Portland has committed to building 720 new affordable housing units downtown as part of its ambitious Broadway Corridor redevelopment, but to meet that goal it may have to shift some of that housing to an auxiliary site across the railroad tracks from the main project.
And the city will have to overcome a legacy of failed housing goals at other major redevelopments. Backers say they are cognizant of those setbacks, and are structuring this project differently in hopes of avoiding past missteps.
Shannon Callahan, director of the Portland Housing Bureau, said Thursday that the city will build 440 units of affordable housing on the west side of the 14-acre central post office site at the center of the Broadway Corridor redevelopment. The housing will be built during the first two phases of the project.
Portland anticipates another 80 units to be built by developer Continuum Partners under city regulations that require developers to set aside a portion of units for affordable housing in large housing projects. That number could change depending on the portion of land that Continuum develops for commercial use.
The city has identified two other nearby parcels for the at least 200 remaining units they will need to meet their affordable housing goal -- one of which is on the west side of Naito Parkway at the Broadway Bridge, across the railroad tracks from the main post office site.
“The other properties that we’re talking about with Prosper Portland are somewhat of our safety valves,” Callahan said.
The Broadway Corridor project, one of the largest and most ambitious redevelopment projects in city history, will create a new neighborhood encompassing 32 acres in Northwest Portland between the Chinatown-Japantown historic district and the Pearl District.
The project is anchored by the 14-acre central post office site, which the city paid $88 million to acquire in 2016.
The Portland City Council took a major step forward in setting the course for the project Wednesday when it voted unanimously to approve an agreement between the city and lead developer Continuum Partners, along with a funding and financing plan and a community benefits agreement.
Mayor Ted Wheeler has touted the community benefits agreement -- which he said is a first of its kind for a project of this magnitude -- for ensuring the project will be guided by principles of equality and inclusion. A key piece of the city living up to those lofty goals will be delivering on the promised 720 units of affordable housing.
Those units are planned for families earning less than 60% of area median income, according to the project term sheets. For a family of four that would be $52,740, city records show.
In the past, Portland has struggled to deliver on affordable housing goals in big development projects around the central city.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reported in 2010 that the city had failed to deliver on its goal of bringing 430 units of low-income housing to the South Waterfront. Four years later, officials recommended decreasing goals for South Waterfront affordable housing.
The city ultimately oversaw the construction of two buildings in the South Waterfront that brought 412 affordable housing units to the area, but the completion of those projects took years, with 209 of those units only coming available earlier this year.
Developer Hoyt Street Properties built 2,000 new units as part of the city’s 1997 plan to transform 34 acres in the Pearl District. But the Oregonian/OregonLive reported in 2014 that the developer had failed to meet its contractually-obligated goal of setting aside 35% of new units for affordable housing. Portland later forced Hoyt Street to sell land to the city for affordable housing.
Kimberly Branam, executive director of Prosper Portland, the city’s economic development agency, said Portland is approaching affordable housing goals in the Broadway Corridor differently to avoid similar missteps to the ones in the Pearl District and South Waterfront.
Unlike in past projects, the city owns the properties within the Broadway Corridor and has been able to set aside parcels to meet its affordable housing goals.
It has also committed to a specific number of affordable housing units, rather than require that a specific percentage of new units be dedicated to affordable housing. Branam said setting aside a percentage of units for affordable housing can lead to the total number of units changing over time if developers dedicate more land for commercial use.
“There are a number of things that we have learned that we applied in this project,” Branam said. “There are a number of things we’re going to learn in this project that we will then apply to the next project.”
In the coming years, the city plans to sell land on the post office site to Continuum Partners, who would then develop the site. However, the city will retain control of one parcel on the west side of the site where it plans to build two towers of affordable housing, with 252 units coming in the first phase of the project and an additional 188 units coming in a second phase.
Callahan said the city will have to identify separate affordable housing developers to develop, own and operate the two towers.
“It’s an important commitment to making sure that we create a neighborhood with opportunity and also a place that’s really welcoming to all Portlanders of all incomes and especially communities that have been displaced for generations,” Callahan said.
But the city determined in 2019 that it would be unable to meet its affordable housing goals on the post office site alone.
While Callahan said the city wanted to ensure that a large portion of affordable housing was on a prime parcel within the Broadway Corridor, they didn’t want all the affordable housing to be concentrated in the same block. They also did not want to construct a 19-story building, which they felt would have been needed to come close to meeting the affordable housing goal at the post office site alone, a spokesman for the Portland Housing Bureau said.
That led the city to identify the parcel across the railroad tracks at the Broadway Bridge, known as One Waterfront, as a potential site for affordable housing in 2019. After discussions with community organizations, the city later identified a separate parcel just south of the post office site, known as Block R, as another potential site for affordable housing. Both sites are owned by Prosper Portland.
The One Waterfront site being considered for affordable housing wasn’t part of the original boundaries the city proposed for the Broadway Corridor in 2015. The site was only added to the plan later, after the city officially purchased the post office site in 2016.
The Navigation Center, a 100-bed homeless shelter that opened last year, currently sits on the One Waterfront site.
Callahan said decisions on whether to develop the site for affordable housing won’t come for at least a decade, until the later phase of the Broadway Corridor project. She said the project wouldn’t necessarily displace the Navigation Center, which was pegged as a temporary shelter when it opened in 2019.
“It’s frankly too early to tell if we’ll actually be using (One Waterfront) or Block R,” Callahan said. “What we do know is we’ll be using the two-tower model in the heart of the district early on, but we wanted to make sure we were planning for the future.”
-- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com | @jamiebgoldberg