O’Bryant Square reopens this fall for the first time in five years, and when it does visitors will stroll right into the middle of the extremes roiling downtown Portland.
The half-acre brick plaza closed in 2018 because of structural problems with the underground parking garage that was a condition of the donor who gave the land to the city decades earlier. Named for Portland’s first mayor, Hugh O’Bryant, it’s been fenced off since 2018 as the city put together plans to carefully fill the garage, work finally due to begin as soon as next month.
The park that emerges when fences come down this fall is just across from the new Ritz-Carlton, which promises some of Portland’s toniest condos and hotel rooms. It’s also right by Multnomah County’s new Behavioral Health Resource Center and other social service agencies that serve some of the city’s most distressed residents.
So as Portland prepares to take the fences down around O’Bryant Square, the city is trying to envision how to create a public space that somehow serves the city’s extremes – without deteriorating into a drug haven once known as “paranoid park.”
“We’ve got to activate that space and we’ve got to activate a lot of our spaces downtown,” Parks Commissioner Dan Ryan told a gathering on the square’s future earlier this month. “We must focus on that as our No. 1 priority because we need that activation, we need that joy.”
Architects and interest groups have pitched a variety of ideas — transitional housing, food carts, a public garden or a fenced-off space that closes at night. The city isn’t close to settling on a long-term direction, but downtown businesses and parks enthusiasts are hopeful that when the square re-emerges this fall, it does so with amenities that will provide a pathway to a more approachable space.
“The overarching desire from everybody is that it’s safe and welcoming,” said Randy Gragg, director of the Portland Parks Foundation. “There’s a strong interest in some kind of commercial, ongoing activity there – a lot of energy around food carts -- and arts leaders are excited about what they could do in a downtown plaza.”
O’Bryant Square opened in 1973 with a bronze fountain and rose bushes, promptly winning a design award from the federal government. Portlanders gathered there to mourn John Lennon’s death in 1980.
But the square’s fountain leaked and closed. The park – surrounded on three sides by hulking structures including the Pittock Block, the nexus of Portland’s telecommunications networks – gradually became a hangout for people who didn’t want to be seen.
Just two blocks from West Burnside Street, and only steps from popular downtown hotels and restaurants, O’Bryant Square steadily deteriorated for years. Before its closure, though, the park had enjoyed a decade of revival because the nearby Alder Street food carts attracted diners who then went to the park to enjoy their meal.
The food carts are gone now, replaced by the Ritz-Carlton. And in the years since O’Bryant Square closed, Portland’s chronic issues with homelessness became a full-blown crisis – with thousands of people sleeping outside nightly across the city.
Walt Weyler, chairman of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, said he believes O’Bryant Square can serve an important role as one of Portland’s cherished gathering areas. But he said it will take attention and care from the city to make it happen.
“I hope that when the city finally spends the money to fix it, and it needs major fixing, that it will also have necessary oversight – that is, patrols that discourage criminal behavior – and that the park can be a place of enjoyment and comfort and safety,” Weyler said. “I believe it’s important that parks have lights in them.”
The parks foundation held a series of public meetings earlier this month to solicit ideas for what O’Bryant Square might someday become. But for Steven Lien, whose underU4men shop looks out on the brick plaza, the immediate question is how the city will manage it when it reopens in September.
“Who knows when we’ll get an actual finished park, a newly designed park? My guess is that’s several years away,” Lien said. “I have concerns about the interim period. I’ve got concerns about safety and I’ve got concerns about the general upkeep and maintenance.”
Without many storefronts or other attractions to draw the public, O’Bryant Square has repeatedly deteriorated – and the chain-link fence has done little to keep people out over the past five years.
Still, Lien said he’s optimistic about the future – envisioning a plaza that’s attractive to people living in single-room-occupancy rentals and to those at the Ritz.
“I hope to see it as a fun gathering place,” he said. Lien said the city intends to use the period after the park reopens to try out various ideas, like around-the-clock lighting and music that could give the space a lively feel.
Gragg, with the Parks Foundation, said he wants to see Portland thinking proactively about the park’s future. And he said he hopes the city has design innovations in place by fall to make O’Bryant Square attractive when it reopens in September.
“There absolutely has to be something happening in that park the day the fences come down,” Gragg said. “Because a space not programmed with safe, positive activity will get programmed by others with ill-intent.”
-- Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com |
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