fourth Ave., once housed prisoners and is familiar to many Portlanders who have paid traffic tickets and settled legal matters there for generations.

The building on the downtown Park Blocks is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, so proposed changes must also win approval from the National Park Service and State Historic Preservation Office to secure needed tax credits.

NBP Capital purchased the courthouse from the county in November 2018 for $28 million. After considering a hotel use, NBP has opted to bet on Portland’s rapidly expanding office market as tech firms jockey to lease attractive urban workplaces.

Traffic impacts loom large for the proposal. GBD is engaged in ongoing discussions with the Portland Bureau of Transportation regarding loading from Salmon Street and related issues.

“We were hoping we’d be able to come in here with the transportation things resolved,” said Agustin Enriquez, a GBD design director. “We’re not quite there yet.”

A PBOT representative said the agency needs more information from the project team.

“We don’t know much about the proposal yet,” PBOT’s Tammy Borden-King said.

As designed, trucks would back into the building’s single loading area, at times blocking both traffic lanes on Salmon Street. PBOT requested the applicant consider moving the loading to Southwest Main Street on the building’s south elevation.

“We asked them to study both,” Borden-King said. “They declined to do that; they only studied Salmon.”

The loading is needed to supply a ground-floor restaurant, and to provide trash and recycling services, Enriquez said.

GBD has abandoned plans for parking at the building.

The building’s central courtyard – sort of a donut hole in the center of the square exterior – will enable a contractor to perform a seismic upgrade with minimal disturbance to the structure, Enriquez said.

“We don’t have to remove a lot of material in the center of the building to seismically upgrade a very heavy masonry building,” he said. “That allows the building to be upgraded without really having to gut the inside.”

GBD proposes to convert old jail cells on the penthouse level into transparent office space with substantial window coverage. That portion of the existing structure is made of hollow clay tile. That material is not historically important, commissioners said, adding they were open to granting more leeway at the penthouse level.

Chairwoman Kristen Minor said the height of the penthouse level could be an issue for pedestrians and observers from other downtown buildings.

“I have a little concern that now we’re creating a wedding cake,” she said.

The project previously came before the Historic Landmarks Commission for a design advice hearing on Sept. 9, 2019, and a land use review hearing on Oct. 25, 2019. The project is tentatively scheduled to return on March 23.

Enriquez said the project team should be able to satisfy the commission’s objections.

“I think we could solve all these things,” he said.

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Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to clarify that Atticus Hotel partners Brian Shea and Erin Stephenson are business partners and are not married, as an earlier version stated.

Construction is booming this summer in McMinnville as local officials and business owners seek to capitalize on strong demand for wine-country tourism.

Several projects are under way to take advantage of high-income visitors and attempt to expand business beyond Third Street, McMinnville’s downtown retail thoroughfare.

A major makeover is under way at Alpine Avenue, a downtown artery. The project is intended to link McMinnville’s historic Third Street, where tourist-friendly wine bars mix with longtime local haunts, and the Granary District, a former agricultural center that now hosts wineries, breweries and related businesses.

The Alpine Avenue project is funded by a transportation bond McMinnville voters passed in 2014. The project includes street surfacing, pedestrian improvements, bike lanes, utility upgrades and landscaping along four blocks of Alpine, from Northeast Seventh to 11th avenues.

McMinnville boosters hope Alpine Avenue transforms into a corridor of high-end restaurants, coffee shops and art galleries.

Ellen Brittan, co-owner of Brittan Vineyards, said Alpine Avenue will become “more mixed-use and enticing to walk through,” bridging the gap between downtown’s retail shops and the hands-on artisan manufacturing businesses of the Granary District.

“For us, it’s a positive thing,” said Tres Burns, associate winemaker at Brittan Vineyards. In the Granary District, he said “it sort of feels like you’re miles away from Third Street. Just getting those corridors improved, that improves the connection to downtown and to Third Street, which is important for us because we’re trying to be part of the downtown experience.”

McMinnville’s status as a tourist destination is intimately tied to Oregon’s growing reputation for winemaking. More than 200 wineries have sprouted within a 20-mile radius of McMinnville, and some Oregon pinot noirs have been compared to the best of Napa Valley and France.

McMinnville is among the major outposts for Oregon’s alcohol industry, which now outpaces all others for job growth, surpassing even the much-lauded Silicon Forest software industry, according to an analysis by Jones Lang LaSalle.

The alcohol industry, including wine, beer and distilled spirits manufacturers, generated 7,400 new jobs between January 2008 and September 2016, according to JLL.

McMinnville is benefiting from the boozy trend. In addition to wineries such as Coeur De Terre and Yamhill Valley, breweries such as Heater Allen and Golden Valley have contributed to the grape-and-grain scene.

Ellen and Robert Brittan founded their winery in 2008 after careers in Napa Valley. Ellen Brittan said the town has since changed.

“We’ve seen quite a bit of transition into higher-end restaurants, more quality retail,” she said.

With the winery scene comes high-end tourism, and the town has few hotel rooms to absorb it. A local partnership is stepping in to fill that gap with the Atticus Hotel at the intersection of Northeast Fourth Avenue and Ford Street.

An R&H Construction crew broke ground on the project May 15. The hotel, which is on track to open in spring 2018, will offer 36 rooms that average about $350 a night.

It follows other luxury wine-country developments such as The Allison Inn and Spa in Newberg.

The Atticus Hotel will fulfill an unmet market for luxury lodgings in downtown McMinnville, said Erin Stephenson, who is part of the ownership group for the project. The other partners are Brian Shea; her father, Rob Stephenson; and Jeb Bladine, who owns the lot and other downtown properties and is publisher of the local newspaper, the News-Register.

The design for the 22,640-square-foot, four-story building comes from architect Nathan Cooprider.

“We recognize there are some guests who don’t come and stay in McMinnville at all because there isn’t a hotel that can meet that full-service experience,” Erin Stephenson said.

The Atticus Hotel is the most significant ground-up construction under way this year. It follows major renovations of historic buildings, including one to suit McMenamins‘ 42-room Hotel Oregon, which occupies a 112-year-old building in the heart of Third Street.

In 2015, local businessman Bob Emrick completed a new building, called the Kaos Building at Third Street and Galloway streets. The project is anchored by a fine-dining restaurant, The Barberry, on the ground floor. The second floor holds offices and the third floor is occupied by a casual eatery, 1882 Grille.

One project coming later this year is Allegory Brewing, in a converted warehouse on Northeast Fourth Street. The project won a $100,000 grant as part of the state Historic Preservation Office‘s Main Street revitalization program.

The grant program is focused on supporting healthy downtowns, said Kuri Gill, grants and outreach coordinator for the Historic Preservation Office.

“Some of these downtowns are already vital, and we want to keep them that way,” Gill said.

The grant will go toward creating a taproom and beer garden at Allegory, at 777 N.E. Fourth St., with seating indoors and outdoors separated by roll-up garage doors. The building has 5,800 square feet, with an 8,000-square-foot parking lot.

The new brewery’s owner, David Sanguinetti, said Allegory will provide a missing way station between Third Street, the Granary District and Alpine Avenue.

“This might help with the gateway to those,” he said. “It’s a natural progression.”

Fourth Street has potential to extend the downtown tourist district, Sanguinetti said.

“I think Fourth Street is the next to develop,” he said.

Sanguinetti is well-known to locals as the proprietor of The Bitter Monk, a popular Third Street taproom. He’s hoping to open Allegory in July and self-distribute beer to the Portland market.

Also bringing life to Fourth Street is Type A Press, a boutique letterpress operation that produces stationery, promotional materials and business cards. The business was founded in 2010 by Chelsey Bladine, daughter of Jeb.

McMinnville has other tourist draws, chiefly the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum on Oregon Route 18 southeast of the town center.

Yet it is wine that drives the economy in McMinnville. Town officials have created a wine walk modeled after the Bend Ale Trail to encourage tourists to make their way around town.

One winery, Elizabeth Chambers Cellar, recently completed a $1 million renovation to attract wine drinkers. The winery is in a former diesel electric power plant at 455 N.E. Irvine St. that was in use from 1926 to 1978. The renovation retained the building’s brick bones but allows visitors to see a vast barrel room and aesthetic touches. A garden provides outdoor seating and often hosts events.

The winemaker, Michael Stevenson, said the town has continued to evolve since he arrived in 1994. He’s eager to see the town better connected.

“Every year is better and better,” he said.

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The Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church, in North Portland, saw its congregation swell in the wake of the 1948 Vanport flood, which displaced Oregon’s largest African-American community in a matter of hours. This led to a significant alteration of the church building, and it’s still noticeable today.

Such history will soon be documented by the Architectural Heritage Center, thanks to a $12,000 grant from the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office. documenting early history of African-Americans in Portland, and cover structures ranging from the stately Vancouver Avenue church to houses that formerly housed working-class families.

“With a project like this it was really important that we get it right,” said Brandon Spencer-Hartle, historic resources manager for the city. “In this case, getting it right means bringing on people who have a connection to the population that we’re trying to better document and understand.”

The grant was awarded by the city of Portland. The AHC was chosen over five other bidders – mainly Portland-area preservation consultants. Its research program is expected to ultimately result in an application to list Portland’s varied African-American cultural sites on the National Register of Historic Places. Combining multiple sites into one historic district is done through a Multiple Property Documentation process, which is said to be more involved than the one to list an individual site.

AHC distinguished itself via its deep connections to Portland’s African-American community, according to Spencer-Hartle.

“What stood out about AHC’s bid, and the reason why ultimately they were selected,” he said, “is that they’ve got a lengthy history of not just documentation of buildings, but direct involvement with property owners and renters and businesses in North and Northeast Portland that have long-standing associations with the African-American community.”

Along with technical writing and research, the project’s scope includes a heavy public engagement component. The AHC’s first community meeting for this project is scheduled for May 20, at 10 a.m., at the Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church, at 3138 N. Vancouver Ave. Attendees are asked to bring photographs, oral histories or other materials detailing what life was like in Portland in its first 75 years. These could include present owners or occupants of properties formerly occupied by African-Americans decades ago, Spencer-Hartle said.

Many of the key properties are expected to be in North and Northeast Portland, where many of the city’s African-American residents took root. Others could be located elsewhere, and help tell stories of displacement as a result of unfair mortgage lending practices or other racism.

Additional meetings will take place later this summer, depending on the outcome of the first one.

The AHC is expected to deliver around August a completed nomination for a federal Multiple Property designation containing a wealth of relevant contextual history. It should come in a form compatible with the U.S. Forest Service’s best practices for documenting historic resources. Plus, the AHC is being asked to present the information in a way that hasn’t been done before.

If the designation is awarded, that opens the door for individual property owners to designate their individual buildings.

Previous efforts by historic preservationists often weren’t oriented toward telling the stories of African-Americans, Spencer-Hartle said.

Spencer-Hartle, a former Restore Oregon staffer, said the city has studied similar documentation efforts in Los Angeles and Wichita, Kansas.

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Oregon might soon gain greater protections for historic properties.

The Department of Land Conservation and Development will hold hearings on proposed new rules on Friday in St. Helens. DLCD officials will be able to choose to adopt the rules, reject them or continue to study them.

“It is probably the most important change in a couple of decades,” said Peggy Moretti, executive director of Restore Oregon. “It is very measured. These are modest steps.”

The proposal includes four key rules. First, it would mandate a public review for any project proposal to demolish one of the 11,594 properties in Oregon listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Second, it would allow creation of local historic districts with the consent of a simple majority of property owners.

Also, the proposal would clarify that taking an inventory of historic buildings is not a form of designation. That would allow cities to update their inventories without obtaining owners’ consent.

Lastly, the proposal would allow municipalities to apply any protections to properties listed on the national register or in historic districts, but only after a public process.

This would mark the first time that the state would have a uniform policy on how it treats historic properties. Currently, the only guidelines that address historic property use are set forth in the DLCD’s Goal 5 document that governs land use.

“It’s housed within Oregon’s land use policy,” Moretti said. “Goal 5 was aimed at natural resources, and historic resources got mushed in there with it.”

For the most part, those policies leave decisions entirely up to local municipalities. That leaves some areas, like Portland, with very strong rules about use of historic properties and other areas with no regulations at all.

“Oregon’s current guidelines are ill-defined, and insufficient to provide any meaningful protections at all,” Moretti said. “In some areas, the only oversight of a demolition is a demolition delay period of 90 days.”

The proposed rules are the result of more than four months of work by a rule advisory committee set up by the DLCD. The goal was to balance property rights with historic preservation aims.

“The guidelines we got were to clarify how (a municipality) and state does or does not act,” said Ian Johnson, associate deputy state historic preservation officer. “We needed to clarify how those interacted and how an owner could object.”

The State Historic Preservation Office worked in an advisory role to help develop the new rules. One of the big elements is that any proposed demolition of a historic property would be subject to public review.

“It says that it would have to have a local hearing,” Johnson said. “Approval would still be subject to the local government.”

The rules might have the biggest impact on smaller and rural communities. Larger cities and urban areas tend to have programs that oversee use of historic properties. Smaller communities often lack such oversight.

“Our big question was: How is this going to impact folks?” Johnson said. “This can’t be overly burdensome or not useful.”

So far, the most vocal opposition to the rules has come from Deschutes County. Officials there fear that existing protections of historic sites could be lost.

“We think it’s possible that county could do away with those protections anyway,” said Rob Hallyburton, community services division manager for the DLCD. “We don’t think these rules make it any more likely.”

The requirement of a hearing for a municipality to apply protection to a property listed on the national register would be a significant impact, Hallyburton said. Currently, many municipalities automatically extend those protections.

Another change in the proposed rules would be to preserve historic properties’ protections even after transfer of ownership. That would ensure compliance with an Oregon Supreme Court decision.

Overall, the new rules have been well-received, Hallyburton said.

“So far, we have had about 25 to 30 written comments,” he said. “The numbers of letters have been overwhelmingly positive.”

The challenge in developing the proposed rules was finding the proverbial middle ground, but Moretti believes that goal was achieved.

“We worked to strike the balance between private property rights and public benefit,” she said. “I think this does that.”

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