New Developments on the Rise in Downtown Portland

Every day on my way to and from work, I see the building on SW Taylor between 2nd and 3rd getting eaten away, bite by bite. Oddly enough, it's a very orderly and calm process, the tearing down of a building.

The site currently houses the Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple (or what's left of it anyway) and is the planned new home for a 10-story building by Ankrom Moisan Architects. According to the architecture firm's blog about this project, the building will consist of about 190,000 square feet for mostly creative office space use, with some retail space planned for the ground floor. You can see a rendering of the building's final design footprint at the bottom of this post.

It's exciting to see an abandoned building (designated a dangerous building since 2009) being replaced with a vibrant new space in downtown Portland. With so much of the city's growth taking place on its bookends — the Pearl and South Waterfront — a new development in the city's core seems overdue. And, let's face it, I’ve been working in an office downtown for almost ten years and I'm ready for a new lunch spot!