Boora Architects

The Pearl District north of downtown Portland, Oregon, is one of America’s most recognized urban redevelopment communities. Hoyt Street Properties, the Pearl District’s largest landowner and developer, owns 34 acres in the neighborhood and has completed 13 developments to date, offering an eager market over 1,800 housing units. These have included condominium lofts, apartment units, and affordable housing units (approximately 600 of the 1800 units meet affordability standards). Hoyt Street Properties’s developments also include over 100,000 square feet of ground floor retail space, primarily aimed at boutique retailers.

Development in the lower half of the Pearl District follows the massing pattern established by the neighborhood’s many historic warehouse buildings, often planned without regard to larger neighborhood opportunities.  To date, only 50% of Hoyt Street Properties's Pearl District holdings have been built out.  When Hoyt Street was ready to begin work on its land north of the warehouse district, it saw an opportunity to establish a new pattern for the Pearl District.

The former site of a large rail yard, the land in the North Pearl District was largely vacant, with no dominant architectural context and very little infrastructure in place.  Boora and Spencer & Kupper collaborated with the developers, the city, and the neighborhood in an inclusive planning process that yielded a new vision embraced by all stakeholders and called a model of Portland's progressive democratic urbanism.

The master plan vision not only establishes design goals for new building projects but also anticipates a new neighborhood park, enhanced connections to the Willamette River, new street infrastructure, concentrated retail corridors, new civic attractors, and a school.  The City of Portland used the master plan vision as the basis for zone changes that allow the increases in density and building height necessary to achieve scenarios for the development of the neighborhood desired by the neighborhood, the city, and the developers.