North Campus of Salem's State Hospital slated for demolition

If you care about the livability of Salem, Oregon, check out the latest potential Oh, no! blow to the many Salemians who want to preserve this town's historic heritage while adding some much-needed urban design coolness to what is, at present, a pretty damn boring and non-cutting-edge community.

Yesterday Architect Geoffrey James posted disturbing news on the Salem Community Vision Facebook page about plans for the Oregon State Hospital North Campus property.

James is part of a group that submitted a North Campus redevelopment proposal that was rejected by the powers-that-be in state government.

Here's a view of the property in question, a slide from a 2014 City of Salem presentation.

Below you can read James' post. I've mildly edited it for readability and added a few links.

I haven't followed North Campus goings-on in great detail, but am fairly familiar with the key issues. I've got two main concerns with the recently-announced plan to demolish all but one of the historic buildings on the site prior to issuing a new RFP, Request for Proposals, from prospective developers of the property.

First, having Oregon taxpayers foot the bill for demolishing the buildings, removing hazardous materials such as asbestos, and otherwise making the property "shovel ready" for new development doesn't make sense to me.

The cost of all that would have to factored into a higher sales price for the property. And it precludes any possible reuse of the buildings that would be torn down. James believes that some (or maybe all) of those buildings can be saved.

As he says in his post, James' redevelopment proposal backed up that belief with an offer to buy the property. In other words, a private party was willing to buy the property "as is," taking on the responsibility of dealing with the existing buildings.

Apparently DAS (Oregon Department of Administrative Services) now believes that it can both (1) confidently predict that no prospective developer of the property would want to re-use any of the current structures other than the Dome Building, and (2) demolish those buildings at less cost than a private developer could, thereby recouping the cost to state government through a higher North Campus sale price.

These assumptions seem dubious enough to warrant close questioning of this proposal by the public and state legislators -- in part because of my other concern. Namely...

Second, there's good reason to view this demolition plan as having been orchestrated by City of Salem officials. I left this comment on James' post: "This feels like it has the secretive manipulative back room dealmaking hands of Mayor Peterson and City Manager Norris all over it."

Several years ago a newspaper story described the dream of Peterson and Norris to have a $100 million development on the North Campus that could bring in more than $522,000 in property taxes each year.
Download Redeveloping the OSH North Campus could be a $100 million project with key benefits for Salem.

As many as 490 housing units could be built on the site. Apartments, row houses, condominiums, and assisted living homes would be part of the mix on the 47-acre north campus.

My reaction, and that of many people who currently live in the North Campus neighborhood: ugh. Not nearly good enough. Salem already has plenty of ordinary housing options. This is a special property that deserves to be made into something unique, not commonplace.

Someone, I and others strongly suspect, put pressure on DAS to reject the redevelopment proposal that saved existing buildings and left plenty of green space on the property. That someone likely was officials at the City of Salem.

They are notorious at conducting the public's business outside of the public eye, making backroom deals that eventually emerge from the shadows where attempts are made to sell them to a suspicious citizenry. Same thing is happening here.

Read the comments on the Facebook post to see how well the demolition notion is being received. For example: "horrified, sick, defeated feeling, mad, devastated. Did I say mad, HOW ABOUT FURIOUS!! Screw the poor neighborhood. Build ticky-tacky crap housing, import higher crime to Northeast - just what we need!"

Here's Geoffrey James' report on what's going on.

ALERT: NORTH CAMPUS TO BE DEMOLISHED!

You will not read about this in the newspaper, at least for a while, but DAS (Oregon Department of Administrative Services) announced to the Capitol Planning Commission on Friday, January 9, that the half million sq.ft. of historic buildings at the 37 acre Oregon State Hospital North Campus will be DEMOLISHED, with the exception of the Dome Building, that is presently occupied by the Dept. of Corrections administrative offices.

This proposal will cost many millions, and would need to be approved by the Legislature, so is not yet a done deal. They first would remove any asbestos, then demolish the 5 buildings, then apparently would provide larger utility connections to city sewer and water. The objective is to try and make the property "shovel ready" and more attractive to developers. They also plan to trim the diseased trees.

This proposal is maybe what the City of Salem staff want, i.e. a site for their hoped for $100 million development. However, the real estate market is limited, and the location of this site may only attract apartment blocks. That is NOT what the neighborhood wants or needs. The NESCA Neighborhood has adopted nine goals that encourage adaptive reuse of the existing buildings, and saving the trees and much open space.

A local Salem group did submit a proposal for acquiring the property, reusing the buildings, and implementing ALL nine neighborhood goals. That is not what city staff wants to happen, so the word was put out that the local proposal, from an investment group, was "not qualified". An actual purchase and sale offer was submitted for millions, i.e. more than the appraised value of the property, and DAS staff were impressed, but the City seems to have inflence over what happens.

Salem Community Vision visualizes adaptive reuse of the buildings into maybe another exciting adaptive reuse project like Edgefield (McMenamins Edgefield in Troutdale) plus a higher education campus, and some senior housing. The recreation area (park) at the northwest should be retained. The wonderful trees should be preserved. There is room for low rise housing carefully sited in the trees at the north east portion of the site.

One building on Center Street could have small neighborhood shops, restaurants, and small businesses. An incubator for entrepreneurs is needed, and there is room for that. The center could well become a neighborhood center and one of the attractive places to visit in Salem like the Willamette Heritage Center.

So here is the situation: a half million sq.ft. of historic buildings are planned for the wrecking ball. Contact Rep. Brian Clem and Senator Jackie Winters, members of the Capitol Commission, about this. It is unlikely the state (and the taxpayers) would be able to recoup the planned millions that DAS plans to spend to "prepare" this property for future development.

Comments

[Breakfast on Bikes]

This isn't all overreaction, but there is some overreaction going on. The case here is more complicated than at the Blind School.

For example, the housing goals in the "Leland report" don't show "ticky tacky crap housing" and while this isn't a guarantee that bad housing won't be built, at least at the start they are aiming higher.

http://www.oregon.gov/DAS/EAM/Statewide/docs/VisionStratDevProg.pdf

The idea that the City wants to screw the neighborhood doesn't ring true. I think the City wants to create something more like a walkable residential and neighborhood commercial district with early 20th century streetcar scale charm.

As for the trees, the Walnuts are starting to die off from "thousand cankers disease." One has been removed by the Kirkbride building already and others will follow shortly. Elsewhere around town you can see Walnuts withering from it. It is not likely the magnificent row along D street will survive intact.

Eola, Yaquina, Santiam, and McKenzie halls aren't that great, and folks should be open to replacing them with finer buildings. Especially - are people really clamoring to save Eola hall???

The City's screwed up too many things, but I think it's more likely that the State's haste to unload the property is a greater threat.

The Dome Building is the real gem here, and let's just make sure we take care of it. Not everything else is essential.

[Brian Hines]

Breakfast on Bikes, you make some good points. There's certainly room for debate about every aspect of how the North Campus should be redeveloped.

But this is one of my main concerns about how this effort is proceeding: a lack of debate, of open public hearings, of a transparent process for deciding on goals for this property and who should implement them.

Given the City of Salem's track record in this regard, citizens have good reason to be wary.

Just consider what has happened with Pringle Square, the Third Bridge, Policy Facility planning, downtown parking and dissolution of the downtown association, Howard Hall, and the generally dismal track record of the current folks at City Hall when it comes to encouraging creative, bike/pedestrian friendly, mixed use, mass transit centered, non-autocentric projects that reflect a broad community consensus about what sort of town Salem should be, and become.

I readily admit that I don't trust our current crop of City officials.

Their habit is make decisions behind the scenes, almost always tilting toward special interests, then to reveal those plans to an appropriately skeptical public, trying to sell people on a project that already has been set in motion, and not being willing to change course even in the face of facts and citizen input that demands a different way.

We've seen this game played over and over by the folks at City Hall.

I don't see any reason to believe the redevelopment of the North Campus isn't being manipulated in the same fashion. This is a big part of why I'm concerned about the effort to essentially have the upcoming session of the Oregon legislature decide on the future of the North Campus.

If you look at the original early 2014 planning document linked to in this post, you'll see that the open, transparent decision-making process outlined in a slide has gone off course, since the sole response to the RFP for redevelopment was rejected by DAS in a rather strange manner, and apparently no new RFP is in the cards.

Rather, backroom political manipulations have replaced open community planning, which isn't a good sign for the future of the North Campus.